TONI SIMON will be reading at 4 PM at the Boog City Festival (Unnameable Books) from her forthcoming illustrated book Earth after Earth from Lunar Chandelier Press

SATURDAY AUGUST 6,
11:30 A.M.-9:00 P.M.

Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave.
Brooklyn

Free

8th Annual Small, Small Press Fair

Beginning with readings from authors of the exhibiting presses

12:00 p.m. Evie Shockley, Belladonna
12:10 p.m. Leigh Stein, Bone Bouquet
12:20 p.m. Cariah Lily Rosberg, Don’s Saddles and East Egg Press
12:30 p.m. Magus Magnus, Furniture Press
12:40 p.m. Helen Vitoria, Gigantic Sequins
12:50 p.m. Brenda Iijima, Least Weasel Chapbooks @ Propolis Press
1:00 p.m. Stephanie Gray, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
1:10 p.m. Joe Elliot, Lunar Chandelier
1:20 p.m. Ronna Lebo, Off the Park Press
1:30 p.m. Damian Weber (music)
1:50 p.m. Break

2:00 p.m. J. Hope Stein, Ping Pong
2:10 p.m. Tantra-zawadi, Poets Wear Prada
2:20 p.m. Lydia Cortes, Straw Gate Books
2:25 p.m. Dorothy Friedman August, White Rabbit zine
2:30 p.m. Emily Skillings, Stonecutter Journal
2:40 p.m. Lawrence Giffin, Tea Party Republicans Press
2:50 p.m. Ron Horning, Vanitas magazine and Libellum Books

3:00 p.m. Break

-----------------

3:10 p.m. Rebecca Satellite (music)
3:40 p.m. Paul Foster Johnson
3:50 p.m. Austin LaGrone
4:00 p.m. Toni Simon
4:10 p.m. Will Edmiston
4:20 p.m. Kimberly Lyons
4:30 p.m. Christine Hamm
4:40 p.m. Vyt Bakaitis
4:50 p.m. Martha King
5:00 p.m. Debrah Morkun
5:15 p.m. John Mulrooney
5:30 p.m. Justin Remer (music)

6:00 p.m. Break

6:10 p.m. Joanna Penn Cooper
6:20 p.m. Franklin Bruno
6:30 p.m. Tanya Larkin
6:45 p.m. Emily Einhorn (music)
7:15 p.m. Mary Austin Speaker
7:25 p.m. Jean-Paul Pecqueur
7:35 p.m. Jesse Seldess
7:45 p.m. Douglas Piccininni


Directions: 2, 3 to Grand Army Plaza,
C to Clinton-Washington avenues, Q to 7th Ave.
Venue is bet. Prospect Pl./St. Marks Ave.

* * * * * *

CHARLES BORKHUIS’ new one-act play “FLIPPER” will be presented

as part of the 2011 BOOG POETS’ THEATER FESTIVAL



Sunday, August 7 at 5:45 P.M.

at the ZINC BAR

82 W. 3rd St., NYC (btwn. Sullivan & Thompson Sts.)



FLIPPER

by Charles Borkhuis

directed by Chris Mirto

featuring Chandler Wild and Jason Martin

* * * * *

The new book from Argotist Online is

Fib Sequence by Larissa Shmailo

* * * * *

New and Selected Poems by Charles North

* * * * *

The Enormous Chorus by Frank Kuenstler

* * * *

Lens by Frank Kuenstler (Complete Book Online)_
Lens-sample page

The new book from Argotist online is A House in Summer- poetry by Maxine Chernoff

* * * * *


TONI SIMON will be reading at 4 PM at the Boog City Festival (Unnameable Books) from her forthcoming illustrated book Earth after Earth from Lunar Chandelier Press

SATURDAY AUGUST 6,
11:30 A.M.-9:00 P.M.

Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave.
Brooklyn

Free

8th Annual Small, Small Press Fair

Beginning with readings from authors of the exhibiting presses

12:00 p.m. Evie Shockley, Belladonna
12:10 p.m. Leigh Stein, Bone Bouquet
12:20 p.m. Cariah Lily Rosberg, Don’s Saddles and East Egg Press
12:30 p.m. Magus Magnus, Furniture Press
12:40 p.m. Helen Vitoria, Gigantic Sequins
12:50 p.m. Brenda Iijima, Least Weasel Chapbooks @ Propolis Press
1:00 p.m. Stephanie Gray, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
1:10 p.m. Joe Elliot, Lunar Chandelier
1:20 p.m. Ronna Lebo, Off the Park Press
1:30 p.m. Damian Weber (music)
1:50 p.m. Break

2:00 p.m. J. Hope Stein, Ping Pong
2:10 p.m. Tantra-zawadi, Poets Wear Prada
2:20 p.m. Lydia Cortes, Straw Gate Books
2:25 p.m. Dorothy Friedman August, White Rabbit zine
2:30 p.m. Emily Skillings, Stonecutter Journal
2:40 p.m. Lawrence Giffin, Tea Party Republicans Press
2:50 p.m. Ron Horning, Vanitas magazine and Libellum Books

