Sunday, December 31, 2006

Announcing Jacket 31

" Announcing Jacket 31 "

As the shades of 2006 gather to bid us farewell...
the glow of a gleaming new Jacket lights up the night sky...

Jacket 31 - October 2006 - via
http://jacketmagazine.com/00/home.shtml

Featuring the late great Robert Creeley...
poetry from the Low Countries...
the Letter to Poets project...
more on the Phlarf Phenomenon...
and millions of poems, reviews, articles, and interviews.


>>>>>> Feature: Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

Edited by Michael Kelleher

--- Robert Creeley, 'Wow. I called it and why not:' 7 letters, 1950-1961, edited by Rod Smith, Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris.

--- Charles Alexander: Robert Creeley: The Speech that Seeks Company (two brief notes)

--- Amiri Baraka: CREELEY TRIBUTE, MAY 06 JUST BUFFALO

--- Benjamin Friedlander: Reading in Pieces

--- Susan Howe: Leaf Flower in the Wind Falling Blue The Dark River

--- From Words to Pieces: On Robert Creeley, A tape-essay by Tosa Motokiyu, Ojiu
Norinaga, and Okura Kyojin, with an introduction by Kent Johnson and Javier Alvarez

--- Alexander Jorgensen: Emails to a Younger Poet

--- Margaret Konkol: Creeley in Age: Negative Poetics in Robert Creeley's Late Work

--- Ruth Lepson: "It Is All a Rhythm": Robert Creeley and Steve Lacy

--- Stan Persky: About Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

--- Kyle Schlesinger: GETTING Behind the Word: Creeley's TyPOGRAPHY

--- Dale Smith: Space Suits: the Empirical Tradition in Robert Creeley's "A Day Book"

--- Joel Weishaus: A Poem Addressed to Robert Creeley on His Poem "Histoire De -Florida."

--- Don Wellman: Creeley's Ear


>>>> Feature: The Low Countries -

Editor: Karlien van den Beukel

--- Karlien van den Beukel: Introduction [to come]

--- Paul Bogaert: ADDRESS, translated by John Irons

--- Arjen Duinker: Senses and Desires, translated by Jeltje Fanoy

--- Hans Faverey: Poems from Three Cycles: translated by Francis R. Jones

--- Astrid Lampe: 4 Poems from "Spuit je Ralkleur" (Spray your RAL Colour)

--- Lucebert: Four Poems, translated by Diane Butterman

--- Erik Spinoy: Three poems, translated by John Irons

--- Dirk van Bastelaere: Wwwhhhooossshh (The Opera Ain't Over Till The Fat Lady Sings), trans. Willem Groenewegen

--- F. van Dixhoorn: Two Poems: 'All at sea' and 'Big batten', trans. Astrid van Baalen, with a note on the translation

--- Reviews: Andrew Duncan: "The Last to Leave" by Dirk van Bastelaere

--- Douglas Messerli: Three reviews: Hugo Claus, Remco Campert, Hans Faverey

--- Eliot Weinberger: "Preface Against the Forgetting: Selected Poems" by Hans Faverey, trans. by Francis Jones


>>>>>> Feature: Letters to Poets

--- Introduction: Dana Teen Lomax and Jennifer Firestone: Letters To Poets: Conversations

About Poetics, Politics, and Community

--- Kathleen Fraser and Patrick Pritchett

--- Paul Hoover and Albert Flynn DeSilver

--- Leslie Scalapino and Judith Goldman


>>>>>> Articles

--- Charles Bernstein: Afterword to "The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser" (Revised and Expanded Edition) Edited by Miriam Nichols

--- Rachel Blau DuPlessis: Manhood and its Poetic Projects: The construction of
masculinity in the counter-cultural poetry of the U.S. 1950s

--- Jonathan Fedors: Writing Class in Kevin Davies' "Comp"

--- John Felstiner and David Goldstein: The Lure of the God: Robert Duncan on Translating Rilke

--- Chris Glomski: Leafing The Now: "Depth Theology" by Peter O'Leary, "The Totality for Kids" by Joshua Clover

--- Piers Hugill: "Fig" by Caroline Bergvall, and "Via: Poems 1994-2004", by Caroline
Bergvall

--- Tom Jones: "The Unconditional: A Lyric" by Simon Jarvis

--- Poets Behaving Badly: Robert Sheppard: "Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court" by Peter Barry: 'What the Arts Council's investigating team had failed to achieve in months I accomplished in seconds,' boasts Osborne of the fateful meeting when the avalanche of resignations was triggered by chairman Jeff Nuttall. 'They marched out of the room, and I asked the Secretary to be certain to record their resignations in the minutes, for fear they should come to what senses they possessed and march back in again. But they didn't return. Was ever a victory so inadvertently achieved?'

--- Anthony Stephens: Nietzsche's Unease: The Ambiguity of Poetic Metaphor


>>>>>> Poems

--- Caroline Bergvall: The Summer Tale (Deus Hic, 1)

--- Sean Carey: Looking at Peter Porter after many years

--- Sharon Dolin: Four poems: Missed Hummer / The Give, Seek, Am / This Scabbard's Free / Lick-Over

--- Landis Everson: Jack, My Vocabulary Said This

--- Adam Fieled: Apparition Poems

--- Alan Gilbert: from "Pretty Words Made a Fool Out of Me"

--- rob mclennan: Four poems

--- D.S. Marriott: the levees

--- Geoff Page: Ugly Beauty

--- Hazel Smith: In camera

--- Mark Yakich: New Love Poem

--- Jeffrey Yang: Bedsong for A - after Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006)

--- Todd Swift: Four poems: Confessions / The Serious Business / I'm In Love With A
German Film Star / Hume

