Aw shucks
Thanks, Katey.
That's just about the best reaction EVER.
TAG: Canal Street Exit Influx*
Often we argue punctuation
but the exclamation
point's a rare mark to really mean.
A blaze of blue tarp
on a roof across the river recalls
salt water mist missed.
Bookended in bridges Brooklyn smudges
perfection, light filtered through
the undies in Chinatown windows.
Move bitches! he explains, performs
the
Rizzo/
Lamoureux chap
on the return commute via Q.
I offer him
Chris Murray before
we hit DeKalb and choose the park.
A fuzz of German beer reinstates
a wonder cradle. Is that so silly?
The trains of Queens are poetry failed,
reader/rider risking much.
*Tag, now look who's it!
UPDATE: Chris Rizzo responds to his tag.
Then Chris Murray goes on a tagging fest!
Note to self & y'all
Gotta update the readings page soon with fall events:
September 27 with Marie Ponsot at
Pete's Big Salmon
October 16 at the
Ear Inn with Matthew Freedman
November 23 at Kili Lounge (Tracey McTague's new Battle Hill reading series) with TBD
November 30 at
KGB Nonfiction Series for the GAMERS launch party
December somethingth at
Bowery Poetry Club for GAMERS launch, pt. 2.
Whee!
Feel like I'm missing one, though. Hmm.
Also, Shafer reports that the new Frequency schedule will be ready very soon, so I'll update
that page as soon as I get it!
Speaking of tagging...
Tony just
tagged me too, plus Shafer Hall & Gabriella Torres!
Tag--I'm it!
Laurel tagged me. It's a fun new game. Stay tuned, because you could be next! I am heading off to a birthday party and shall return with a poem naming the next vicitim.
There is no base.
Some Adelaide Crapsey
Amaze
I know
Not these hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Languor After Pain
Pain ebbs,
And like cool balm,
An opiate weariness
Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed
Pale wrists.
Laurel in the Berkshires
Sea-foam
And coral! Oh, I'll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun's
Gold flood.
Mad Song
Grey gaolers are my griefs
That will not let me be free
The bitterness of tears
Is warder unto me.
I may not leap or run;
I may not laugh nor sing.
"Thy cell is small," they say,
"Be still though captivated thing."
But in the dusk of the night,
Too sudden-swift to see,
Closing and ivory gates
Are refuge unto me.
My griefs, my tears must watch,
And cold the watch they keep;
They whisper, whisper there--
I hear them in my sleep.
They know that I must come,
And patient watch they keep,
Whispering, shivering there,
Till I come back from sleep.
But in the dark of a night,
Too dark for them to see,
The refuge of black gates
Will open unto me.
Whisper up there in the dark....
Shiver by bleak winds stung....
My dead lips laugh to hear
How long you wait...how long!
Grey gaolers are my griefs
That will not let me free;
The bitterness of tears
Is warder unto me.
The Warning
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk...as strange, as still...
A white moth flew. Why am I grown
So cold?
These poems are from
Verse (Knopf, 1938--a reissue of the posthumous 1915 edition from Manas Press). I found this copy in New Orleans at Kaboom Books last year? The year before? I used to write biographical sketches of authors for Gale Literary Databases/
Contemporary Authors series of reference books. (I did hundreds of these on mostly minor figures.) When I was first assigned Crapsey, I was only minimally familiar with her
cinquains as a form. She spent most of her energy working not on the cinquains and her poems, but on a book of poetics called
Analysis of English Metrics. She never finished it, but the portion she completed was published in 1918 as
A Study in English Metrics. Like Joan Murray, she's associated with Smith College, where she taught poetics until her failing health required her to give it up in 1913. Here's an entertaining, and antiquatedly beautiful passage from the 1915 introduction to
Verse by Claude Bragdon:
"Although in Meredith's phrase 'a man and a woman both for brains,' she was an intensely feminine presence. Perfection was the passion of her life, and as one discerns it in her verse, one marked it also in her rainment. In the line 'And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass' I see again her drooping figure with some trail of gossamer bewitchment clinging about or drifting after her. Although her body spoke of a fastidious and sedulous care in keeping with her essentially aristocratic nature, she was merciless in the demands she made upon it, and this was the direct cause of the loss of her health. The keen and shining blade of her spirit too greatly scorned its scabbard the body, and for this she paid the uttermost penalty."
Yeah, she's a dark little romantic, drama queen.
You can get a new edition of The Complete Poems and Collected Letters
here. And there's a
biography too, though it's also out of print.
Until just this moment I would have sworn I once rode in a subway car with "Amaze," miraculously chosen for a Poetry in Motion poster. But I just
checked. Never happened. Must have been a dream. Hmm.
Commitment issues
Yesterday, Dan asked me to name my personal top five 20th-century American female poets. I started and restarted and revised and took folks on and off, never getting past #4. Admittedly, I was taking it way too seriously for a bar game.
While Dan is away on vacation in Vermont this week, I will try to come up with a list I can stick to.
Tom Hartman's list: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, and oh I can't remember the other one.
