maggie wants to know if this is really happening

because nobody else is talking about it?


Eileen Myles--Reading Her New Book

Dog Eared Books is honored to host Eileen Myles. We will serve free wine and refreshments while you enjoy Eileen's work.



Eileen Myles is one of the best-known unofficial poets in America. She will be at reading from Sorry, Tree her brand new book which will officially be out on April 1 from Wavebooks. Sorry travels the gap between love and love lost, downtown New York and Southern CA, all the while keeping close watch as America asks itself if it’s a republic or an empire. In 1992 Eileen Myles conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. In the 80s she was the Artistic Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project. She currently curates a literary/performance series called Scout at Participant Inc. In NYC. In 2006 Myles received a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Grant for an upcoming book, The Importance of Being Iceland. Her novel, The Inferno, is also forthcoming next year.

March 30, 2007
08:00 PM - 09:15 PM

Venue Information
Dog Eared Books
900 Valencia St
cross 20th
San Francisco, CA 94110

Additional Event Information
415-282-0191

i ripped this off from the Poetry Center's site:

Carol Watts and Leslie Scalapino
introduced by Robert Grenier
Tuesday March 27, 2007
6:00 pm @ Café Royale
800 Post (at Leavenworth), free

• Carol Watts visits from London. Her chapbook brass, running was published by Equipage (2006) and her book of prose chronicles alphabetise exhibited at the Museum of Art in Bury, Manchester, in 2005. Wrack, her first poetry collection, is due from Reality Street. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London, where she co-organises the Centre for Poetics, and author of Dorothy Richardson (1995) and The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years’ War and the Imagining of the Shandean State (2007).

The absence of harm is not the place to begin.
In the mildness of. Seasons, insufficient leaf
fall, they hang on. By the last thread, needing.
Definition, the gasp of frost. To let go. I know
what it is and then I do not, this game. Quietens
us down. If you break it open why, is there only
this silence, cracked open, the salt of other....

Carol Watts, 2006

• Leslie Scalapino is the author of over twenty books of fiction, poetry, plays and criticism. Her long poem way received the Poetry Center Book Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.

“her work is infused with a seriousness, a passion, a timeliness, and an intelligence with which we profoundly identify” —Lydia Davis

ufda.

is what my peoples say.

my ribs, ufda.
my back, ufda.

this cough... UFFDA.

i can't tell if writing w/ codeine is good for my german sonnets project.

maggie was saying last night that we should maybe re-think having babies since we are already two old ladies... w/ her back & my love affairs w/ various viruses. i did hear that. but.
**


i got to lay in bed this morning and watch a baseball game. red sox v reds. it wasn't very exciting. i'm not a fan of either team. i used to like the red sox because i hated damon and loved to hate damon and so it gave me something to do when they played... root for the other team. but, alas, damon is a yankee... & i was a yankee fan... but then... damon became one... so then i switched firmly to the A's because i always liked them anyway. and i can get tickets to their games.

which... i do care for the giants... but cripes. what about the home opener? hello?

first complaints, second thanks

some things i need to complain about.

one is... i have been coughing this painful, dry, abrupt cough. the kind of abrupt that means you can't always get to covering yr mouth. & that is just... so rude. & i feel bad about it. but. that's abrupt for you. my back hurts from coughing. i'm working a half-day today because of it all.

also... the second complaint i have is this:

why, & since when, are novels "too literary" for presses to publish?

if we had a dollar for every admiring but sound rejection calling maggie's novel "too literary" we wouldn't need to wait a year to buy a house in Durham.

i mean... in my mind they are actually saying: yr book is too good for us to publish it. is it that way in yr mind? meanwhile... maggie spent over four years of her life writing this "too good" novel... waiting tables so she could do it... & since that F*** GW began his second term... she has been sending it out... only to get these responses...

"too literary"
"above our readers"

it is simply... indigestable.

****

THANKS TO POETS

last night we saw Jack Kimball & Suzanne Stein at SPT. we only went for the readings because of that cough i mentioned. but we went because we really wanted to see both of these poets in action.

and we were not disappointed.

in fact. we were delighted. & left feeling better than we felt arriving.

I've Forgotten How to Write a Poem

As many of you might have noticed (or maybe not), Kate has been the primary poster on this blog for a long time. It seems that I abandoned writing on the blog as soon as I was overcome with writers block. Although, I don't know if that's an apt term. What's happened to me, you see, is that I finished my novel. It seems very strange after working on a project for so long, such a unified project for so long, to begin anything again. I managed to avoid this anxiety by avoiding writing for several years by preparing to apply to graduate school, applying to graduate school, and then reapplying to graduate school, and intermittantly searching for publishers for my novel, which I will add is a grueling and discouraging task and which I have managed unsuccessfully to this point. In any case, though for a time I was surprised at how "ok" I was at not writing, suddenly, now, I miss it. And I miss, most of all, poetry. I was really angry at poetry for a while, the result of graduate school in creative writing, but now I truly miss it. But before I started writing the novel my poetry got pretty crappy, as if what I needed couldn't happen there. So it's been a really long time since I've written a poem I've liked. And yesterday I tried, I think whole heartedly, and it was crappy. So I realize that one writes a lot of crappy things when one is searching for the right new form for oneself. But I've been thinking how to make this process less painful, how to make it like sketching for a painter. The best idea I have is to read poems I like and then imitate them without thinking that the imitations are real work. My idea at the moment is that if I just let myself play without pressure perhaps I will remember how to write a poem again, or I will learn a new way to write a poem again. I am open to any other advice.

SPT FRIDAY

Friday March 23
Jack Kimball & Suzanne Stein


YES!


WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU BE DOING?

see you there.