3:00 p.m. Break

-----------------

3:10 p.m. Rebecca Satellite (music)
3:40 p.m. Paul Foster Johnson
3:50 p.m. Austin LaGrone
4:00 p.m. Toni Simon
4:10 p.m. Will Edmiston
4:20 p.m. Kimberly Lyons
4:30 p.m. Christine Hamm
4:40 p.m. Vyt Bakaitis
4:50 p.m. Martha King
5:00 p.m. Debrah Morkun
5:15 p.m. John Mulrooney
5:30 p.m. Justin Remer (music)

6:00 p.m. Break

6:10 p.m. Joanna Penn Cooper
6:20 p.m. Franklin Bruno
6:30 p.m. Tanya Larkin
6:45 p.m. Emily Einhorn (music)
7:15 p.m. Mary Austin Speaker
7:25 p.m. Jean-Paul Pecqueur
7:35 p.m. Jesse Seldess
7:45 p.m. Douglas Piccininni


Directions: 2, 3 to Grand Army Plaza,
C to Clinton-Washington avenues, Q to 7th Ave.
Venue is bet. Prospect Pl./St. Marks Ave.

* * * * * *

CHARLES BORKHUIS’ new one-act play “FLIPPER” will be presented

as part of the 2011 BOOG POETS’ THEATER FESTIVAL



Sunday, August 7 at 5:45 P.M.

at the ZINC BAR

82 W. 3rd St., NYC (btwn. Sullivan & Thompson Sts.)



FLIPPER

by Charles Borkhuis

directed by Chris Mirto

featuring Chandler Wild and Jason Martin

* * * * *

An Interview with Heriberto Ypez

Remembering Peter Seaton

Charles Bernstein is hard at work assembling all the known ms of Peter Seaton and all of his published works. Today he posted a bio of Peter Seaton and, kindly, a brief biographical sketch that I provided when he asked me some details concerning Peter.

Jacket 2

* * * *

The new ebook from Argotist Online is Mother Earth by Adam Fieled

The new ebook from Argotist online is Country Without A Name by Ann Bogle

Of “Country Without a Name”, Morgan Harlow writes: ‘Ann Bogle’s latest collection of memoir fiction, is a sequence of thoughts, dreams and conversations. Here white petunias are cut with scissors to make a name, values are placed as if they were tarot cards, and approximations of the sublime are revealed in mathematical detail. “Country Without a Name” recalls the work of Dada poet Tristan Tzara (whose name means “country” in Romanian) and the semi-autobiographical pharmaceutical quests and cut-up text collages of William S. Burroughs. Bogle rebels, defines and ultimately defies hierarchies. Her writing, manifesto-like, hints at what might have been learned from Andre Breton’s Nadja if we had been given her diary to read, along with the idea that non-being dwells in language the same as being does, or in Bogle’s words: ‘Not to be she is embodied’.

The new ebook from Argotist online is Harmonium by Don Share

Don Share is the senior editor of Poetry magazine, His blog isSquandermania

* * * * *

Complete Catalogue: Argotist Online Ebooks

* * * * *

Alain Badiou on You Tube: Beyond Positivism and Nihilism 2010

Getting to know Drew Gardner

* * * *

Drew Gardner on Rod Smith's New Poem, Conceptual Poetry and Flarfl

The new ebook from Argotist online is Respondings

“Respondings” is the second collection of poet Martin Stannard's reviews and writings about writing, this time selected from pieces published between 2004 and 2007. Often controversial and brutally honest, and never courting popularity, Stannard continues to question poets, poetry and himself in an effort to find out whatever there may be to find out. Stannard's writing has often been called "witty and outspoken". Others have just said it's really clever and funny. It's always interesting.

* * * * *

Gently Read Literature: July issue

The Poet’s Theater of Fiona Templeton: An Environmental View:
James Sherry

* * * * *

Esque

Contradicta

We've forgotten the endless, arid stretches of boredom in childhood that were replaced by an insatiable hunger for regard in later life.


* * *


When the strong feel deterred by kindness they become cruel; when the kind encounter cruelty they become compassionate. You know the rest.


* * * * *

An Interview with Christian Bok

* * * * *

Rae Armantrout interviewed by Amy King on the Argotist Online

* * * * *

Lyn Behrendt collages


* * * * *

Century of the Self [thanks to Nico Vassilakis for the link]

Poem in the Manner of John Edwards (Louise Mathias)

* * * *

Charles Bernstein interview with Adam Fitzgerald in The Brooklyn Rail

Charles Bernstein's Attack of the Difficult Poems Book Party AIR Gallery June 11

The New Ebook from Argotist Online is

Periods by Joel Chace. [Download free from LuLu]

The Incovenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman (Huffpost Education)

* * * *

Birthday Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan at 70

Squandermania and other foibles: Gary Sullivan's Ten Years in a Quandary and How Fl...