Dan didn't finish his own list either, but contenders included Sharon Olds, Alice Notley, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, H.D.
I'm not sure if I got those in the right order.
None of my incarnations had Olds, Plath, Notley, Stevie Smith, or HD.
#1 Gertrude Stein
#2 Elizabeth Bishop
#3 Marianne Moore
#4 Laura Riding
#5
Agonizing possibilities in no particular order: Adelaide Crapsey, Joan Murray--just one book, but what a book, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, May Swenson, Anne Sexton, What to do with Susan Wheeler--can I save her for the 21st?
I invite you to confuse me further by remarking on all the grrls I have left out of this near dozen.
This just in from JKno:
"You work so hard, you blow my mind like a Brazilian sailor."
From Poems by Joan Murray (1917-1942)
Ahab the Supermonomaniac
An improvisation
Ahab, the supermonomaniac...
The finite creation leaguing it
Through the torturous underseas of un-God...
Sought all life damned.
Pain chanted imaginings.
Ahab, the strain of the inexplicable,
The man-fathomed bitterness.
We who turn slowly,
Forcing our consciousness to conceive of passivity
In land, in night, in stone...
We, who are rocked to the bottom by our own inability
To dent, to stammer, or to guide, to restrain
The slow annihilation of the coast,
The shift, the imperceptible movement of inanimate
Dissolving all along the line...
Things That Are Sinuous
Things that are sinuous are the rivers of the land--
Women stalking, with the ripple of cats
Along the leg, and movements of the body
In deep eddies, in silk transparencies.
Rivers of the tumbled slopes,
The flatlands to the west,
Tidal rivers, licking and drawing back,
The whole weight of protuberance toward the sea,
Making a salt ridge in the bright flush of the flats.
They are women with bare and subtle feet,
Of brooks, of rills, of mountain lakes,
Of turbulent cascades, of torrential moments,
Of long coiled tenuous drift, with one still cloud
Sucking from rim to rim of that insoluable thing...
Down to the river and the beat of the river.
Lullaby
Sleep, little architect. It is your mother's wish
That you should lave your eyes and hang them up in dreams.
Into the lowest sea swims the great sperm fish.
If I should rock you, the whole world would rock within my arms.
Your father is a greater architect than even you.
His structure falls between high Venus and far Mars.
He rubs the magic of the old and then peers through
The blueprint where lies the night, the plan the stars.
You will place mountains too, when you are grown.
The grass will not be so insignificant, the stone so dead.
You will spiral up the mansions we have sown.
Drop your lids, little architect. Admit the bats of wisdom into your head.
[That's my favorite. Isn't she a lovely freak?]
Looking for a copy of...
the March 2004 edition of
Hollywood Reporter with the feature on Wrestlemania XX. Do you have one I can borrow? I need the ad with Brock Lesner for a quick scan. Aw yeah.
Also, if you are interested in owning a rare copy of Joan Murray's
Poems, holler at me. I just heard from a book dealer who has one. Not cheap--but like I said, it's very rare. It was only printed in one small, hardcover edition. John Ashbery likes it. So does Susan Wheeler. And Marcella Durand (who scored one in Maine). And me.
I'll post some more of her poems this weekend. There's not anything online except
this one &
this one.
I'd pitch a revised edition (her original editor, in my opinion, snuffed the spark of some of the poems with his heavy-handed edits)--but with her limited rep, who would go for such a thing.
Here's the part where I offer a photocopy to anybody who can't afford to shell out for the original.
Yes, I'm still planning to revise the article. It's about #1298 on the to-do list. Right before translating some contemporary German poets with my friend Susanne.
This just in: Bikes Against Bush
From
Shannon Holman:
Want to send a message to the RNC next week? How about sending it
wirelessly and having it distributed in chalk by bicycle?
I'm crazy about this project and hope you will be too.
Shannon
Bike Writer Pedals for Protest
"New Yorker Joshua Kinberg is a bike messenger of a different stripe.
Instead of ferrying legal papers between lawyers, he uses a homemade,
wireless, bicycle-mounted dot-matrix printer to spray protest messages
in the street.
Kinberg will be taking his road-spraying bicycle to the Republican
National Convention in New York this fall, where he'll ride around
spraying [chalk] slogans submitted over the Web and beamed wirelessly
to the bike."
Wired article
here.
Joshua's web site
here.
Oh my.
My CV/resume hasn't been updated in about two years. Maybe three. Ugh.
Native soil: The Texas Trip
Just booked two tickets to Texas, y'all. Here we come, arriving September 17.
Stops:
Arlington/DFW (Mom's. Convince Temple bunch to come up.)
Weatherford (Father figure's party at the ranch!)
Silsbee/Kountze (In-laws)
Fredericksburg (Side trips to Enchanted Rock & Luckenbach.)
Marfa (Marfa Lights & Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation.)
Midland/Odessa (top-secret anti-Bush research.)
Arlington/DFW
Dang, Texas is big. That's at least 30 hours of highway driving. But Texas has the best roads in the world. And I love to drive.
The rest by popular demand!