My Bruce Andrews Dream

Kate has pressured me into appearing on the blog again. The problem is that I don't have anything interesting to say. I haven't even felt chatty. I did have an interesting dream last night, though. I was in college again and was at a reading. Unexpectantly, Bruce Andrews shows up and begins reading. Some people are annoyed because it was already the end of the reading and Bruce wasn't supposed to be one of the readers. But I'm in the front and in the moddle of his reading Bruce demands cantalope. So I go into the kitchen area and find him cantalope and I'm about to bring him some of the melon, when Rosmarie Waldrop grabs it from me and tells me that she will bring it to him and tell him to end the reading. This happens. Many people leave, but I am still hanging out with Bruce because he thinks I'm going to let him crash at my house. We find a cassette tape that has recorded the poems people were making up in their head as Bruce was reading. I'm one of the people on the tape. I am very excited to hear my own thoughts recorded. Bruce misunderstands me and thinks I'm not interested and destroys my segment. I am very angry with him and leave. Then a player from the Polish Olympic handball team comes to us to show us his medal. Bruce and I watch several minutes of play on a video screen. I tell Bruce that I like games where the same formation is run over and over again until it works (soccer). He is not impressed with my assessment. I leave Bruce in a classroom filled with undergraduates hanging on to his every word. Also, during this entire dream, I am not wearing underwear and only a cloth to cover me. As all of the actions are occurring, I am worried that Bruce will notice I am not really dressed.

Ok, dream interpreters, go to work.

-- Maggie

maggie says

we're going to open a tavern named
the winking beaver.

unabashedness

one of my former profs at SFSU [who shall remain nameless] once told maggie right before we started seeing each other "she can be a bit worshipful." and it is true. i can be. only... it really is a diction-related worshipful.

i'm telling you this because i went to see both of kate greenstreet's readings in the bay area this week & i can tell you that i am JUSTIFIABLY WORSHIPFUL of kate greentreet's work... and kate, too... and her husband max....

i will defend myself later ... i just realized i left kate's book at home... but i can tell you that i am not alone. i haven't seen a wait for books to be signed as long as kate's in a many months now. i had to wait thirty minutes to say hello to her last night... she's a popular lady.

***

i had a dream yesterday morning that E. Tracy Grinnell was now doing backgrounds for cartoons.

i can't explain this.

***


how was SPT last next?

next week it is suzanne stein & jack kimball!

***

o, yes, i also wanted to say that i am forever amazed by jessica smith & her curations... such lovely little books! i'm so happy to spend money on them!

announcements & plans & information

last night we saw laynie browne read in Berkeley & it was great. her new book, Daily Sonnets, is fucking awesome. i mean, really awesome. and i think you should all buy a copy now. we *both* love it... so i'm not even being all excited because i think laynie is such a great person... it's just really that great. [i have a fondness for sound / mis translations & a child's way of thinking]. so, there's that.


****

NEXT WEEK...

kate greenstreet will be HERE & in BERKELEY!!!! so, ya'll [practicing for durham...] should come out for that. here you go:

Tuesday, 13 MAR 07 7 pm
with Dana Teen Lomax, Colleen Lookingbill,
& Sarah Rosenthal
Book Passage Bookstore
1 Ferry Building, #42
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.835.1020

and friday in berkeley

Friday, 16 MAR 07 7:30 pm
with Janet Holmes
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94704

we are going to Tuesday night for sure... please go with us! [we are leaving soon you know...}
****
&, i know ya'll know about this, too, but i don't want to be accused of playing favorites:

SPT
Friday March 16
Katie Degentesh & Drew Gardner

AND

ARTIFACT
Bob Glück
Lisa Robertson

March 17, 2007
7:30PM
Reading begins at 8PM

$5 donation goes to readers & drinks!
(no one is turned away for lack of funds)

2921B Folsom St. @ 25th St. SF 94110

AND

NEW YIPES
March 18
Dodie Bellamy with
Armand Capanna and
films by Sarah Lockhart


***

cripes! i bet we won't have weeks like this too often in Durham, NC... eh? wow. i can't see how we're not going to all these events next week...

i'm staying in this weekend.

stir

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tony & leigh tost's backyard.
(we miss it!)

maggie

has work in shampoo 29.

***

the film will be up later. of the backyard.

***
on my desk:

the Oxford Thesaurus

the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid : Eradicating Poverty through Profits - CK Prahalad

Swallows -Martin Corless Smith

Of Piscator - Martin Corless Smith

Sean O'Casey's Plays (8 o' them)

Abriß der Psychoanalyse. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. - Sigmund Freud

Zukofsky issue of Chicago Review

Cervantes' Don Quixote

The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History - Edward S. Casey

Langenscheidt's New College Merriam-Webster English Dictionary

***

we're home.

but not really... since... home won't be this home much longer.

in the mail was the new foursquare that jessica smith puts out & we are in & it is SO BEAUTIFUL! we love it! yay jessica smith & Krista Stout! & i guess they are all gone now?? but that's because they are so damn gorgeous, not because we are in it. thank you jessica!

***

we are going to this, are you?

Laynie Browne, David Bromige, Richard Denner, Michael McClure and David Meltzer
Monday March 5th, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley CA 7:30 pm
Come to a reading to celebrate the publication of 3 new books:

Daily Sonnets by Laynie Browne

The Cry at Zero by Andrew Joron

An Ives Set by Joseph Noble

Tuesday, March 6, 2007, 7:30 p.m.: Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, with Andrew Joron and Joseph Noble.

***
i'll be posting a movie featuring tony & leigh tost's backyard tomorrow. all you city folks be prepared for some real movement.

***

we heart Durham. & Durham poets. the job hunt is on.

durham drive

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