Minor American

One Makes Many: A Conference of Poetic Interactions

2011-10-28T11:53:00.000-04:00

Mark your calenders. The Duke/UNC Contemporary Poetry Working Group is excited to announce

ONE MAKES MANY: A CONFERENCE OF POETIC INTERACTIONS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11 (DUKE) & SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12 (UNC)

"One Makes Many: A Conference of Poetic Interactions" brings together local, national, and international scholars and poets to participate in panels, readings, exhibitions, and events. Each of our panels orients itself along one or more disciplinary boundaries and aims to interrogate poetry’s relation to visual art, technology, history, folk tradition, religion—to name just a few. We are enthusiastic about the multidisciplinary nature of the conference, which draws interest and participation from multiple departments across both campuses.

http://onemakesmany.siteslab.org

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Friday, November 11

Location: Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke U., Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, Floor 1, C105

10:30-12:00 Sacred Poetry: Carl Ernst, Paul Losensky, Murat Nemet-Nejat, and David Need

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Latin America (in Translation): Steve Dolph, Carlos Soto-Román, and Guillermo Parra

2:45-4:15 The Digital Muse: Steve Roggenbuck, Dan Anderson, and Bill Seaman (Moderator: Patrick Herron)

Gather at concurrent digital/new media poetry exhibition

Break for dinner

8:00 Reading by Nathaniel Tarn

Saturday, November 12

Location: YMCA, UNC, 180A East Cameron Ave., Chapel Hill

10:30-12:00 Black Mountain Aesthetics: Tyrone Williams, Kimberly Lamm, and Julie Thompson

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Afrosonics: Andrew Rippeon, Shirlette Ammons, and Harmony Holiday

2:45-4:15 Folk Poetics and Oral History: Christopher Green, Frank Sherlock, and Ali Neff

Break for dinner

8:00 Musical performance by Lightnin' Wells (Durham, TBA)

For more information, http://onemakesmany.siteslab.org

We would like to thank our major sponsors:

The Kenan-Biddle Partnership and the Duke English Department,

our Duke co-sponsors: the Program in Literature, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Romance Studies, and the Franklin Humanities Institute,

and our UNC co-sponsors: The Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Graduate School, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Center for the Study of the American South.

Sigo & Taylor Read POEMS!

2011-10-12T00:40:00.002-04:00

SECOND MINOR AMERICAN READING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!

Cedar Sigo
&
Ken Taylor

Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 8pm
PLACE: Women's Studies Lounge, 1st Fl., East Duke Bldg, East Campus, Duke University

Map is Here.
BYOB, FREE, & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

[This Event is sponsored by Duke English Department's

Faculty/Graduate Student Reading Group in Contemporary Poetry]

Cedar Sigo is a poet and sometime teacher, active in the art and literary worlds since 1999. He studied writing and poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of seven books and pamphlets of poetry, including two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse , 2003 and 2005) Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008) and most recently, Stranger In Town (City Lights, 2010) His poems have been included in many magazines and anthologies, and he has published poetry books and magazines under the Old Gold imprint. He participated in “Coordinates: Indigenous Writing Now,” a conference at California College of the Arts. He has given readings and performances at the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, Bowery Poetry Club, PS1 Museum of Contemporary Art, Beyond Baroque, San Francisco Poetry Center, The San Francisco LGBT Center, Intersection for the Arts, and Small Press Traffic, among others. He has collaborated with visual artists including Cecilia Dougherty, Frank Haines, Will Yackulic and Colter Jacobsen. He lives in San Francisco.

Ken Taylor's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, The Stony Thursday Book, elimae, MiPOesias, The New Guard, Whale Sound, Eclectica Magazine, OCHO, Poets & Artists, HAM Literature and Gigantic Sequins. His manuscript "dog with elizabethan collar" is a finalist for this year's National Poetry Series. He is the 2011 winner of the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize.

Minor American Reading, September 2011

2011-09-10T16:33:00.004-04:00

FIRST MINOR AMERICAN READING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR

RYAN ECKES
&
ALLISON CURSEEN

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2011, 8pm
PLACE: Women's Studies Lounge, 1st Fl., East Duke Bldg, East Campus, Duke University

Map is Here.
BYOB, FREE, & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

[This Event is sponsored by Duke English Department's

Faculty/Graduate Student Reading Group in Contemporary Poetry]

Ryan Eckes was born in 1979 in Philadelphia. He's the author of Old News (Furniture Press 2011) and when i come here (Plan B Press 2007). More of his poetry can be found on his blog, which is also called Old News, and in various magazines. Along with Stan Mir, he organizes the Chapter & Verse Reading Series in Philly. He works as an adjunct English professor at Temple University and other places, and he spends a lot of time hanging out with poets.

Allison Curseen is an English PhD candidate at Duke. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University in DC but still loves her undergraduate, Oberlin College, best. She thinks of herself primarily as a fiction writer but has been for the last year, at least, working mostly on poetry. Allison also enjoys facilitating creative writing in different settings from universities and middle schools to churches and prison.

My Intro For Eileen Myles

2011-02-20T11:33:00.002-05:00

This was written with the help of several posters on FB, who gave me some concrete reasons as to why they love Eileen Myles. Of course, the intro is filled with my own reasons. But the writing process was, for a few hours, a collective one. The introduction was for a reading Eileen gave on February 8, 2011 at Duke University. Thanks to all of you who sent "love" in for Eileen:

This week on Valentine’s Day the online magazine “The Awl” published an article by Eileen Myles called “Being Female.” In the article Eileen discusses the recent Vida pie charts that showed how low the numbers of female writers getting reviewed in the mainstream press are, a sad and discouraging fact for all vaginally equipped scribes. Eileen’s article opens with a description of one of her own personal rituals to overcome the self-doubt that is a natural part of being a female writer in this world. She writes, “When I think about being female I think about being loved. What I mean by that: I have a little exercise I do when I present my work or speak publicly or even write…In order to build up my courage I try to imagine myself deeply loved.” She goes on to say that when she finds herself wondering how certain men she admires are able to live so boldly (she uses the life of Passolini as an example) she sees it as a result of such love. She writes, “A mother loves her son. And so does a country. And that is much to count on. So I try to conjure that for myself particularly when I’m writing or saying something that seems both vulnerable and important so I don’t have to be defending myself so hard. I try and act like its mine. The culture. That I’m its beloved son.”

So I thought that since Eileen is a beloved guest in our house tonight, that I would do the job for her. That I would now speak in the name and words of many of our nation’s poets, all of our nation’s Polish mothers and in the name of the American nation itself to let Eileen know just how and why she is our beloved son and our beloved uncle. Eileen, We, the poets of America, the Polish Mothers of America and the United States of America love you! We love you for your honesty and your courage, your ability, despite “the blues and the greys and the feelings of lostness” “to be inexcusably addicted to light” in your work and in your life. We love you because your like poetry's very own Kennedy, only unafraid of eros. we love to hear her say the words "dark red hair. We love you because you wear cool boots, because you wear your charisma and poetic authority lightly and with good humor. We love you because you’re part of this NY downtown art and poetry scene that is still so alive and real and searching and open. We love you for the surprise in the line: "But he always needed to go out and stay out for long stretches and freely kill other creatures." We love your Rhythm: the living scansion of thought and line in a performative drive. We love you for taking everything that's brilliant, edgy and humane in the New York School, throwing out the dross, adding the special kinds of aliveness, that are only yours to add, we love you for making quite a lot of sense in sound, for telling the right people to fuck off, and telling so many girls, girlish boys, and boyish girls they were “right on” when the rest of the world was telling them they were all wrong, we love you for having enough guts to open up the kitchen cabinets and let in negative capability, we love you for not believing that poets are contaminated by writing novels. We love you for being pretty much totally hot. We try not to drool when standing close to you. We think it’s awesome when you order clams during job interviews. We love you for running for President, but are glad that you didn’t win because we’re pretty sure the bankers would have had you shot and no one really needs to be that much like a Kennedy anyhow, and besides I think you look more like Warren Beatty. Eileen, we are so cool for you, we can hardly stand it. We might have to make a 51^st state just to hold our love for you, We love you in all your freedoms, short lines, long paragraphs, Eileen, our own dear queer defender of American forms, how could we have imagined ourselves without you?

The Waldrops are my Heroes.

2009-12-04T12:31:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came out last night to hear the Waldrops read. And special thanks to Joe Donahue and Tony Tost for their wonderful introductions.

I was glad to have the chance to thank the Waldrops for their role as teachers in my life and in the life of many other writers and poets. Here's what I said in a very husky and cold-ridden voice:

Tonight Poet Tony Tost will introduce Rosmarie Waldrop and Poet Joe Donahue will introduce Keith. But before Tony comes up here to start things off, I wanted to say a few words about the Waldrops. From the readings tonight you will learn what wonderful poets Keith and Rosmarie are. But you might not know about their work as mentors and teachers. I would venture to say that there are a few hundred poets who would claim them as mentors. I was going to run a poll on Facebook so that I could offer you an exact number, but I unfortunately came down with this terrible cold and never got around to it.

But I can tell you from personal experience what wonderful teachers they are. When I was 18, I met Keith and Rosmarie for the first time. It was my first year of college and though they were both teaching that semester, I was in class with neither of them. They quickly befriended me, however, because I was taking a poetry workshop led by one of their students. She must have slipped them the news that I too might be one of those unfortunate people who would like to cut words out of old books in the middle of the night or translate sonnets from languages that I didn’t understand, rather than going to law school or doing something else that would let me eat well. In any case, before I even knew there was a poetry community in Providence, they welcomed me into it. They looked at my fledgling work seriously, offering both criticism and praise. But the most significant thing they did for me happened at their house that same year. The Waldrops were hosting a party for a Scandinavian poet. They were not only kind enough to invite me to it, but when they introduced me to the visiting poet they said, “This is Maggie Zurawski. She is a poet.” This may not seem like a significant gesture to everyone, but I am sure that many of you in the room tonight know what it’s like to be 18 or 19, thinking that you want to be a poet. It takes a lot of courage to accept yourself in those terms. Aside from feeling that the proposition of being a poet is an absurd one given the world we live in today, one also feels that perhaps to make such a claim one must first produce a masterpiece, or at least a fair number of works. But when the Waldrops introduced me as a poet that night, I knew that they took me and the little work I had written seriously and that it was also time for me to do the same. They didn’t doubt me, so I stopped doubting myself, at least often enough to never stop writing. Over the years, they have kept up with me, finding me no matter where I seemed to land, always making sure I would get the latest books they’ve published. I made sure, too, that they were the last people to read my book manuscript before it went off to the publisher. I needed to know what Rosmarie and Keith thought should be cut before I would listen to any editor. In short, they’ve taught me what it means to be part of a poetry community. That if we care about poetry, we need to care about one another, too. What they’ve done for me, they’ve done for many others. I’m not special, just lucky enough to have received their care. I only hope that when I become a teacher, I am able to treat my students with as much kindness and generosity as they treated us. So tonight Rosmarie and Keith, I want to thank you for all your kindness and encouragement over the years. I know I am not the best at remembering to send thank you notes when I get Burning Deck books in the mail, so tonight I wanted to make sure you knew how grateful I am for all those books that have come like clockwork over the years, thank you for your poems, for your translations, for all your encouragement, for your loyalty and enthusiasm, in short for everything you’ve done for us and for poetry. Thank you.