Mr. & Mrs. Maisie Weisman make the same face, imitating some guy on the Fung Wah.
Aaron Kiely laughs at Brendan Lorber, if I recall correctly.
Sean Cole was rumored to be recording everything. This grainy shot just might prove it.
Erica Kaufman threatens Dan with her kickboxing moves.
Douglas Rothschild, Alli Warren & Stephanie Young are sick of me taking photos.
Aaron briefly thought
I was married to Dan.
Miss Meghan & family with Jordan "The Robot" Davis.
Labels: photos
Ada Limon reads tonight in the Bronx!
Ada sez:
"There's an open mic beforehand, but then I'll read for about a half an hour. I think I'm going on around 8:30 or 9. I will read some new poems. It sounds like a great venue..I'll be there from about 8:00 PM on, so come buy me a drink and say hello! Details below."
Feature: Ada Limon
Feature Date: Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Start Time: 7:30-OPEN MIC
Feature Reader: 9:00
Admission: Free with a $5 suggested donation
Acentos Series
@ Blue Ox Bar
East 139th Street & Third Avenue
Bronx, NYC
718.402.1045
Directions: The Blue Ox Bar is a short one block walk from the 6 train's 138th Street/Third Ave station. If coming from Manhattan, please use the exit closest to the last car on the 6.
Whoops. Hit the bookstore.
Went in to get the new
BAP, natch and ended up with that, plus:
The Promises of Glass &
Codes Appearing by Michael Palmer
Word Group by Marjorie Welish
And I looked but no
Staples née Peppermint yet--but I'm guessing I can gallop over there and get it real soon.
Search term
"poems of a normal texan"
How'd that get them here, ya think?
Chapbook Roundup, part 1
I was offline this weekend--whadid I miss?
Been reading the wealth of chapbooks I picked up at the Massacre (or received in the mail just prior), and though I am not feeling up to full reviews (which is certainly my lacking, not the poems'), I would like to list and mention these delightful li'l things here with a hearty recommendation to you to procure them for yourselves. Click the links for details or contact info.
Smokers Die Younger, edited by
Stephanie Young (Comment Box Press, 2004). Jim Behrle, Del Ray Cross, Nada Gordon, David Larsen, Cassie Lewis, James Meetze, Catherine Meng, K. Silem Mohammad, Christina Strong, & Alli Warren. Woowee. Stephanie sent flattened cigarette boxes to each contributor, who then sent them back with a poem written on them. The originals are reproduced for a most, and photos of poets' faces included in the back, and the theme of addiction is treated in energetic ways throughout.
Nada Gordon's "Rage Glom Pink Sun" is formed of curlicues of anagrams, little puffs of verbal smoke, variations on the phrase "smoking = lung rape." "
spurn gingko, spurn!."
Del Ray Cross admits the sexy appeal of smokers, even when they're bad for you: "oh I tried to date him to / listen to what he can hear / (clasps ears) / if only he were still here / (ah here he is smoking / an imaginary cigarette)."
James Meetze's "Giving it Up" takes a look at need and the escape from responsibility inherent in smoking (and poem-making): "The release need one must find reason not to return. / There is no motto worth its while when just to breathe is enough / to carry one up a flight of stairs in a hurry." And "It's these times that are worst. The motions incessantly / a reminder that one hand or the other could be multitasking." Recovering smokers and the unrepentant alike, inhale this half-a-pack today.
Postcard Poems by Stephanie Young &
Cassie Lewis (Poetry Espresso, 2002). With a photocopy of a postcard from Stephanie to Cassie as the cover, this chap, like
Smokers Die Younger, provides a glimpse of handwriting to deepen the intimacies of these Personist missive-poems. This faux privacy is something I find attractive about collaborations and collections of correspondence between poets, and combined with the sense of process provided by dates and daily details, what makes poems like these feel lived-in, beyond the page. "Dear Cassie, what day is it? Your poems have been / arriving slightly bent, as if / they have a private life between the time they're sent / & then received." And in "Untitled" from Cassie to Stephanie: "[...]how will I get to where I am going? / Where's that? A big place in the Sunday / frost where magazines fall from the boughs / of trees? Where's that? / Oh, I just want to write / some essays but my mind won't cooperate. / It thinks that we have to be somewhere."
Art in America by Jack Kimball (
Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2004). Jack has a knack for making a simply stated psuedofact seem factual, even if it's counterintuitive and he sets up interesting relationships between events-- "Manufacturing is showing some strength / I can't sleep[.]" Manufacturing has never kept me up, except when I lived near an ironworks shop in Williamsburg, but I'll buy it here. "Here are the new rules about snoots: / a gingko worksheet: / palliative spire:" or "either //I'm two sadnesses: or / these beyond plants are / not language: / let's go shopping:" And I'm in love with the titles, so daily they're odd: "Obtaining Soy Milk," "My Bitch," "To Ashton Kutcher," and especially "Source Material's Playback," with its ars poetical ring.