Squandermania and other foibles: Gary Sullivan's Ten Years in a Quandary and How Fl...: "To this day, wherever I meet Poetry readers they want to talk to me about flarf and what I think about it. Amazing. Well, Gary Sullivan..."

Books Received

Easter Halloween (Steve McLauglin), Infinite Unexplored Domain of Poetic Values, Principal Hand Editions, Philadelphia, 2011

"My life is like a/ little language, the only/thing listening,/ I have thought my audience./
Come on my little life-giver,/give your life, If this/should hot suffice, I ask/ what is the criteria?"....

"As the sad cliche goes,/broke writers/sell books to get by/And me? So broken, and not even a writer-/When I sell my books/I hope it is an act of pure/unrewarding/mortification"

[Steve McLaughlin explained to me after his reading at The Bowery Poetry Club this past Saturday that the poems in this, his first book, are parodies based on a character in a recent play he appeared in, thus the nom de plume "Easter Holloween",]

* *

A/small/magazine/in the form/of an/unbound sheaf,/assembled in the/spring of 2010/and reprinted in May 2011/for the occasion of/Steve McLaughlin's/Segue reading in New York City/(with the addition of an excerpt from his forthcoming book)

Includes work by Kareem Estefan, Cecelia Corrigan, Alejandro Crawford, Artie Verkrant,Astrid Lorange, Steven Zultanski, Diana Sue Hamilton,Eddie Hopely,Matthew Abess, Easter Halloween, J Gordon Faylor,Jarrod Fowler,Lawrence Giffin, Phillip Dmochowski, Sara Wintz,Joseph Kaplan, Vladimir Zykov,Patrick Lovelace, Stephen McLoughlin

"The appropriation of pre-textual material in conceptual writing- most often Google searches, text messages and so-called "status updates" or "tweets"- has always included two contradictory dimensions: a dimension of exploitation and a dimension of participation. These two dimensions are perversely confused in conceptualisms like Flarf, which explains most audiences' indifference, at the end of a reading, to both pure appropriation- which denies the hope of individual and collective agency- and the managerial lyric- which shrugs off the exploitation of the market economy"
Kareem Estefan

"Then a plant which tells me to do things, people/What people? you aren't, though./The smelly exotic plant is a tongue with tongue firmly planted in cheek./Even if you think you're superior. Even if you think I'm superior./Sometimes, it (the plant)makes funny sounds./Even if you think I'm superior/Threatening but it's just part of all the other plants in the store./A small cast, band, and unit set, all the other plants./That's why I love you (feed me)/Like it will help my neurosis/Selfish, selfish Seymour. It can't actually touch me./They don't even know who I am seriously./....I'm not sure. Back to little feed me. It will help my neurosis./The singular neurosis is a symptom itself, but the only way it can/actually be threatening is by forcing you to feed people to it/And it's not even actually forcing you./...."
Cecelia Corrigan: from Shop o' (for Gregory Laynor)

Two New Books Employing Hypnogogic Processes of Writing

* * * *

Bernadette Mayer explained at her reading at the Bowery Poetry Project yesterday that she has been employing hypnogogic processes of writing, using lines halfway between waking and sleeping. One of her new books was available at the reading. (The other one, also very exciting to hear about is the complete Studying Hunger journals


Bernadette Mayer: Ethics of Sleep

Trembling Pillow Press, New Orleans, LA 2011

"if you want to write/be polite as an angel/& move the table/gently toward the pen/then ask/an implied question/of the subject/the relation/the figure/for instance/you could say/'You expect so little'"
* * * *

Laynie Browne also read from two new books, (one of which was based on Bernadette Mayer's classic The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters) titled The Desire of Letters (Counterpath 2010). The other books she read from was Roseate Points of Gold (Dusie, 2011)

"A basket of thought is internal/tempting the inner dawn/Neither this thought nor the movement entailed by mirror's/gravity contain solidity/Both dissolve by approach"

* * * *

Michael Ruby: Voices Heard Before Sleep (Argotist Online Free E-Book)

* * * *

Susan Bee Show Opening Soon at the Air Gallery

Susan Bee (and others) at the Air Gallery Susan Bee--Stephanie Bernheim--Senzen Marasela

Contradicta readings on Penn Sound

The two most recent Contradicta readings, at the Bowery Poetry Club and the Poetry Project, are available now on Penn Sound (Jan 19 and April 30)

* * * *

Scarlatti Sonata in F Mnor k 466

Contradicta


Our suffering could teach us everything we might want or need to know but our minds withdraw from it as quickly as fingers from a flame.



* * *


We often believe that for knowledge to exist it must be asserted; yet there is a world of unarticulated experience that thrives nonetheless.

Katie Couric kicking back with Charles Bernstein's Attack of the Difficult Poems

Otoliths Issue #21

* * * * *

Boston Review: An Interview with John Ashbery

The Anatomy of Influence: An Interview with Harold Bloom (Boston Review)

The Grand Piano: A Collective Autobiography

"Among the thousand or more simultaneous voices of the chorus, only two are heard."