You can listen to last night's reading by the Waldrops here.

2009-11-24T22:40:00.005-05:00

(Please Forward Far and Wide!)

Minor American Presents:

Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Talk on Translation: 4pm
Duke University, English Department Lounge (West Campus), Allen Building, 3rd Floor, Chapel Drive.

Poetry Reading: 8pm
Duke University, East Duke Parlors (East Campus), 1st Floor - Pink Parlor

(For Campus Map and Directions go to: http://map.duke.edu/)

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

(Co-ponsored by the English Department's Graduate Reading Group in Contemporary Poetry, the Department of Romance Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature, and the Franklin Humanities Institute)

Keith Waldrop's 2009 books are: Transcendental Studies (poetry, Univ of California), which won the 2009 National Book Award for Poetry; Several Gravities (collages & poetry, Siglio Press); and Paris Spleen, the prose poems of Baudelaire (Wesleyan). He has also translated Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil as well as books of poetry by Anne-Marie Albiach, Claude Royet-Journoud, Paol Keineg, Dominique Fourcade, Pascal Quignard, and Jean Grosjean. Other books of poems include The Real Subject (Omnidawn) and the trilogy: The Locality Principle, The Silhouette of the Bridge (America Award, 1997) and Semiramis, If I Remember (Avec Books). He teaches at Brown University in Providence.

Rosmarie Waldrop’s recent poetry books are Curves to the Apple, Blindsight (both New Directions), and Love, Like Pronouns (Omnidawn). University of Alabama Press published her collected essays, Dissonance (if you are interested). She has translated, from the German, books by Friederike Mayröcker, Elke Erb, Oskar Pastior, Gerhard Rühm, Ulf Stolterfoht and, from the French, Edmond Jabès, Emmanuel Hocquard and Jacques Roubaud. Together, Keith and Rosmarie have published Well Well Reality (collected collaborations, Post-Apollo Press), Ceci n’est pas Keith Ceci n’est pas Rosmarie (autobiographies, Burning Deck), and translated Jacques Roubaud’s poems on the streets of Paris: The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart (Dalkey Archive). They co-edit Burning Deck Press in Providence.

2009-11-08T22:43:00.001-05:00

Please Forward This Announcement:

MINOR AMERICAN READING
Lucy Corin & Guillermo Parra
Saturday, November 14, 8pm
at THE SPACE
715 Washington Street
Durham, NC
FREE, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, BYOB

This event is sponsored by
The Duke University Department of English Poetry Working Group

Lucy Corin is the author of the short story collection The Entire Predicament (Tin House Books, 2007) and the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls (FC2, 2004). She teaches at the University of California, Davis, where many professors are currently working to keep the university from being privatized. You can find her microfictional apocalypses in The Massachusetts Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch, Pen/America, and Diagram.

Guillermo Parra lives in Durham, NC and writes the blog Venepoetics. He has published Caracas Notebook (Cy Gist Press, 2006) and Phantasmal Repeats (Petrichord Books, 2009). He is currently translating the work of Venezuelan poet Juan Sánchez Peláez.

Question

2009-10-18T23:22:00.000-04:00

Is the face a person made presentable?

2009-10-13T23:20:00.001-04:00

Production is overrated, or perhaps, at this point, simply overdone. Anything we might need is nothing that can be made. This is the best argument for poetry.

2009-10-13T00:05:00.005-04:00

MINOR AMERICAN READING
Gail Scott & Robert Glück
-musical performance by y2kbunker-
Saturday, October 24th, 8pm
at THE SPACE
715 Washington Street
Durham, NC
FREE, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, BYOB

This event is co-sponsored by
The Duke University Department of English Poetry Working Group
&
The Center for Canadian Studies at Duke

Gail Scott has completed a new novel, The Obituary. She has written 7 other books, including the anthology Biting The Error edited with Bob Gluck, Camille Roy, and Mary Berger, Coach House, 2004 [shortlisted for a Lambda award]; the novel, My Paris, about a sad diarist in conversation with Gertrude Stein and Walter Benjamin in contemporary Paris, Dalkey Archive [Normal, Ill] September, 2003; the story collection Spare Parts Plus Two [Coach House, 2002]. The novels Main Brides and Heroine, and the essay collections Spaces Like Stairs and la théorie, un dimanche [with Nicole Brossard et al]. Her translation of Michael Delisle’s Le Déasarroi du matelot was shortlisted for the Governor General’s award in translation [2001]. She was named one of the 10 best Canadian novelists of the year 1999 by the trade magazine Quill + Quire. She is co-founder of the critical journal Spirale (Montréal) and Tessera (new writing by women). She teaches Creative Writing at Université de Montréal.

Robert Glück is the author of nine books of poetry and fiction, including two novels, Margery Kempe and Jack the Modernist and a book of stories, Denny Smith. Glück edited, along with Camille Roy, Mary Berger and Gail Scott, the anthology Biting The Error: Writers on Narrative. Glück was Co-Director of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, Director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State, and Associate Editor at Lapis Press. His poetry and fiction have been published in the New Directions Anthology, City Lights Anthologies, Best New Gay Fiction 1988 and 1996,The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Best American Erotica 1996 and 2005, and The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction. His critical articles appeared in artforum international, Aperture, Poetics Journal, and Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, and he prefaced Between Life and Death, a book on the paintings of Frank Moore. Last year he and artist Dean Smith completed the film Aliengnosis. Glück teaches at San Francisco State University.

y2kbunker is either a noise collective or a doomsday cult/commune. Instrumentation ranges from the standard (violin, trombone, guitar) tothe profane (electric drill, fireworks, riding crop). http://www.myspace.com/y2kbunker

2009-09-05T23:12:00.006-04:00

MINOR AMERICAN NUMERO UNO 2009

VANESSA PLACE -- TED POPE -- DES ARK
SEPTEMBER 19, 2009, 8pm
715 Washington Street Durham NC
FREE -- OPEN TO THE PUBLIC -- BYOB

Vanessa Place:  Vanessa Place is a writer, a lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is author of /Dies: A Sentence/ (Les Figues Press, 2006), /La Medusa/ (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), and /Notes on Conceptualisms/, co-authored with Robert Fitterman (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009); her nonfiction book, /The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law/ is forthcoming from Other Press. Place is co-founder of Les Figues Press, described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”  

Ted Pope:  “I am the warm and fuzzy wall between the Church and The State. Trapped out here in the orbit-of-Mars like a Hound-Dog or an Owl. the little inner buddha is building a wondrous canoe that will travel from my heart... to you.”

Des Ark: Des Ark is the secret soundtrack of midnight Carolina. It’s the hard and sweet noise of everything that keeps you up at night, a bulldozer come to break its heart with you. Walking alone at night, you can hear Des Ark through the broken window of the used bookstore. Inside, everyone is there and everything is real.

From Coolidge's "The Crystal Text"

2009-09-04T22:05:00.004-04:00

A prosewriter's mind's mass is thought plots
but a poet's is fielded of words.

What do you see when you look out with your language?
A pile of hooted buckets.
A loose laugh spoon.
Miles of adroited pain paper.
Lungs full of glass beads.
A list of nodules knowing of nameless.

These are never only things, just, but the words
retracked. Circling as a flying object almost home
with your pen above whatever oval tensions
or the wheat in your litmus class, the glow on the fear.
The witness motions are there. Or add another
e to that th.

When I am become nothing but the atmosphere, I hope the atmosphere sounds like this:

2009-08-23T22:43:00.002-04:00

I Can't Believe the Republicans...

2009-08-08T14:48:00.001-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Thinking Outloud on "Innovation" as a label..

2009-07-15T00:25:00.004-04:00

Brian Allen Carr was nice enough to respond to my post in the comments section under the previous post. He makes the point that he was asked to review a book that had "Innovative" stamped on it. Fair enough.

I guess my whole beef is with the narrow understanding of innovation in general. It seems like books in the US are labeled "innovative" or "experimental" where in Germany, for instance, (and only because I am somewhat familiar with German bookstores) these books would simply be called literature. I mean, shouldn't writers always be thinking about whether or not the form they are using is the right one for the 'content' they are working with? In other words, shouldn't anyone writing a novel (or anything for that matter) be thinking about HOW to write it best? The US publishing world favors a certain kind of realist prose, and calls that "fiction" or "literature," and writing that comes out of another kind of literary tradition, if it is not foreign, gets labeled "innovative" or "experimental." These two terms, then, become labels for everything that isn't, for example, Alice Munro and Robert Ford.

To quote the FC2 website: "In his New York Times Book Review "Guest Word" of Sept 15, 1974, Sukenick described the group's aim to 'make serious novels and story collections available' and 'keep them in print permanently.'" In other words, Suckenick and others create FC2 in order to create the possibility of publishing prose other than, to change the old Charles Bernstein term, Official Prose Culture. But I am wondering if we aren't both operating (Carr and I) under a too narrow view of "innovation." The OED defines "innovative: 1. a. The action of innovating; the introduction of novelties; the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements or forms. {dag}Formerly const. of (the thing altered or introduced)." It seems like innovative becomes rigid and prescriptive as well: 'did you mess with your sequencing of the narrative? etc.' It seems like a working definition that is more generous to what most writers are doing is the second half of #1: "the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements or forms.' Recombinations, in other words. And to toot my own horn, I think I could argue for my work being innovative in this way. I mean, I don't think that Thomas Bernhard ever wrote a lesbian sex scene. If I am wrong on this, let me know. It seems like old technique applied to new content is a kind of innovation.

I think I don't believe in INNOVATION.

2009-07-12T22:00:00.009-04:00

The most negative review my book has received was written by Brian Allen Carr in the March/April 2009 issue of American Book Review online.[By the way, the first long passage that is quoted in the review has a typo in it. The word "site" should be "since."] For Carr, my book's biggest offense besides being "boring" and containing "student-grade prose," was the fact that although The Bruise received the "Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize," the book was not "innovative." I can't really defend myself against this charge of non-innovation. That's a question for the judges at FC2. I simply put my manuscript in the mail.