Grim Little by
Christopher Rizzo & Mark Lamoureux (Anchorite Press, 2004). Firstly, Chris Rizzo's Anchorite press makes absolutely gorgeous books. This one is no exception: illuminated letters on the cover, cream laid paper and translucent tissue--the incarnation of this poem is one most poems should dream of. Mark & Chris read this poem at the Massacre--and I noticed when I sat down with it that I misquoted them in my reports! The poem begins "Xylophone networks / for bruised cacophany, digits, / pickups--say Humbuckers cannot / sate the hunchback now peerless / I's for dignities, mercies, violas / in gravel diaphragms, sickly blues / in this city of Dis, disasters Cambridge-styled / can drag a corpse to water but / can't make it Wallace Stevens's[.]" Since the book contains a single three-part poem, I won't spoil it for you by quoting too much, but Learishly named Grim Little in his cubicle with his cuticles chewed might remind you of someone you know as "the irksome police [skirt] the perimeter of meter swiftly, shouting Breaker of Iambs!" A dark little tale of Grim against the suits.
Coming next (at some point!):
The Kickboxer Suite by Erica Kaufman,
What Ever Belongs in the Circle &
Jaywalking the Is by Noah Eli Gordon,
Meme Me Up, Scotty by Chris Murray,
Self-Portrait in Fire by Chad Parenteau,
March 18, 2003 by Michael Lally,
Calamity & Calamity Annex by Maureen Thorson,
New Years by David Perry,
(Purple) Notebook of the Lake by Jim Behrle, and I think a few more I still have in a bag somewhere!
Bowlmor Writemore update...
Hello pinheads!
Deadline for your Bowlmor Writemore submissions is September 1.
I will try to find out about available dates at Bowlmor Lanes this weekend.
It's looking like September will work best for most folks.
We'll read between turns and make a companion chap!
Don't ya wanna play?
Poetic prowess in action
Labels: photos
Jennifer L. Knox reads tonight for the HOWL Festival
For
Open City
at
KGB
85 E. 4th Street (@ 2nd Ave)
JKno is awesome live. Ya gotta come see.
UPDATE:Sorry--at 8:30.
Here's a link to the
Open City events page.
And more on the
HOWL Festival here.
I forgot to remind you
If you missed T. Cole Rachel's & Hal Sirowitz's poems on
Writer's Almanac yesterday and today, you can now listen online.
Here and
here.
UPDATE: And we just this minute heard that we'll have more poems on the air next week! Hooray!
Aug 24: another poem from
Bend Don't Shatter (by Christopher Murray)
Aug 29: two poems from Hal's other recent book,
Before During and After, "Believing in Fate" and "The Wind Throws Back"
Scare quotes: If you see something, say something
New Yorkers know this slogan from subway and bus posters that have gone up since the WTC attacks. The posters (like the one above) usually feature an unattended bag or suitcase under a bench, etc. But as
Chiba details over at SubText, unattended property is so common in the subways and streets here (often the belongings of a transient or homeless person) that it's almost odd
not to see such things. And if you do "say something" you may just be dismissed.
Anyway, Shawn works in midtown Manhattan in the very cool Daily News Building, 1930. (The lobby detail below has folks calling it the Daily Planet Building, after Superman.) It's near the Pfizer pharmaceuticals building, the UN, and several consulates, including the Israelis, and Grand Central Terminal. Police presence in the area is always pretty high, and stronger when the UN is in session or a diplomat is in one of the nearby hotels, etc.
Yesterday, the Daily News Building (and the Pfizer building and a few others) were evacuted because of a "threat" on the street out front. Somebody had left an empty suitcase unattended on the sidewalk. Too bad Shawn didn't have an
Emergency Fanny.This isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, the clients Shawn was meeting with yesterday (who were present for the evacuation) were laughing that the same thing had happened to them Monday at the Saatchi building downtown. And once, Shawn was the one to "say something." He saw a "suspicious" unattended suitcase under a mailbox and told the nearest police officer. That officer was unable to leave his post on the corner, but he flagged down a passing patrol car and shared the news with a second officer, who presumably went to check it out. But Shawn wouldn't know.
While standing there talking to the officer, he realized he had several anti-Bush books in his bag, so he skeedaddled.
Oh, and I found out Monday that freelancers don't get Emergeny Fannies. So in case of disaster or attack, our standard-issue asses will have to be enough.
Attempt beautiful crafting, dude.
Everyone finds good humor
in just kicking little mouthfuls.
Nice! Our poems're quick,
refreshing, so tasty!
Upscale verbs will xerox youthful zeal.
[In other words, are you up to
Maggie's abecedarian challenge? There are several oldies but goodies up from her last challenge, a while back, up now too.]
Compatibility quiz
1) Ashton Kusher or Ensign Crusher?
Oh my goodness, it's...
fallmost!
Emergency Fannies
"This week we will be distributing fanny packs to each of you to keep at your desk. These packs contain water, an energy bar, flashlight and batteries. In addition we have just added a dust mask, goggles and a space blanket. In case of an emergency (such as last year's blackout) take the pack with you. It will be of some assistance in your travel home."
Hot biker alert!
Soft Skull poet
Todd Colby just survived Ironman 2004. What's next--the freaking Olympics?
