Distribution Automatique

Wednesday, July 23

Nicholas Manning Reviews Gary Sullivan's PPL in a Depot (Roof):

Galatea Resurrects #10

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Kristina Marie Darling reviews Catherine Daly's Chantreuse/Cantatrice (Factory School) Galatea Resurrects #10

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Charles Bernstein reviews new book by Al Filreis in

The Boston Review

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Pessoa in the Rain

What a pleasure to have had The Book of Disquietude to read during a summer rain. Now that the rain is over, the words do not seem the same, but as it did, I thought of blogging a few quotes as I read and thought of Pessoa writing them, and listened to the thunder and the rain...The moment passes, always, and Pessoa kept mourning this, yet we still have his words:

"O alcohol of grand words and long phrases that raise the breathing of their rhythm like waves and then crash smiling, with the irony of twisting snakes of foam and the sad magnificence of shadows."

"To realize a dream, it's necessary to forget it, to divert our attention from it. To realize is thus to not realize. Life is full of paradoxes, as a rose is of thorns.
"I'd like to construct the apotheosis of a new incoherence which could stand as the negative synthesis of the new anarchy of soul. I've always felt that to compile a digest of my dreams might be useful to humanity, which is why I've never given up trying. The idea that what I did in the real world might be profitable offended me and left me dry and withered..."

"The rain continued to fall sadly but with less force, as if seized by a cosmic weariness. There was no lightning, and only very occasionally would a distant, short roll of thunder harshly rumble, haltingly at times, as if also weary. Suddenly, or so it seemed, the rain let up further...."

"Rain, rain, rain...
Constant groaning rain (...)"

The thunder and rain have now begun again.


Quotes from The Book of Disquietude
by Fernando Pessoa
The Sheep Meadow Press, 1996
translated by Richard Zenith

Monday, July 21

Check out Didi Menendez' blog: Men and Women of the Web

and thanks to Didi Menendez for the interview:

Men of the Web

**

OCHO 14 is available online, here: OCHO 14

Wednesday, July 2

Contradicta





Do not go gently into that good night. Stay home and call for takeout.






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The most awful argument can be ended by the most awful joke.

Wallace Thinks Again: Poetry About Poetry

Sunday, June 22

                                Groovy

There's a scene in Eugene Eustache's movie The Mother and The Whore (1973) in which Jean-Pierre Leaud sits in his room and listens to an entire record. You see him moving the tone arm onto the disc and quietly enjoying the whole record by himself, nodding his head to the rhythms, smiling, thinking, staring into space. I thought of this scene when reading, recently, Edmund Wilson's autobiographical novel published in 1929, I Thought of Daisy. There are so many good things to be said of this novel, but reading it I couldn't resist the idea of blogging the entire sequence during which the narrator lets himself into his friend Daisy's apartment, and, finding her not there, decides to wait for her, during which time he plays a record on her phonograph:

    "There was a phonograph beside me on the table: it was a small cheap portable one. I regarded it with hebetude. Without Daisy, it seemed as depressing as the glasses, as the garments, as the magazines. But involuntarily grasping at a last resource against despair, I picked up the heap of phonograph records, lying half-shuffled, like a battered pack of cards. Scrupulously I pushed them even and ran through them, reading all the titles: With You in Paradise, from Pretty Kitty, sung by Bee Brewster; Ben Bolt, by John McCormack; Chanson Hindoue, Saxophone Solo; So's Your Old Man, Fox Trot, by Fred Casey and His Burglar-alarm Boys; La Forza del Destino, Red Seal, Duet by Caruso and Scotti; Mamie Rose, Fox Trot, by Jake King and his Eight Kentucky Mocking Birds. I remembered that Mamie Rose was the fox-trot which Daisy had so offended by playing, the night of Ray Coleman's party, when Rita had been reciting her poems. I got up and put it on the machine.
    "The record, I noted, as I wound the crank, had been made by the American Melody Company. It was a pale and unpleasant brown and seemed to have been molded by river mud. Remembering the handsome victrola which I had seen at Ray Coleman's apartment I pitied Daisy a little; yet she had had the right sort of bravery, the bravery to go free when love had passed! The only needles I could find were buried in an ash-tray under cigarette butts and burnt matches, and it was impossible to tell the used from the new. The first I tried began with a blurt, a hideous stuttering blur. Still dominated by Rita's tastes, I felt that turning on the phonograph would be like drilling with a dental engine: Rita had not cared for popular music- had thought lightly of even the Rosenkavalier!
    "The second needle turned out no better, but I let it go; and presently Mamie Rose emerged as a kind of fiendish jig, running itself off at impossible speed; too fast, too nasal, too shrill. I made an effort to regulate it and only effected a harrowing descent of pitch, like the grasping and discordant howl of some demon from inside the machine crying out an intolerable agony at being compressed from one tempo to another. I listened for the first night I had met Daisy, but merely succeeded in having my heart wrung by the first night I had heard Rita's poems. The spring of the little phonograph held only for a single winding, so that the record began too fast and was already running down before it came to the end; but, what was worse, it had no horn, so that the demon inside the box, beating in its cramped black prison like a panic-stricken bat, had to squeeze out, as it were, through a crack- the little aperture at the base of the "arm." No wonder it chittered and squealed so thinly, like an unwinding wire of sound, like a wire, rusted, wry and eaten, worn away so that it seemed almost snapping, or so rough that it would stick and stammer over some echolalic phrase! So completely had the music been robbed of resonance that it seemed a mere memorandum of music, as if some writer in sound had scribbled down the skeleton of an orchestration, with the brasses brief tin-whistle blasts and raspings, the strings a jotted jingle of cicada chirpings, and the tympani scored as tiny explosions and echoless crashes of glass. And the "vocal refrain," when it suddenly began, had as little in common with the human voice as the noises of the instruments had with music: it gave the effect of some mere momentary modulation in the quick mechanical jiggling of a railroad train- it was a sharper shrillness, a more insistent iteration: There she goes- Mamie Rose- She-loves-me! Don't seem to show it!- How do I know it?- It's A.B.C.-She's- a crackle of high-pitched syllables ending with aggravatin'-But when I want a little lovin' she don't keep me waitin!- She's proud and snooty- But she's my cutie- She tells me- a second slip of dulled and driven cogs- That's how I knows- Mamie Rose- She-Loves-me! The jazz departed, with redoubled violence and complexities of deformation, into a last frantic charivari- then, after a brief unpleasing flourish, was bitten off as abruptly as it had begun.
    "I lifted the needle, clicked the little catch and went over to the window..."

Saturday, June 21

New Review of *Forget Reading* by Anthony Hawley

CutBank Reviews

Friday, June 20

Penn Sound Daily Rss Feed

Penn Sound Daily

Wednesday, June 18

Hey, I Was Just Getting Used to Conceptual Poetry and Now We Have Conceptual Invasions

"A Shell spokeswoman hinted at the kind of work the companies might be engaged in. 'We can confirm that we have submitted a conceptual proposal to the Iraqi authorities to minimize current and future gas flaring in the south through gas gathering and utilization,' said the spokeswoman, Marnie Funk. 'The contents of the proposal are confidential.'"

Deals With Iraq Are Set To Bring Oil Giants Back

****

Conceptual Poet Lives by Nicholas Manning

Wednesday, June 11

My Poem "The Sky Is A Painting in Black and Red (12 Dreams)"

is now available in the latest OCHO (#20) as a PDF
edited by Kemel Zaldivar
and for $8 in printed form from Mipoesias

and on The Annandale Dream Gazette edited by Lynn Behrendt

Tuesday, May 20

PRESENT TENSE


a play by Charles Borkhuis
part of the Tiny Theatre Festival (6 one-acts) at The Brick Theater


directed by Gabriel Shanks,

featuring Frank Blocker & Ben Trawick-Smith
Stage Manager: Jeni Shanks
Design: Allen Cutler


May 23 and 24 | 8pm | $15
at The Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg
(L Train, 1/2 block from Lorimer Stop)
RESERVATIONS: 866-811-4111
http://www.theatremania.com

Two characters find themselves slipping in and out of parallel lives through "wormholes" in the space-time of the play. One believes he has dozed off at home with a book on his lap and the play is a curiously lucid dream. The other is convinced that their performances in front of a live audience are desperately real. Panic starts to set in as the play's complications and reversals become increasingly fascinating and frightening.

Thursday, May 15

Rauschenberg's Goat

poemeleon

****************

Kaz Malanka interviewed by Gregory Vincent St Thomasino on Word for Word on Mathematical Poetry

Bob Grumman on mathmaku and mathematical poetry generally Word for Word (presented by Gregory Vincent St Thomasino)

Monday, May 12

OCHO 14

with work by Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies, Ray DiPalma, Elaine Equi, Nada Gordon, Mitch Highfill, Brenda Iijima, Kimberly Lyons, Sharon Mesmer, Tim Peterson, Corinne Robins, Jerome Sala, Gary Sullivan, Nico Vassilakis and Mark Young

is now available as a free download at Mipoesias.

"A terrific read from cover to cover." -Ron Silliman's Blog. And Nick Manning wote, in his review in the current issue of Jacket-"The value of Nick Piombino’s vision is that we are invited to accept this volume’s most vital paradoxes: the true fury of its moment."

