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
Monday, September 01, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Advancing on the First-Aid and Metaphysical Fiction Bestsellers Lists!
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Ugh -- Friedlander linebreaks
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
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"
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"
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Today It All Sucks...
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.
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