Check out his muscles and his muscular "I remember" piece over at
Surgery of Modern Warfare.
SHHHHHHHH! No Tell Motel!
"With great fanfare and the cutting of ribbons we announce the opening of No Tell Motel (www.notellmotel.org), an online poetry journal. Edited by
Reb Livingston and Molly Arden,
No Tell Motel features a new poet each week, a new poem every weekday. Each year will see the publication of 52 poets and 260 poems. Featured poets in August and September will be Jennifer Michael Hecht, Anthony Robinson, Karl Parker, Heidi Lynn Staples, Shanna Compton, and others."
See
No Tell Motel for the first poetry feature and call for submissions.
Super swanky. Is it too early for a highball?
Cool! Audio from the Massacre
John Mulroony's poem from Friday night. Now I don't have to regret missing it!
Recorded (as everything else) by Sean Cole. ROCKING.
Picked a peck of peppers
I meant to order 4 jalapenos, but ordered 4 POUNDS of jalapenos by mistake from Fresh Direct this week.
I'm considering roasting and stuffing them and taking them to the Liar this afternoon.
They are organic. And half will be vegetarian or vegan.
Takers?
UPDATE: I just made...
Roasted Jalapenos with Brown Sugar Ancho Glaze (Vegan)
Cream Cheese, Bacon & Red Pepper Stuffed Jalapenos with Ancho Powder
Cream Cheese, Red Pepper & Parsley Stuffed Peppers (Vegetarian)
Shrimp Veracruz Stuffed Jalapenos (with Vegan Mayo)
...YUM! The stuffed raw peppers were seeded and rinsed in vinegar water to tame them for you Yankees. The roasted peppers will make ya sweat, tho.
*[This post has not been modified, but I have since
gone vegan.]
Labels: photos
Grrr...
I just uploaded a bunch of candid shots and then Safari quit on me, so I lost the post.
I'll redo it later, damn it.
Sunday at the Boston Poetry Massacre
For Friday, go
here.
For Saturday, go
here and
here.
MITCH HIGHFILL
"Epithalamion for Gary & Nada"
It's all about the way something hits you
I often scorned those who watered me.
Even the greatest oceans do.
Sex poems are trophy poems.
as if the cosmos was sitting off-center
[passed his poem for Bill Bissett so we cld see odd spellings]
"just a little flarfy"
I am the freespeech zone.
JACK KIMBALL
Laura Bush likes to clean.
Men have become substantially feminized.
I was born when minimalism was all the rage.
Bite mich! ("Sorry Mitch. That's German.")
MATVEI YANKELEVICH
Babies don't deserve money.
I haven't been writing much
and that's been true all my life. I don't like writing.
If poets write poems, then readers write readings.
Inventions got the better of us, so we decided to throw ourselves away.
You lingerie angels: good, bad, indifferent.
MEGHAN CLEARY
I am not diplomatic
I'm no prize
but I can cook well.
You should taste my apple pie.
I make it with a buckwheat crust.
It was all I could do to lay stripped on my bed.
Now we are talking kneeling down
at the base of my grief.
AARON KIELY
What are you majoring in?
How to prove I've read books.
She knows my passion
and she feels abundant.
My passion makes her feel abundant.
Lord help me see people
so I don't bomb them
and cut their heads off.
NOAH ELI GORDON
"I'm going to read some paragraphs."
Rain on the sidewalk is
rain on the ceiling.
And my suit is just right for the job.
Magical realism, mute narration, or just jack-in-the-box psychosis?
MICHAEL CARR (right?)
Unlike most cowards
it means sit and watch for the subtitles.
I still like art deco
with respect to a format.
They call these ranchers jolly.
DAVID PERRY
Steal the wheels right off my locked bike...(sigh)...fucking hell!
Double lives: don't lead 'em.
My country don't want me
don't exist
don't leave me
The danger out here is shameless.
I'm guilty as a hall monitor
sucking up to porn [?]
All I want is to get up early and surprise a few clams.
If you're anything like me, you're not velour.
CHRIS JACKSON
Pulchritude doesn't sound much like what it means.
You should see the golf course.
She in plaid.
He in Coco Chanel.
Since I've quit R.J. Reynolds I've learned exactly what control is.
I'm Jack, the bad pirate!
Foxy, but not beautiful.
My teeth: these cute little white squares and triangles. [Big smile]
MATTHEW CELONA
It looked at you provokingly,
the Book of Ancient American Proverbs.
In the flip fuck book the fuckers were flipping through the flip fuck books while fucking.
What pleasure is there in seeming to whip an empty balloon?
LORI LUBESKI
There is a plateau flat
across ivory layers of skin.
The liability of a wide road
My one bold indestructible force strikes a match.
Rain comes indecently.
MIKE COUNTY
You can rip a new asshole for anyone these days.
Michael County, please hold for an important message.
When the form came, there was nothing to place in its container.
Applause and cheers for JIMMY!
Labels: photos
Happy birthday to me
Whoops. I missed my blog's one-year anniversary. My first bloggish post was on
August 4, 2003.