--- John Tranter: Girl in Water

--- Harriet Zinnes: Possibilities

--- Grzegorz Wróblewski: Two poems: A Summation Scheme (About the Illness of John T.) / Black Head


>>>>>> Interviews

--- Janet Cardiff in conversation with Anthony Easton

--- The Romantic Objectivist: Hugh Seidman in conversation with Molly Nason, 2006


>>>>>> More on Flarf

--- Michael Gottlieb: Googling Flarf

--- Rick Snyder: The New Pandemonium: A Brief Overview of Flarf


>>>>>> Reviews

--- Erik Anderson: Cockerels and Testicles: "Exchanges of Earth & Sky" by Jack Collom

--- Martin Anderson: "New and Selected Poems" by Kelvin Corcoran

--- Scott Bentley: "Perspective Would Have Us" by Erica Carpenter

--- Clive Bush: "Myne. New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2005" by Frances Presley

--- John Couth: "Inside to Outside" by Christopher Gutkind

--- Ian Davidson: "Collected Poems" by Lee Harwood

--- Thomas Fink: "The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. 1" by Eileen R. Tabios

--- Kass Fleisher: "Nightbirds" by Garin Cycholl

--- Tom Goff: "Must Be Present to Win", poems by Meg Withers

--- Henry Gould: "Breeze" by John Latta

--- Lisa Guidarini: "Jagged With Love" by Susanna Childress

--- Edmund Hardy: "The Places As Preludes" by Gustaf Sobin

--- Edmund Hardy: "Ancestors and Species: New & Selected Ethnographic Poetry" by Tom

Lowenstein

--- Tim Kahl: "Mulberry", by Dan Beachy-Quick

--- David Kennedy: Ken Bolton, "At The Flash & At The Baci" - Four Coffees with Ken
Bolton

--- Michael Leddy: Homer: "Iliad" 12 CDs and "Odyssey" 10CDs, translated and read by
Stanley Lombardo: '...I have been reading and teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey in
Lombardo's translations for several years, and I'm delighted by the ways in which
listening to these readings allows nuances of the poems to register.'

--- Ben Lerner: "Curves to the Apple", by Rosmarie Waldrop

--- Nicole Mauro: "Twin Towers" by Basil King

--- Nicole Mauro: "Gogol in Rome" by Katia Kapovich

--- Bridie McCarthy: "Strange Attractors", by Louis Armand

--- Tim Morris: "Word is Born", by Michael Kindellan and Reitha Pattison

--- Robert Mueller: "Ledger" by Susan Wheeler

--- Paul Nelson: "Lost in the Chamiso" by Amalio Madueño

--- Paul Nelson: "Fulcrum" Number Four 2005

--- Craig Perez: "Involuntary Lyrics" by Aaron Shurin

--- Gilbert Wesley Purdy: "Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved" by
Gregory Orr

--- Brian Richards: "Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets" by Kent Johnson

--- Peter Riley: "Blue Grass" by Peter Minter

--- Dale Smith: "Solution Simulacra" by Gloria Frym

--- Rob Stanton: "Open Clothes" by Steve Benson

--- James Stuart: "The Trees: Selected Poems 1967-2004" by E. Montejo and "Walking to
Point Clear" by David Brooks

--- Ezra Tessler: "The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch", by Kenneth Koch

--- Carolyn van Langenberg: "The Hoplite Journals" by Martin Anderson

--- Mark Wallace: "Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile Culture" by Joe Amato:'... That such forums continue to exist in a society often so hostile to them gives Amato at least a degree of optimism on which to conclude a book that spends most of its time detailing a vast industry of unfreedom and the anguish it causes.'

--- Ivan Weiss: "Gagarin Street" by Piotr Gwiazda

--- Marjorie Welish: "Spinoza in Her Youth" by Norma Cole

________________

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Monday, December 18, 2006

2nd Ave Poetry vol. 2

2nd Ave Poetry vol. 2

featuring the work of

annon-3888976 | anselm berrigan | regie cabico
michael coffey | ernest concepcion | kevin coval
del ray cross | thom donovan | phebus etienne
thomas fink | rob fitterman | sarah gambito | drew
gardner | rigoberto gonzales | sabrina gschwandtner
donna ho | fanny howe | brenda iijima | paolo javier
ellen kennedy | jack kimball | tao lin | serena liu
jill magi | paolo manalo | noam mor | joyelle mcsweeney
bruna mori | hugo mujica | daniel nester | aimee
nezhukumatathil | long ngan | urayoan noel | manuel
ocampo | aaron peck | tim peterson | wanda phipps
sreshta premnath | meredith quartermain | peter
quartermain | barbara jane reyes | tony robles | patrick
rosal | thaddeus rutkowski | sukhdev sandhu | leslie
scalapino | jennifer scappetone | purvi shah | dennis
somera | rodrigo toscano | charles valle | tim yu

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Friday, December 15, 2006

Thursday, December 14, 2006

For the Onion Dead

Cauliflower works well when smushed with a bit of
bizarro mannequin behind the wheel of a
round-bodied Pudding Risotto Beef--

An onion-headed man.
His teeth were bad.

How's your ass?

"me real poet, you historical context"

Tony's got some interesting things to say re Ron on Ashbery.

The thing I wonder is would Dave Smith be able to comment on Ron's work at all. I rather suspect Ron cld comment, with some context, on Dave Smith. That's, perhaps, part of Ron's dismissal of that list of Medal for the Arts recipients. The tradition Ron is pushing, radical modernist comme Stein, Zukofsky - New American - Language etc is used to being overlooked in the awards/major review arena. I don't disagree with Tony that there's new terrain to be explored but I'm not sure championing Ashbery, against, for example Pinsky, could do anything but further that exploration.

All that said, I've never read Robert Penn Warren. & I'm ok with that.

