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.





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

Dustin Williamson

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

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

Blogging as Thinking

Gary Norris' DagZine is back!

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.




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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

The Form of Things

by Peter Ciccariello

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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.

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""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

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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

Nicholas Manning reviews Ocho 14 in Jacket

Elsewhere


and


Text Loses Time by Nico Vassilakis

in

Galatea's Resurrects #9

Contradicta




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





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

Everybody's Heading For

Big Bridge 2008

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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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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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

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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

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."

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

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Text Loses Time by Nico Vassilakis

a review on

fantographic books
by

Eric Reynolds

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The Remains of the Poet

Peter Ciccariello

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

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

Big Window

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Douglas Messerli Opens New Blog

Green Integer

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critiiphoria #1

Critiphoria

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"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)

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

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Lanny Quarles

has opened a new group blog

Havmophunic Transolutions

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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"

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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.

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


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

reservations required

Museum Reading

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.


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This just in from Mark Young

Otoliths 8


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

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.

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This Just In from Tom Beckett:

An Ex-Val Interview with Jessica Grim

Reviews of OCHO 15 published by Didi Menendez

The Montserrat Review