I was nervous at first. But y'all were so nice!
"It's a shame to be caught up in something that doesn't absolutely make you tremble with joy!"
Julia Child, you will be missed.
The meal would begin with foie gras, oysters and "a little caviar." For thirty-five years she was repeatedly asked for the menu of her last meal. For one who loved a simple, well-cooked piece of meat and a ripe pear for dessert, she always named the most extravagant and rarest foods for her last repast:
First, caviar with Russian vodka (Duburovna) and oysters with Pouilly-Fuissé. And some foie gras, of course. Second she wanted to eat pan-roasted duck--the duck never varied--accompanied by little onions and chanterelle mushrooms, her main dish. Sometimes she mentioned pommes Anna
, "that lovely cake of sliced potatoes baked in butter to a crisp brown crust." Sometimes she wanted fresh asparagus with the duck. She would drink a 1962 Romanée-Conti, which she had had only once, for it cost $700 a bottle. When she was in a frugal mood, she chose a delicate red Bordeaux, a St.-Emilion or Chateau Palmer. Sometimes, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. Third, good French bread with Roquefort and Brie would be eaten with a great Burgundy, such as Grands-Echézeux.
Finally, dessert was a moveable feast on which she changed her mind over the years. It varied from pungent sorbet with walnut cake to a simple ripe pear and green tea. She was never strong on desserts, but as she got older she decided she could eat a gooey chocolate dessert or a charlotte Malakoff. When she dreamed big, her dessert was the creme brulée from Le Cirque with Chateau d'Yquem 1975 or 1976 at $450 a bottle.
"And I would die happy," she'd say.From Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child by Noel Rily Fitch*[This post has not been modified, but I have since
gone vegan. Still gotta give props to Julia tho. She was awesome.]
And holy massacre, don't miss...
this groovy report by David Hess. (Who somehow manages to post to his blog though the front page doesn't reflect it.)
Massacre Saturday: More poets' faces
For Friday's report (no photos) see
here.
For Saturday, part one see
here.
JENNIFER L. KNOX
Motherfucker! I just found out my boyfriend's a prostitute.
GABRIELLA TORRES
A different spiral takes you
to the bathhouse of the poor.
ADA LIMON
That bird looks like a flight risk.
Hooray for the differently sane!
AUTUMN McCLINTOCK
tuna fish sandwiches cut into triangular wedges
for consumation [?] I considered becoming a juggler.
DANIEL NESTER
a lovely day for a motion picture
Asshole, O how you wait for everyone!
Let us speak of Dudley Moore now
TINA BROWN CELONA
It burned, sending up tumors of honey.
My doctor says I'm hostile
and I stink of rum--WAIT. This is the wrong version of this poem.
My doctor says I'm hostile,
and I believe him.
You can't have ego salad without personal taste.
HASSEN
I can remake you better than you can be.
What if I am you, Joseph Banks.
What if you are me?
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS
Because the river that was not a river
felt like a river nonetheless
Dear Karen, I've failed.
And I'm the one who proposed the match.
STEPHANIE YOUNG
You wear the device on your back, as if it were full of books.
I had one long continuous dream of human violence.
Emotions expressed as diamonds.
I developed a wish to have legs as long as a horse,
for showing excitement.
AARON TIEGER
Moving through snow
with a grace too slow
The silent layer of your eyes
Now we have a name
and drop like water.
JORDAN DAVIS
[At this point my camera battery died. Man that sucked. So I didn't get to jot J's lines. I was still messing with it, futiley, during AARON KUNIN's & DAVID HESS's reading. Or I could blame my lack of note taking on David's flame-licked neon cowboy hat! Unfortunately dead battery means no photos for the following Saturday nighters.]
DAVID HESS
I'm a representative of the School of Quietude, here to disturb your gathering with my quiet.
JACKIE WATERS
Desire is a good start.
TRACEY McTAGUE (the dissident poster girl!)
They're young.
They
always set the golf course on fire.
This is called "Pantyhose Face."
...and naked aerobics on videotape...
JOE TORRA
Enjoy your youth.
ALLI WARREN
It turns out I'm still thinking underpants.
MAX WINTER
So keep that thought in your jacket pocket.
Red & blue balloons, what are your names?
AND FOR THE SATURDAY FINALE...
DOUGLAS ROTHSCHILD (R)
[Douglas emceed a hilarious special edition of the Poetry Game Show, featuring Sean Cole & Mark Lamoureux (L) as contestants and Erica Kaufman & Shafer Hall as judges.]
SUNDAY & CANDIDS TO COME!
Labels: photos
More Massacre photos tomorrow!
Promise.
Yikes!
My train was evacuated at DeKalb Avenue (we almost missed the stop and had to go out the last car). I was sure till I got to the office somebody had blown up the Manhattan Bridge. Thank goodness I was panicking for nothing. Everyone else seemed fairly calm, but I can't help it.
Actually, it felt like we hit something. Here's hoping not.
Poet, novelist, playwright, etc.
Hey y'all--check out
Brad Baron's site. You can read excerpts, download his e-book, decorate your desktop, hear tunes, and be generally energized. Get thee.