Published by Didi Menendez, the print edition of OCHO 14, with a cover by Toni Simon, is available for $10.99, exclusively at Lulu

****************

Rachmaninov- By Andrew Lundwall

Tuesday, April 29

Goodreads

The art of reviewing, hey, the fact of book reviewing has taken a lot of hits in recent years. not the least of which is the closing down of poetry reviews at Publisher's Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, and long, long ago, the sad disappearance of Geoffrey O'Brien from the poetry book reviewing scene, the end of Tembor, due to the tragic early death of Leland Hickman, which featured terrfic critical writing from Joseph Simas, Ghino Tenger and many others. Geoffrey, of course, has been busy writing his own books, among others *The Phantom Empire" about the history of film, which I scored recently, complete with review and author photo, at the Strand for $1.

Thankfully, the web, in particular, Jacket, the blogging scene-and even the SUNY poetics list, has brought us some fine critical writng from, of course, Ron Silliman, Amy King,Gary Sullivan, Tim Peterson, Michael Lally, Nada Gordon, Ray Davis, Nicholas Manning, Sharon Mesmer, Mark Wallace, K. Silem Mohammad, Charles Bernstein, Jack Kimball and many others, most notably recently Douglas Messerli and his critically absorbing and autobiographically revelatory Green Integer Blog.

Not that long ago, a new phenomenon emerged on the web, that at first appeared to consist of little more than lists of favorite books on a site that echoed successes by other well known web "friendship" groups. When you join Goodreads, people may nominate themselves as "friends" or you may suggest yourself as a friend to other members, by going through the friend lists on your friends' sites, checking yourself off there for a request to be automatically emailed to someone, who can then accept or reject you. Possibly to distract myself from other work to be done, or perhaps to show off my library, of which I am quite proud (there is, among many other prized items my signed book by Theodore Dreiser), I joined up. One day, in a fit of inspiration I listed over 750 items from my library.

Anyway, lately I haven't been spending that much time on the thing, or on this thing for that matter, having been busy on some other projects, and having fallen in love with reading novels by women which I am now consume addictively like so many delicious, or ordinary boxes of chocolates. I seem to have become a gourmand of this genre, not a true gourmet. But when I got an invitation recently from Marcella Durand to become her "friend" on Goodreads. I noticed that John Ashbery was listed on her site. When he recently agreed to be my friend on Goodreads I thought to myself: wow, this is getting really interesting.

One of the features of Goodreads which you can receive if you choose to (you can also suspend it if you want) is to receive recent book reviews from your friends. I am not ashamed to admit, that while I do tend to read books, even for years, by types, I like to read almost any kind of book review, the same way I will read anything in front of me at the breakfast table, including whatever is on the cereal box, particularly if it happens to appear in front of me and there is nothing else to read. I don't always read the reviews that now pour in daily in my email inbox from Goodreads, but I have been reading every single one, by somebody who has named themselves, interestingly, tENTIVELY, acONVENIENCE. I noticed, and was struck by the sensitivity and generosity of a group of reviews he did about books by Alan Davies. He claims he is going through his library alphabetically, and reviewing books that catch his eye. Today, for example, he reviewed "In Celebration of Ourselves" by Seymour Rosen and said:

"Ah! The front cover gives a pretty good explanation: "All of us have to reveal our inner selves once in a while - Sometimes that just might mean smiling at a stranger for no reason - or whistling - A rarer breed likes to dress up as cabbage leaves or sunflowers - or wear Hawaiian leis or diapers - But there are few authorized times for that - What do you do when you have a full Samurai outfit and no place to go - Or a bird's-eye view of Sydney tattooed above your kidney - How do you say - I am alive - if you are a sixteeen-year-old ghetto kid - That's only the beginning - California has always had more than its share of - grand eccentrics"....A great, GREAT bk. Kinetic sculpture race, 'outsider' architecture, costumes, murals, folk sculpture, graffiti, neon, church fronts, shaped buildings, giant donut signs, art cars, homemade ads, all sorts of fascinating signs of creativity largely done outside of the art world. Oddly, my copy has rubber-stamped inside: 'NOT FOR RESALE DISTRIBUTE THRU BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT'".

Even if you know you'll never read even a fraction of the thousands of books you will find out about on Goodreads, it's a fascinating enterprise, not the least of which is the opportunity to list books you think others should know about. There are tons of books, by the way, for which there is only one listing, while there are others, like The Great Gatsby, that has 69, 760 listings, and, "the Curious Incident of A Dog at Nightime" which has over 39,000 listings, Charles Bernstein'a A Poetics has 39 listings as does Ron Silliman's Age of Huts; Elaine Equi's Ripple Effect has 20, Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere 1 has 10, Tim Peterson's When I Moved IN has 11,Brenda IIjima's Around Sea has 9, Nada Gordon's Folly 9, Kim Lyons' Saline has 8 and my fait accompli 7.

Goodreads is easly accessible on Google, of course.

Sunday, April 27

prepublication launch & performance
Monday, May 5, 8pm (New York)

**Blind Witness: Three American Operas -- Charles Bernstein**

Forthcoming from Factory School
Blind Witness brings together in one book Bernstein's libretti for Blind
Witness News, The Subject, and The Lenny Paschen Show written for
composer Ben Yarmolinsky in the early 1990s.
Bernstein & Yarmolinsky will perform sections of the operas along with
Deborah Karpel, soprano; Nathan Resika, bass; Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano
Ishmael Wallace and Elizabeth Rodgers, piano
introduced by Joel Kuszai
Medicine Show
549 West 52nd St. (between 10th and 11th Ave.), New York
$5 admission
Reservations requested to ensure seating: 212-262-4216
This program is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, a
state agency.
*
Advance copies of Blind Witness will be available at the launch at a
special discounted price
Blind Witness can be ordered now prepublication direct from Factory School:
http://factoryschool.org/pubs/blindwitness/

Sunday, April 20

Contradicta




Whatever else it is, thought is a kind of touch, and if it is not felt it is not known.





*********




We imagine harmony, live in dissonance and think in the whirlpool between the two.





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Spring In This World of Poor Months:-Ange Mlinko in The Nation

Tuesday, April 15

The Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra

A question from a young woman about the Prospect Park West bus led to a conversation about The Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra for which she plays the cello, not an easy instrument to move about on city streets. Checking out the link (above) she told me about, I realized she was on her way to a rehearsal at that moment. When she told me that the orchestra is now rehearsing a Brahms symphony (#1, my favorite, in fact) I decided to definitely try to make the June 8th Concert, right nearby on 7th Avenue between 4th and 5th Street (John Jay High School).

By the way, the link includes Debussy's lovely Girl With the Flaxen Hair played by the First Street Woodwind Quintet, among other selections by the BCCO.

Thursday, April 10

Contradicta




Insight is the hardest thing to find, the hardest thing to keep, one of the few things that last, and the only thing that makes things last.





******************




Thoughts are whispers, voices, footsteps, echoes overheard in a darkened room.

Tuesday, April 8

Dustin Williamson

reviewed *fait accompli*, the book, in the current Poetry Project Newletter.

****************

Jacket 35 is out with Nicholas Manning's review of OCHO 14.

Sunday, March 30

Blogging as Thinking

Gary Norris' DagZine is back!

Monday, March 24

Contradicta


The secret of art is in knowing how, at the right moment, to seize what is important in what seemed unimportant and to reduce to its essential unimportance what was apparently so damned important before. It's the secret of happiness also, by the way.




**************************



I thought I was becoming less confused until I noticed those who are not confused and then I became even more confused.


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New E-Book By Nico Vassilakis

GAMMM

Saturday, March 22

The Form of Things

by Peter Ciccariello

***********************

SEGUE READING SERIES
MARCH 29

Saturday: 4PM-6PM
308 Bowery, just north of Houston

$6 admission goes to support the readers



RODRIGO TOSCANO & MARK WALLACE
Rodrigo Toscano’s latest book is Collapsible Poetics Theater, which won the National Poetry Series 2007. Toscano is a poet and the artistic director and writer for the Collapsible Poetics Theater (CPT). His experimental poetics plays, body-movement poems, and polyvocalic pieces have recently been performed in San Francisco, and Alexandria, Virginia. Mark Wallace is the author and editor of a number of books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. A collection of his tales, Walking Dreams was published in 2007 and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion is forthcoming in 2008. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University San Marcos.

******************

""Beyond the Waves; Feminist Artists Talk Across Generations"
Sunday, March 30th, 3-5pm
Panelists: Susan Bee, Emma Bee Bernstein, Mira Schor, Carolee Schneemann, Brynna Tucker at The Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
Free & Open to Public (With Museum Entry Fee) - 3:00 - 5:00 PM

____________

A.I.R. Gallery Gala Celebration & Exhibition
ART MUSIC FILM POETRY FASHION
Friday, March 28, 2008, 6-9 pm
Puck Building 295 Lafayette St.
(SE Corner of Lafayette & Houston, Manhattan)

Tastings of some of NYC's best food and wine. Participating restaurants include: Yushi Sushi, Vogues Chocolate, Daisy Bakery, Ito-En Teas, PT (Italian Cuisine), Mojito Restaurant, Ivy Bakery, La Palapa, Thai Palace & more.

A.I.R. and Art and Living Magazine are very pleased to award three outstanding women art professionals and three galleries the Art to Life Award for their passion and commitment to advancing the status of women artists: Judith Brodsky, Ferris Olin, Dr. Elizabeth Sackler, ACA Galleries, Flomenhaft Gallery, P.P.O.W. Gallery

A.I.R.'s first annual Gala is the highlight of a series of events celebrating women in the arts during National Women's History Month. The centerpiece of the Gala is a retrospective of artists who have exhibited work at A.I.R. Gallery over the past 36 years. Works by the artists who have not shown at A.I.R. but have actively supported our mission over the years will also be on view.

