May 29, 2008

POETRY (???) READING @ MAMA BUZZ -- 6.01.08 -- 7pm SUNDAY!!!
future moist immersion of standalone charm come over and enjoy

Jessalyn Aaland

Jorge Boehringer (bjorn of the moleland)

Zach Houston

David Harrison Horton

Koroshiya (special guest noise dude from Berlin with Japanese word in his name)

Erika Anderson

May 29, 2008

Strongbad gives advice on writing love poems.

May 27, 2008

Eric King has some drawings up at Deep Oakland.

May 27, 2008

Jacob Eichert's interview with Michael McClure is now up at Deep Oakland.

May 27, 2008

levellum

May 23, 2008

In my insomniac boredom, I began reading Edwin Arlington Robinson's full-length narrative poem Roman Bartholow (MacMillan, 1923). My college library discarded a first edition, which I snatched up, simply because I snatch up all poetry books the library withdraws with the idea that one day I'll get around to reading it. I'm convinced there's something to be gained poetically even in the worst & most outmoded texts. This particular book hadn't been checked out since 1938, so I can understand the impetus of whichever librarian to get rid of it. On the other hand, since the library is smallish & part of an equally small liberal arts school, I question getting rid of any poetry book, since their offerings are hardly exhausitive or even representative of the many movements in 20th century poetry.

"Why do you tell me now that other men
Have built of their insolvency new houses?
What are all the houses that all other men
Have built, or may build, worth to me tonight,
Now that I see no house?" (98).

May 22, 2008

A reading copy of WORK no. 1 is now available at Deep Oakland. And for those in the Madison, WI area, WORK is being archived at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Library.

May 19, 2008

I wasn't in a note taking mood last night, so I didn't bring my notebook to 21 Grand. Now, regretably, this morning I wish I had, since I feel like saying something about Robert Fitterman last night. What I can say from memory is how much I appreciated the level of integration between his spoken material and the prepared tech material. Also something about how decontextualizing the banal and pointing to it makes it inherently more interesting. And repetition.

May 17, 2008

Cassie Smith and Samantha Giles yesterday

at the Mills College MFA Reading

May 15, 2008

Visual artists should read this, then spam their Congress reps. The copyright of your own visual art is on the line.

There's a petition you can sign here.

May 15, 2008

Recent mass transit reads:

Kenneth Patchen, Poems of Humor & Protest (City Lights, 1960)

Geof Huth, ed., &²: An/thology of Pwoermds (Runaway Spoon, 2004)

Bill Luoma, Dear Dad (Tinfish, 2002)

&

Sabrina Calle, The Gilles Poems: Winter 2006 Collection (Transmission, 2007)

May 12, 2008

Robert Fitterman & Jennifer Manzano

LIVE! This Sunday
21 Grand
416 25th St, Oakland

$3--$infinity sliding scale

ROBERT FITTERMAN, born in St. Louis 1959 of cigar-making jewish-Russian lineage, has remained close to the heart of Curt Flood. He has lived in NYC since 1981 working as a bartender, waiter, docket clerk, documentation writer, and, finally, as a Master Teacher of Expository Writing at New York University. Author of nine books of poetry, including three installments of the ongoing poem Metropolis: Metropolis 1 15 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), Metropolis 16 29 (Coach House Books, 2002), and Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edge Books, 2004). His most recent work, War, the musical, coauthored with design artist Dirk Rowntree, is a book-length poem that appropriates online language to compose a "libretto" aimed at reenacting how Americans process war through media.

JENNIFER MANZANO balances her time between Alameda, Oakland, and San Francisco, CA. Her affairs with language have driven her to letterpress printing, bookbinding, tactile fixation, urban wildlife, and the sounds of public transportation. She published a chapbook making under this is not a french press in December 2006. More recent work can be found online at Cricket Online Review and The Press Gang.

May 11, 2008

The end of the semester is finally becoming palpable to me. I'm doing student exit interviews for my classes where they turn in their last assignments & I just had my last shift at the library until next fall. In a week, I'll be 2/3rds unemployed until August or desperation makes me find some stop-gap part-time gig. Or maybe I'll just live really cheaply the next few months and actually finish some of these half-done projects laying about my studio apartment. I'd be panicked if I weren't so excited by the possibilities.

May 9, 2008

Adieu (again), Eli's Mile High Club.

Erika Staiti's Race. & Gender project is now up.

May 1, 2008

Now up at Deep Oakland:

Dillon Westbrook talks with Bob Grenier
&
David Buuck, Ruts