Current fave line from God Save My Queen II by Daniel Murlin Nester
"As if anyone's childhood isn't science fiction."
It's in a footnote, natch.
UPDATE: Not quite finished yet, but check out Katey's redesign of
God Save My Queen dot com! And yes, that's where Dan's new blog will be!
Pssssst.
Heidi Lynn Formerly-Peppermint Staples says Kristin Prevallet now has a blog. Meet
Citizen Kay.
Soft Skull poets on the radio!
"Misery Loves Company" and "The Benefits of Ignorance" from Hal Sirowitz's new collection
Father Said, will be broadcast on Garrison Keillor's
The Writer's Almanac on August 17th, 2004.
"The Poem is Haunted" from the collection
Bend, Don't Shatter, edited by T. Cole Rachel & Rita Costello, ditto, August 18th, 2004.
Who knows how they choose what they choose, but 'tis good news, good news!
Link to the show
here.
GAMERS reviews to come!
Just confirmed:
Wired and
Harper's!!!!!
Labels: reviews
24-hour poem
[oops--went into overtime a bit.]
Massacre Saturday: Matching poets to faces
There are plenty of good prose reports (Stephanie, Alli, Chad, and others--Chad's got audio too!), so I'll keep my comments brief. Here are the readings shots from the first few sets on Saturday. I took notes too, so the captions are random lines that I got down, probably many incorrectly. (Corrections appreciated. And again, if some of you shy types prefer not to appear here, let me know!)
AMANDA NADELBERG
Are you hungry, froggie?
All there is to eat is water and glass.
...
How would you like to stop jumping?
Like this? Or like this?
LISA LUBASCH
Lampshades will admit of the spectacular.
variations of the same dress, gathered
CHRISTOPHER RIZZO & MARK LAMOUREUX
Can't lead a horse to water, but can't make him Wallace Stevens.
ERICA KAUFMAN
It makes no sense to have shoulders so pained from just watching.
Here is a woman who's proud to sweat.
COLBY CEDAR SMITH
We are glad they are breaking apart.
my body in an unmade bed
JIM BEHRLE
"Don't do that." [He wasn't reading--he was talking to snap-happy me. Too late!]
JOHN COLETTI
cooking up brisket in a snow globe
One should delicately smell the millennium.
BRENDAN LORBER
piehole of stone
"Purity of Essence" for Todd Colby
My cat is the devil's pet project.
SIRUS LORBER-McTAGUE & DAVID HESS
[Brendan & Tracey's dog Sirus [or Cyrus?]. That's David Hess distracting him with the clock. See D's reflection in the TV?]
BRANDON DOWNING
The body opera is washed and dried in the sun.
There goes consciousness, always related to Venice.
A goth girl is telling me she's a virgin in a Cabriolet.
NEETZAN ZIMMERMAN
Finish your FDC Red #35!
Carbon dating is the new wave.
This nurse is like a piece of cake--
all easy, no bake.
JAIME CORBACHO
Alien abduction is a common occurence in the suburbs.
Ladies, he's actually called "Six Ways to Domingo."
JOHN COTTER
Who makes their own languages makes maps.
My shiny bride, safe in our [illegible] home,
painting her toenails.
JOANNA SONDHEIM
A pirouetting marvel atop a wooden raft
SHAFER HALL
Stop saying tiger. [From Katey Nicosia's Operation Tiger poem]
If I attended better schools would the ones I love be less blue?
So maybe I'm a little bit of a little girl.The rest of Saturday and plenty of candids and smoke-break shots to come.
Labels: photos
God Save My Queen II: Countdown to books!
Just confirmed this morning--copies of
GSMQ II by the temporarily MIA* Daniel Nester will be ready by September 6th, just in time for his reading at KGB on September 7. Mark your calendars, people!
*Because so many of you have asked, Dan's blog will be back, I think, though perhaps in another form. Katey Nicosia is redesigning his GSMQ site at the moment, and he's thinking of moving it over there to his own domain rather than continue to use the free Blogspot URL.
Fabulous. That makes two...
so-called video-game murders in recent headlines. The Lori Hacking case and the case dubbed "the X-Box murders."
But/and
GAMERS galleys are in!
Damn, Jimmy's on a roll.
See here and scroll down through the posts o' yesterday. Hot diggity soy dog.
UPDATE: Link fixed!
(AND, I make my second Jim-Side appearance, sort of. Oh sweet cartoon fame.)
Can someone please tell Ben Friedlander to help me get a job?
If I taught a first-books or publishing class, or poetry workshop, or lit survey, or hell, freshman comp at UMaine, I could live in Winter Harbor. Oh, heaven. Even Sullivan. Or Ellsworth even, near a lake. Gouldsboro. All commutable to Orono/Bangor.
LL Bean, the fashion copywriter route, is located in Freeport. Too far.
Did I mention yet...
that I am the lucky editor/assoc. publisher of the new book of poems by Jerome Sala? Previously titled
Media Effects, it's now called
Look Slimmer Instantly.