But, seriously, is working with awareness in a tradition inherently an oedipal matter? Pollock, to go to another context, seemed to think so. But let's go to jazz, how about Lacy's relation to Monk? It seems to me possible to work in a furthering/celebratory manner that's highly conscious of a/the tradition(s).

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Flarf Goes to College Videos

Just in time for the holidays, all the videos from the Flarf collective reading at Dickinson College - Katie Degentesh, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon w/ Mel Nichols, Michael Magee, Rod Smith, & Gary Sullivan - are now up at YouTube.

sweet land of liberty

"The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

What the media aren't telling you about the Iraq Study Group report

Summary: Media Matters for America has identified six findings in the Iraq Study Group's report that major news outlets have largely overlooked. They include: that the Pentagon has significantly underreported the extent of violence in Iraq, that U.S. officials possess little knowledge about the sources of the ongoing attacks, and that the situation in Afghanistan has grown so dire that U.S. troops may need to be diverted there from Iraq.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

The Lipstick of Noise, yay!

Third Annual Single Malt Poetry Slam

Sunday Dec 10, 5 pm

Third Annual Single Malt Poetry Slam! Anna Moschovakis, Gary Sullivan,
Paolo Javier, Eugene Ostashevsky, Kim Rosenfield + yr hosts: Fitterman
& Holman $20/$15 at www.virtuous.com

The Bowery Poetry Club is hosting a Sixteenth Annual Single Malt Scotch Holiday Poetry Slam, at 5pm on Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006, 308, Bowery at Houston. $20 includes 6 single malts! ($15.00 in advance at virtuous.com)

This fourth annual event features 6 poets, reading descriptions of six
single malts, as the audience samples the whiskeys. The audience votes
on the poets and single malts. + Door prizes!!

Friday, December 01, 2006

Comp. in French!


traduit de l'anglais par Xandaire Sélène

cover photo: Tim Davis, Buddah Security Camera

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

So There



Bass player Steve Swallow has been meditating on the poetry of the late Robert Creeley (1926-2005) for a long time. In 1980, Swallow and pianist Steve Kuhn released an album of song settings of Creeley’s poems with vocalist Shirley Jordan (Home, ECM). After a quarter century, Swallow feels prepared to take up the collaboration again.

For So There, Creeley recorded a selection of poems and fragments. Swallow took the recordings to Oslo a few short months after the poet’s death and created the musical accompaniment, again in the company of Kuhn, and this time also with the Cikada String Quartet.

Tracks: Oh No; Names; Here Again; Ambition; Indians; From Histoire De Florida; Sufi Sam Christian; Later; From Wellington, New Zealand / From Eight Plus; Miles; Just In Time; Return; Echo; Sad Advice; Riddle; Blue Moon; I Know A Man; A Valentine For Pen.

Personnel: Steve Swallow: bass; Robert Creeley: voice; Steve Kuhn: piano; The Cikada String Quartet: Henrik Hannisdal: violin; Odd Hannisdal: violin; Marek Konstantynowicz: viola; Morten Hannisdal: cello.

Monday, November 27, 2006

OMG THIS is SOOO Presidential!!

Idiots have bred presidents to be much larger than ever
intended, thereby increasing the incidence of hip dysplasia .

Friday, November 24, 2006

Beethoven Opus 109 pg 2 original draft manuscript

BBC ON CIA ROLE IN RFK ASSASINATION

New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been brought to light.

The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O'Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Ghost Brain

the to-come,
its
always--

red dye on the
sunburnt rye--

lest the lettuce-head win:

keep worsening

their orbit, their

lutes,

their us

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Thanks to Jane Dark on Kakutani on Pynchon.

A case of review as "bucket wheel excavator."

On the other hand, there's some class struggle at the Wall Street Journal.

I refuse their call for resignation.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Lannan at Georgetown 11/16

Thursday, November 16 in the ICC Auditorium at Georgetown

8:00 PM, Reading:

CAROLINE BERGVALL
&
JOHANNA DRUCKER

4:00 PM, Lannan Literary Symposium, The Poetic Book

Jerome McGann, Johanna Drucker, Penn Szittya, & Caroline Bergvall

Did NASA accidentally nuke Jupiter?

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Bernstein/Smith 11/18 4 pm

i.e. reading series

Saturday, November 18th
4 pm - 6pm

Charles Bernstein & Rod Smith

Clayton & Co. Fine Books
317 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD
410-752-6800

Raworth/Brötzmann at Woodland Pattern

Thursday November 16 and Friday November 17, 10PM
Peter Brötzmann (Germany) and Tom Raworth (UK): Poems and Improvisations and Cheryl Lynn Bruce (Chicago) and Joshua Abrams (Chicago): Pickling by Suzan-Lori Parks, performance monologue with music Elastic Arts Foundation, 2830 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor
$10

Sunday November 19, 7PM
Peter Brötzmann (Germany) and Tom Raworth (UK): Poems and Improvisations and Cheryl Lynn Bruce (Chicago) and Joshua Abrams (Chicago): Pickling by Suzan-Lori Parks, performance monologue with music Co-presentation with Woodland Pattern
Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 East Locust, Milwaukee
$8/$7 students and seniors/$6 Woodland Pattern members

Charles Bernstein at Bridge Street, Sun. 11/19, 7 PM

Come to Bridge Street Books

at 7 PM on Sunday, November 19th because

CHARLES BERNSTEIN

will read.

Charles Bernstein is the author of 30 books of poetry and libretti,
including Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Shadowtime
(Green Integer, 2005), With Strings (University of Chicago Press,
2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000).
He has published two books of essays and one essay/poem collection: My
Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); A Poetics
(Harvard University Press, 1992); Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984
(Sun & Moon Press, 1986, 1994; reprinted by Northwestern University
Press, 2001). Bernstein is Donald T. Regan Professor of English,
University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-founder and co-editor, with
Al Filreis, of PENNsound (writing.upenn.edu/pennsund); and editor, and
co-founder, with Loss Pequenño Glazier, of The Electronic Poetry
Center (epc.buffalo.edu). In 2006, Bernstein was elected a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave.
(202) 965-5200

Located in Georgetown next to the Four Seasons Hotel, 5 blocks from
the Foggy Bottom Metro station (blue & orange lines).