Cesar Vallejo
Against Professional Secrets


Saturday's reading at Poet's House included 8 of the ten poets who have been working on the ten volume experiment in "collective autobiography" since 2006 realizes perfectly the kind of literary experience this blog was dedicated to exploring when it was opened in 2003, which was, as I somewhat lightly called it, time travel (my idea of time travel intended to synchronistically reconnect the present and the past). The two poets who were unable to come were Rae Armantrout and Lyn Hejinian. Towards the end of the presentation Ron Silliiman talked about the fact that this group has kept in touch, and that these books represent one expression of the relationships that have continued among the West Coast language group poets over a period of 35 years. Tom Mandel mentioned the importance of digital technology in making this collaboration possible, and then Ron mentioned another Language Poetry collaboration of many years ago titled Legend that was composed entirely through the mail. Although I am not a literary historian I tend to think that this 35 year span as historically unprecedented. As I listened to the beautifully orchestrated reading (at one point Ted Pearson showed the musical chart he had constructed to lay out the parts) my mind kept criss-crossing over the years that I have known and have been reading the work of each of these poets. As Ron Silliman once put it, language poetry was a moment, not a movement. But when you consider the significance of Sarah Palin announcing today in Wisconsin as a victory the recent decision in Wisconsin to deny the right of union collective bargaining and what that decision means for the Tea Party, and the horrific reality this represents for our country, you realize just how important the solidarity of this group of poets (and their Eastern friends and cohorts, including Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, MIchael Gottlieb, Erica Hunt, Andrew Levy, Lee Ann Brown, Pierre Joris, Susan Bee, Francie Shaw, Joel Lewis, Burt Kimmelman, Lynn Behrendt, Marc Nasdor, Nada Gordon, Star Black, Kimberly Lyons,Toni Simon and Larry Price, who were in the audience) is to our culture. It was in this spirit that I listened to the voices of Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman and Barrett Watten sing out their experiences and ideas in the hall at Poets House. Also, as I listened, I realized how much I have taken for granted over the years having to do with the group of poets I chose to identify my work with since beginning to write for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E in 1978, and even before that as I excitedly and eagerly read the issues of This that Barrett Watten edited in the 70's as they were published, and the Tuumba series of chapbooks edited by Lyn Hejinian, among them one of my favorite works of Charles Bernstein, Senses of Responsibility. During the panel discussion there was some conversation about the "differences" that emerged in the group about the structuring of the collective autobiography and it brought to my mind the whole issue of differences that take place between friends and poets in the course of the years. But these differences should challenge us to not lose sight of the more significant total picture. And that makes it all the more moving and admirable that this group, brought together by Barrett Watten, could compose a ten volume work together some 30 years after the first connections among them as illustrated by the original talks at the Grand Piano. After the presentation I talked briefly with Barrett who- perhaps jokingly- asked me if I had any thoughts about the "psychodynamics" of the presentation. But I answered him seriously to say that one of the things that most excited me was to be brought back to remember how important the idea of transcending the self was for me in the mid to late 70's, especially following my experience of the 60's, and how the poetics of the language group at that time was consciously set in firm opposition to what I would now identify as literary and artistic narcissism. I didn't get a chance to tell him that I have just completed an article that is partly on the topic of artistic narcissism to be published in a psychoanalytic journal. This five year experiment in literary collaboration illustrates exactly how writers as part of a literary movement can work together to try to avoid the worst pitfalls of artistic grandiosity. And, ok, I understand artists and writers have to have some of that in the tank to add some pizzazz, but lets face it, too much will doubtlessly clog the engine and blind the driver to the other cars on the road.

I for one am eagerly looking foward to delving much more deeply into these volumes (I have read many of the pieces in them, but in, as I see now, an unfocussed way), and as I read them all the more carefully, I know I am going to enjoy the process of using this time to renew my appreciation for the roots and branches of a movement that has enriched my personal and literary life so much. The link for the Grand Piano volumes above includes recordings of some of the earlier readings of the collective autobiography.

* * * *

Lawrence Schwartzwald Photos at Poets House 4/16/11

* * * *

Star Black Photos at Poets House 4/16/11

George Lakoff: Obama Returns to his Moral Vision

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger: Friends and Moments Like These

Ron Silliman's recent musing about his blog and the possiblity of perhaps retiring it (as reported by Harriet and Bookforum.com: when he listed these links he listed them under the comment "reports of my demise...a wee bit premature, don't you think?") brought some thoughts to this blogger not only about long term blogging, but long term friendship as well. Although It's been ages since I've cornered every person in sight and waxed euphoric about blogging (still feel that way, whatever might be said about Facebook and Twitter) like Ron, as much as I still value this context I don't find as much time to blog as I did, say, back when I started here in 2003. I wrote to Ron immediately, as many others did, to suggest that he continue by employing guest bloggers and volunteers to post the links, for example. The idea of Ron's ending his blog, although I would well understand it (look at how much work he has put into this project for 8 years), made me feel sad, though at this point in my life, seeing the end of various eras has become, also sadly, almost a routine experience. For myself, several years ago I decided I had to go back to reading books a whole lot more often, and for longer periods of time, so gradually I've been reading blogs less (not Ron's, which I've read nearly every day since its inception, as well as wood s lot). This decision had gradually led to my writing much less often in this space, but still, I don't think I would ever seriously consider ending this blog. For one thing, I would lose the opportunity of posting announcements and the occasional reviews I still write. And of course, I could not imagine not posting my Contradicta, although that possibility has been suggested.

