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."
Distribution Automatique
Saturday, October 27
Saturday, October 20
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
Check This Out
Tuesday, September 18
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
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
Saturday, September 15
Greenspan Rates the Presidents
For pure time travel, this is well worth reading
Newsweek via MSNBC
**
Kill For Oil: Greenspan tells the inside story [from the Huffington Post 9/15]
Greenspan Says Iraq War Was About Oil
Sunday Times Of London | Graham Paterson | September 15, 2007 11:14 PM
America's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush's economic policies.
For pure time travel, this is well worth reading
Newsweek via MSNBC
**
Kill For Oil: Greenspan tells the inside story [from the Huffington Post 9/15]
Greenspan Says Iraq War Was About Oil
Sunday Times Of London | Graham Paterson | September 15, 2007 11:14 PM
America's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush's economic policies.
Tuesday, September 11
Saturday, September 8
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino
has been interviewing me over the past couple of years. I can't begin to express the gratitude I feel for the hard work he has put into this, his patience and generosity. The interview is now up at The Argotist Online. Thanks also to the publisher, Jeffrey Side. The site also has a number of articles by GVST, other interviews conducted by him, including one with Colin Wilson, and some of his poetry. There are interviews on the site with Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer, Jack Foley, Joanne Kyger in conversation with Simon Pettet and many others and a rich poetry section as well, here:
The Argotist Online
has been interviewing me over the past couple of years. I can't begin to express the gratitude I feel for the hard work he has put into this, his patience and generosity. The interview is now up at The Argotist Online. Thanks also to the publisher, Jeffrey Side. The site also has a number of articles by GVST, other interviews conducted by him, including one with Colin Wilson, and some of his poetry. There are interviews on the site with Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer, Jack Foley, Joanne Kyger in conversation with Simon Pettet and many others and a rich poetry section as well, here:
The Argotist Online
"It Gives No Help..."
"if I am shocked at the undeserved suffering in the world, that shock is not thinking. Here is a little book of verse, the work of one well skilled in his art, but it is simply the shock and nothing more. Much of modern literature is of the same kind and it is worthless. It gives no help."
*Last Pages of a Journal* by Mark Rutherford (Oxford University Press, 1915)
"if I am shocked at the undeserved suffering in the world, that shock is not thinking. Here is a little book of verse, the work of one well skilled in his art, but it is simply the shock and nothing more. Much of modern literature is of the same kind and it is worthless. It gives no help."
*Last Pages of a Journal* by Mark Rutherford (Oxford University Press, 1915)
Thursday, September 6
An Actor Compares
Michael Lally (Lally's Alley) posts an insider view of Delpy's excellent *Two Days in Paris*, a movie dumbly panned by a some myopic critics.
*************
TEXT LOSES TIME by Nico Vassilakis
(pre-ordering info)
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
CONTACT AND ORDERING INFORMATION:
ManyPenny Press
1111 E. Fifth St.
Moscow, ID 83843
$15.95 + $2 postage
(Advance orders will receive the book post-paid.)
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 - however arranged - 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.
SAMPLE OF WORK FROM "TEXT LOSES TIME":
FROM "THE SCAFFOLDING"
The Rhymes of Vellum
A boy or girl, Vellum, blows a few papers in the wind It answers noise Hopping, hopped. Tapping, tapped Swim sweet twins swing twig Think of losing, serendipity or the wings of a sentence He will get them, but not tell you where they were I like to drink through my brother's center A finger's rose begins A shadow grows down the sidewalk Clapping, clapped
It helps to rip this box open Sound harbor, sound hole Blind rose is a very shape friend I want a shirt to visit my slacks Moon noose soon loose A good look at the cookbook - lots of o's - ghost epaulets on the shoulders of a paragraph Dishes mixes, buses guesses I sit down to work; I draw with my right hand The response sadly is never Living as wide as it gets Think sift You could fault the long moth, the dog lost in soft fog, but it's the song's cost, its crust I got frogs in my throat, a forehead throat Boris said, "Your throat's red." Timothy hums a nail into the wood I run uphill swimming The test isn't over The floor's hard The new girl at school Can you look at a book without getting caught on a line? Like radio, writing is a broadcast They found people in the mailbox A huge gem in a cage Susan flips back to the glossary Only a certain type of fastener The letter "R" in each corner of a page Unexpectedly the middle is empty Next, write your best trick Most banjo. Odd pretty piece asleep A drum whisking discard into cream In this way we raise our pigs on fire & Kenny is always six yards old The donkey said, "Enough." The donkey said, "English." Dark thoughts won't cure light sickness The ladder moved slightly throws the world in disarray The teacher's a bird and flies out the window They had found their clown center Art will say, "I like to pitch. What is your name?" Art will say, "Hi, I'm Art. I like to pitch. What's your name?" Slowly toward a large bird Paper hats, cats A lot of noise comes to visit Long thin water in a line of people I called you once today to say geese make a village of gold & both of my little friends like to sing. Their secret voices are beautiful Spray Spray Spray
COMMENTS ON TEXT LOSES TIME:
"Part nested Minimalist cubes and part laser light that won't diverge across distance, Nico Vassilakis' poetry seems to ask whether we are primates at play on a baseball diamond of memory and desire beside mural-lined public structures slipping toward infinite regression.
Richly iterative, these pairings and alphabets escape the mirror to thrill us with variation and sting all forms of complacency. Vassilakis extends Oulipian strategies: Perec references, lamellisections, crystalline build-outs and transpositions, a scat of nonrepresentational vocables, lettered whirlwinds giving speed for legibility, -- "extracting the gem through layers of gauze" and, other times, lowering a gem into a fold.