BYOE (Bring Your Own Ears)

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Dem Senate Majority

The new AP count showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236. Virginia has had two statewide vote recounts in modern history, but both resulted in vote changes of no more than a few hundred votes.

"World Reaction"

Kaplan passed this on from CNN:

In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members
of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as
"the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world" and
gloated that they left the Bush administration "seriously weakened."

yay dems!!

The Work of Leslie Scalapino

Saturday, November 11th, 1:00 pm at The Poetry Project, 131 East 10th Street, NYC

please come!

A celebration and inquiry into the work of prominent contemporary experimental Bay Area writer and publisher (of O Books) Leslie Scalapino. Leslie Scalapino's over 20 books challenge the boundaries of poetry, prose and visual art. Her most recent titles are Orchid Jetsam, Dahlia's Iris and Zither & Autobiography. Six poets will each present a short talk on aspects of Scalapino's work, followed by a question/answer session. Poets will include Brenda Iijima, who will host the discussion, Rod Smith, Laura Elrick, Alan Davies, Jennifer Scappettone and Rodrigo Toscano.

Rod Smith is the author of In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, The Good House, Music or Honesty, and, forthcoming You Bête. He publishes Edge Books and edits the journal Aerial in Washington, DC. Smith is also co-editing, with Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, for the University of California Press. Laura Elrick's book Fantasies in Permeable Structures is recently out from Factory School (2005) in Vol. 1 of the Heretical Texts series. She is also the author of sKincerity (Krupskaya, 2003) and is one of the featured writers on Women In the Avant Garde, an audio CD produced by Narrow House Recordings in 2004. Alan Davies is the author of many books of poetry including Active 24 Hours (Roof), Name (This), Rave (Roof), and Candor (O Books). Jennifer Scappettone's recent poetry, prose, and translations from the Italian are forthcoming in 4x4, Drunken Boat, P-Queue, The Cracked Slab Anthology of New Chicago Writing, Jacket, Modern Philology , and Zoland Annual . She is working on an archaeology of the landfill & opera of pop-ups in progress, provisionally entitled “Exit 43”, commissioned by Atelos Press. She teaches at the University of Chicago. Rodrigo Toscano is the author of To Leveling Swerve (Krupskaya Books, 2004), Platform (Atelos, 2003), The Disparities (Green Integer, 2002) and Partisans (O Books, 1999). His poetry has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Toscano is originally from California (San Diego and San Francisco). He lives in New York City. Brenda Iijima is the author of Around Sea (O Books, 2004) and two forthcoming titles: Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press) and Eco Quarry Bellwether (OtherVoices). She runs Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs from Brooklyn, New York.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

In memoriam, Brad Will

Bradley Roland Will (1970-2006) was a U.S. anarchist, documentary filmmaker, and journalist with Indymedia New York City. He was shot and killed on October 27, 2006 during the teachers' strike in the Mexican city of Oaxaca.

Monday, November 06, 2006

GROVER LEPER

Being a Grover Leper,
something is going on--

Grover was an American politician--
outraged citizens branded him a "moral leper"--

freesofree that my pastor, St. Francis Rickenbacker:
Roar! I'm a leper!

!!

Roar! Roar! I'm a hamster! &
this is disjunctive poetry

'Jesus' can also be translated as 'Leper Colony'
makes me happy

This is the situation--
want to drown?

"To heal the leper"
militia?

the other kids not accustomed to
"LEPER MILITIA"

become part of the Grover family
(the Honolulu Chapter)

If all employers
be like ya know 'neighborhood leper'

then the Dems have a chance!
yay Dems!!!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Tough times for NGC 6745


Just remember, no mater how bad it gets, at least you're not in a colliding galaxy . . .

Reading Bay Poetics

Reading Bay Poetics is devoted to collecting and generating discussion of the anthology Bay Poetics, edited by Stephanie Young (Faux Press, 2006).

Potential contributors should email Tom Orange at tmorange[at]gmail[dot]com.

limetree's movin'

new add

Friday, November 03, 2006

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Gottlieb/Smith 11/4 NYC

SEGUE READING SERIES @ BOWERY POETRY CLUB

Saturdays: 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston

NOVEMBER 4 MICHAEL GOTTLIEB and ROD SMITH
Michael Gottlieb’s most recent books include Lost and Found, Gorgeous Plunge, and The River Road. In the late 70s and early 80s he helped edit one of Language Poetry’s seminal periodicals, Roof Magazine. Rod Smith is the author of Music or Honesty, The Good House, Poèmes de l'araignée, In Memory of My Theories, The Boy Poems, Protective Immediacy, and New Mannerist Tricycle with Lisa Jarnot and Bill Luoma. A CD, Fear the Sky, came out from Narrow House Recordings in 2005. He edits Aerial magazine and publishes Edge Books. Smith is also editing, with Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley for the University of California Press.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Warhol photo of Ron Padgett, ca 1965