What I mean is that Carr is right when he says that "Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka are all liberally borrowed from here." And that "this is a lesbian pseudo-romance, but that's nothing new." He does forget to mention Thomas Bernhard. I stole like mad from Thomas Bernhard. What I am trying to get to is this: I had no intention of making anything NEW when I was writing this book. In fact, what would or could be new? I am not really interested in that question. It seems like something for boys who like Pynchon and HTML to work on. I was just trying to write a book that I would want to read. My guess is that Carr and I like to read different things. What I find offensive in this review, though, is the implication that I was trying to pull one over on the reader, as if I thought the reader wouldn't hear the imitation, the sampling of my favorites. And this I don't think is Carr's fault. For some reason the literary world is haunted by this idea of novelty. The "Dude, I've heard that before..." syndrome. For all its post-modern claims, it holds tight to the most MODERNIST idea of all: that of making it NEW. But trust me, I was well aware of my book not being new. Charging that my influences are too obvious, both as favorites [as in not obscure enough] and as sounds in the prose, seems like something that would only happen to a writer. I mean, when we hear a Rickenbacker plugged into a Vox on some new indie album, we don't turn it off because it sounds too much like the Beatles. I at least keep listening to see what happens to that Beatles sound. Maybe I am boring, but I don't mind if new music sounds a little like old music. And I like new books that sound a lot like old books that I like. But even if I had lived up to Carr's ideas of the Sukenick award, even if I had completely adopted Sukenick's theories and deviated from linear form by "experimenting" with sequencing, I imagine that I still would have only been as innovative as Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. I would rather be like Bernhard or Proust or Stein, in any case.

Thomas Bernhard is Better than Thomas Paine

2009-07-09T00:42:00.000-04:00

Inside Me Anne Boyer is Always Becoming The Favorite Perpetual

2009-07-05T01:37:00.006-04:00

Mean to LOOK here.

In case you missed this because of all the Michael Jackson stories...

2009-07-02T14:50:00.001-04:00

Obama Health Care Plan -- July 1, 2009 Townhall Meeting

2009-07-02T11:11:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I was unable to watch the President's town hall meeting on health care live and was hoping to get a report on it on the 5pm news, but instead MSNBC, CNN, and FOX only reported on Michael Jackson and governors who hiked the Appalachian trail. This morning I was luckily able to watch the entire meeting on wh.gov. I've been out of the country for six weeks and thought that was why I was finding it hard to learn about the nuts and bolts of the President's proposal, but given that America lacks any real television news and I am at my parents' house in NJ where cable rules, I could only get the information from the White House itself via internet. Thank God for Youtube. Infotainment doesn't really cut it, when people are dying because of lack of health care.

In case you were wondering, I don't see how we could give up Obama's Public Option and call anything else real reform. Watch the video.

Literary Women in Berlin

2009-05-30T10:53:00.008-04:00

When I lived in Berlin from 1995 to 1997, I frequented the literature houses in the city often. I had the luck of hearing Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker, but the reading that struck me most was given by the Danish poet, Inger Christensen. (She is the woman in the picture on the left above). She read during a group reading. She was already an older woman with something grandmotherly about her. She came to the stage in what my mother in Polish calls a "costume," that is, in a skirt with matching blazer. She was dressed all in brown, looked very much like the older women I saw everyday on the Berlin subway and when she came to the stage with a large handbag that she set on the floor next to her, I found the image of this poet quite funny, exactly because she didn't look like a poet at all, at least according to my twenty-three-year-old self. But then she began reading sonnets from her cycle The Butterfly Requiem and I felt truly stupid for my earlier judgment of this woman's appearance. All I can say is that the poems were magical. As earthly and mundane as Christensen's appearance seemed, her poems were from another world. I only wish I could write something as beautiful as Christensen before I die.

This past Thursday I had the pleasure of hearing Ilana Shmueli at the Literaturwerkstatt in Prenzlauerberg. (Shmueli yesterday and today is above on the right.) Shmueli was a childhood acquaintance of Paul Celan. Later, in the mid-sixties, she met him again in Paris, began a romance with him, which resulted in a very beautiful correspondence, published a few years ago in Germany by Suhrkamp. Shmueli lives in Israel and is the Hebrew translator of Celan's work. She has authored an autobiography of her experiences in WWII and began writing poetry while translating Celan's work. People's interest in Shmueli no doubt stems from her connections to Celan. Shmueli herself is very aware of this. She refrained from reading more than two of her own poems on Thursday and spent the rest of the time talking either about Celan's poetics, or her own experiences in the war and their affect on her own relationship to language. What was most striking about her talk had to do with her elaboration on her relationship to German. German was her first language, the language spoken at home, though she lived in a Romanian area, and now that she lives in Israel, she is part of a minority of German-speaking immigrants. Through her talk it was obvious that the loss and suspicion of one's own language is one of the tragedies of war.

The Bruise Wins 2009 Lambda Award!

2009-05-30T10:34:00.002-04:00

I am happy to report that my novel The Bruise won a Lambda Award in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category. I unfortunately was unable to attend. I am teaching creative writing in Berlin for six weeks, but my sexy representative was in the third row with butterflies in her stomach. She diligently rehearsed a few lines and delivered them so well that Kate Clinton complimented her as she returned to her seat. I have to say, I really wanted to win. I know, that's not cool to say, but it was nice to be legible in a reading community outside of the "innovative fiction" world. Here's a list of the other finalists in my category:

LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION

* The Bruise, Magdalena Zurawski, Fiction Collective Two/University of Alabama Press -- Winner!

* Red Audrey & the Roping, Jill Malone, Bywater Books
* Passing for Black, Linda Villarosa, Kensington
* Closer to Fine, Meri Weiss, Kensington
* Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind, Chavisa Woods, Fly by Night Press

OUR AMAZING TOUR

2009-03-11T10:44:00.002-04:00

Because of not being able to blog on a regular basis because of Maggie's computer being down I'm not going to be blogging about the trip, JUST BECAUSE I don't like doing a half assed job. And I really feel like I've done a half assed job so far, NOT covering 90 percent of a visit.

But I will say that we're having a GREAT time, and being met with incredible generosity!

THANKS TO EVERYONE WE MEET ALONG THE WAY,
CAConrad

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

2009-03-09T09:20:00.002-04:00

MARCH 6th, 2009, Lawrence, Kansas. Anne Boyer took us to the Bloch Museum where a BLACK ROTHKO is hanging, WOW, it was such a dream, something I had only seen in a book before. BUT, MY, FAVORITE! FAVORITE! piece is the Louise Nevelson piece! (did I spell her name right?) Then we had food at a famous barbeque joint in Kansas City, which to me smelled like a crematorium, oy, made me sick.

6 Gallery for our reading. What a huge crowd, I don't even know how many people, but so many people that they we're sitting on the floor all the way back to the door. We sold a lot of books, made a lot of great new friends.

In the bathroom in 6 Gallery, next to the toilet there's a little table. In the drawer is my FAVORITE postcard photograph of DIVINE in a leopard print, big, CRAZY, DELICIOUS grin, black and white. Under the postcard is a tiny pink box of condoms called CHERRY SEX LIFE which promise flavor for your pleasure I LIKE THIS TOWN!

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

2009-03-09T09:05:00.002-04:00

MARCH 5th, 2009. We're at Anne Boyer's apartment in Lawrence Kansas with her amazing daughter Hazel. Anne is on the porch cutting Magdalena's hair right now. It's a warm, sunny day and birds are ALL OVER the eaves and branches singing their most luxurious possible anthems! Magdalena's bits of hair fall to the ground and the birds eye the soft tufts, planning new nests in their vivacious bird brains. When I was a boy my grandmother cut my hair outside once. She put her Jolly Green Giant kitchen towel around my neck and shoulders. A robin hopped closer and closer to us, then snatched a blond curl from the grass and flew to the nest so the baby birds could sneeze and shit in plush comfort AND I WAS SO FUCKING PROUD and it was one of the happiest days of my young bird brain life.

Anne Boyer was one of my favorite poets, but now she's one of my favorite people on earth! I LOVE Anne. There's so much to say, but don't want to say too much, you know? I mean I don't want to say anything that will embarrass Anne, SHIT, I SHOULD HAVE ASKED, HEY ANNE, CAN I BLOG ABOUT THAT? Down the road from her home there's a house, very large house, like a mini mansion, and in ENORMOUS black letters on the front of the house are the words RED RIGHT RETURNING. What the FUCK does that mean? It MUST mean something very VERY important to put it on the side of your house. And, it wasn't on paper, and it wasn't on plastic, it was ON THE HOUSE as a permanent message. Red right returning, red right returning, red right returning, I just don't know what the fuck it means, WHAT THE FUCK does that mean? I asked if we could stop of the way back so I could knock on the door as ask, and everyone said SURE WHY NOT, but then we forgot.

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN

2009-03-09T00:46:00.003-04:00

Hi, we're in Minneapolis at the moment, and we've been having a FANTASTIC TIME!

Magdalena's computer isn't working well, and isn't getting internet connections at all, so I'm borrowing a computer to leave this note on the blog.

We'll blog more later, and thanks for tuning in.
CAConrad

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

2009-03-05T13:29:00.003-05:00

March 4th, 2009. Magdalena and I discovered we were at the same concert at Six Flags Great Adventure many years ago. It was a MONKEYS concert, and Magdalena was there with her father, I was there with some friends, getting high, eating cotton candy and finding out FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME that the mother of one of the MONKEYS invented WHITE OUT, better known then as LIQUID PAPER. And that's why THAT particular MONKEY did not, or would not go on tour. He was too good to be singing I'M A BELIEVER at that point I suppose with his mother's fancy LIQUID PAPER money, WHOOPY FUCKING DOO! But Magdalena was there, and I was there, and I think about friends and lovers all the time in the missed cross hairs of time. There we both were at the MONKEYS concert though, YEARS before we were friends or even knew one another. How close were we to one another? Did we make eye contact? I'm always seeing people in the world and thinking, "WILL I EVER KNOW THAT PERSON?" Was I thinking that back then when seeing Magdalena with her father? I remember eating cotton candy and jerking off my boyfriend on the last car of the roller coaster. He wanted a blowjob, but it was too much to negotiate as it turned out. But Magdalena, did I see her then? Once when sleeping in my old boyfriend Marwan's bed next to him I dreamt that when we were little boys we were eating in a diner with our families at different tables. I walked over to where he was sitting, his five year old hands drinking from a large glass of milk, and I said, pointing right at his face, "I'm going to know you one day, and Love you." The best part of the dream is that none of the adults noticed, and said nothing, and saw nothing, and Marwan looked at me with his milk moustache and nodded, and smiled. When we woke and he was cooking us breakfast I told him my dream and it was one of the few times I ever saw him cry.