I was FLOORED when Jerome's manuscript showed up in my in-box, late last year. I've always been a fan, and love
Raw Deal (
Gary's recent post reminded me to tell you this) and thought of him right off as an ideal Soft Skull fit.
Jerome also has some faux-retro poems in the forthcoming
LIT.
Photos from the Massacre with more reportage tomorrow. Right now I'm pooped and waiting for tacos with hubby and brother-in-law.
Reality check
Could I survive four months a year at near-freezing temps?
Blogging article in Salon
Re: Movable Type going corporate, etc.
here.
Lost, not given
I love Maggie Balistreri's blog; it's quickly become a favorite.
This post is an example of why.
Boston Poetry Massacre report, Friday
So we started out around 10:45, going to pick up the car at the rental place at 12:00. Took us till 12:45 to get it, and another half hour to get it back to Brooklyn. Loaded up, picked up
Shafer and Lucas and got on the road close around 2:30, thinking we had plenty of time to arrive before 7:00 to catch the first readings, etc.
But I missed the turn off for the Triboro Bridge, and had to backtrack from the LIE, so that put us back about 30 minutes.
Then in Connecticut we hit the snarliest traffic snarl I have ever witnessed. It took 2 hours to travel from Exit 17 to Exit 25--I was going mad in the driver's seat. We moved so slowly for so long the road stripes played an optical illusion on me--it seemed the road was slipping toward the car, instead of the car rolling over it. Finally, I had to get out. At 6:00, we pulled over for some roadside nourishment, such that it was, and after getting back on the highway, I drove like a hellion, trying to make up some time.
Gina and Gabriella were in the same snarl, apparently, a little ahead of us. As Gina noted in her report, our goal changed from trying to make it by 7:00 for the first readings, to trying to make it by 9:00 for my reading.
Jaime Corbacho & John Cotter called--or Shafer called them--a couple of times to check our progress and update Jim. When it became clear that there was no way in hell I was going to make it, Jim agreed to rearrange a little to accommodate me. And yes, dear readers, this made the second time I was egregiously late to my own reading at Wordsworth's. Sheesh.
So we arrived in Cambridge about 9:00, and parked and reached the store about 9:15. I grabbed the chaps and hauled ass to the second floor, just in time for the end of the break. No time to breathe or pee, I was immediately on, looking road-weary I'm sure, and still a bit traffic-dazed. I managed to say quick hellos to John Mulrooney, Noah Gordon, Mark Lamoureux, Chad Parenteau. and a few other folks on the way in.
But...I also didn't have time to get nervous.
I read from
Down Spooky and
Big Confetti--I didn't have time to unpack the newer poems I'd planned to read. I think I did "Li'l Undergraduate Disaster," "We the Blind Need Pushing," "I Am Not Related to Any of You Yet," "Will That Be All Mrs. Kickboxer," and "Under This Umbrella Is Another Umbrella" of the spookies. When I started to read "Under This Umbrella" I explained that
Stephanie had donated the title and asked if she was in the audience. She stuck up her hand and we met right there--so that was fun. Then I did a few from
Big Confetti--"Elegy for a Fictional Strongman," "My Huge Napoleon," "Mouth Made Out of Trees," "Thick As, Um, Thieves," and "Those Days of Pomp & Vigor," if I remember correctly. Shafer providing humorous heckling throughout.
Be sure to see
Stephanie's report for the scoop on the readings that night! I was really bummed out to have missed this whole stellar lineup.
UPDATE: Shin-Yu (who somehow I missed meeting!?) also has a great
highlights report from Friday. And it was standing-room only! Not just Friday, but pretty much the whole weekend. Amazing!
After the readings, Shawn and I ran over to the hotel to check in and park the car. We cleaned up and changed, then met Jen, Ada, Shafer, John, Jaime, Lucas, Sybil, and Douglas Rothschild at Hong Kong--a three-floor restauarant/bar/dance club near in Harvard Square. The drinks were communal (as so much else that weekend), served in giant mixing-bowl size containers with multiple long straws. (I sipped one, but am allergic to pineapple juice so stuck with vodka tonics). Met Ada's fried Matt and Douglas's friend Catherine, as well as poet Autumn McClintock. Shawn and I snuck out around 1:00--exhausted and knowing we had to get back on the road the in the morning for a wedding in Wellfleet (though come next morning, we actually missed it; more about this later).
Friday was too rushed for any photos, unfortunately. But I made up for it later.
Warning: I'm back
...with much to say about the Boston Poetry Massacre as well as the culinary and natural delights of Downeast Maine.
Firstly, if you fear I may have photographic evidence pertaining to your highly poetic behavior in Boston, and you fear I may post it here (as well you might), and wish to entreat me not to do so, please let me know.
Otherwise, you just might find your mug in this space.
I got readings shots of everybody on Saturday (through Jordan Davis, during whose slot my battery died), and all of Sunday. Many porch and sidewalk shots--and never fear--no shots from the infamous party. Though I did somehow end up with Shafer's polar-bear boxers.
More, to be sure, soon. Catching up and picking at the crumbs of vacation through this final Sunday, doing nothing much.