Let's just look at some of the events I attended this weekend. Ok, I won't go into details about the movie Jane Eyre. I'll just say I liked it. And yes, I am not afraid of sentimentality, and this movie is rolling in it. Lovely cinematography, good acting, great story. What's not to like? Then we went over to the free night at the Whitney and said goodbye to the Hopper/Realism show (incredible) and checked out Glenn Ligon: brilliantly varied, moving, at times extremely saddening, a must see. That was Friday. When we got home we watched Hurt Locker. Chances are, you already know all about that: a frightening story about an heroic group of US Army bomb specialists working during the Iraq war, including a study of why one specialist compulsively keeps going back for more. Filmed by a woman director!

On Saturday Toni and I responded to an invitation by the artistic collaborative team Ligorano Reese. We had the immense pleasure of a private viewing in their studio of their newly completed piece The Fiber Optic Tapestry: 50 Different Minds. As I was idly crunching some almonds and sipping on a Brooklyn Lager, I was equally idly glancing at a group of nine large metallic cubes pinned to the wall, that consisted of squares of wiggly lines, weavings of constantly shifting symmetrical patterns and colors. Marshall was explaining that these were made out of fiber optic threads woven together and scratched open to expose the colors that were programmed to correspond to information pouring into them moment to moment from the internet. The two streams of information consist of flight patterns from various airports and certain colors as they are mentioned on Twitter. Since I do use Twitter to post my Contradicta (if you don't know about this check out the sidebar to your right) I found this particular stream of great interest. The other stream coming in are flight patterns which also interests me, somewhat negatively I must admit, since I reside under a jet path. But that's another story. As I watched these patterns for a couple of hours, chatting with various friends of Marshall and Nora's as they came by, I became more and more mesmerized and excited. The patterns are beautiful in themselves, but there is another factor I found particularly engaging. It is my belief that our brains process far more information that we are ever able to recognize, "digest" or even directly perceive. As a psychoanalyst and as a writer I have always been fascinated by manifestations of the unconscious. Yet the Ligorano Reese 50 minds fiber optic tapestry transcends this literal notion. Watching it, you have the feeling of a living, breathing, organic being, an artistic android, if you will. As I watched, I had the feeling of being spoken to in colors, forms and patterns, that somewhere, somehow my brain was processing countless bits of information while at the same time eliminating that pesky middleperson, language. Marshall told me that the first buyer of the piece spoke extensively about the musical aspect. I couldn't agree more. The other fascinating factor is how the piece, ten years in the making, encompasses aspects of two earlier careers conducted by the collaborators: Marshall was a poet (in my opinion, still is) and Nora was a textile designer (obviously can't stop). The piece sings of their collaboration as it listens and sings to the world listening and singing to itself.

Sunday found us at 4 o'clock attending yet another great free concert at the Brooklyn Public Library, central branch, which is fortunately steps away from us. Today we listened to soprano Risa Renae Harmon accompanied on the piano by Tyler Wottrich. She sang lieder by Handel, Mahler, Faure, Turina, Rossini, Walton and a medley of songs by George Gershwin. Tyler Wottrich sensitively and with great precision played some Preludes by Debussy (he is a summa cum laude graduate in piano performance and math!). Both performances were excellent and Toni and enjoyed them immensely. There were songs in German, Spanish, Italian, French and English sung in a dramatic, humorous and wonderfully theatrical way by Hartman. We have attended many concerts at the Library this year and this was one of the best. With only a few minutes in between events to stop for the amazing chicken dumpling soup at Excellent Dumplings on Lafayette we hurried to the stunningly beautiful Synagogue for the Arts on White Street to see the third in a series of four performances of the Sanctuary Project. This is the result of a year long collaborative project including two friends of ours Joanna Fuhrman,and David Shapiro. The Sanctuary Project. It was wonderful hearing poems read by two of our friends, and several others, sung by a superb soprano Katherine Dain, and played by an excellent small orchestra including Jonathan Engle (flute), Ben Ringer (clarinet), Arthur Moelier (violin), Jen Herman (viola), Andrea Lee (cello) and Evi Jundt (piano). The composers were: Andre Bregegere, Mohammed Fairouz,Raphael Fusco, Laura Koplewitz and Alex Shapiro. Besides Fuhrman and Shapiro, the other poets were Ron Buchert, Yerra Sugarman and Ryan Vyne. Originally performed at Carnegie Hall on Maech 21, the next and last performance will be on April 21st at the WMP concert hall. I will tell you I enjoyed every moment of this huge 2 hour performance of works by five composers and five poets, and if you love contemporary music and poetry this is a wonderful opportunity to hear it. Special hint: Katherine Dain's superb singing is strong, tuneful, pristine, flawless, inexhaustible.