The Gala exhibition and art sale will be on view from 5PM until 9PM, featuring a special preview from 5PM to 6PM for collectors, curators, critics and the general public.

Feminist Fashion Show , produced by former A.I.R. Fellowship Recipient Enid Crow returns as part of this exciting evening!

Featuring music & poetry, including V. Da Nessa Monk and Eileen Myles

Tuesday, March 11

Nicholas Manning reviews Ocho 14 in Jacket

Elsewhere


and


Text Loses Time by Nico Vassilakis

in

Galatea's Resurrects #9

Saturday, March 8

Contradicta




Go ahead and jump to conclusions, then try to skip the conclusion part.





***********************






Life is a crossword puzzle with too many boxes, and too few hints.

Sunday, March 2

Everybody's Heading For

Big Bridge 2008

*********************
Elephant Hearts Tonight at the Zinc Bar

These two poets win the award for lyrical sensitivity combined with urban wit:

Godfrey + Lyons

3/2 reading at Zinc Bar

starts at 6:30 (not 7pm as announced previously)

see you there

Kl

Saturday, March 1

Sustainable Aircraft: a new online poetry review edited by Josef Kaplan

reviews of: Michael Gottlieb (by Alan Davies), Stacy Doris, John Ashbery, President of the United Hearts, others

Sustainable Aircraft

************************

Barrett Watten on Lytle Shaw's *Frank O'Hara*

in

Artforum Online

When Barrett Watten is at his best, as in this lively, readable review, his writing reveals the "pleasure of the text" as much as Barthes, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling or Hazlitt in their heydays. A real treat.

Tuesday, February 26

Make Art!

As almost everybody knows, singer/actors Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova just received Oscars for their song "Falling Slowly" from the film *Once.* Well, despite its unrelieved sentimentality, I loved the movie of the same title, which is about street musicians (last week, *fait accompli* featured Kathleen Mock, a real life street musician whose music is of the first order). Glen Hansard ended his thank yous, with the aside, "Make art!" This thought, and the attitude with which it was presented, was very much in keeping with the spirit of the movie. He also mentioned that the film was made in three weeks for $100,000.

Friday, February 22

Gary (Sullivan) and Nada (Gordon)

stopped by yesterday to watch the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with us. As you know, if you read Nada's blog, she enthusiastically supports Hillary. The debate was ok, Toni's pasta dinner was great, and Gary and Nada were as much fun as ever. What is truly exciting is that Gary gave me an early printing of his book of plays *PPL In A Depot* coming out very soon from Roof Books, two of which were published in OCHO 14 which I guest edited with much help from Toni, who did the cover. Speaking of covers, this one is awesome, a tracing from some wall graffiti which Gary had photographed. Mac Wellman wrote of these plays: "Gary Sullivan's PPL in a Depot is a collection of pataphysical dramas- each a delight to read, and presumably to watch- if from a safe distance. A gleeful and slightly spavined collection of fast-moving and un-pindownable plays in a nastily wicked vein. They could be called poetic, but the author whould probably prefer to be shot than thought poetic. How can you not love a play called 'Written in Styrofoam'?"

God, I love these plays. They will make you think and laugh at the same time, or will teach you how.

*****************

Heather O'Neill's *lullabies for little criminals*, Harper 2006

What *David Copperfield* was for the 19th Century and *The Catcher in the Rye* for the 20th, *lullabies for little criminals* could or should be for the 21st.This is childhood painted against a black sky, where a fat full moon glares at you grumpily or shimmers its silver smiles and falling stars lift, then break your heart.

Heather O'Neill's story *The End of Pinky* in The Walrus

Heather O"Neill profile in Quill and Quire

******************

Kathleen Mock Rides Again

If you are a subway commuter in New York there is little doubt that you have more than once stopped to listen, with pleasurable surprise, to Kathleen Mock's lovely, vibrant voice wending its way between the roars of trains entering and leaving the station. It was quite some time ago that I first chatted with her and bought a CD. To my delight I heard her again playing yesterday at the 96th Street station on the #3 train. This time I bought another CD of hers, which she told me consists of songs written in her 20s. She loves singing on the subway now as much as she did when she started 18 years ago. Kathleen Mock website, including NPR interview, here: Kathleen Mock

Tuesday, February 19

Out of the Past: Lucy Lippard talks about Eva Hesse with Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt
6/5/1973- Artforum, February 2008

This month's Artforum features a fascinating interview that Lucy Lippard held with Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson in 1973. For Robert Smithson and Eva Hesse fans (are there any art lovers over the age of 50 who aren't?) this is a definite must-read. I couldn't resist copying out some sections to post. Of course it led me to remembering my own brief meeting with Smithson at Max's Kansas City in the early 70's. I was introduced to him by a friend, the artist Wayne Timm who I had met in Provincetown in 1962. Reading this interview also led me to thinking about the fact that by the early 1980's I had lost five heroes as a result of untimely deaths: Buddy Holly (I was at a Crickets concert in 1957), Robert Smithson, John Lennon, Ted Berrigan and Phillip K. Dick. All of these heroes were prophets who typified and emcompassed their eras in their work and who also very accurately anticipated the future by means of their astounding innovative creations. In this interview Smithson shows the impressive scope of his insights.

"Robert Smithson: I think all perception is tainted with a kind of psychoanalytic reading. In other words, somebody who's having Oedipal problems, it's going to come out in the perception, or it's going to come out in the making, the kind of work they choose to do. I got into a sort of psychoanalyzing of landscape perception in that [Frederick Law] Olmstead piece."

"Lucy Lippard: Yeah, true, You go back in, in order to come back out- the labyrinth."

****

"Robert Smithson: But my high school art teacher said to me that the only people that become artists are women and cripples."

****

"Robert Smithson: Society at large has a kind of flattening effect in terms of its rationality, the kind of rationality that more or less keeps things going. It's very totalitarian, because it flattens everything out. We're sort of witnessing that with the Watergate situation, or that's breaking down. There's a kind of real artlessness about these people; they're really people without art. They control. The artist is in some other realm. The artist is involved with some kind of enchantment. In the other world, that whole enchantment is crushed with some kind of efficiency, and that efficiency is now catching up with itself."

"Nancy Holt: I think the more awareness you have, the more difficult it gets. Part of the motivation for smoking dope or drinking is to dull what can be seen, felt, and perceived, and I'm sure that that extends into other areas of life. I'm sure that we're all blocking off large segments that we can't deal with in any given moment. It might be like dimming in and dimming out."

"Robert Smithson: There's a kind of terrorism involved in the whole situation. How much can you take? I thought it would be very interesting if tornadoes came into New York and ripped it up. But I think the art world is a sort of tribal society with its totems and taboos. No human can withstand too much emotional stress. Taling about Eva [Hesse] that stress is sort of objectified into this totem."

Friday, February 15

New at Penn Sound

Thanks to Danny Snelson, Charles Bernstein, Al Filreis and others at Penn Sound for the great job in updating and presenting my sound files- I hope you will have a chance have a look and a listen soon

Penn Sound

**************

Text Loses Time by Nico Vassilakis

a review on

fantographic books
by

Eric Reynolds

*************
The Remains of the Poet

Peter Ciccariello

Tuesday, February 12

New Sound Files at Penn Sound

J. Henry Chunko
Danny Snelson has been updating my sound files at Penn Sound, "segmenting" them, as he explains it- which means you can listen much more easily to individual tracks- has some very kind words to say about this blog- which was a very nice thing to happen on:: fait accompli's:: fifth birthday!

Thanks, Danny

Friday, February 8

"Ah, Squares": Big Window Features the Art of Toni Simon

Big Window

****************

Douglas Messerli Opens New Blog

Green Integer

*****************

critiiphoria #1

Critiphoria

****************

"Nobody is well known. Look at the Unknown Soldier: everybody knows him"

Francis Picabia

("I Am A Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, Provocations"
translated by Mark Lowenthal; MIT Press)

Monday, February 4

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger


Things are cooking up in the poetry world lately; so many readings and publications it is hard to keep track of them all. This past weekend there were readings at Adam's Books, The Museum of the City of New York, The Bowery Poetry Club and other venues including the AWP conference that included Carla Harryman, David Shapiro, Anne Waldman, Jeff Encke and many, many others. You'll have to check elsewhere for the scoop on the AWP.

I did attend the Counterpath reading (see list below) at the Bowery Poetry Club and listened with pleasure to Anthony Hawley, Laynie Browne, Jen Hofer, Marjorie Welish, Peter Gizzi, Forest Gander and many others.

Earlier on Friday I had lunch with Anthony Hawley whose acquaintance I made last year at the reading for Gina Meyers' Tiny, issue #3 at the Poetry Project.

Anthony and I met for lunch at the Moma Snack bar. Over excellent soup and salad Anthony I swapped stories about our childhoods and other things. Anthony has a new book from Counterpath that last year published his terrific Autobiography/Oughtabiography. After Anthony left for further AWP activities close by MOMA at the Hilton I stayed to look around. I liked the Latin American show, but particularly enjoyed a piece by Rodney Graham titled Rheinmetall/Victoria 8. This film depicts a 1930's German typewriter found in a junk shop screened using an ancient projector.