Padgett/King 11/5 at Bridge Street 7 PM

Join us at Bridge Street Books

Sunday November 5th @ 7 PM

for a reading by

RON PADGETT
&
AMY KING

Ron Padgett's contribution to American poetry is HUGE. Originally from Tulsa, where he edited The White Dove Review with Joe Brainard, publishing Creeley, Kerouac, Leroi Jones and others, he moved to New York in 1960 with a cadre that included Ted Berrigan, Brainard, and Dick Gallup. Together they invented (&/or re-invented), via the inspiration of poets such as Ashbery & O'Hara, what has become known as The New York School. He studied with Kenneth Koch and Lionel Trilling at Columbia. He directed The Poetry Project in the late seventies and publications at Teachers & Writers from 1980 to 2000. Padgett's books of poetry include You Never Know (Coffeehouse Press, 2002), Poems I Guess I Wrote (2001), New & Selected Poems (1995), The Big Something (1990), Triangles in the Afternoon (1979), and Great Balls of Fire (1969). His first collection of poems, Bean Spasms, written with Ted Berrigan, was published in 1967. He has also published a volume of selected prose titled Blood Work (1993), as well as translations of Blaise Cendrars' Complete Poems (1992), Pierre Cabanne's Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1971), and Apollinaire's The Poet Assassinated (1968). His most recent book is a memoir--Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers.

Amy King is the author of Antidotes for an Alibi published in 2005 by BlazeVox. She teaches English at Nassau Community College on Long Island and has been writing poems throughout her numerous careers, which have included working for the Department of Defense, managing a popular fast food restaurant, multi-tasking as a medical technician in Labor & Delivery, serving as a residence counselor and advocate for the learning disabled, directing an ESL school in Manhattan and many other positions better left a mystery.

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave.
(202) 965-5200

Located in Georgetown next to the Four Seasons Hotel, 5 blocks from
the Foggy Bottom Metro station (blue & orange lines).

Upcoming at Bridge Street:
Nov 19th - Charles Bernstein

BYOE (Bring Your Own Ears)
---------------------------------------------

Monday, October 30, 2006

XX

Death has only
writing to end.





Tolling Elves arrived today announcing its demise-- significantly-- with the stop of a REAL magazine, felt & thought, always, in its choices, in its attn, in its gifting, and with a powerful "return" to poetry by Barrett Watten. I daresay a double masterpiece that leaves us with "masterpiece?" and means to.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

VERY interesting . . .

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist government of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Thorson/Potvin/Manzione @ Bar Rouge 10/30 8 PM

Maureen Thorson, PF Potvin and Gianmarc Manzione at Bar Rouge in Washington D.C. Monday, October 30. Reading will begin at 8:00 p.m. in The Dark Room at Bar Rouge.

oh great

If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.

Claire Lise



Elle a chantés à Washington dernier soir. C'étais bon. Terrific stage presence. Good fun. Good band. She'll be in New York at Pianos on Sunday Oct 29 at 9:30 & at the Bowery Poetry Club Monday the 30th, 6 PM.

Friday, October 27, 2006

The Anger Scale by Katie Degentesh

Starred Review-- Publishers Weekly October 16, 2006


The Anger Scale
Katie Degentesh, Combo (SPD dist.), $12 paper (80 p) ISBN 0-9728880-2-0

Degentesh's debut draws on Google by importing content from Internet searches into her poems to fill in the blanks of the MMPI. That's psych shorthand for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, sample statements from which --"I Feel Uneasy Indoors"; "I Am Not Afraid to Handle Money" -- serve as titles for these 35 beautifully conflicted poems. Degentesh inhabits the poems' weirdly pathologizing psychic space with a deep love of overheard speech that's charged with unconscious (and sometimes not so unconscious) violence, longing and misunderstanding: "it was sloppy and bloody and all fucked up,/ when I try and translate it back into English/ it sounds like the Christian notion that we are born// to read stories of free, unhindered UnaBirths." Degentesh is a member of the Flarflist collective, a loose gathering of Google-obsessed poets who cast their poems in an ironic, deliberately "not ok" mold: "I loved my mother, and she did nothing/ as my father repeatedly beat me." The Weird genius of these poems is that Degentesh encodes a sliver of identification within her deadpan sendups of cliché and banality surrounding real feelings, such that when one speaker says, "at the same time some poor wanker necro in half undress/ was kissing, fingering and licking Shelene's pussy," the reader feels a kind of celebration rather than censure. (Nov.)

Now available from Bridge Street Books-- (rod at bridgestreetbooks dot com). Or visit Combo Arts online.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Winch & Young @ Bridge Street 10/29

Please join us

Sunday, October 29th @ 7 PM

for a reading by

TERENCE WINCH
&
GEOFFREY YOUNG

Geoffrey Young is the author of Fickle Sonnets, Lights Out, Admiral Fever, Pockets of Wheat, Rocks and Deals, and Subject to Fits. He lives in the Berkshires where he runs The Geoffrey Young Gallery, an art space celebrated in such publications as Artforum and The New York Times. Publisher's Weekly writes of his recent book Lights Out: "Young's great strength, like that of his compadres Michael Gizzi and Clark Coolidge, is his updated use of Kerouac's "spontaneous bop prosody," an intricate and seemingly improvised incantation of word and syllable whipped up to ecstatic length." Young is also publisher of The Figures-- one of the most important literary presses of the last thirty years.

Terence Winch is the author of three books of poetry: The Drift of Things, The Great Indoors, and Irish Musicians/American Friends. His most recent book, That Special Place: New World Irish Stories, is a collection of non-fiction stories drawn from his life as a musician playing traditional Irish music with Celtic Thunder-- a band he started with his brother Jesse in 1977. Celtic Thunder's second album, The Light of Other Days, won the prestigious INDIE award for Best Celtic Album. His writings have appeared in more than 20 anthologies of poetry, prose, and non-fiction, and in journals and newspapers such as The Paris Review, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, Arshile, Shiny, Verse, The Washington Post, The Washingtonian, and The Village Voice.

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave.
(202) 965-5200

Located in Georgetown next to the Four Seasons Hotel, 5 blocks from the Foggy Bottom Metro station (blue & orange lines).