And, with friends and moments like these, why would I ever stop blogging? And my bet is that Ron Silliman feels the very same way...

Holland Carter reviews Emma Bee Bernstein show at the Janet Kurnatowski gallery curated by Phong Bui and Linnea Kniaz

* * * * * *

Jacket 2 Inaugural Issue

* * * * * *

The Importance of the Personal:Glenda Burgess on Jane Lazarre's Some Place Quite Unknown

Ego Surfing

My friend the late poet genius Jackson Mac Low used to call googling yourself "ego surfing." Every now and then I still do this to see what bloggers might have linked to on this site. Technorati used to tell me this more easily, but now I have to page through the links to fait accompli on Google.

Thanks to all who have linked here recently! Here is a selection I came across tonight....
* * * *

And One For You Also

I WAS NEVER YOUNG (Summer Brown [Scout]


* * * *

Where Truth Falls Short

Solvitur Ambulando (Marina Bell)


* * * *

Link to Contradicta Quote from Rob Brezsny's Horoscope Blog on blogbabel

“Tutti i tuoi desideri sanno dove andare”, scrive il poeta Nick Piombino, “ma devi dirgli di aprire gli occhi.”

Pisces

* * *

Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Quote from Contradicta (Scroll to bottom of page to Pisces)

All your feelings

Free Will Astrology Home Page

* * *

open.

regarder of the cries of the world

* * * *

Man Carrying Thing (Wallace Stevens quotes from Subject to Change (in Boundary of Blur [Roof])

Giant Sloth

* * * *

News Relating to and from Pensioners (UK)

Free Fall

Books Received


Charles Bernstein-The Attack of the Difficult Poems

Contradicta



No matter how well you get things tied up, eventually parts of it, or all, will start to unravel. The trick is not to let yourself unravel.



* * *


The solution to some problems is so obvious and simple one can only suppose it was the injury that caused them that made them so mesmerizing


* * * * *

Five former artistic directors of the Poetry Project chat and recall their experiences: Bernadette Mayer, Ed Friedman, Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett: Directors Talk

* * * * *

Argotist Online

E-Books

Happy 92cd Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A Coney Island of the MInd--Googlebooks


* * * * *

by Lynn Behrendt

Sunday, March 20

* * * * *

"The task is not primarily to "think up" a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements that are merely shell, or husk, and that give apparent form to the story but actually obscure its essence. In other words, the problem to is transcend the givens of a narrative."

Reality Hunger, a Manifesto
David Shields, Vintage Books
February 2011

* * * * *

Nico Vassilakis, Letters Part 1


* * * *

Two Anti-Bullying Efforts

Stop Bullying.gov


* * * * *

The Official PCCC Wisconsin Recall Campaign

Act Blue

* * * * *

Three Quarks Daily

via wood s lot

Slope Weather
(poet) reporters: Sandra Doller, Lucas Farrell, Lisa Fishman,
Rick Meier, Sara Mumolo, Brandon Shimoda, Jared Stanley)

* * * *

Tom Beckett's sensitive, insightful and moving reviews of Lynn Behrendt's 2 new, beautiful chapbooks from Dusie:
L'AMOUR Fou

* * * *

Books Received

2 Gorgeous chapbooks from Lynn Behrendt

This is the story of Things that Happened (Dusie, 2011)

"Could military strategy, gourmet coffee
and genocide be a story? Is that the story
about the way the world is?
This is not a story about the magical

ray-gun of one rogue investor.
This story is a systematic failure
that we are experiencing.
The American mainstream."

* * *

ACQUIESCENCE (DUSIE, 2011)

"we've got this crippled
notion of time and space

and it wounds me
makes me its slave"

Books Received

A new book by Elaine Equi is cause for a celebration!

Just out: Click and Clone (Coffee House Press)

"I live in a clock in a corner of the future
beneath its glass gears and weightless weight-
in a room I share with numerous holograms

space being at a premium
and privacy (as we know it) a thing of the past."....

(from 'A Woman Trapped in an Aerosol Mist")

Elaine Equi on Penn Sound

* * * *

Just out by Chris Mason: Hum Who Hiccup (Narrow House)

"Hail, Library,
where homeless men
and women sit,
with the world's words:
you shelter vast
volumes of love.
I will meet you
down in the stacks."

(from Homeric Hums)

Chris Mason on Penn Sound

thanks to Chris and Elaine for sending the books!

Contradicta




Often without apparent purpose, without measure, without boundaries, without pause, imprecise yet utterly human and inexplicable: feelings.


* * * *


We must find the Prague in progress.

Today is fait accompli's 8th birthday!

Toni and I felt like rushing out this morning to go watch Christian Marclay's wonderful new movie The Clock again today at the Paula Cooper gallery, which we watched this time for 7 straight hours, and I still didn't feel like leaving, as Marclay's film comprises some of the best time travel I've ever witnessed, a true fait accompli synchronicity!