Rodney Graham

******

Lanny Quarles

has opened a new group blog

Havmophunic Transolutions

******

Don't Miss

Douglas Messerli's *My Year 2005: Terrifying Times (Green Integer). Douglas Messerli has embarked on a massive memoir project that is inventive, comprehensive, funny and fascinating. By means of brief essays juxtaposed with each other disjunctively he is both tracing his own and cultural history from 2000-2010. Each year is given a theme that Douglas traces by means of reviews, autobiographical anecdotes, interviews and other sorts of short pieces. 2005 was "terrifying times." This year he told me. over lunch and coffee at recently at Molyvos, is called "Into the Gap" which is a phrase that describes the dangerous missions of counter-spies who put themselves out in the open to bring out their adversaries. This is time travel par excellence and well worth reading and collecting. From the Table of Contents: "How to Destroy your Children", "Three Hitchcock Structures", "Applause, Applause", "The Prom King", "How ROTC Saved My Llife", "How I Learned to Write Immorally", "Nine Nights in New York", "Making Things Difficult: An Interview between Charles Bernstein and Douglas Messerli", "Two Words by Julien Gracq", "Standstill", "The Hole Missing Robert Creeley", "What Have We Reaped?", "Something Wicked", "Longo's Empire", "The Imperfect Medium", "Answering the Sphinx", "The Necessary Remedy", "Living Darwinism", "Singing the Body Electric", "Borders without Borders", "Starting Over"

**

Literacy and Longing in L.A. by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack, Delacorte Press
My review on Goodreads

bookshelves: currently-reading (edit)
review: Ever since reading Peter Moore's terrific novel Los Angeles, one of my novelistic holy grails became the search for new witty novels that take place in the silver screen behemoth. For me, Los Angeles is to New York what Paris is to London, our mirror opposite, our ambivalent companion. That grail has been more than satisfied, for the moment, by the literary team Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack's *Literacy and Longing in L.A.* For denizens of Goodreads this novel may well be the most sheer literary fun they've had in years, because essentially it is about them. This is a book about, for and by literary gourmands, compulsive readers and book collectors whose lives, let alone "free time" are based on the desire to read. The main character, Dora (named after--guess--Eudora Welty) has recently divorced. In blatant identification with her alcoholic mother, whose husband, Dora's father, left when the two sisters were around 8, Dora loses herself- to the reader's great joy- in an endless reading fest that she writes about in great detail. Dora's husband is a wealthy CEO who is ravishingly handsome but who admits to being "bored by Shakespeare." After a few years of tedious social events, Dora leaves him for her books, bathtub and bottle of wine. A mad affair with a bookstore clerk/playwright brings her to her senses--and more books. At the end of the tome you find a 10 page single spaced list of books mentioned in the text.

Thursday, January 31

Counterpath Press at the Bowery
Poetry Club starting at 7 on Friday, Feb. 1st.

Anthony Hawley
Laynie Browne
Linda Norton
Cole Swensen
Martine Bellen
Bruce Beasley
Gillian Conoley
Forrest Gander
Peter Gizzi
Jen Hofer
Elizabeth Willis
Claudia Keelan
Timothy Liu
Suzanne Paola
Bin Ramke
Donald Revell
Carol Snow
Marjorie Welish


**********************


Reading at the Museum of the City of New York Sunday 2pm Honoring Rudy Burkihardt and Yvonne Jacquette

reservations required

Museum Reading

Monday, January 28

Notebook, 1/27/08

Wanderers

Awareness, whether of past, present or future experience appears as a shimmering. Things maintain solidity but even our awareness of our own bodies sustains this ghostly, discontinuous quality. Everything in time plays hide and seek with us. Perhaps if we could be sure of a purpose for existence the accumulation of a myriad of moments might assume some permanent outline or shape. But without certainty of proven purpose, comprehension of material manifestation must remain sporadic. The perpetuation of this fleeting significance of experience constantly returns us to various shadings of desire or despair. In order to reconceive these aporia as graspable entities we are led to evolve forms of metaphysical measure. But even our senses of success in such strivings remain occasional and tentative. Life is a voyage whose ports offer countless discoveries but whose goals remain elusive.


*********************
This just in from Mark Young

Otoliths 8


********************
New Interview Issue from Mipoesias includes an interview with Gary Sullian by Rodney Koeneke
Mipoesias

Wednesday, January 23

Drew Gardner's Poetics Orchestra

performed last night at the legendary Living Theater, featuring poets Katie Degentesh and Sharon Mesmer as well as the Musetry Project with Steve Dalachinsky and Ellen Christi. Christi and Dalachinsky brought back very pleasant memories and smiles for me of Keeley Smith and Louis Prima, a comic jazz duo extant no doubt well before your time, reader. Ellen Christi's jazz riffs worked well with Dalanchinsky's poetic monologues spoken in a cool undertone at the back of the Living Theater stage decked out for a Judith Malina play which is up now. One of Dalichinsky's poetic quips floated by me bringing a strong chuckle: "young and gifted, old and gifted." ( "Is botox a ball team?" he later asked, from the stage, of Sharon Mesmer, referring to a line from her performance: "I thought it was BoSox").You could see that both Christi, and later Degentesh added to their comic presences by working from the sunken bathtub which was part of the Malina stage set (Malina performs there tonight there in a two-women play at 21 Clinton Street on the Wednesday pay-as-you-wish basis). Katie Degentesh read from her recent book The Anger Scale, in the lightning fast world of blogging already an underground classic, and Sharon Mesmer read mostly from her equally awesome new book Annoying Diabetic Bitch, both from Combo.Mesmer and Degentesh are terrific poets, working in these books in the Flarf manner, who happen also to be superb performing poets as well; i would even go so far as to say they are each fine comic actors who write their own hilariously parodic material that strikes home on many levels of complexity: poetic, personal, social and philosophic. Sharon told me that she has performed before with bands and enjoyed it. I heard her ask Drew to invite her back and I hope he does. The members of the Orchestra were in top form as well, melodically rich, rhythmically diverse and meticulously coordinated both with each other and with the poets, under the able baton of Drew Gardner. Mesmer and Degentesh's voices also blended well together yet each has her own unique and individual peforming style. I hope Drew brings them all together again soon.

Speaking of bitchin' books...

Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books)
Sonnetailia (Roof Books)

Thursday, January 24
8pm
Mehanata Bulgarian Bar
113 Ludlow Street
NYC

F/J/M/Z trains to Delancey/Essex
Free admission until 10:30
Cash bar
Eugene Hütz of Gogol Bordello DJ-ing at 10:30


Drinkin’!
Dancin’!
Rockin’!
Aww yeah!

More info:
Mehanata
Virgin Formica
[from Virgin Formica- Sharon Mesmer]

By the way, Nicole Peyrafitte, who was in the audience, will be performing at the Zinc Bar on Sunday, January 17 with Belle Gironda at 6pm. Having lived these many years in Albany, raising two children with poet-blogger-translator-traveler-professor Pierre Joris, she now resides in Brooklyn, where, like so many other poets these days, she unquestionably wants to be.

*****************

This Just In from Tom Beckett:

An Ex-Val Interview with Jessica Grim

Tuesday, January 22

Reviews of OCHO 15 published by Didi Menendez

The Montserrat Review

Saturday, January 19

Why Do We Hate This President? Let Us Count The Ways

Lally's Alley

Friday, January 18

This Just In from Drew Gardner

--FRIDAY, 1/18--

I'll be performing at the book release party for the release of
Jackson Mac Low's Thing of Beauty:
From 6:30 - 8:00pm, CUE Art Foundation, 511 West 25th Street, NYC

Readers/performers include Charles Bernstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge,
Katie Degentesh, Mitch Highfill, Chris Mason, Joan Retallack, Anne
Tardos

www.cueartfoundation.org


--TUESDAY 1/22--

Drew Gardner's Poetics Orchestra @ The Living Theater

I'll be conducting The Poetics Orchestra, 8:00pm, The Living Theater,
21 Clinton St., NYC

featuring: Gene Cawley, Ty Cumbie, Steve Dalachinsky, Katie
Degentesh, Francois Grillot, James Ilgenfritz, Daniel Nester, Sharon
Mesmer

with: Ty Cumbie's Musetry Project!

http://www.livingtheatre.org/livingmusic.html

Wednesday, January 16

Didi Menendez has a blog

Sardines and Orange

Monday, January 14

Contradicta






Those who always know where they are going are not very interesting when they get there.




***********************



Only that which is freely given can be freely taken.

Sunday, January 6

Toni Simon- the Mipoesias Art Gallery

Free Fall- the Mipoesias Art Gallery

************

Contradicta



Ask your feet to take you where your mind won't go.




******************



Understanding the world and its needs may tell me why I should give; but it is understanding myself and my own needs that tells me why I am able to give.

***********************

Tom Beckett discusses Jean Vengua's new book of poetry Prau

Friday, December 28

Ron Silliman Reviews OCHO 14

Silliman's Blog

Sunday, December 23

Monday, December 17

Friday, December 14

From The Ontological Museum


The Spam Poetry Game

In one of my nocturnal wandering of Yahoo, I came across the following group of spam poems, created from a game I participated in in May of this year, the link for the complete selection above.


Department of Linguistic Records



THE SPAM POETRY GAME
Round Two - 27 Entries!
You'll want to have plenty of time to study this wonderful selection of spam poetry most of which used the same cluster of random words and phrases. Each poet brought their own style and sensibility to the words. Some people offered a number of works and some offered works that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the directions for this game. But that's poets for you (or possibly people who cannot read instructions).