Am I supposed to be writing about the tour Dear Sara Diary? The drive across this country, which I LOVE SO COMPLETELY I RISK SOUNDING CORNY OR SLIGHTLY INSANE WHEN SAYING SO, is sublime, especially when next to a good friend. We picked up Aaron in St. Louis, ate some delicious noodles, and drove to Columbia. My friend Marsha Goldberg's house is where we are right now. Marsha went to work and Magdalena and Aaron are still asleep. Our reading was funny last night, I mean, not what I had imagined, but it turned out pretty good in the end. Except Magdalena was stressed out, and said some snippy things to me, which I believe she didn't mean, but it made me angry, and not respond well. But that's bound to happen. I love Magdalena, she's a sister, and I really mean she's a sister, blood sister. Aaron is marvelous and started off the reading for a very tough crowd, but his passages about orgies in the bible got them to pay attention.

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

2009-03-05T13:26:00.002-05:00

March 3rd, 2009, many many years since Jesus hung from the cross, but his crucifixion is celebrated with tremendous gusto along the highways of West Virginia. I'm so confused when I see his torture apparatus ALL OVER THE WORLD! Wooden crosses mean more about the corpses of a couple of beautiful trees to me. I see the crosses every 10 miles and think, WHAT KIND OF TREE WAS THAT WHAT DID IT LOOK LIKE WERE THERE BIRDS WERE THERE ANTS WERE THERE SMALL MAMMALS AND MOTHS WHO KNEW THIS TREE, OF COURSE, OF COURSE, BUT OF COURSE! I stubbed my toe last week and am thinking about celebrating the cement curb where I stubbed my toe, only, I'm afraid it will be difficult to gather the will of the masses around a cement sidewalk curb to worship. Please help me spread the word of the cement curb where I hurt my toe. No, it doesn't hurt any longer, thanks for asking, but when I think about it IT STINGS A LITTLE!

Day 1: Off Like a Herd of Turtles

2009-03-04T10:56:00.004-05:00

Hello -- I am actually writing from the morning of Day 2. We have already experienced a minor tragedy on our journey: It seems my laptop has died. Last night when Conrad and I arrived at our hotel about 120 miles from St. Louis, I thought I was going to begin blogging properly. But, alas, my macbook had a blank blue screen. I hope I haven't lost some writing forever. In any case, the blogging will most likely not be as grand as I hoped unless some computer guru comes to save me in MO tonight. I had photos from our drive through Kentucky that I really wanted to post. We also drove through West Virginia and Virginia, neither of which I felt like photographing. West Verginia, in fact, made me feel like I was on the verge of being poisoned by a corporation with all those coal plants and a big fat nuclear power plant spewing stuff into the sky and little houses practically on the highway. It's like they guarantee you breathe in poison in West Virginia. In Bland, Virginia Conrad walked out of the men's bathroom with a ten dollar bill in his hand. He says he "found" it. We had sushi in Louisville. Kentucky is heartbreakingly beautiful and we of course had Cat Power on all the way through. Rolling hills with a few isolated trees upon them. A relief after the "we're all going to hell in a handbasket" feeling of West Virginia, the poisoning power central of our nation. We are off to St. Louis in a few minutes, where we pick up Aaron. Then we are off to Columbia where our first reading takes place at 8pm. Wish us luck and pray for my laptop! Oh and everyone here keeps calling Conrad "Mam" so I have renamed him Gertrude. -- M

Midwest Tour Dates!

2009-02-23T21:25:00.001-05:00

CAConrad, Aaron Kunin, and Magdalena Zurawski Tour the Midwest in March 2009

CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia where he lives and writes with the PhillySound poets www.PhillySound.blogspot.com. His latest book The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009) received The Gil Ott Book Award. He is also the author of Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), (Soma)tic Midge (FAUX Press, 2008), and two forthcoming books, advanced ELVIS course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Press, 2009). He invites you to visit him online at www.CAConrad.blogspot.com

Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a
collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). Another collection, The Sore Throat and Other Poems, is forthcoming. He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.

MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that's where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

COLUMBIA, MO:
Wednesday, March 4th, 8pm
Cherry Street Artisan Café/Gallery/Theater
111 S. 9th Street, Ste 10

LAWRENCE, KS:
Friday, March 6, 7 pm,
6 Gallery
716 1/2 Massachusetts Street,

IOWA CITY, IO
Saturday, March 7pm
Shambaugh House (Home of the IWP)
430 N. Clinton St

MINNEAPOLIS, MN:
Sunday, March 8, 5 pm,
Magers and Quinn Booksellers, 3038
Hennepin Avenue S.

MILWAUKEE, WI:
Monday, March 9, 8 pm
900 S. 5th Street

CHICAGO, IL:
Tuesday, March 10, 8 pm,
New Wave Coffee,
2557 N. Milwaukee Avenue

CLEVELAND, OH
wednesday march 11! 8:00pm
The Language Foundry
2335 West 11th St #3

CINCINATTI, OH
Thursday, March 12, 7pm
Cy Press Presents
@ 1628 Otte Ave
Cincinnati, OH 45223
BYOB

PITTSBURGH, PA:
Sunday, March 15th, doors: 7pm/show :7:30
Your Inner Vagabond
4130 Butler Street @ 42nd
Pittsburgh PA 1520

Breakfast on Nezinscot Farm: The Best Omelette I've Ever Eaten!

2009-01-29T18:15:00.001-05:00

2009-01-29T18:11:00.000-05:00

Snow with Flash...

2009-01-29T17:55:00.001-05:00

I'm walking in the snow...

2009-01-29T17:49:00.001-05:00

2009-01-29T13:43:00.000-05:00

2009-01-29T13:41:00.001-05:00

2009-01-29T13:39:00.001-05:00

A Film About Conrad at Newark Airport

2009-01-28T20:38:00.001-05:00

We Made It!!

2009-01-28T20:24:00.003-05:00

Well, my flight out of Raleigh/Durham was one of the few that wasn't cancelled and Conrad's flight was cancelled from Philly to Newark but they put him on the Amtrak, so we both made it to Newark, and I SWEAR we were like the only flight that left Newark and we arrived in Portland Maine in the middle of a huge snow storm. And our plane had propellers. Now we are eating soup at Eden's house on the Bates campus. Later I will hunt for lobsters in the snow. I am cleaning my shotgun as we speak. Unfortunately our reading at the bookstore was cancelled today. But we are going out for a walk now and I will make snow angels.

Notice the propellers and the snow. We were like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens except we didn't crash. Here we are!

3 in Maine with CAConrad

2009-01-27T11:57:00.002-05:00

(snowmobile transportation between readings)

Wenesday, January 28th
GULF OF MAINE BOOKSTORE
134 Maine St., Brunswick
5:30pm

Thursday, January 29th
BATES COLLEGE
in the Skelton Lounge in Chase Hall
56 Campus Avenue Lewiston
7:00pm

Friday, January 30th
UMAINE OF ORONO
Jenness Hall
4:30pm

I LOVE SNOW
SNOW AND POETRY
2 FAVORITES OF MINE
many THANKS to everyone
who made this trip possible!

My Typewriter

2009-01-25T12:41:00.001-05:00

January 24, 2009

This was supposed to be written on my typewriter, but as luck would have it, after 1.5 years of not using my typewriter due to one cross-country move, one cross-town move, and something like a divorce, when I finally plugged my typewriter in today, well, the keys didn’t correspond to the letters the typewriter was printing. So much for electronic typewriters. Obviously several wires were crossed and some chips were scrambled, so when I struck the letter “K” the letter “V” came out. And I think “S” got me the mark of the British pound.

I like the typewriter because it makes me feel like my writing is real. I hit an object and that object hits another object and through a kind of miniature violence out comes my letter. Viola! Of course my novel was written completely on several laptops and computers (some died along the way and one was dusted off and reborn) so I am not sure what it is about the typewriter for me. It seems like each time I begin to write after not writing for a long time, I long for the typewriter. It’s the sound of it. It sounds like something is happening. The scariest thing about starting to write again is the thought of nothing happening, but with the typewriter something is happening. Your words, no matter how benign or boring, are engraved upon a page. Almost impossible to delete, but easier to burn.

Midwest Antics

2009-01-23T11:35:00.002-05:00

OK. So CAConrad, Aaron Kunin, and I have been frantically organizing our midwest tour. We've done a good job I think. The unofficial itinerary, very subject to change, is thus:

March 3 or 4: Columbia, Missouri (Really!)
March 6: Kansas City -- Is the reading in Kansas City or Lawrence?
March 7: Iowa City: NOTHING: PRAIRIE LIGHTS IS BOOKED
March 8: Minneapolis:Rain Taxi
March 9: Milwaukee: Karl's House Party:
March 10: Chicago: Joshua Marie Wilkerson
March 11: Cleveland @ Mac's Backs
March 12: Cincinnati
March 13 or 14: Pittsburgh: Typewriter Girls Cabaret!

As you can see, we are at a loss in Iowa City. Any ideas? We'll read anywhere!

Winter Break Reading List + 1 Question

2008-12-07T18:40:00.004-05:00

OK. So now that I am close to done, I am about ready to declare what I will read over break that has nothing to do with SCHOOL!! I decided that I would read books by friends and almost-friends over break. I hate having not read my friends' books because of school. School. Sometimes it stops you from reading.

1) Aaron Kunin -- The Mandarin
2) Michelle Koerner -- First dissertation chapter in manuscript form on Deleuze and American Lit (roughly speaking)
3) Fred Moten -- Hughson’s Tavern
4) Lucy Corin -- Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls, A Novel
5) Ali Liebegott -- The Beautifully Worthless

Alright, if I get through that by January 8th and write my Melville paper, I will be psyched.

Real Question: So, how do I get free new books? I have to spend all my money on school books and thus feel like I can't keep up with all the new poetry and fiction I want. I know a bunch of you are poor like me, and yet I see on GoodReads etc, you all get your hands on the new stuff. Tell me, please.

The Wound of Things

2008-12-05T19:12:00.003-05:00

Hello. It seems like my life of finals keeps extending itself. I am finishing up a paper on Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" and starting to think about a Melville paper, which I image as a talk to writers rather than academics. I am thinking about Meliville's Billy Budd as a corrective to the problem of my book (or maybe I just mean "of writing") in relationship to the real world. Something I keep thinking about. For more on this, see the X Poetics feature (link to the left). But until I turn into the Handsome Sailor (I would like to exist that way, minus the hanging), my interview on the local NC public radio station show (The State of Things) can be heard
here.

Also, I want Jacob Russell to be my own personal critic. I feel like he really gets my book and I am grateful for all the time he has taken to write about it on his blog. It's very generous of him. And makes me feel understood, which is a rare feeling for anyone, I imagine. His latest post is
here.

And NY, I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Until then, think kindly of me.