Upcoming Bridge Street Readings:
Nov 5th - Amy King & Ron Padgett
Nov 19th - Charles Bernstein

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Friday, October 20, 2006

Creeley Letters!

The first publication of the project Kaplan, Peter, & I have been working on is now up at Jacket 31--

Robert Creeley, ‘Wow. I called it and why not:’ 7 letters, 1950–1961
edited by Rod Smith, Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris

Letters

* To William Carlos Williams (February 11, 1950)
* To William Carlos Williams (February 27, 1950)
* To William Carlos Williams (January 1, 1957)
* To Denise Levertov (April 22, 1951)
* To Robert Duncan (September 24, 1955)
* To Robert Duncan (October 30, 1959)
* To Tom Raworth (January 21, 1961)

Thanks to Michael Kelleher & the folks at Jacket. They're still in the process of finalizing the Creeley Feature.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

yo yo yo ya'll gotsta dig de 14 Midget Man

If you can imagine a fat bald midget
wearing a bright blue sweatsuit,
you are a fourteen-midget man.

Dan Gutstein in Rat Genius 10/20 @ 9 PM


Our DC friend and future Edge author Dan Gutstein makes an appearance in Natl Geographic's Rat Genius, 9 pm Friday October 20th on the National Geographic Channel.

Archive of Dylan's radio show

Click on the link above and start downloadin'. Thanks to the gentle radishes of Lisablog.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Ben Doyle & Sandra Miller photos


Sandra & Ben read two sets-- the first individual readings of 15 minutes each, the second trading poems and a few collaborations. It rocked.

Monday, October 16, 2006

The World Premiere of the all-new stand-up special, "Steven Wright: When The Leaves Blow Away" debuts on COMEDY CENTRAL Saturday, October 21 at 9:00 p.m.

Hillman/Berssenbrugge Georgetown 10/19

GU Poetry & Seminar Series Presents

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19
Brenda Hillman & Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Gender on the Lyric Edge

Seminar: 5:30PM, 462 ICC
Reading: 8:00PM, Copley Formal Lounge

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's mixed-media collaboration with artist Kiki Smith, Concordance, has been published by the Rutgers Center for Innovative Paper and Print. Her selected poems, I Love Artists, appeared in 2006. Among Brenda Hillman's recent books are Pieces of Air in the Epic and an edition of Emily Dickinson's poetry. She is active in the non-violent Code Pink Working Group in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Old news

Flarf split.

Alan Gilbert on Lisa Robertson.

Saturday & Sunday

R U T H L E S S G R I P P O E T R Y S E R I E S
@ Pyramid Atlantic Art Center

8:00PM, October 14, 2006
BEN DOYLE and SANDRA MILLER

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center is located at 8230 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, MD, three blocks from the Metro red line.


I N Y O U R E A R R E A D I N G S E R I E S
@ District of Columbia Arts Center
3:00PM, Sunday, October 15, 2006

RIC ROYER
WARD TIETZ
&
the "IS THAT WOOL HAT MY HAT?" PLAYERS

District of Columbia Arts Center is located at 2438 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC, between the Dupont Circle and Woodley Park metro stations.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Leslie Bumstead & Rod Smith @ George Washington University

Wednesday, October 11th
5:25 to 6:25 p.m.
GW Visitor Center
(next to Smith Hall of Art)

Free and open to the public

Directions: Foggy Bottom Metro, take a right at the top of the escalators, then a left at 23rd and H. Cross 22nd on H. Past the statue of Pushkin (on your left) you'll come to a walkway between two buildings. Take a left. The Visitor Center will be the first door on your left.

Friedman/Orange at Bridge St Pics



Tom read from his forthcoming Dusie book and a new piece dedicated to Joe Ross and the DC poets. Write him soon and you might be able to get a copy. Michael read from his new rather flarfy novel Martian Dawn, just out from Turtle Point Press. Good crowd, 30-40 people, including regulars like Leslie Bumstead, Tina Darragh, P. Inman, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and Buck Downs, as well as a number of GW and Georgetown students. Afterwards, we repaired to Marshall's for refreshments. All was, briefly, well.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

repopo

"a blog dedicated to reviewing women’s innovative poetry and related poetry work. If you have a review of a book, poem, po-formance, or other uncategorizable woman product, please send it to repopo1@gmail.com right away."

This is Cathy (aka Vigilante Librarian) Eisenhower's new project. Recently posted, Maureen Thorson on Lauren Bender's The Dictionary Poems.

Lisa Robertson / James Scully reading



At the seminar Lisa spoke eloquently of her recent reading of Arendt & of "a necessary inconspicuousness" -- the poem's non-site -- ". . . a place that gives pause, a clandestine hiding place that is always strategic." That one can, or must "extract a representation which remains both inconspicuous and a site for future thinking."

I enjoyed James Scully's talk but didn't quite get what he was getting at when he said "Emily Dickinson is an anti-poet," somebody said something about "pseudo-anti-poetry."

From Scully's reading:

"The future of sleep is buried alive."

A few quotes from Lisa's reading:

"O, uneven survival"

"and if I degenerate into style it's because I love it so"

"The biggest problem with melancholy is that it is more detailed than the world."

From the Norton Anthology of Sea Shanties



If I had a boat

I would eat a sandwich





Video from Day 31 - Rod Smith and Cole Swensen.

Pics from Poetry Bus in DC.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Friedman/Orange 10/8 at Bridge St

Sunday, October 8th @ 7 PM


MICHAEL FRIEDMAN
&
TOM ORANGE

Poet Michael Friedman's debut novel, MARTIAN DAWN, is just out from Turtle Point Press in New York City. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including the book of prose poems SPECIES (The Figures, 2000). Since 1986 Friedman has edited the influential literary journal SHINY.