BELOW THE RESULTS FROM OUR POETS


Mon 5/7/2007 9:57 PM

First half and last line complete the mirrored stochasticative...

storms ~ emote
reputation ~ radarman
wrong ~ toward
only on the ~ alt no Zerbo
hand grasp ~ spurge avow
love more ~ Ham rag
tempests ~ nonprint
end enemies ~ lament lazy
remember ~ adrenal
there no england ~ brogan an craft
lessen days ~ guff vassal
freedom ~ malevo
however ~ several
customer death ~ Wtoeh rewatow
wrong paradise ~ laborat zonalt

but part of the common ~ runner alt or boy tod

Remainder
[Skillful pilots gain their much my political life, but no who mixes the pleasant with the useful. I have had a lot of there is much error. I never forgive, dignity of any but I always forget. He gains shortcut to life. Law everyone's there is glory approval of, life is a learned. Honesty is a question of right or not a matter of policy. Everyone complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody of his judgment. Malt does more than Milton can to justify to man.]

0!Z!^!P P!^VP
Mon 5/7/2007 10:06 PM

Skillful pilots
enemies that I can remember

part of the Common
is
the hand that does not grasp


God's ways of freedom

the pleasant with the useful.
An apology mixes
shortcut to life

of his memory
love the more


Remainder
reputation from storms and your wrong.? Bah! adversaries in alights only on . The greater the difficulty If you tempests. To the end . There is no of England. lesson imperfectly The bird our days Disgusting! wrong, Cowardly! Beneath the gentleman, however be. Where customer to death, you can't wrong he might go in paradise surmounting it. gain their much my political life, but no who I have had a lot of there is much error. I never forgive, dignity of any but I always forget. He gains shortcut to life. Law everyone's there is glory approval of, life is a learned. Honesty is a question of right or not a matter of policy. Everyone complains of the badness , but nobody of his judgment. Malt does more than Milton can to justify to man.

Jim Piat
Mon 5/7/2007 11:29 PM

apology


I have had
a lot of
skillful
political
pilots
grasp
reputation
from
difficulty

and
there is
England
God's
Law
Honesty
reputation
judgment
glory
life

cowardly
enemies
disgusting
storms
badness
death
freedom
memory
love

I
never
justify
error
but
I always
forget
dignity

life is a
wrong
shortcut
where
the
tempests
end
paradise
imperfectly

beneath
the
gentleman
customer


Bah!
bird

[remainder words]
is part of the Common wrong. An in alights only on the hand that does not grasp. The greater If forgive you t more. end that I can remember. There is no of lesson our days ways however be. to, you can't he might go in surmounting it. gain their much my, but no who mixes pleasant with useful there is much. I never of any but always forget. He to everyone's there is approval of, is a learned. is a question of right or not a matter of. Everyone complains of of his, but nobody of his judgment. Malt does more than Milton can to justify to man

Nick Piombino
Tue 5/8/2007 8:40 AM


Malt does more to Milton
than the policy of England.

God’s reputation mixes
skillful approval of
the cowardly customer with
the law of death.

Everyone alights honesty.
The tempest’s political badness
is surmounting dignity.

A gentleman always
gains adversaries.
To the enemies I can
remember, I hand no apology.
I never forgive you and
your wrong judgment.

A common bird complains
of the error of his memory.

If you love nobody, life
is a disgusting matter.

A lesson of my life:
There is no shortcut
to paradise.

Pilots in storms grasp
the difficulty in life.

Beneath glory, there is only
that question of right or wrong.

He can’t imperfectly forget
that much useful freedom.

Everyone’s end is pleasant,
However wrong he might be.
Bah!

But I go to where man
is to justify his ways.

But who have our days
learned from? There is
the greater part of their gain,
but not much more.

Remainder
An, on, it, the had, lot, any can, not, of, that, of, the, does

Kathy Burkett
Tue 5/8/2007 8:41 AM

[reputation]

reputation from
storms and your wrong. An apo
logy? Bah! adver


[only on the hand]

saries in alights
only on the hand that does
not grasp. The greater


[to the end]

the difficulty
If you love the more tempests.
To the end enem


[ies, there is no england]

ies that I can rem
ember. There is no
of England. lesson imper


[the bird]

fectly The bird our
days God's ways of freedom
Disgusting! wrong, Cow


[beneath the gentleman]

ardly! Beneath the
gentleman, however be.
Where customer to


[death, you can't wrong]

death, you can't wrong he
might go in paradise sur
mounting it. Skillful


[pilots gain their life]

pilots gain their much
my political life, but
no who mixes the


[i have had a lot]

pleasant with the use
ful. I have had a lot of
there is much error.


[i never forgive]

I never forgive,
dignity of any but
I always forget.


[law]

He gains shortcut to
life. Law everyone's there is
glory approval


[honesty is a question]

of, life is a learned.
Honesty is a question
of right or not a


[everyone complains]

matter of polic
y. Everyone complains of
the badness of his


[malt does more]

memory, but no
body of his judgment. Malt
does more than


[the common man]

Milton can to just
ify to man. is part of
the Common



(titles have been [added] but are all taken directly from the text of each haiku from which they are sampled)

Allan Revich http://www.digitalsalon.com

Wednesday, December 12

OCHO 14 Now Available on
Kindle
****************
Rod Smith's "Deed" Reviewed in The Nation
A Kind of Waiting Always by Joshua Clover

Monday, December 3

So Young

Mark Young, who is included in OCHO 14 with four beautiful poems (Genji Monogatatari I-IV), now has a video of his poetry up on The Continental Review

Get the whole story on Mark Young's Gamma Ways

********************

We are proud to announce the publication of OCHO 14, available to order now at

LuLu/OCHO 14

guest edited by Nick Piombino, cover art by Toni Simon. With poetry by

Charles Bernstein
Ray DiPalma
Alan Davies
Elaine Equi
Nada Gordon
Mitch Highfill
Brenda Iijima
Kimberly Lyons
Sharon Mesmer
Tim Peterson
Corinne Robins
Jerome Sala
Gary Sullivan
Mark Young
Nico Vassilakis

Publisher: Menendez Publishing
Copyright: © 2007 OCHO Contributors Standard Copyright License

Paperback book $16.94
Printed: 181 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding, black and white interior ink
Description:
OCHO # 14 guest edited by Nick Piombino. Featuring Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies, Ray DiPalma, Elaine Equi, Nada Gordon, Kimberly Lyons, , Mitch Highfill, Brenda Iijima, Sharon Mesmer, Tim Peterson, Corinne Robins, Jerome Sala, Gary Sullivan, Mark Young and Nico Vassilakis. Cover art by Toni Simon.

Go to the LuLu link above to see the cover art, and a preview that includes an introduction to the issue.

Friday, November 30

The Master's Voice

"Why the work succeeds is because both its discrete as well as its combinatory elements are expressive and not merely 'illustrative'."

Ray DiPalma

*************************************************
Mira Schor

terrific painter and writer, coeditor with Susan Bee of M/E/A/N/I/N/G, author of an excellent book of essays about art titled *Wet* (on painting, feminism and art culture from Duke U), has work in a group show in Williamsburg titled

Air Kissing: An Exhibition Of Contemporary Art About The Art World, curated by Sasha Archibald.

The exhibition is at Momenta Art 359 Bedford Street, between S. 4th and S. 5th, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, through December 17.

Check out Mira Schor's website at:

Mira Schor.com

*

A view of a previous show of MIra Schor's here:

Smack Mellon Studiios
*******************************************************

In January, 2007 someone invited me so I wrote a poem and sent it to Dan Waber a couple of weeks later for his ars poetica website because I liked the idea behind the site. Some time after that I was curious as to why it had not appeared. Dan politely wrote back that he was getting so many submissions that my poem would come out in approximately nine months!

Here is the link for the site (which no doubt most of you have seen, but even if you have, it is certainly worth visiting again): Ars Poetica

and here is the archived link for my poem posted on November 21:
Ars Poetica Archive

Saturday, November 24

Contradicta




Know one thing, say one thing, do one thing well, all goes well, boring as hell.






*************************




A little knowledge is a risky thing, a little chaos is a creative thing, a little chuzpah is everything.

Thursday, November 22

dpqp visualizing poetics- A Little Something About Crag Hill

dbqp-More on Geof and Crag's reading

Although I had met Geof Huth once before, I had never met Crag Hill until hearing him and Geof do this wonderful reading this past Friday evening at the Stain Bar in Williamsburg, Brookyn. Then yesterday I found these terrfic posts by Geof.

****************

The following Sunday, 16 poets read at the EOAGH reading, organized and presented by Tim Peterson at Unnameable Books. Here are some photos Tim Peterson posted on Mappemunde::

Mappemunde- EOAGH reading

Mappemunde-EOAGH reading

Mappemunde

****************

Gregory Vincent St Thomasino did a fine reading for EOAGH at Unnameable Books

Monday, November 19

Contradicta



It is intelligent to despise stupidity yet even more intelligent to comprehend it.



********


The weak respect cunning more than kindness but the cunning know they are more feared than loved. So in time the cunning get weak from loneliness while the kind grow strong with trust.

***************************

On My Desk


Benjamin Friedlander, "The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes", Subpress
"Many a wounded category drawn
from portraits of a gotten life
has disabused me of the contact high
I dreamt across on ruined nights"

Renee Daumal, "You've Always Been Wrong", University of Nebraska
"Thorughout their histories, India and Tibet have experienced more than any other land a tremendous abundance of attempts to think. And more than any other land their priesthood has always found a way to appropriate all those manifestations of thought and turn them into vehicles for theocratic power."