NYC on TUESDAY!

2008-12-04T20:33:00.002-05:00

Next Tuesday—at a triple book party—the final QT of 2008—the pleasure of your company is requested—

QT: Queer Readings at Dixon Place presents:

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN
Your Body, Figured (Nightboat)
+
MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE
So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights)
+
MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI
The Bruise, winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize (FC2)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at Dixon Place: 161 Chrystie Street, between Delancey and Rivington doors (+ snacks + drinks + hangouts) at 7 / reading at 7:30

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN is the author of two novels, Outline of My Lover and Branwell; a book of stories, They Change the Subject; a lyric narrative, Your Body Figured; three volumes of poetry, most recently In The Time of Assignments; and a new novel, Once You Go Back, forthcoming in 2009. He is an English professor at Wesleyan University and teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Goddard College in Vermont.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE is an insomniac with dreams. Unfortunately sometimes the dreams are awful and the next day is worse. This pattern may have influenced Mattilda's new novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). Mattilda is also the author of Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003) and the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, most recently Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and an expanded second edition of That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008). She is currently at work on a new anthology, titled Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? You've probably asked that question yourself.

MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that's where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

QT: Queer Readings at Dixon Place
http://qtreadings.blogspot.com
qtreadings@gmail.com

I'm Working On Finals

2008-11-15T10:10:00.003-05:00

I will be in my bunker, procrastinating and working, but will emerge on Thursday, November 20th. At 12:40pm you'll be able to here me on WUNC, 91.5 on the local NPR show "The State of Things." Hopefully, all this paper-writing will not have reduced me to a blob of incoherent flesh. If you hear lots of static, that might be me. More likely is that I'll blather on shamelessly and regret it later.

At 7pm that same day, I'll be reading at The Regulator bookstore in Durham. Information is at the left.

Also, of you are on FB and like my novel, please become a fan
here.

My Two Coats

2008-10-29T19:03:00.003-04:00

This week I saw "On the Waterfront" for the first time. I know. It's terrible. I am the opposite of Frank O'Hara. I never watch any movies. I've hardly seen any movies. When I lived in SF, Jocelyn Saidenberg would take me to the movies and because of her I saw La Dolce Vita, which I think is the best movie ever, but that's another story. But anyhow, I am TAPPING this semester and that's basically like being a TA in training. It's for a Cold War Culture class. So I had to go to the screening of "On the Waterfront". And it revealed a lot to me about my childhood. See, when I grew up in NJ it was the '70s. There weren't many white immigrants coming in from anywhere. We were sort of a fluke that way. At first we lived in an older suburban neighborhood that still had traces of its farmland roots. But by the time I was ten, Edison was all suburban sprawl.

My family was the only family in the neighborhood that I knew of, until my early teens, that wasn't American. My parents were professionals, so we didn't have any need of living in an urban area in a Polish community, or at least not after my mother got pregnant with me. So we were this Polish family in the suburbs. I had to go to the mall and ask the saleslady questions for my mom. She was embarrassed of her accent. That kind of thing. Of course there was a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn (Greenpoint before the hipsters came) but my mom always spoke of it as this terrible place filled with lowlifes. We never went there. So clearly there was a class thing separating my parents from the Polish community we could have had. I guess all I am trying to say is that we lived in the suburbs and everyone around us was non-ethnic white. Or at least that's the way I saw it as a kid.

So when I was watching "On the Waterfront" this weekend it felt really familiar in this strange way and I started to remember that when I watched TV alone as a kid I sought out films that I thought were set in "Brooklyn". Like, I think, I must have watched a lot of James Cagney movies without even knowing it. And I am wondering now if I hadn't watched "On the Waterfront" by accident. Because I remember always wanting to be a guy like that. A guy with a Jersey or Brooklyn accent and kind of tough and working class. I remember going into the basement and looking through old clothes, hoping to find a leather jacket and then finding some seventies blazer and putting it on and looking in the mirror and feeling like I was sexy like the Fonz. I was maybe six. But it makes sense now. All the guys in those movies are Irish or Italian. It's the closest thing to being Polish in NJ. It's like I watched this old black and white world to try to understand my own immigrant experience, which was neither urban nor working class. But that Hoboken or Brooklyn world seemed like where a family like ours should have landed and didn't. Of course all the guys in those movies were Catholic and Catholic School I had plenty of. I understood the role of the priest in all those films. Those people were white like me, I thought.

And so it was especially interesting to notice Marlon Brando's coat this week because it is a plaid coat not unlike the one in my novel. And the one in my novel is based on a real coat I bought on the men's sales rack in the mall in RI. But the coat, it was so much like Marlon Brando's and when I got it at 19 or 20, I felt like I did in the basement in that terrible blazer as a kid. And so I am wondering now, if I hadn't seen the film as a kid and if Marlon Brando's plaid coat is the only thing I remembered from it. And then there was another coat. A leather coat that I dreamed of in college. And after I woke I walked out of the dorm onto Thayer Street and bought a coat just like the one in my dream. And a few days later I realized it was just like the coat Springsteen wears in the band shot on the back of The River. And of course I wanted to be like him, too, when I was a kid. And even now, but I avoid playing air guitar in front of mirrors, lest I be caught. But Springsteen -- he was Irish/Italian Catholic, much closer in age and place to me, and the coolest thing ever.

So in college I got these two coats. One was for Brando and the other for Springsteen. But when I bought them I was really buying them for my six-year-old self, who really wanted to believe "I could walk like Brando, right into the sun, and dance just like a Cassonova." But, of course, I was just a nerdy middle-class Polish school girl, reading books and stuff. In my mind, though, I looked better. I was much cooler.

2008-10-29T19:01:00.001-04:00

Philadelphia, etc.

2008-10-21T10:02:00.004-04:00

Saturday late afternoon my friend Mary Kalyna picked me up at the Philadelphia airport, then we picked up CAConrad and we all went back to Mary's place for a sleepover party. Mary and Conrad are what I miss most about living in Philadelphia. We spent the night eating pierogis, stuffed cabbage, and borscht, all made by Mary's mom. We talked about scary things like Nostradomus, nuclear winter, and how Bush might bomb Iran, if Obama is elected. And we talked about annoying things, like bad dates and lazy neighbors. And then we watched Sarah Palin on SNL. Totally boring, we thought. The next morning we saw Colin Powell endorse Obama on "Meet the Press". Mary and I nearly wept. I was grateful for Powell's criticism of the Republicans' derogatory use of the Muslim religion. It was nice to hear a general criticize his own party for being racist. Can't exactly say that Powell is part of the liberal media or has a leftist agenda. Seems like his criticism would most likely be taken seriously by the people who need to hear it most.

That afternoon we spent in the museum with the Australian poet Pam Brown, the poet Frank Sherlock, and my parents. We were killing time until 4pm, when Pam and I were scheduled to read with Ron Silliman. I was excited and antsy about my reading, so the thing I remember most about the museum is the chocolate pudding. It's hard to look at art when you are getting ready to perform. My dad managed to tell us his entire history with Hooter's (the restaurant). It's a story I'd like to get on video tape and post to youtube. I was also grateful to have a little time to talk to Pam. I always enjoy hearing what foreigners find odd about our country. See was shocked by the gossipy article on Cindy McCain in the New York Times and was bringing it back to Australia to show people that such things counted as news here.

The reading itself was well-attended. Pam and I struggled with the microphone, but it seems from the audience response that we managed ok, despite our own discomfort at the stage. Pam's work is published by Salt Press. Short angular poems, spirited with a sense of humor, though not overly comical, just enough to handle the gravity of the work, something I very much respect in poems. I am looking forward to reading her work on the page. I usually absorb a lot at readings, but less so, when I am one of the readers. I'm not generally able to overcome my own nervousness to be a great listener.

Ron's reading I heard more of, because he read after me and there was a short break between our two readings. I am always reminded when I hear Ron's work that LANGUAGE poetry is realism, an extension of the Williams tradition. It seems that the idea of LANGUAGE poetry in the poetry world at large seems at odds often with the actual work. People love to hate what they haven't read in this case. But they most likely would dig it. I mean, who doesn't love poetry with lots of concrete nouns in it? My mother, whose native language is not English, had an easier time understanding Ron's work than mine. So to all of you who like to call any "cryptic" poetry, Language Poetry, do your homework and update your vocabulary.

My dad played official photographer. It was a little embarrassing. As soon as I get the photos, I'll post them.

My next readings are in Durham on November 20th and in NYC on December 9th. After Christmas, the reading schedule gets more intense, so lookout, especially if you live in the mod-west.

Jacob Russell wrote a nice review of the Philadelphia reading
here.

Philadelphia Reading on Sunday, October 19th!

2008-10-13T10:14:00.002-04:00

Pam Brown
Magdalena Zurawski
Ron Silliman

DO NOT MISS THIS READING!

Hosted by CAConrad

ROBIN'S BOOKSTORE
108 S. 13th St., Philadelphia

Sunday, October 19th, 4pm

Pam Brown lives in Australia and is co-editor of Jacket Magazine. She has published many books and chapbooks including Text thing (Little Esther Books, 2002) and Dear Deliria (Salt Publishing, 2003) which was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Poetry in 2004. She collaborated with Seattle-based Egyptian poet Maged Zaher on a collection of poems called farout library software (Tinfish Press, 2007). Her most recent book, True Thoughts, was published by Salt Publishing in September 2008. Her next collection, Authentic Local, is forthcoming from Papertiger Media in 2009. She keeps a blog you can see HERE.

Magdalena Zurawski was born in Newark, NJ in 1972 to Polish immigrants. Her work has been published in American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Rattapallax, Talisman, and other magazines. She lives in North Carolina where she is working on her PhD at Duke University. The Bruise is her first novel and won the Ronald Sukenik Innovative Fiction Prize. Her blog is HERE.

Ron Silliman's long awaited collection THE ALPHABET will be available for sale and for signing. He is the author or editor of twenty-six books of poetry or criticism, among them The Age of Huts (compleat), Tjanting, ABC, Demo to Ink, Paradise, ®, What, Woundwood, and the memoir Under Albany. He edited the landmark poetry anthology In the American Tree, and has received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, two Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, and three arts commission grants from the state arts councils of California and Pennsylvania. His widely read Silliman's Blog, a daily journal devoted to contemporary poetry and poetics, has become a major force in online literary criticism. He is a member of the Grand Piano collective.

This note shamelessly stolen
(and somewhat adapted)
from CAConradEvents

Why Hobbes's LEVIATHAN is Worth Reading...

