Founding Co-Editor Anthony Rainone on The Lineup #4

Founding co-editor Anthony Rainone will be adding to a running post throughout the day for the eighth stop on the So Dark For April blog tour.

Anthony Rainone's fiction in AHMM

I just received the September 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, featuring "Tomb Guardian" by Lineup founding co-editor Anthony Rainone. Well done, Anthony. Click on the image to enlarge.

Anthony Rainone's Introduction to The Lineup 3

Author and New York Editor for Crimespree Magazine Anthony Rainone has worked on The Lineup since its formative stage in 2007. Anthony decided make Issue 3 his last as a co-editor, but today he's blogged his introduction to Issue 3:

The Lineup Issue Number 3 is a robust slice of life distilled by some of the best crime poets in the game today. This is poetry at its best, bringing the reader into terrain that is at turns sobering, horrifying, enlightening and always tinged with a crime element.

And crime poetry isn’t afraid to take that slice deeper than skin level. It eviscerates muscle and bone and bores down to the spaces inside our souls wherein everything lurks.

The Lineup 3 is about revealing secrets, as does Amy MacLennan’s prowler in “Prowling.” Yet, it’s also about our fears and about our perhaps longing for a slightly darker way of life. Poetry — crime poetry — frees us to explore the deranged and dangerous in ways only writers can. The human desires and frailties displayed in this issue cross cultures and countries, from Henry Chang’s Chinese deliveryman in “Takeout” to James McGowan’s Irish thugs in “Running for Home.”

The Lineup 3 has the usual suspects too: murderers, victims, and cops. In this issue, you’ll meet police who put up a façade of gallows humor in the blood-glare of perp killers, such as aptly depicted in Sarah Cortez’s “Ride-along.”

And when we’re the guilty party, crime poetry tells us in aching fashion what the recovery from the fall is like — if recovery happens at all. Sometimes crime poetry just plain hits with flash emotions like a jazz riff floating on barroom currents, such as Wallace Stroby’s “Independence Day, 1976.” You can either fill in the narrative of lives rented from the fabric of conventional society, or you can let the colors of poetry wash over you. Sometimes those colors are the rainbow, and sometimes they are only black and blue.

There are so many reasons to read crime poetry. It will tell you about life in astonishing ways. We all either know what it’s like to put our hand to the flame, or have the desire to do so, or to understand the attraction better. The Lineup 3 burns the way with you.

Anthony Rainone
Brooklyn, NY
January 2010

Thanks for everything, Anthony.

Our First Reading

It was great to meet Jennifer L. Knox, Carol Novack, and Karen Petersen along with a slew of Lineup fans and learn they're all as enthused about crime poetry as Patrick, Sarah, Richie, Anthony, and I.

I began last night with these remarks:

Welcome to the first reading from The Lineup: Poems on Crime. I'm Gerald So, founding editor, and with me are two of my co-editors—Richie Narvaez and Anthony Rainone—and three contributors—Jennifer L. Knox, Carol Novack, and Karen Petersen. I'd like to thank Carol, Richie, and KGB for tonight's event. Feel free to order refreshments throughout the night and support this great venue for writers.

A lot of people who hear about The Lineup think crime poetry is new or gimmicky, but the same emotions that inspire crime have long inspired poetry. Crime poetry is akin to crime fiction. Both have a sense of purpose. Every word, every sentence plants clues, reveals character, tries for resolution, but crime poetry forces us to face the same fear, jealousy, anger, indignation—without fiction's buffer of make-believe.

Karen read first, followed by Anthony, who read poems by Patrick Shawn Bagley, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Stephen D. Rogers. Anthony introduced Jen Knox who read several crime-related poems including "Why We Came and Why We Stayed" from The Lineup 2.

After a twelve-minute break to sell books and mingle, I introduced Richie, who read his poems "Metro", "Papi Was a Numbers Runner", and "Judgment Day" from The Lineup 1, as well as "Latest Victim" by Graham Everett and "Prayer of an Arson Investigator" by Sarah Cortez, also from Issue 1.

Richie introduced Carol Novack, who read her Lineup 2 poems "Willie" and "Color Symphony: Bronx Summer", Janis Butler Holm's Lineup 2 prose poem "Shopping with Winona", and finally a short play.

I capped the night with my Lineup 1 poems, "Witness Protection," "Four Minutes," and "Mickey Spillane".

We'd sold four copies of Issues 1 and 2 before I had to catch a train home. Thanks to everyone who attended, and once again to KGB for having us. A picture or two to come.

The prospect of audio and video recording the event fell through. If you attended, feel free to leave a comment. If not, you can experience a virtual reading by listening to The Lineup episode of Seth Harwood's CrimeWAV.

Caught on Camera

At last night's Robert Crais Chasing Darkness signing at Mysterious Bookshop. Photo: Joe Guglielmelli (l to r, Anthony Rainone, Richie Narvaez, Gerald So)

I had to leave the festivities early, but Anthony and Richie gave Crais a copy of The Lineup, which he received with enthusiasm and said he would read on the plane.

Anthony Rainone

Anthony is the New York Editor for Crimespree Magazine, a crime fiction book reviewer for the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper, and a Contributing Editor for January Magazine. He has written numerous articles, including for Mystery Scene Magazine and an upcoming piece for the Strand Magazine. Anthony has also published short stories in Demolition Magazine, Thug Lit, Thrilling Detective and Plots With Guns, among others. He has recently completed a novel set in the Midwest. Anthony lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.