Crag Hill and Geof Huth, *sightings and hearings*, pdqp (for their Stain Bar reading, 11/16/07)
"Driving above Palouse river on River road, I rode into another time, Around a bend, I ran nto the low-flying path of a blue heron. It flew high enough for us both to miss, then veered into time before human time, This bird, this flight, this river." (Crag Hill)

"Whenever he wrote something on a pad of paper, he saved only the blank sheets filled with vague indentations." (Geof Huth)

Geof Huth, "Out of Character", Paper Kite
(visual poems: letters that walk, dance, move, writhe, write and thrive)

Brenda IIjima, "Animate, Inanimate Aims", Litmus
"Reminiscent search parties
Their shoulders rustle festive streets
Nocturne slow merges in spurs
Suspicion branches around rose bushes
Collective cries mobilize a movement
Kick over inert signs
Mad rough lineage tied to swords"

Jonathan Lethem, "The Disapointment Artist", Doubleday
"I don't think I was autistic, but like an autistic child I wanted the volume turned down. Though consciously thrilled by the adult lives around me, and the odd but definite privilages my commuinion with their variety had bestowed, I was unconciously seeking hiding places."

Nico Vassilakis, "Text Loses Time", ManyPenny
"Writing a history for
each thing you own.
A framed photo of two
friends. Perhaps
Pennsylvania. On the cycling
team. Date unknown. The
objects that follow
you from one living
situation to another.
And what house do you
recall having no door."

Dana Ward, "The Wrong Tree", Dusie
"You should tell everyone swimmingly!
So much it hurts!
Every year a new holiday day!
& that party!
sleepy eyed Rilke in spiritous bangles!
Thinking elliptically rote thoughts about a concession stand!"

Sunday, November 18

EOAGH already!

EOAGH #4


SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18
5 PM at Unnameable Books

A Poetry Reading Celebrating the Launch of
EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts
Issue 4

456 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, NY
FREE

Featuring:
Gilbert Adair
Cara Benson
Joel Chace
James Cook
Alan Davies
Thom Donovan
Joanna Fuhrman
Rebecca Gopoian
Dan Hoy
Sara Marcus
Stephen Paul Miller
Nick Piombino
Tim Peterson
Evelyn Reilly
Edwin Rodriguez
Gregory Vincent St Thomasino
Shelly Taylor
Adam Tobin
Lynn Xu

*****************************************************************

Contradicta





It is intelligent to despise stupidity yet even more intelligent to comprehend it.





********




The weak respect cunning more than kindness but the cunning know they are more feared than loved. So in time the cunning get weak from loneliness while the kind grow strong with trust.

Friday, November 16

See You This Friday, In Person or in Spirit: Huth & Hill, Stain Bar Brooklyn, 11-16-07

Poets Crag Hill and Geof Huth will give a reading entitled "Sightings & Hearings" at the Stain Bar in Brooklyn, New York, on November 16th. Combining their interest in visual, sound, and even textual poetry, they will read and perform, together and apart, a wide range of works. This will be the first time Hill and Huth have performed together since their performance in March of this year, so don't miss this east coast appearance. If a reading isn't enough encouragement, Stain Bar has a great selection of New-York-only beer and other drinks.

Crag Hill and Geof Huth
Friday, 16 November 2007
6:30 pm
Stain Bar
766 Grand Street
Brooklyn, New York
718/387-7840
To get to Stain Bar, take the L train to Grand and go one block west to 766 Grand Street by the way of Graham Avenue and Humboldt Street.

Bios of the Performers:

Crag Hill has been exploring the world through the prisms of verbal and visual language since his re-birth in the 1970s. Writer of numerous chapbooks and/or other print interventions, including Dict (Xexoxial Endarchy), Another Switch (Norton Coker Press), and Yes James, Yes Joyce (Loose Gravel Press), he has also once edited two magazines, Score and its successor Spore. His latest book, co-edited with Bob Grumman, is Writing to be Seen, the first major anthology of visual poetry in 30 years. He writes frequently about poetry at his blog, Crg Hill's poetry scorecard .

Geof Huth is a writer of textual and visual poetry who has lived on most of the continents on earth. He writes frequently about visual poetry, especially on his weblog, dbqp: visualizing poetics. His chapbooks include "Analphabet," "The Dreams of the Fishwife," "ghostlight," "Peristyle," "To a Small Stream of Water (or Ditch)," and "wreadings." Huth edited &2: an/thology of Pwoermds, the first-ever anthology of one-word poems. His most recent books are a box of pages entitled water vapour and the chapbook, "Out of Character."

Sunday, November 11

Contradicta




To acknowledge your feelings is to sometimes feel unsure. To not know your feelings is to always feel unsure.




*************




To those who can listen, even the melody of sadness lingers.

Friday, November 9

A Flurry of Furries

Marianne Shaneen's Film-in-Progress on the Furries Featured on

Boing Boing

*******************

Unnameable Secrets/EOAGH Said

Unnameable Books featured in Time Out
Tim Peterson's literary website featured at Adam's Bookshop on November 18

this just in from Adam Tobin

Dear friends of Unnameable Books:

Don't tell anyone, but the editors of Time Out New York have appointed YOUR FAVORITE BOOKSTORE as one of NYC's 50 Essential Secrets. Unnameable Books also made the list. Page 40 of last week's issue features a large and excellent photograph of our secret back wall, in which you can see, too, if your eyes are keen, our secret collection of old issues of Botteghe Oscure (an important international literary journal of the 1940s and 50s). The caption reads, in part, "With a cluttered, top-shelf inventory that could keep you reading great tomes for the next decade, [Unnameable] is a definite
boon to Brooklyn's literati."

The text of the article can be found online at http://www.timeout.com/newyork/article/features/23933/44.html, but the
photograph looks much better on paper. Please find a copy of the magazine, cut out page 40, and wheatpaste it prominently on your front door, or on the side of any major architectural landmark.

There do exist, however, more and larger, more important secrets in the world.

The most immediate of these, concerning our ongoing Sunday afternoon readingseries, regards one SARAH LANG, who has written a book of poetry. The book is called THE WORK OF DAYS, is published by Coach House, and is just out new
now. Here's what Carole Maso says about the book: "With ferocity and tenderness, with and without hope these staggering poems astonish at every turn. One gets up from them changed." But don't trust Carole Maso: come see the poems for yourself, and hear them read aloud, by their very author, THIS SUNDAY at 5 PM, here at Unnameable Books. That's, like, tomorrow. November 11.

THE VERY NEXT SUNDAY -- to wit, the 18th of November -- Unnameable will host a release party for Issue 4 of the internet's premiere unpronouncable literary journal: EOAGH: A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS, edited by the inestimable Tim Peterson, whom we esteem greatly. Various writers will read from their work. This, too, will occur at 5 PM. Previous issues of EOAGH can be found at http://chax.org/eoagh/ , whereat Issue 4 will appear sometime before the release party...

More authors will appear on Sunday afternoons in December at 5 pm: notably, Shelley Jackson on Dec. 9 and the Harp & Altar special on Dec. 2: Lynn Crawford, Johannah Rodgers, and Corey Frost

Yrs.,
Adam


***
***

Please do consider ordering your Christmas gifts through Unnameable Books: we can order any book in print, and ship anywhere in the world. And we give a 20% discount for most special orders. Amazon, schmamazon! Send us an
email ( unnameablebooks@earthlink.net ), or call us on the telephone (718 789 1534).

***
***

THE UNNAMEABLE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Please mark your calendars with a very special symbol. All events are free of charge, but not wheelchair accessible:

***
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 11
5 PM at Unnameable Books
Sarah Lang (THE WORK OF DAYS, Coach House Books)

Sarah Lang was born on a Saturday in the winter of 1980, in Northwestern Canada. In the spring of 2004, she completed her MFA at Brown University. She began work on her PhD in Chicago in the fall of 2005. Her work, which incudes poetry, prose, personal, critical and medical essays, ahs been published in Canada, Great Britain and the United States. She has translated work from Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Ukrainian, Japanese and Mandarin. THE WORK OF DAYS is her first book. She now lives in, and writes about, airports. She intends to orbit the earth before her projected death in 2056. www.arimneste.com / www.theworkofdays.com

***

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18
5 PM at Unnameable Books

A Poetry Reading Celebrating the Launch of EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts Issue 4

456 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, NY
FREE

Featuring:
Gilbert Adair
Cara Benson
Joel Chace
James Cook
Thom Donovan
Joanna Fuhrman
Dan Hoy
Sara Marcus
Stephen Paul Miller
Nick Piombino
Tim Peterson
Evelyn Reilly
Edwin Rodriguez
Shelly Taylor
Adam Tobin (yes, that's me!)
Lynn Xu

EOAGH Issue 4
Edited by Tim Peterson

will be available at
http://chax.org/eoagh
any day now

***

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2
5 PM at Unnameable Books
Harp & Altar Presents:

Johannah Rodgers
&
Corey Frost
&
Lynn Crawford

LYNN CRAWFORD's books include Simply Separate People and Fortification Resort--from Black Square editions--and Solow and Blow--put out by Hard Press. Her work appears in the anthologies, Fetish (Four Walls Eight Windows), and The Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Press, London). She edits the cultural arts journal, published by Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit,
DETROIT:.

JOHANNAH RODGERS is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. Her chapbook Necessary Fictions was published by Sona Books in 2003, and her short stories and essays have appeared in Fiction, CHAIN Arts , The Brooklyn Rail, Pierogi Press, and Fence. Her book sentences, a collection of stories, essays, and artwork, was published this year by Red Dust Press.

COREY FROST's stories have appeared in Matrix , Geist, The Walrus , and other magazines. He was named the Best Spoken Word Artist in 2001 by the Montreal Mirror . He is currently writing a book about spoken word scenes around the world as part of a doctoral dissertation. A CD of his performances, Bits World: Exciting Version, is forthcoming. His books
include The Worthwhile Flux (2004) and My Own Devices: Airport Version (2006), both published by Conundrum Press.