2008-10-09T10:19:00.003-04:00

...even if you are not a monarchist:

1) This passage reminds me of the opening scene of Proust:

The most difficult discerning of a mans Dream, from his waking thoughts, is then, when by some accident we observe not that we have slept: which is easie to happen to a man full of fearfull thoughts; and whose conscience is much troubled; and that sleepeth, without the circumstances of going to bed, or putting off his clothes, as one that noddeth in a chayre. For he that taketh pains, and industriously layes himself to sleep, in case any uncouth and exorbitant fancy come unto him, cannot easily think it other than a Dream.

2) And this is where Lisa Jarnot found her lemur (maybe):

The unformed matter of the World, was a God, by the name of Chaos.

The Heaven, the Ocean, the Planets, the Fire, the Earth, the Winds, were so many Gods.

Men, Women, a Bird, a Crocodile, a Calf, A Dogge, a Snake, an Onion, a Leeke, Deified. Besides, that they filled almost all places, with spirits called Daemons: the plains, with Pan, and Panises, or Satyres; the Woods, with Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other Nymphs; every River, and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house, with its Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghostof men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, Peace, Concord, Love, Contention, Vertue, Honour, Health, Rust, Fever, and the like; which when they prayed for, or against, they prayed to, as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall, or withholding that Good, or Evill, for, or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own Wit, by the name of Muses; their own Ignorance, by the name of Fortune, their own Lust, by the name of Cupid; their own Rage, by the name Furies; their own privy members by the name Priapus; and attributed their pollutions, to Incubi, and Succubae: insomuch as there was nothing, which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem, which they did not make either a God, or a Divel.

Jocelyn Saidenberg & Guillermo Parra

2008-09-28T23:00:00.004-04:00

MINOR-AMERICAN POETRY SERIES:

Saturday, October 4, 7:00 pm
The Broad Street Cafe
1116 Broad Street, Durham, NC 27705
919.416.9707

Please come out and support our series as it moves to a public all-ages venue. Admission is free.

Jocelyn Saidenberg is the author of Mortal City (Parentheses Writing Series) and CUSP (Kelsey St. Press), and Negativity (Atelos). She is the founder and editor of KRUPSKAYA Books. Born and raised in New York City, she lives in San Francisco where she is active in the queer arts communities and works as a catalog librarian for the public library.

Guillermo Parra was born in Cambridge, MA in 1970. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in Effing, The C.L.R. James Journal, Fascicle and 6x6. In 2006 he published Caracas Notebook (Cy Gist Press). He lives in Durham, NC and writes the blog Venepoetics.

Broad Street Café now has a full hot food menu, wood-fired pizza, 15 beers on tap and full bar. Check out www.TheBroadStreetCafe.com for hours, menu, directions and more.

Moby Dick

2008-09-15T21:56:00.003-04:00

I am half-way through Moby Dick. It is my third time this far into the novel, though this is just about where I have always stopped reading. Under no circumstances will I not make it through to the end this time. The book means too much to me now. I have always loved the language, but the speed always belonged to another world. I think now I am a part of that other world, operating at a different speed than, for instance, the office worker, sitting long hours in the library, that vessel of boredom, waiting for the next mammal to upset my evening, but until then, just reading. Slowly reading. The book is slow because it is so beautiful. Or, technically, sublime. One cannot have enough adequate thoughts for each sentence, and yet, one must read on. Luckily, this time I am in a melancholic mood that allows me to read with a teenage feeling, which, in some ways, is the most satisfying of reading styles. The sentences matter then. I can't help but want to use each clause for myself, as if Melville could help me feel differently. It opens me up to the book, at the same time that I distort it for my own emotional ends. It turns Moby Dick into an experience not unlike the one described in the first few pages of Proust where the book and the dream and the dreamer are all confused. Perhaps this kind of reading is the experience I am best at initiating, though I am still not sure if reading is an experience or what one does until one can have experience. In any case, my favorite sentences thus far are pasted below:

“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.” – King Henry

“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see, thou does not talk shark a bit. Sure, ye’ve been at sea before now; sure of that?”

“But I am one of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud.”

“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--“hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of.”

“A soul’s a sort of fifth wheel to a wagon.”

“But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.”

“Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.”

“But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!

“For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

“For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.”

“For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.”

“And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cozy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves.”

“With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude,--how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships’ standing orders, ‘Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.’”

“For nowadays, the whale fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.”

“There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch, slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!”

Reading Report Etc.

2008-09-10T08:17:00.003-04:00

So Asheville and Providence, the first two readings with novel in hand, were great. Chall Gray's house reading series was one of the friendliest ever. The crowd was small, as it was Labor Day weekend, but they were there and along for the ride. Brian Howe recorded us and kindly uploaded my reading here.

Last weekend's reading in Providence was extra special. Friday afternoon I got to visit many of the places actually in the novel. I saw the Bridge above the Seekonk River, was able to sneak into my old dorm where I found the door of my room open and I met its newest resident, but was unable to verify if there was still a white plastic bucket in the closet. I saw the statue of Marcus Aurelius, but, alas, was unable to get a ham steak in the refectory for dinner.

On Friday night I did have a lovely evening of Thai Food and wine with Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop and Susan Bernstein, all of whom were important mentors. I was moved by their welcome and their excitement for the book and reading. The reading on Saturday itself was great. A packed house full of friends and old teachers. Thanks again to Kate Shapira for making it all happen. Providence still feels like home in many ways.

Next Stop: The Promised Land! (Providence, RI)

2008-09-01T18:10:00.001-04:00

Dear listeners, stretched and refreshed,

Please come and rock the new Publicly Complex season with poetry and prose:

Magdalena Zurawski
Dorothy Albertini
Jeremy Hoevenaar

will read to you on Saturday, September 6th, 7:30 pm
at Ada Books, 330 Dean St. at Westminster, www.ada-books.com

We'll regale you with eatables and drinkables as well as fierce writing.

About them:

Magdalena Zurawski is the author of The Bruise (Fiction Collective 2), a novel, and maintains the blog Minor American. She lives in Durham, NC.

Dorothy Albertini's work has appeared in Shifter Magazine, Flux, Textsound and other places. She works for the Bard Prison Initiative at the college's satellite campuses in New York State prisons, and has her MFA in writing from Bard College.

Jeremy Hoevenaar is in a band called The Lisps. His poetry has appeared in Forklift, Ohio.

Please come start the fall off right.

Your excited, delighted organizer,
Kate Schapira

Advancing on the First-Aid and Metaphysical Fiction Bestsellers Lists!

2008-08-21T16:39:00.003-04:00

Dear Readers, The fact that my book is a real object in the real world makes me feel like the recipient of a miracle. Is that how I would say it? Is the receiver of a miracle the "recipient" of a miracle? Does one "receive" miracles? In any case, I mean 'the book as miracle', in a Monkees kind of "I'm a Believer" way. I still fear that love might be for someone else, not for me, but up until the book arrived on my doorstep, I also thought that book publishing was for someone else, not for me. And since I acquired my copy of my book, I have kept it at my side, like a small child I must guard. And show off, like a little cousin visiting from Bratislava, for instance. And for instance, if I were to meet you on 9th Street in Durham, I would most certainly pull my bruised cousin from my bag and force you to look at him. If you should be the victim of these actions, please note that it is not arrogance, but rather disbelief that causes me to do such things. I feel like a person with coronary disease who has managed to win a marathon. In any case, the writing of this book often felt like trying to run a marathon with coronary disease. It, in other words, feels like a personal triumph.

What is also quite wonderful is that the book is already deeply misunderstood. For instance, here you can see how the book is being marketed as a first-aid device. This is even better.

Ugh -- Friedlander linebreaks

2008-05-28T09:52:00.000-04:00

Blogger screwed up the linebreaks below. They are not flush against the left, but staggered inwards. How do I fix that? Where is Ron Silliman when I need him?

Summer Reading

2008-05-28T09:26:00.002-04:00

The problem when I try to read without an authority figure telling me that such and such a text must be read by such and such a day is that I begin reading three books which then end up being seven which then end up being ten and then I don't feel like I'm reading anything. I get the mathematical sublime when I am left to my own devices. I started reading "Call Me Ishmael" and I need to finish that in the next couple of days because Jocelyn Saidenberg and I are doing a Melville reading group this summer. We're going to read all the Shakespeare Olson talks about in relationship to Moby Dick then we're going to read Moby Dick. Then it will probably be September and it will be time for my Melville class with Priscilla Wald. Jocelyn is going to come read in the fall and then sneak into our class on Monday. Melville. All poets love Melville. Or at least they should.

Anyhow, in non-official reading last night, I opened Benjamin Friedlander's "The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes" and read "Covenant" (the book is a collection of F's early books, so "Covenant" must have been a chapbook). In any case, it's unbearably beautiful in that Dickinson way of syntactic twists. Given that I couldn't sleep and was thus reading poetry late at night, it is appropriate that my favorite poem from last night is called "Insomnia". It ends with the following passage:

mom-slam-the-door
a mad hatter
opens, I-Alice unawares,
the ruddy
punisher, deplored did
queer the deal
no one, nowhere else
no home
is ours is ours
to keep, is shown

stillness, ferrying bitch, take me through th rapids,
lash light--shine on

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

I hope those linebreaks happen right (as in correct) when I hit "publish post". In any case, I am teaching creative writing this summer, starting at the end of June. I am trying to get some ideas for fiction readings. Alexander Chee, a super-cool guy and great novelist who I met at the "Emerging Writers Conference" at USF (we were suite mates and shared facial scrub) suggested I read Miranda July after he heard me read. I've been wanting to read her, as it seems everyone was walking around with her bright yellow book last summer, but, alas, I was reading things written by dead people all year. Not that I'm complaining. I love reading dead people. So yesterday my used copy of July's "No one belongs here more than you." came in the mail and I read the first story right before my first shift of sleep (pre-Friedlander Insomnia) and I really dug it. I read "The Shared Patio". The prose is spare, the settings banal but the storytelling very strange. The narration is sparely strange. Does that make any sense? The prose isn't ornate, the setting seems suburban, and yet everything is slightly surreal mostly because the narrator needs a hug. It works pretty well and I wish I was imaginative enough to come up with some of the situations July thought of for this story. I saw her feature film the other night. It had similar qualities. Most moving was the depiction of the loneliness of children. The least interesting narrative thread, I thought, was the one she played in herself. She was a lonely performance artist who worked as a cab driver for the elderly. She falls in love with a shoe salesmen. That storyline seemed the most strained, mostly because I couldn't figure out what was so interesting for her about the shoe guy. But the kids of the shoe salesmen were amazing. And the writing she did for their parts was wonderfully crazy. Especially the littlest kid. He is amazing. What's the movie called? "You and Me and Everyone we Know"

2008-05-14T21:11:00.002-04:00

ashley howe & brian howe have made another great film!

you can see it here

the color is amazing.

Today It All Sucks...