Can an argument between a machine that produces texts and "longhand into tiny notebooks" wake us up? In pain, "the throbbing thumb" makes us "attend to the living."
If Vassilakis revises the rock lyric "meet-the-new-boss, same-as-the-old-boss" to "meet the solipsistic era. same as the old
solipsistic era," is treatment to be had in a bar, a science lab, or will it reach us over the radio? Try a road trip, so "you can't afford to blink, to be blind for even a second" going through a colander out where dust is breeding and "glass traps lighting" like no scene you've seen in quite this way. Through crevices, perforations, punctures, piercings, pinholes, see
neighborhoods as "that place where organized sleeping happens." So, look for a faceted colony that "sometimes congeals.""
--Deborah Meadows
"Nico Vassilakis' Text Loses Time unhinges the folds of the book and the word; as the 'folded loose leafed sheets whiz past your ears' you can hear the echoes of meaning. The words flake off the page like aged paint leaving a patina of colour and meaning on the surface and a growing heap of signification at our feet. Here the means of writing rise up and turn
against our expectation, lurching into new spaces. Letters become tactile, meaning becomes rubbery, and both reading and writing become a new collaboration."
--derek beaulieu
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
(Advance orders will receive the book post-paid.)
________________________________________________________________________
Michael Lally (Lally's Alley) posts an insider view of Delpy's excellent *Two Days in Paris*, a movie dumbly panned by a some myopic critics.
*************
TEXT LOSES TIME by Nico Vassilakis
(pre-ordering info)
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
CONTACT AND ORDERING INFORMATION:
ManyPenny Press
1111 E. Fifth St.
Moscow, ID 83843
$15.95 + $2 postage
(Advance orders will receive the book post-paid.)
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 - however arranged - 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.
SAMPLE OF WORK FROM "TEXT LOSES TIME":
FROM "THE SCAFFOLDING"
The Rhymes of Vellum
A boy or girl, Vellum, blows a few papers in the wind It answers noise Hopping, hopped. Tapping, tapped Swim sweet twins swing twig Think of losing, serendipity or the wings of a sentence He will get them, but not tell you where they were I like to drink through my brother's center A finger's rose begins A shadow grows down the sidewalk Clapping, clapped
It helps to rip this box open Sound harbor, sound hole Blind rose is a very shape friend I want a shirt to visit my slacks Moon noose soon loose A good look at the cookbook - lots of o's - ghost epaulets on the shoulders of a paragraph Dishes mixes, buses guesses I sit down to work; I draw with my right hand The response sadly is never Living as wide as it gets Think sift You could fault the long moth, the dog lost in soft fog, but it's the song's cost, its crust I got frogs in my throat, a forehead throat Boris said, "Your throat's red." Timothy hums a nail into the wood I run uphill swimming The test isn't over The floor's hard The new girl at school Can you look at a book without getting caught on a line? Like radio, writing is a broadcast They found people in the mailbox A huge gem in a cage Susan flips back to the glossary Only a certain type of fastener The letter "R" in each corner of a page Unexpectedly the middle is empty Next, write your best trick Most banjo. Odd pretty piece asleep A drum whisking discard into cream In this way we raise our pigs on fire & Kenny is always six yards old The donkey said, "Enough." The donkey said, "English." Dark thoughts won't cure light sickness The ladder moved slightly throws the world in disarray The teacher's a bird and flies out the window They had found their clown center Art will say, "I like to pitch. What is your name?" Art will say, "Hi, I'm Art. I like to pitch. What's your name?" Slowly toward a large bird Paper hats, cats A lot of noise comes to visit Long thin water in a line of people I called you once today to say geese make a village of gold & both of my little friends like to sing. Their secret voices are beautiful Spray Spray Spray
COMMENTS ON TEXT LOSES TIME:
"Part nested Minimalist cubes and part laser light that won't diverge across distance, Nico Vassilakis' poetry seems to ask whether we are primates at play on a baseball diamond of memory and desire beside mural-lined public structures slipping toward infinite regression.
Richly iterative, these pairings and alphabets escape the mirror to thrill us with variation and sting all forms of complacency. Vassilakis extends Oulipian strategies: Perec references, lamellisections, crystalline build-outs and transpositions, a scat of nonrepresentational vocables, lettered whirlwinds giving speed for legibility, -- "extracting the gem through layers of gauze" and, other times, lowering a gem into a fold.
Can an argument between a machine that produces texts and "longhand into tiny notebooks" wake us up? In pain, "the throbbing thumb" makes us "attend to the living."
If Vassilakis revises the rock lyric "meet-the-new-boss, same-as-the-old-boss" to "meet the solipsistic era. same as the old
solipsistic era," is treatment to be had in a bar, a science lab, or will it reach us over the radio? Try a road trip, so "you can't afford to blink, to be blind for even a second" going through a colander out where dust is breeding and "glass traps lighting" like no scene you've seen in quite this way. Through crevices, perforations, punctures, piercings, pinholes, see
neighborhoods as "that place where organized sleeping happens." So, look for a faceted colony that "sometimes congeals.""
--Deborah Meadows
"Nico Vassilakis' Text Loses Time unhinges the folds of the book and the word; as the 'folded loose leafed sheets whiz past your ears' you can hear the echoes of meaning. The words flake off the page like aged paint leaving a patina of colour and meaning on the surface and a growing heap of signification at our feet. Here the means of writing rise up and turn
against our expectation, lurching into new spaces. Letters become tactile, meaning becomes rubbery, and both reading and writing become a new collaboration."
--derek beaulieu
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
(Advance orders will receive the book post-paid.)
________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, September 5
Saturday, September 1
Wednesday, August 29
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)