***

SUNDAY DECEMBER 9
5 PM at Unnameable Books
SHELLEY JACKSON (author of Half Life, The Melancholy of Anatomy, Skin, Patchwork Girl, etc.)

***
***

Unnameable Books
456 Bergen St.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
unnameablebooks@earthlink.net
(718) 789-1534
www.unnameablebooks.net

***
***

Friday, November 2

David Abel and Mitch Highfill

gave first rate readings at Unnameable Books this past Sunday.

Mitch, who lives in Park Slope, read, among many other superb works, his stunning prose poem "Lonesome Town."

David Abel, former owner of the Bridge Bookstore in Manhattan, and who now resides in Portland, Oregon, read many moving, excellent poems, among them an ongoing work he calls *Sweepings*. I am paraphrasing here an aphorism I have not stopped thinking about since that memorable evening at one of New York's greatest used bookstores:

"At last I met the girl of my dreams and now all I ever do is sleep."

Saturday, October 27

Contradicta






In a world parched by dessicated words and empty lies, silence tastes sweet.




**




Making something crucial out of what is unimportant is the way of the fool and the cruel.

Saturday, October 20

Contradicta



Look back- it's always the same. One more moment and you would have found it.



*****



If you haven't asked a question, you haven't said anything.





(in celebration of the tiny #3 reading at the St. Mark's Poetry Project 10/19/07)

Friday, October 19

This Friday, October 19th at 10pm the tiny is hosting an event in
celebration of our third issue at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's
Church. We hope you all can make it.

Friday, October 19th, 10PM

Come out and celebrate the recent release of the third issue of the
annual print poetry journal the tiny

With readings by: Nick Piombino, Anthony Hawley, Kristi Maxwell,
Andrea Baker and Will Edmiston

Music TBA

Issues of the tiny will be available for sale at a reduced rate of $10
(regularly $12)

The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church
131 E. 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

http://thetinyjournal.com

Thanks, and best wishes,
Gina & Gabriella




*****************************************


Highly recommended reading at a highly recommended bookstore...

Get ready to hear a great reading and find great books...

Tell all your friends...

Spend your money on great books- free admission...


You are cordially invited to a poetry reading by

David Abel & Mitch Highfill


Sunday, October 28
5:00 pm

free admission


Unnameable Books

456 Bergen Street
(between 5th Avenue and Flatbush)
Brooklyn, NY

718-789-1534
unnameablebooks@earthlink.net
www.unnameablebooks.net

Wednesday, October 3

Fall Segue Reading Series at the Bowery Poetry Club

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue Foundation. For more information, please visit www.seguefoundation.com Segue Foundation or call the Bowery Poetry Club at (212) 614-0505. Curators: Oct.-Nov. by Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan, Dec.-Jan. by Brenda Iijima & Evelyn Reilly.


OCTOBER 6 JENNIFER MOXLEY and MAGGIE O'SULLIVAN Jennifer Moxley is the author of four books of poetry: The Line (Post-Apollo 2007), Often Capital (Flood 2005), The Sense Record (Edge 2002; Salt 2003) and Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons 1996; Salt 2003). Her memoir The Middle Room was published by Subpress in 2007. Maggie O' Sullivan is a British poet, performer and visual artist. She has been making and performing her work internationally since the late 1970s. Her most recent publication is Body of Work (Reality Street, 2007), which brings together for the first time all of her long out-of-print small-press booklets from the 1980s.
OCTOBER 13 ANDREW LEVY and BARRETT WATTEN Andrew Levy is a contributing writer on President of the United States' The Big Melt (Factory School, 2007), and he is the author of a dozen books of poetry, including Ashoka (Zasterle Books), Paper Head Last Lyrics (Roof Books), Curve 2 (Potes & Poets Press), Values Chauffeur You (O Books), and Democracy Assemblages (Innerer Klang). He is editor, with Roberto Harrison, of the poetry journal Crayon. Barrett Watten founded the Grand Piano reading series in 1976 and edited and published This from 1971. His most recent books are Bad History (Atelos, 1998), Progress/Under Erasure (Green Integer, 2004), and The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2003), which won the 2004 René Wellek Prize.
OCTOBER 20 K. LORRAINE GRAHAM and TAO LINK. Lorraine Graham is the author of three chapbooks, Terminal Humming (Slack Buddha), See it Everywhere (Big Game Books), and Large Waves to Large Obstacles (forthcoming from Take Home Project), and the recently released chapdisk Moving Walkways (Narrowhouse Recordings). She has just completed the extended manuscript of Terminal Humming. Tao Lin is the author of a novel, EEEEE EEE EEEE (Melville House, 2007), a story-collection, Bed (Melville House, 2007), and two poetry collections, You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am (Action Books, 2006), and the forthcoming Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Melville House, Spring 2008).
OCTOBER 27 ROB FITTERMAN and MEL NICHOLS Sandwiched between Shell and Mobil gas stations, Robert Fitterman grew up in a pre-sprawl St. Louis suburb named Creve Coeur (broken heart). He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon), Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House Books) and, most recently, War, the musical (Subpress, 2006) with Dirk Rowntree. Mel Nichols lives in Washington, DC, and teaches at George Mason University. Her chapbooks are Day Poems (Edge Books 2005) and The Beginning of Beauty, Part 1: hottest new ringtones, mnichol6 (Edge 2007),
NOVEMBER 3 CHRIS FUNKHOUSER and MADELINE GINS Chris Funkhouser was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2006 to lecture and conduct research in Malaysia, where his CD-ROM eBook Selections 2.0 was produced at Multimedia University. Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995, a history of pre-WWW computerized poetry, has just been published by University of Alabama Press. Madeline Gins: B-b-b-b-b-orn and intends never to die. Three of her eleven books: What the President Will Say and Do!; Helen Keller or Arakawa; Making Dying Illegal (co-author Arakawa). Three of five Arakawa + Gins' built works: Bioscleave House–East Hampton; Site of Reversible Destiny–Yoro; Reversible Destiny Lofts–Mitaka.
NOVEMBER 10 SEAN COLE and BRANDON DOWNING Sean Cole is the author of the chapbooks By the Author and Itty City and of a full-length collection of postcard poems called The December Project. He is also a reporter for public radio. In his spare time, he writes bios like this one. Brandon Downing's books of poetry include LAZIO (Blue Books, 2000), The Shirt Weapon (Germ, 2002), and Dark Brandon (Faux, 2005). A new DVD collection, Dark Brandon // The Filmi, was just released, and he's currently completing a monograph of his literary collages under the title Lake Antiquity.
NOVEMBER 17 BENJAMIN FRIEDLANDER and DANA WARD Benjamin Friedlander is the author of several books of poetry, most recently The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes (Subpress, 2007). His edition of Robert Creeley's Selected Poems 1945-2005 is forthcoming from the University of California Press. He is currently completing a book on Emily Dickinson and the Civil War. Dana Ward is the author of The Wrong Tree (Dusie, 2007), Goodnight Voice (House Press, 2007) and other chapbooks. OMG recently published an edition of For Paris in Prison with images by the artist Matthew Hughes Boyko. NOVEMBER 24 NO READING–Happy holiday!
DECEMBER 1 TYRONE WILLIAMS and SUEYEUN JULIETTE LEE Tyrone Williams's book, c.c., was published by Krupskaya Books in 2002; the chapbooks AAB and Futures, Elections were published in 2004; and the chapbook Musique Noir was published in 2006. A new book, On Spec, is forthcoming from Omnidawn in 2008. Sueyeun Juliette Lee currently lives in Philadelphia where she edits Corollary Press, a small chapbook series dedicated to new work by writers of color. Her chapbooks include Perfect Villagers (Octopus Books) and Trespass Slightly in (Coconut Poetry). Her first book, That Gorgeous Feeling, is forthcoming from Coconut Books next spring.
DECEMBER 8 JESS MYNES and ANTHONY HAWLEY Jess Mynes is author of birds for example (CARVE Editions), In(ex)teriors (Anchorite Press) and Full On Jabber (Martian Press), a collaboration with Christopher Rizzo. His If and When (Katalanche Press), Recently Clouds, a collaboration with Aaron Tieger, and Sky Brightly Picked (Skysill Press) are forthcoming this year. Anthony Hawley is the author of The Concerto Form (Shearsman Books, 2006) and four chapbooks of poetry: Vocative (Phylum Press, 2004), Afield (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004), Record-breakers (Ori is the New Apple Press, 2007), and Autobiography/Oughtabiography (Counterpath, 2007). His second book of poems, Paradise Gelatin, will be published in 2008.
DECEMBER 15 BARBARA JANE REYES and BHANU KAPILBarbara Jane Reyes is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. She lives with her husband Oscar Bermeo in Oakland. Bhanu Kapil teaches writing at Naropa University and Goddard College. She is the author of three full-length collections: The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works), and Humanimal (forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press).
DECEMBER 22 & 29 NO READING–Happy holidays!