2008-05-01T22:19:00.002-04:00

By 5pm tomorrow I'll be done with my last paper. By 8:30 I'll be drinking with David Buuck. It's been rough, but the ride is almost over. And I took no incompletes.

so.

2008-04-25T21:06:00.004-04:00

how are you all?

i'm good.

i'm off to
View Larger Map>kill devil hills, nc for a weekend of writing and flying kites.... all by my lonesome.

very excited.

anyway. the birds are still getting up at 4 am. i saw my first NC tick today. i screamed. i made my friend Tom kill find it. kill it. Des brought it into the building and very irresponsibly flicked it into the office. and that FREAKED ME OUT.

ticks are browner than i imagined them to be.

now i'm terrified of what i'll see.... my first trip to the Outer Banks and the NC coast.

have a good weekend.

i'm trying

2008-04-19T08:53:00.003-04:00

to understand what it is about the birds ... in durham... in Spring.

this is my first SPRING in NC.

things i've noticed:

1. there is a thick green-yellow layer of pollen covering the entire city. if you leave yr windows open [as you must, it was 93 yesterday] then this layer will also be on every surface in yr house. it is like the black dust from the bus system in sf. only it is green-yellow.

1a. i realize that most people would write "yellow-green." i do not know why. it occurs to me that it is, for some reason, more acceptable to write "yellow-green" than "green-yellow," however, upon observation, i am first struck by green and second struck by yellow, thus: green-yellow.

2. since about two weeks ago i find myself again waking to the chirping of birds. this was once a devastating experience for me, as i had so linked the morning birdsongs to a particular woman who ultimately broke my heart. now, though, i once again am able to enjoy this phenomena.

2a. i wake rather early in the morning and i use the sound of birds to gauge whether or not i should actually get out of bed. i don't mind getting out of bed if it is, say, 6 am. i do mind getting out of bed if it is before 6 am because then i feel as if i will be way too tired that day. my friend, chris vitiello, he subscribes to the belief that if one is awake one should get out of bed and maybe read a book or write poems. chris doesn't have a dog named bear that immediately springs into action the second he knows yr awake, though.

all of this to say:

the birds start to sing at 4 am in durham.

2b. i don't understand why they are singing so early. the sun is not awake yet. but the birds are. this morning i thought... well, maybe the birds in the South are responsible for waking the sun.

but then i thought maybe the porch lights are too bright and somehow i am participating in a complete re-wiring of the birds' brains... nervous system.... and what might that mean for the future of, not just birds and bird life as we all know it, but, let's say squirrels? rabbits? or, more importantly, my waking habits?

mom

2008-04-12T08:25:00.001-04:00

my mom died fifteen years ago today.

hi mom!

nothing.

2008-04-12T07:34:00.003-04:00

my relationship w/ running has returned to its pre-injury status, and i'm grateful. it seems that jamie and i were both put out of commission for the same length of time, and guillermo went on vacation and decided to use his brain more than his legs ... so we are all in the same place, again, although, i think i'm the least fit [don't tell the boys.].

st. louis was surreal. i'm not sure i will explain that. i will say that all the kates, i think, gave really stellar and interesting readings. i was really into all of them, and not a single word / line / tone sent my attention elsewhere, which is something because, there were 8 [well, i sat for seven]. i could even hear the poets before me, which is usually hard because i'm nervous.

and, after the reading, i stayed in st louis all weekend w/ my best friend from junior high.

that was so fun and great and we got into the same sort of mishaps we would get into back in the day.

but i was reminded of myself as a 12 year old which, honestly, i'm not as mean nor as insecure, but, i'm not that different either. i was reading my 8th grade journal and damn.... every day i wanted to die, or i was going to be killed, or my grades sucked, or my boyfriend was a jerk, or i hated my best friend. or loved her too much. i'm pretty sure i was a lesbian in junior high, but i had no idea what a lesbian was, so i was just miserable.... and very unsure of the people around me. when my best friend moved away when we were 14 or 15.... i was so devastated, and i cried for days and days... because she was the only one who understood me.

***

see, this is an example of a post that has words but doesn't really say anything.

2008-04-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

i have nothing to say.

i'm writing a novel.

it is 80 outside.

the arch from wine

2008-04-08T12:12:00.001-04:00

the arch from wine
Originally uploaded by minor americans

my photos. i was too busy chatting to take very many.... i do have some films, though, to upload....

more 8 kates

2008-04-07T18:01:00.001-04:00

IMG_3280
Originally uploaded by ktc131

that's james, kate schapira, me, and my best friend since junior high, patrice! thanks kate colby!

the eight kates

2008-04-07T09:49:00.001-04:00

the eight kates
Originally uploaded by abelz

i'm home.

2008-03-31T18:15:00.002-04:00

the ants are back.

apparently it is their house and we only rent it from them over the winter break.

I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE.

sitemeter

2008-03-30T19:59:00.002-04:00

sometimes i wish sitemeter could give me REASONs for certain google / netscape searches.

really.

especially YOU, UC Santa Cruz person persons!

and the woowie

person...

and the people who always google search raleigh/durham craigslist and come here, instead of going to craigslist.

but you, UC Santa Cruz...

you i am quite curious about.

***

what should i do in st louis? i'm there the whole weekend hanging out with my best friend from jr high. Saturday night i'm watching basketball in the hotel. otherwise i'm free.

???

2008-03-28T22:48:00.001-04:00

i like when people google search woowie and find our blog, it really is quite wonderful, really.

hey, ST LOUIS!

2008-03-26T16:20:00.004-04:00

Observable Readings presents
EIGHT KATES!
April 3, 2008 - 8PM

Kate Colby, Cate Marvin, Katie Ford, Kate Greenstreet, Katie Peterson,
Kate Pringle, Kate Schapira, and Katy Lederer
will fly to St. Louis and read
together on one unprecedented occasion!!

Okay, so it's not entirely unprecedented.
You may remember the
Ten Jens...

The Five Aarons...

and maybe even the Three Stephanies.
But who knew there were so many Kate
poets?

*At the Bottleworks in Maplewood* *FREE!*

For directions and more info: http://observable.org

* * * * * * *

Kate Colby is author of Unbecoming Behavior (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007) and
Fruitlands (Litmus Press, 2006). Recent work can be found in Bay Poetics,
New American Writing and Vanitas. She lives in Providence.

Cate Marvin's first book, World's Tallest Disaster (Sarabande, 2001), was
awarded the Kathryn A. Morton Prize by Robert Pinksy. She is co-editor with
Michael Dumanis of Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century
(Sarabande, January 2006). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review,
Poetry, Slate, and elsewhere.

Katie Ford is the author of Deposition and Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2002
and 2008), as well as a chapbook, Storm (Marick Press, 2007). Her work has
appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets & Writers, Partisan Review,
Seneca Review, and Ploughshares. She is Poetry Editor of New Orleans Review
and currently teaches at Franklin & Marshall College.

Kate Greenstreet is the author of case sensitive (Ahsahta Press, 2006) and
Learning the Language (Etherdome Press, 2005). Visit her online at
kickingwind.com.

Katie Peterson is the author of This One Tree, published by New Issues.
Beginning in the Fall of 2007, she will be the Robert Aird Professor of
Humanities and Poet in Residence at Deep Springs College. She was born in
California.

Kate Pringle has TWO chapbook: Temper and Felicity are Lovers, out on TAXT and, The Stills on duration press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, 580 Split, Fourteen Hills, 42opus, AliceBlue, Denver Quarterly, Dusie, foursquare, string of small machines, etc.

Kate Schapira lives and writes in Providence, where she organizes the
Publicly Complex reading series, and teaches throughout Rhode Island. Her
chapbook, Phoenix Memory, is available from horse less press.

Katy Lederer is the author of Winter Sex (Verse Press, 2002) and The
Heaven-Sent Leaf (BOA Editions, forthcoming 2008), as well as the memoir
Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown, 2003).

Eileen Myles vs. Justin Timberlake

2008-03-26T11:49:00.002-04:00

This is old, but I just found it and thought it HYSTERICAL. How can this guy be serious:

I, Necrophiliac
By Rich Baiocco 02.12.07

I’m not a native of San Diego—and chances are neither are you—but I’ve lived here long enough to call it home, and long enough to take offense to Eileen Myles’ dismissive comments about San Diego’s arts scene in the City Beat cover story (Alone In San Diego, www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=5298) a few weeks ago. First of all, who cares about Eileen Myles? Secondly, who cares about poetry? It’s 2007, and unless you have a band or a movie, it’s extremely difficult to make an artistic impact on society, or cultivate the type of vibrant, thriving scene that Myles was apparently looking for in San Diego. I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by a poem that I bothered to memorize it, yet I know all the words to almost every Justin Timberlake song and I don’t even really like him that much; it’s just saturation, numbers. Sure there are poetry readings here, but what usually comes out of them is less an awakening or a revolution and more a fleeting sense of community perpetuated by likeminded lonely poets desperate to be a part of something; maybe an inspiration or two, and maybe, just maybe, a good poem. And NYC, the “artist-friendly” mecca that Eileen Myles fled, is filled with so many more desperate loners per city block that a poet with even the slightest bit of hustle and enthusiasm can build a scene; but then what? It’s just numbers. It’s just poetry.

i live in a red state.

2008-03-25T23:07:00.003-04:00

i have yet to meet any Republicans.
maybe our mortgage broker is a Republican... if he is, i don't want to know.

i was told by WRAL news that North Carolinians prefer McCain. over half the state will be voting for him.

they must live in Charlotte because i don't think they let Republicans into the Triangle.

jw

2008-03-24T20:40:00.000-04:00

thanks jeff, for this jonathan williams post

i was

2008-03-24T19:59:00.002-04:00

going to tell you all about my blood last week while it was still fresh
in my mind, but then i saw that my beloved magdalena had actually posted
something [and it was much more interesting than my blood] so i didn't.

but now that i have a green bruise and three needle marks on my right arm i
am reminded that i want to tell you about how i got them

so, i walk into the INJECTION ROOM and i'm thinking, WHAT? and also, wow, i still think of the breakfast club when i hear/see the word INJECTION [i'm old?] and i'm like... aren't i just suppose to drink the contrast? but, no, i get to drink it and get injected with it [and i did say "i've been injected with contrast" all day after that]...

so the guy is getting my veins IV-ready and i'm waiting and he says "you have trouble with needles?" and i say, all tough, "nah, that tattoo took 18 hours. i'm fine with needles." and he's like, "okay."so he goes in the wrong vein and makes some joke about my veins not being very generous and i say something about that being bullshit because i bleed quite well and so he goes in another vein and it works and he is putting the catheter in for the IV and i'm not looking because needles are fine but catheters freak me out.

and then i hear HIM scream...

look down

and my blood is spraying out all over the him.

and. after i am done squirting blood all over the room and him,

that's when i notice he's not even wearing those latex gloves that he's fucking supposed to be wearing.

so i say, "DUDE. aren't you worried that my blood just sprayed all over you?"

and then, yeah, he doesn't have an excuse so it doesn't matter what he says next.

but, damn.

i was so distracted and worried about reacting to the contrast that i completely failed to notice the lack of latex.

that's my story.

anyway. my spleen is fine. i just really wrenched a muscle and am not going to be able to run in that race on the 3/29... and i haven't been able to run for two weeks... which is quite depressing.

i'm writing a lot.

a lot a lot.

what are you doing?