The Police- Synchronicity

* * * *

The Last Vispo

Introducing...

Didi Menendez' Portraits of Poets Blog.

PLease check out her portrait of yours truly and many others!

* * * *


Christian Marclay's 24 Hour Movie of Film Clips
Free at the Paula Cooper Gallery

An Interview with Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay has created a unique mode of cinematic time travel. The film consists of 24 hours of film clips from films across the decades. Each clip contains one or more references to the time at the moment of screening. This is a wonderful kind of "fait accompli" overlapping. Just as I blogged from across the decades, using a day in my journals corresponding to the day I was blogging, the Marclay film uses moments of films with explicit references on clocks and watches from across the temporal spectrum of films corresponding to the current moment of time. As might be expected, and occurred with fait accompli, the synchronicities are constant, and fascinating. I loved it! This is a unique don't miss opportunity. I was also delighted to see, as Toni and I left the theater (we came back after dinner) the amazing artist Fred Tomaselli, who showed recently at the Brooklyn Museum, had signed the book just before me.

* * * * *

EOAGH Issue Six Peripheral Writing edited by Tan Linl

The New Book From Argotist Online is
Evelyn Posamentier's Royal Blue Car


* * * * *


SEGUE PRESENTS: 

KRISTEN GALLAGHER + 
STAN APPS

This Saturday, Feburary 5th 

SEGUE READING SERIES 
BPC
4 PM 
$6 


KRISTEN GALLAGHER (born Henry Lawrence Garfield; February 13, 1961) is an American singer-songwriter, stand-up comedian, spoken word artist, writer, publisher, actor, radio DJ, and activist.

STAN APPS is currently a law student at NYU.  His newest paper book, The World as Phone Bill, is a collection of essays on contemporary poetry, eternal verities, assorted universals and a particular or three.  His newest e-book, This Club Will Have Anyone, is available as a download or randomized website from Gauss PDF.  Other books are available from Slack Buddha, Make Now, or Les Figues Press.

* * * * *

Keith is Twittering the Obama SOTU address Olbermann

* * * * *


Nick Piombino and Lisa Robertson at the Poetry Project

Thanks to all who came to my presentation with Toni Simon at the Poetry Project on Wednesday night. If I may say so myself, it was a blast!

Toni and I will be presenting this show again at the Bowery Poetry Club on April 30th, this time on the same bill with Pierre Joris.


* * * * *

Macy Blackman's new album Don't You Just Know It is 16 sides of rockin' jazz/blues excellence. Got a taste for some good blues? Click on a side of Chicken Shack--open 24 hours a day...

* * * * *

Shampoo 38

I will be reading at the Poetry Project with Lisa Robertson in one week
on Wednesday January 19 at 8pm
Toni Simon will be projecting her drawings based on her collage illustrations from
Contradicta

Nick Piombino (with art by Toni Simon) and Lisa Robertson Wednesday Jan 19 at the Poetry Project
* * * *

Mimi's Visit

Mimi (Gross), Toni and I visited the Brooklyn Museum today. Both Mimi and Toni love African and Egyptian art and Mimi had many very interesting things to tell us about both. There was a discussion about whether to describe the colorful figure and animal paintings on mummies as cartoon-y (Toni) or cartoon-like (Mimi). The word cartonnage (as I was writing this) was discovered to appear in one of Toni's collages in our collaborative book Contradicta. We had also found this word in a caption regarding one of the mummies. At first, when I saw it in the caption about the mummy, I thought the word was "cartoonage." I had hoped this might settle the debate about the cartoon-y word. Then, we all visited the Feminist Pop-art Show.

Mimi told me about two links of hers. One is the link to the foundation (where she is president of the board) concerning her father Chaim Gross' art and art collection. The other is a link to an art-making course she is now teaching in Baltimore.

The Oddness of Parts

Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

* * * *

This is Visual Poetry by Nico Vassilakis

Astrological Contradicta (Village Voice January 5 Free Will Astrology)

Pisces

Free Will Astrology (Rob Brezsny)

Thanks to Ernesto-Livon Grosman for alerting me to this link.

At a Park Slope New Year's Day Party I had the Good Fortune to Meet

Itzik Gottesman, formerly a Professor of Yiddish Literature, now associate editor at the Yiddish Forward, whose blog is called Yiddish Song of the Week


"Oy, fishelekh in vaser, zey iz fil beser.
Bay zey iz nit keyn untersheyd, fin klener biz tsu greser.
Oy, fishelekh in vaser, zey iz fil beser.
Bay zey iz nit keyn untersheyd, fun klener biz tsu greser".

"O the fish in water, they have it much better.
They don‘t make a difference
between the smaller ones and bigger ones".

* * * *

Builder Levy

Builder Levy, who I met tonight, has been photographing in Appalachia for 40 years

* * * *

Contradicta



Usually your feelings know things long before your mind does. So, mostly what your thoughts need to do is to tell you to be patient.