Tom Orange is currently teaching literature and creative writing at Georgetown University and The George Washington University. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Court Green, Primary Writing, The Word at Peek Review, Rock Heals, and The Poker.

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave
(202) 965-5200

Located in Georgetown next to the Four Seasons Hotel, 5 blocks from the Foggy Bottom Metro station (blue & orange lines).

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Poet, Translator, and International Man of Intrigue

As fruitcake sd to my
fruitcake, because fruitcake is
always talking—

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Flarf/Dusie at Dickinson College



The entire weekend was a kind of lettucey stegner fellow, very Presidential.

Drew conducting the Flarf Collective with Alarm Will Sound, the best.

Scott Glassman on the event. The above, and most of photos from the weekend were taken by Mel Nichols.

Four Serious Days of F*%#ed Up Music

SONIC CIRCUITS DC
OCTOBER 05 - 08, 2006
Warehouse - 1017-1021 Seventh Street NW, WDC

Phill Niblock : Mikroknytes : Wolf Eyes : Matterlink : Los Glissandinos :
Koen Holtkamp : Queens : Scott Smallwood : Andy Hayleck : Ben Owen : BLK w/ BEAR + VJ Poppins : Lum and Abner of Morocco : Harvey Bainbridge of Hawkwind w/ Spaceseed : Yellow Swans : Mouthus : Kohoutek : MoHa! : Robert van Heumann : USA-USB : SKIF++ : If, Bwana : Violet : Michael Gendreau : elmapi : Northern Machine : Jeff Carey : Office-(R)6 : PHO : DB : John Wiese : Ovo : Mr. Natural : Harrius : Facemat : HZMT : Mat Weston + Tone Ghosting ...

Sonic Circuits is a celebration of audio extremes. The 4-day festival, October 5-8, at Washington DC's Warehouse arts complex features local, national and artists from around the world who are doing something unique outside of "popular" musics; sonic architects who explore and expand on the elements of music beyond melody and rhythm, leading to new territories and discoveries.

SONIC CIRCUITS : ONLINE TICKETING + ARTIST BIOS + FULL SCHEDULE:
http://dc-soniccircuits.org

Monday, October 02, 2006

Robertson/Scully 10/5

Thursday, October 5
James Scully & Lisa Robertson: "Social Practice"
Lannan Poetry & Seminar Series, Georgetown University
Seminar 6:00PM 462 ICC || Reading 8:00PM ICC Auditorium

Poetry Bus 10/4 - 7 PM

Wednesday October 4, 7:00pm

Wave Poetry Bus reading with Joshua Beckman, Kyle Dargan,
Peter Gizzi, Sally Keith, Valzhyna Mort, Dwaine Rieves,
Catie Rosemurgy, Gwydion Suilebhan,
Rod Smith, Cole Swensen and Matthew Zapruder.

The Big Hunt
1345 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC
(Metro: Dupont Circle)

Thursday, September 28, 2006

what is this?


Is this a Brit edition of Oppen I've not seen? I'm curious to see how it's set as New Directions trashed the poems in the new collected edition-- yes yes great intros and essays and unpublished stuff are good but the actual typesetting is no good-- completely throws out the sense of the poems as presented in the first ND Collected that Oppen proofed. I mean it's not that hard NOT to trash. sigh. etc.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Sunday, September 24, 2006

New Buck Downs


HOT off the press it's
Ladies Love Outlaws
by Buck Downs.

$5 to Aerial/Edge,
POBox 25642, WDC 20007.

24 pgs of


unspeakably fertile ground
turns to serious jelly
sticks to the furniture
"I have the agua."

October Readings in DC

Wed 4th -- Wave Poetry Bus, 7 PM The Big Hunt, 1345 Connecticut Ave NW

Thurs 5th -- Lisa Robertson & James Scully, Georgetown University, 8 PM ICC Auditorium

Sun 8th -- Michael Friedman & Tom Orange, 7 PM Bridge Street Books

Wed 11th -- Leslie Bumstead & Rod Smith, 5:30 PM George Washington University

Sat 14th -- Ben Doyle & Sandra Miller, 8 PM Pyramid Atlantic

Sun 15th -- Ric Royer, Ward Tietz, & the Is That Wool Hat My Hat Players, 3 PM DCAC

Thurs 19th -- Brenda Hillman & Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Georgetown University, 8 PM ICC Auditorium

Sun 29th -- Terence Winch & Geoffrey Young, 7 PM Bridge Street Books

Directions to many of the venues available at dcpoetry.com.

Lannan Series at Georgetown.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Flarf goes to college!

Dickinson College that is.

Flarf & Friends:

Saturday Sept. 30 7:30 PM Poetry, film and music performance

This poetry performance includes readings, film, and music. Flarf readings by Jordan Davis, Katie Degentesh, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Michael Magee, Sharon Mesmer, Rod Smith, Gary Sullivan. Dusie readings by Mackenzie Carignan, Scott Glassman, Mark Lamoureaux, Marcie Nelligan, Boyd Spahr, Dana Ward. Film by Brandon Downing. Multimedia work by Joey Bargsten. Musical accompaniment by Alarm Will Sound.
Location: Rubendall Recital Hall, Weiss Center for the Arts
Fee: Free
For more information:
Email Richard Abrams
abramsr@dickinson.edu

Intercapillary Space

featuring poems, reviews & a symposium on the work of Douglas Oliver.

rock on, like they say



Monday, September 18, 2006

Gutstein/Toll, DCAC




Dan Gutstein. Chris Toll. Duets and Shapes. The museum of inconsolable hangovers cries in the electronic alibi acrobat. The cactus wren going suite-sweet, the inglorious amphetamine dawn. The ant preaches "Words will not pollute the soup." Catherine retrofits a woodpecker thumping code. Rain, stop me before I kill again. What I mean is he puts the words, the pollution, and the soup in his pipe and plays it in order to think how coordinating conjunctions can pervert the enforcement of our already perverse, prefabricated life paths and in order to sing how much you can groove to that if you just prepare yourself hard to make it up as you go along. I know where the treasure chests are. The strange thunder of meal carts in the hallway. Our mouse found in the oleo. Our radials. Our bodysuits. Our digital rhythm in the running around chickens. Our mode tomb loons. Our face grayed organizing plain. Our bodysuits. Our hotel grammar seagull of death. Our limpid striescence. Our nouvelle demultiplex bordello paperwork. Our rags of truth. Our majority. Our luck.