For the Record...

2008-03-20T09:46:00.002-04:00

I just listened to several Jeremiah Wright sermons and I can't say that I thought he said anything that was untrue. What do white people think is going on in this country? My dad just tried to tell me that Wright was a radical. I think my dad just doesn't know any black people or any black history. Why is it so hard for Americans to admit that there is something wrong in this country?

just out

2008-03-19T12:39:00.001-04:00

i have a new chap on duration press called the stills!

2008-03-12T15:13:00.002-04:00

tried to go to work but almost puked and was so woozy all the letters were spinning on the screen.

individually.

maggie picked me up from work. came home. passed out. now i am awake and not woozy.

going to try and do some work at home now.

i love my job.

i hate my ribs.

codeine is the kiss of death.

2008-03-12T07:25:00.002-04:00

i busted my ribs.

codeine is fine to sleep but such a wretched morning makes.

i can't run in saturday's 5K w/ ken. i am going back to work today, thank god.

been on the couch trying to read and lay flat for two days.

weiner, berrigan, kafka, & hardy.

a lot of CNN and 5 episodes of the sopranos.

how're you?

the lovely eden reads

2008-03-09T17:27:00.001-04:00

the lovely eden reads
Originally uploaded by feeb

molly's gay parrots

2008-03-09T17:21:00.001-04:00

molly's gay parrots
Originally uploaded by minor americans

minor american reading: osucha & nicholas at molly rowe's.

Late Night Crowd

2008-03-09T17:20:00.001-04:00

Late Night Crowd
Originally uploaded by Ken Rumble

swedish fish photo

tonight !!!!!

2008-03-07T19:05:00.001-05:00

TESSA JOSEPH NICHOLAS
& EDEN OSUCHA!
you'll have to email me
to get the location folks...
it is someplace ELSE this time!
kathrynlpringle@gmail.com

Tessa Joseph Nicholas' poems have appeared in journals such as Sulfur, Seneca Review, and Talisman. She received her MFA from Cornell University and her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she still teaches English and creative writing. She lives in Chatham County, North Carolina, with her husband, baby son, and dogs.

Eden Osucha teaches American literature and culture, and Women's Studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Before her current incarnation as an openly feminist English professor, and all the time in graduate school that preceded it, she worked as a waitress, copy editor, white water rafting guide, office manager,freelance writer,rape crisis hot-line counselor, dental assistant, artist's model, barista, flute instructor, and production assistant for the History Channel. Her writing has appeared in online and in print in MiPoesias, The Village Voice, Talisman, and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, and a few other places.

sestina.

2008-03-05T21:06:00.004-05:00

a while back we had a sestina writing contest at work //we wrote them off-the-clock boss// and chris vitielloposted his on his blog and i didn't post mine because, well, because his is so damn good and writing in the wake of chris vitiello is like touring at the same time as Nirvana [some of you know what i mean]... but now i'm going to post it just because i had fun and i kind of like it // we were supposed to write really bad ones but mine isn't too bad. so here you go.
******
URBAN SESTINA.

garbage boomed on ( a cross ( all dilated almos’ twice sunken city
resemble on the wall she say: itiz da URINISKI, a downy co-llect
where dj equals pirate equals protagonist equals a little scranton-agile
dusted an’ smooth going down, jest like deys told so, possible
but isn’t so much the orifice of the nose that is nether-bloom, nor bud
but that language is a one-room efficiency

suite. o, so sweet an’ all efficiency.
not so loud, how a tree plant itself there. there, there, o , city
crackin’ it at dawn, blessed be thy chains, thy bicycle, and thy bud.
we isn’t goan ta’ pretend no more that is a collection
of all the little things we could a been, Moses, even, possibly
or that wild animal theater attendant, all ‘ceptional an’ agile

smiling no matter what reptile is shredding at yer pants, you ack all agile
then, don’t ya? or else you is stuck in the absolute INefficiency
of yer own damn SELF. possibly, or no possibly
this city
is gonna collect
taxes from yer poor, budding

ass, bud.
one night i hadta walk ‘long the damn telephone line, all agile
an’ shit jest to collect
my money from da’ tenants who is not-so-efficiency
paying me my rent. holla’ dat you city
dwellin’ possibles

first you gots to get fluent. ‘til then it be p to the izzo (possible)
jest like la chupucabra an’ church, lady-bud
you think this is the small time but i tells you, this here is CITYcity
and you jest have to scrum and agile
one up. no, thank you sir, might i have another INefficiency
the US is guardin’ dem collectors.

poor is poor, but one day you might have yr dream : a cul-de-sac, a small collection
of swimming pool possibilities
a righteous appetite and a disaffected one-hit wonder. efficiently
lassoing – hey, what version of lasso do you use, bud?
you is just an anvilparachute portrayin’ all agility
like this is what city is when you knows it all CITYcity

hey, tho. anx, but call collect, next time that lady-bud
you been budding for, possibly? she be all Beowulf on yo’ agile
.(yet delectable) efficiency. remember it when yo’ broke: this here is CITYcity

The John Holmes of Baltimore

2008-03-05T11:04:00.001-05:00

The John Holmes of Baltimore
Originally uploaded by Ken Rumble

getting to know jamie g-p is an experience i will never forget.

MINOR AMERICAN READING: 3/8 @ 8PM!

2008-03-04T19:24:00.008-05:00

2008-03-04T18:14:00.002-05:00

guillermo parra, jamie lewis, & i...

are east-campus-running rockstars.

we made it before the storm.

now there are tornado watches.

i have no clue how to deal with tornados.

i much prefer earthquakes.

)no warning(

i am sweating profusely.

blog: i think if you got a facelift we could maybe work something out.

if you would just stop trying to be so damn cool and name-droppy we'd get somewhere...

2008-03-04T17:01:00.002-05:00

Irresponsibility is good. damn good.

i think i saw a dead bear just off the freeway on the way home from work.

i think i am going to run outside in the almost-rain.

i have been extremely irresponsible.

maybe the bear was not dead, just sleeping.

are there california bears in north carolina?

i'm still not speaking to my blog.

i meant bear bears not gay bears.

2008-03-03T20:31:00.001-05:00

i'm crawling into bed with Irresponsibility tonight and you can't stop me.

2008-03-03T19:16:00.002-05:00

dear blog.

in some ways i pity you. you seem so empty now without me. as if you had no prior identity. no true sense of self. even so. you shouldn't have torn up all my books while i was in baltimore. that was really uncalled for. the pants i don't mind. they're too big for me now anyway. but... my books? what were you thinking? you are such an asshole blog. our therapist said you might "act out" like this.

yr so fucking predictable.

and typical, really, it is so OBVIOUS why you, BLOG, would tear up my books... jealous of other pages getting my attention. what an asshole.

i want you to know i had such a good time without you this weekend. and the fact that you sabotaged my cameras...... did nothing to dampen my mood. pictures were still taken. films were still made. all without you.

klp

2008-02-29T11:09:00.001-05:00

dear blog.

i know our therapist told us to take a break from each other while we were breaking up... but i just want you to know that i'm angry and hating you.

love,
kate

2008-02-29T10:57:00.001-05:00

dear blog,

why are you dragging ken and chris into all this?

god.

i totally resent you. you just piss me off.

2008-02-28T21:03:00.002-05:00

dear blog,

since we broke up last night i have started running. and i am going to Baltimore with Ken Rumble this weekend to see him read with Gina Myers & justin sirois. i'm going to get to hang out a little with ryan walker, too, i hope. i'm moving on blog. moving on.

i'll probably have a film when i get back. maybe we can talk about it? that's all we ever did well blog. that's all.

2008-02-28T08:57:00.001-05:00

dear blog:

i'm breaking up with you because you are a filmmaker and you don't understand me.

it seems like you should, but you don't.

chris says i must explain this. that you won't understand right away.

you'll have to wait.

as you can see

2008-02-27T22:30:00.002-05:00

i'm not so into the blog lately.

it has been fun. but maybe it is over? maybe we can be friends.

maybe i just need some space. do my own thing. you do yrs. maybe get in touch again in a few months. o, sure... we can still meet up for poetry readings. totally. but... i just feel... a little... i don't... stifled. it isn't you. it's me. i'm going through a thing. i just want to be free to do whatever i want. take a break. run a marathon. write some poems. maybe even finish my books. you know... i'm going to be 36 soon. i have things i need to do. i just don't want to be linked to you so much. i've got so much to do and you .... you have all the space in the world to be whatever you want to be...

i don't know what else to say.

i'm just not feeling it.

it isn't you.

it's me.

Capital Theater, Passaic, 1979

2008-02-24T13:01:00.001-05:00

"Meet me in the fields behind the dynamo!"

my mixtape list.

2008-02-24T10:03:00.003-05:00

last night i read w/chris vitiello in brian howe's MIXTAPE series. it was a lot of fun. chris and i decided to switch off reading AND riff off what the other had last read... so... it was even more fun.

here's what i read:

SET 1 [responding to Chris's set 1]

"what i know about henry darger" (Collage History of Art) JOHN D'AGATA, excerpt from Halls of Fame

"Penrod and the Rattlesnake Boy" HENRY DARGER, excerpt from The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glendeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion

"The Collector" passages H4a,1 & H4a,2. WALTER BENJAMIN, The Arcades Project

SET2:

Spoke, HANNAH WEINER, first 15 pages.

"Sonnet L," and "The Secret Life of Ford Maddox Ford," TED BERRIGAN, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

SET3:

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, BRANDON BROWN

"A Red Wheelbarrow," excerpts from Homage to Creeley, and "8" from Language (for Maggie), JACK SPICER, The Collected Books of Jack Spicer

"Literature and the Right to Death," MAURICE BLANCHOT, The Work of Fire

IMAGINARY/ ON HAND / SET4:

"Fugitive State" SUZANNE STEIN, Both Both in loving memory of PZA issue.

Cousins, ALLI WARREN

Conference, STACY DORIS.

2008-02-18T20:52:00.002-05:00

introducing...

2008-02-13T21:37:00.002-05:00

jack peyton eli manning pringle-zurawski!

and, yes, we are reading the fucking awesome new book from chris vitiello ... which you can order HERE.