JANUARY 5 JENNIFER FIRESTONE and LINDA RUSSOJennifer Firestone is the author of Holiday, forthcoming from Shearsman Books. Her chapbooks include Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and from Flashes (Sona Books). She is the co-editor of the anthology Letters To Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics and Community, forthcoming from Saturnalia Books.Linda Russo is the author of MIRTH (Chax Press, 2007) and o going out (Potes & Poets, 1999), among other books. She has published essays on Bernadette Mayer & Hannah Weiner, ecopoetics, and Joanne Kyger, including the preface to Kyger's About Now: Collected Poems.
JANUARY 12 TISA BRYANT and ROBERT KOCIK isa Bryant's work includes Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), and Tzimmes (A+Bend Press, 2000). She is currently creating [the curator], a meditation on identity, visual culture and the lost films of auteur Justine Cable, and Playing House, an exploration of work, writing and domesticity. Robert Kocik is a poet, essayist, builder, and eleemosynary entrepreneur. His niche, architecturally, is the designing/building of missing civic services. His most recent publications are Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2000) and Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007). He is currently researching the Prosodic Body—an exacting aesthetics based on prosody as the bringing forth of everything.
JANUARY 19 RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSIS and ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS Rachel Blau DuPlessis's two most recent books are Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing, 2007) and Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work (University of Alabama Press, 2006). She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Temple University. Anna Moschovakis is the author of a book of poems, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and two chapbooks. She volunteers as an editor and designer at Ugly Duckling Presse, for which she recently co-edited The Drug of Art, the selected works of Czech poet Ivan Blatny (in English translation).
JANUARY 26 SUSAN HOWE and JAMES THOMAS STEVENSSusan Howe's most recent books are The Midnight (New Directions) and Kidnapped (Coracle Books). Two CDs, Thiefth and Souls of the Labadie Tract, in collaboration with the musician/ composer David Grubbs were recently released on the Blue Chopsticks label. A new collection of poems, as well as a re-print of her critical study My Emily Dickinson will be published by New Directions. James Thomas Stevens is the author of seven books of poetry, including A Bridge Dead in the Water, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, and Bulle/Chimere. Stevens is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and a 2005 National Poetry Series Finalist.

James T Sherry
Segue Foundation
(212) 493-5984, 8-340-5984

Sunday, September 30

New Books from Otoliths

Otoliths at LuLu

I'm more and more pleased to have a book on this ever growing, first rate list of publications. I can't wait to read Otolith's new books from Jordan Stempleman, Adam Fieled, Jim Leftwich, Frances Raven and Alex Gildzen.

Saturday, September 29

Peter Straub and Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire's final film role was the 1981 adaptation of Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story. This horror film was also the last for two of his most prominent castmates, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

**
If you've never read a Peter Straub novel, you've got a treat in store, beginning with *If You Could See Me Now* (1977) of which Stephen King said: "Electrifying...My hands were as good as nailed to the book."

*************************
The Geometry of Hope- on view now at the Grey Art Gallery
100 Washington Square East

September 12- December 8, 2007

Tuesdays/Thursdays/Fridays 11 am to 6 pm
Saturdays 11am - 5 pm

An extensive, superb show of Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection

Friday, September 28

Tom Beckett Interviews Alan Davies

on E-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-V-a-l-u-e-s

*********************

Thanks to poezie pamflet for the link to my Argotist Online interview with Gregory Vincent St Thomasino

********************

Women of The Web: Interviews with Didi Menendez

Women of The Web

Sunday, September 23

Am Bushed/No More War

SEPT 25 / Tuesday:
8:30am / Rally at UN /
47th St & 1st Ave. /
Bush will be addressing the UN


SEPT 28 / Friday: War Resisters League Peace Awards
6:00pm Cocktail Party and Reception / 7:30pm Panel
Discussion
and Awards / 9:30 Dessert and Champagne / Program only
$10 / Receptions sliding scale
New York Society for Ethical Culture /
2 West 64th Street at Central Park West


SEPT 29 / Saturday: National March on Washington
Gather in front of Capitol at 11am
Rally begins 12 noon ?March steps off at 1:30pm

The Troops Out Now Headquarters is at: 55 West 17th
St. Suite #5C, New York, NY, 10011
212-633-6646 www.troopsoutnow.org
Email:info@troopsoutnow.org
**********************************
TEXT LOSES TIME - Don't Waste Another Minute

*fait accompli* recommends TEXT LOSES TIME by Nico Vassilakis

ManyPenny Press is pleased to announce the release of TEXT LOSES TIME by Nico Vassilakis. This necessary work spans roughly 15 years of the author‚s efforts in both textual and visual writing. It is Vassilakis‚ first full-length book.

TEXT LOSES TIME

Afterword by Nick Piombino

188 pp.

ISBN-10: 0-9798478-0-X

ISBN-13: 978-0-9798478-0-6



AUTHOR‚S STATEMENT:



This book intends to present both verbal and visual poetries as equal. Though notions of poetics have shifted and swerved, what has stayed solid throughout is that the alphabet, the word ˆ however arranged ˆ contains, within it, dual significance. First, the proto-historic role of the visual conveyance of represented fact. Second, the overriding desire of human utterance to substantiate existence. In conjoining these two models this book hopes to form a third, blurred value. Thought and experience are factors that accrue, while staring and writing help resolve and conclude. Text itself is an amalgam of units of meaning. As you stare at text you notice the visual aspects of letters. As one stares further, meaning loses its hierarchy and words discorporate and the alphabet itself begins to surface. Shapes, spatial relations and visual associations emerge as one delves further. Alphabetic bits or parts or snippets of letters can create an added visual vocabulary amidst the very text one is reading. One aim, to this end, is to merge and hinge visual and textual writing into workable forms. This book collects some of these experiments.


AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:


Nico Vassilakis was born in New York City in 1963. He has co-written and performed a one-man play about experimental composer Morton Feldman. Vassilakis is co-founder and curator for the Subtext Reading Series and editor of Clear-Cut: Anthology (A Collection of Seattle Writers). He has been a guest-editor of WOS#35: Northwest Concrete and Visual Poetry and his visual poetry videos have been shown worldwide at festivals and exhibitions of innovative language arts. In 1998, Vassilakis co-produced, with Rebecca Brown, a 24-hour „Gertrude Stein-a-thon.‰ His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Ribot, Caliban, Aufgabe, Chain, Talisman, Central Park and Golden Handcuffs Review. He works for Fantagraphic Books and lives in Seattle with his son, Quixote.

Chapbooks:

Askew (bcc press), Stampologue (RASP), Orange: A Manual (Sub Rosa Press), Diptychs: Visual Poems (Otolith), Pond Ring (nine muses books), sequence (Burning Press), Enoch and Aloe (Last Generation Press), The Colander (housepress), Flattened Missive (P.I.S.O.R. Publications), Species Pieces (gong press), KYOO (Burning Press) and others.

DVD:

CONCRETE: Movies (Sub Rosa Press)

CONTACT AND ORDERING INFORMATION:



ManyPenny Press

1111 E. Fifth St.

Moscow, ID 83843



$15.95 + $2 postage

Make checks payable to Crag Hill

(Pre-orders will be sent post-paid)

*********************************

Thanks to Ron Silliman and Nicholas Manning for their links to my recent Argotist Online interview with Gregory Vincent St Thomasino.

I've been anticipating a spirited rebuttal from a poet about my theories of creativity expressed in this interview. Somehow I'm not surprised to have seen this one in the comments section of Ron Silliman's blog from my friend Lanny Quarles:

phaneronoemikon said...
Man, Nick is a nice guy, but he needs to get off the psych-bong..

Creativity is a slippage of parent-idealization?

Whatever El Freudo of the hairy foot
Hobboes! I carry a can of Moustache Jelly so I attract more flies to the corpse circus...

Photon thrusters
are not about the parent jack..

man..
that is a racket

Friday, September 21

Will Every Pro War Senator Please Raise Your Hand And Tell Us That MoveOn Is The Problem and War Is The Solution?

Check This Out

Tuesday, September 18

Free Fall reviewed by Geof Huth

dbqp visualizing poetics

Sunday, September 16

2007

Police Arrest 189 During Anti-War Rally in D.C.< [Huffington Post]


Dozens Arrested in Protest Near Capitol [New York Times]


1967

Protesters Take To The Streets in New York [Rolling Stone]

"Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind".

-Bob Dylan


**

Thanks to the following blogs for the links to, and quotes from, my Argotist online interview with Gregory Vincent St Thomasino

Growing Nation

Listics

the Morning Line

Elsewhere

woods lot
[the following quote from the interview was posted on wood s lot September 9, along with, among other things, a tribute to Cesare Pavese, who was born on that date in 1908]
Nick Piombino interviewed
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino
The Argotist Online

The title *fait accompli* is intended as an ironic comment on the conventional viewpoint regarding time. The concept for the blog was to choose and post excerpts from my handwritten journals dating back to the 60's. Each passage was to correspond to ideas, feelings and concerns that I was concerned with that very day, thus creating a journal within a journal in an attempt to create a setting for synchronicities to occur: thus the subtitle of the blog, spellbound speculations, time travel. The blog had grown out of the dialogues I had sought out, mostly on the University of Buffalo listserv, after 9-11. The similarities between the war torn years of the 60's and the post 9-11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were, and are, inescapable. In fact, the phrase, fait accompli, is sometimes employed to characterize wartime events involving violence or political actions that politicians want to see regarded as final. What is done is done and there is no going back; the only choice is to aggressively respond.
For the most part, I do not conceive of time in this way, which probably results from my professional experience in the fields I have been practicing in for most of my life: writing, art and psychoanalysis. For me, time and history are recurrent, as in Freud's return of the repressed and repetition compulsion, the aphorisms of Heraclitus and the timeless insight of tribal shamans. Of course, there are the irreversible finalities of aging and death, utterly indisputable, except for religious believers and mystics, who usually don't completely deny these things but factor in their caveats.... (more)

Nick Piombino's book, fait accompli (Factory School)
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino edits eratio postmodern poetry