Inman/Lang, i.e. series at Clayton & Co., Baltimore



Peter Inman reads like a combination of Morton Feldmans. No 1 any is of it. It doesn't seem right, somehow, to mention other poets relative to Peter, of course there are 'relevant' comparisons-- but the experience of an Inman reading isn't, for me, analogous in that manner. There's a different kind of tuning in involved- a music. But a music of linguistic specificity, that context-rubbing politic a strung word can only offer. Peter seemed very relaxed and concentrated, intent. He began with a piece 'on beauty' and finished with a piece dedicated to Beckett. In the middle much recent work some of which will be published by Cathy Eisenhower's press Interrupting Cow. Details as they emerge. A recent reading of Peter's at Penn Sound.

I left work at 3 o'clock in time to pull up at Clayton & Co at 4:35. Doug was out front smoking. We missed his reading. Damnit. He read from a sonnet sequence some of which I've heard but I always always always want to hear this poet so was bummed. Here's a piece of Doug's at McSweeney's.

Moist Feelings: A Love Poem

Every now & then
I feel you ignore me

Knee-deep in lust

I turn around &
look at you
& you're not there
because you're not you

It feels like something
Wet and ugly
Has taken my place

It smells like strawberry surprise

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Thursday, September 14, 2006

pheep

Footnote

Passion as a lucky rollabout, blundering. I met several, and man-o-man, how explain the apparent lack of impact on discursive frameworks of power? Worse than that though, in world war 2.786 leading American contradictions have to get mine any way. Our only hope is to rewrite Napster (or any "peer-to-peer," I'm not picky) to redistrubute wealth rather than music.

Don't think of a shark



1/43/96


HF--

Part of that thing of Doug's is in Aerial 6/7. I just spaced on the colab as I am wont 2 due. Personally I've been reading THE POLITICS OF TIME, if'n we don't need to take on a bigger subject. That idea + form as activity + cognitive limits < some idea of 'scale' (as in covered with) that Watten sort of points at/toward when he says: "If at some point language walked in the open door, we would show it some respect." Our response would be more immediate than to use it as a sign. So we respect language by not being content to operate in any one part of it. It's greater than we are. That has implication for the form. “The sense is larger than one can say."
Now, what wld it mean to operate "in any one part of it"-- is that possible? Or are we always already illiterate-- in that there will always be much more that we don't know: cognitive limits carried into periodization as latent scale = form as activity trap. Nonsense is very telling. In _The Elucidation of Intention_ Charles Bernstein Rinpoche is cautioning against the means of designation as the designative base. This is a general characteristic of hermeneutical strategies that depend upon content rather than context. "As long as we think of solutions as happening only once we perpetuate the trauma of our native insecurities" sayeth Rasula. What he might mean by "trauma" is all too clear to the "native insecurities" which are IN FACT in the dictionary. However in Edgar Alain Poe's recent chapbook we find an argument for "the Principle itself. . . the Human desire for Supernal Difference." It seems the fundamentally systemic indignity is HISTORY, or else haddock, but let us suppose it is history-- 'politics of time' -- "all politics as centrally involving struggles over the experience of time" -- with respect to this: "Think, in particular, about the problems posed for a politics of emancipation by a horizon of expectation within which the replacement of capitalism within any current lifetime is no longer a feasible prospect; and the social forces traditionally assigned to the job can no longer be looked upon with any confidence to 'grow into' their allotted political role." Without the "jargon" but with the "in particular" this seems to be accurately involved in an elucidation of the historicized deprivation of the disingenuous.
But is there some hope for a commodification of revolution?
Modernity has codified change-- post-modernity being only meaningful if allowed to be meaningless, i.e. as schism in modernity's endless meaning concretions-- & if meaningless then the famous haddock (named Kannon) blurred with tears of major tremble is the meaning to be decided. We're always already always already at this point & Sunoco's web-page (under construction) is a "community"
"resource"--
it is as snow falling
a big yellow glove that waves bye-bye a million times
holds me in my Novocain creations
Do lots of Nicotione-Fairys visit your dreams as well?
Do you have an e-mail for Irigiray? (bad line)
NOT KNOWING
"now more than ever"
Art as creator of concepts yes. . .
Concepts as hollow in our happenstance?
Portable action: projection?, extrapolation? Hopelessly inert articulations
I'm willing to settle for less, but wish it were a choice.
Dressed in lint
it's glimmered
one pint Asterick (or a pitcher?)
motions the luck
back out from under
the laundered
ratiocination
Binky gasps
at the lamps’
back-lit bummer
levens this roiled-up
limey cliche's
callous "cash-payment"
of the mandarin praise. Gramsci's
kite in a tree-- the given
glistening-- eschatology's
psychedelic narrative deed.
Billy Dungoski saw Jesus on a telephone pole-
The Rainbow Gathering as parapatetic circumference,
but I don't have enough gas to get "home." George Will found
therapy to involve too many nasty words-- talk about
attention deficit. Vietnam was considered a bad cause. "Was." "One by one all the bars fell into place."
DEALING WITH WITHDRAWAL
my haddock or yours, a diurnal
dissonance to unlock the fob

Wednesday, September 13, 2006