* * *


For some, even an attempt to leave themselves alone might constitute an unprecedented approach to a previously unknown internal territory.

Happy 2011 New Year Poem from

NIcole Peyrefitte and Pierre Joris

Eric Ewazen, American composer

I went to a concert this afternoon at the Brooklyn Public Library. Eric Ewazen's String Quintet
(Sinfonia for Strings) was performed by Harumi Rhodes, Adela Pena, Ah LIng Neu and Roberta Cooper. I found a work online by Ewazen whose music is certainly worth learning more about.

Eric Ewazen Down a River of Time and other mp3's


A duet for our time, of
anguish

* * * * *

A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality

Keepaway Kickstarter

This just in!

Keepaway raised over $10, 000 for their new album, just in time!


* * * * *

Contradicta


Even as you live, to live is to remember to live.




* * *



Everything in contemporary culture tends to become a popularity contest. Nothing wrong with this, except that the truth is rarely popular.



* * * * *

Moonshine

This just in from Kimberly Lyons


"Come in and enjoy!
take a break from toil & trial,
all the wear & tear of holiday prep:
LUNAR CHANDELIER PRESS announces
         a book signing/reading
                  BY VYT BAKAITIS
                     LYNN BEHRENDT
                   AND JOE ELLIOT
          to take place from 2:00 p.m.
      this Saturday 18 December 2010
at Unnameable Books: 600 Vanderbilt Ave
(between Dean St & St Marks Ave), in Brooklyn NY

yours, Kimberly Lyons"
646-438-5559



* * * * *

Lunar Chandelier Press

had its debut reading tonight at the Poetry Project. Of the three books presented I am most familiar with Joe Elliot's Homework. When I edited OCHO 21 I had the immense good fortune to choose from a large portion of the as yet unedited manuscript of this book. I can say that my most immediate feeling was sadness at not having chosen to edit a magazine much sooner and I could now see why so many of my poet friends had done exactly that with a good portion of their time over the years. When I was asked to write a blurb for the book I was delighted and honored but soon realized what a daunting task it would be, having already experienced so many waves of emotion about Elliot's powerful work. When I brought the book home tonight and began rereading it I got a glimmer of just how strongly his work had affected me, not only by way of enjoyment and admiration, but viscerally and very personally. The thoughts and feelings I am driving at here are somewhat summarized in the blurb I wrote for Joe's book, available on the Lunar Chandelier website (above), and, in a shortened version, on the back of the book. More of that some other time, hopefully soon.

I have had a couple of days to begin reading Lynn Behrendt's new book and I am impressed and excited about that book as well. My first thought was that my reaction to q quick read of parts of this book reminded me of my reaction to hearing and reading Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, over 40 years ago. This response might have had to do with these lines:

"I am a language vole too.
I got glue
in my vagina"

(from the poem The Ulna Slash Uvula Laid Bare Lingual Age)

I had the same sudden feeling reading this poem two nights ago of a manifesto of an impending poetic movement as when I read Berrigan's sonnets for the first time. And I think, in particular of these lines:

"baffling combustions are everywhere/graying the faces of virgins/ aching to be fucked/we fondle their snatches/and O, I am afraid!/The poem on the page/ will not kneel/for everything comes to it/gratuitously"

Now, I've thought in recent and not so recent years how sexist these lines must sound now, since the "we" obviously refers to men, and therefore hints of a predatory male conspiracy. But reading it then, I don't believe that is how it struck me. Berrigan's Sonnets deftly wove such sexual and sensual longing within a lyrical, complexly rhythmic, linguistic thread of philosophical and literary intellectuality, wit, self-effacement as well as countless other emotions and observations blended with numerous fragments of conscious and unconscious, fantasy experience. I feel the same in Lynn's poem- the poem continues with variations on the original words much the way Berrigan's Sonnets turn lines again and again around and within themselves.

Behrendt's poem continues:

"It's me and thee and analog glee-
lingo vogue
in isotope tetrameters"

and later:

"You're one alluvial egg
you lover of lingo slag
a lovely oval lung"

and later:

"how long , lonely little Anglo?
I'm venial Eve hitting a gog
in a dollar store lounge"


The final reader tonight was Vyt Bakaitis, whose book I have not yet seen, but whose reading evoked countless memories of New York School charisma. His wit, charm and lyricism pulled in the whole room, and by extension, the world outside the room.

The whole evening left my mind virtually swinging from, and with, the Lunar Chandelier.

* * * * *

Debussy plays Debussy- You Tube

Keepaway's Latest:

Kompetitor (EP) Free Download!
(To just listen without downloading click on the arrow at the top)

Keepaway: Kompetitor

Two Aphorisms by Nietzsche

Thoughts: -- Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments--always however obscurer, emptier, and simpler.

* *

My Dog--I have just given a name to my pain, and call it "a dog,"--it is just as faithful, just as importunate and shameless, just as entertaining , just as wise, as any other dog-- and I can domineer over it, and vent my bad humour on it, as others do with their dogs, servants and wives.

(Joyful Wisdom, 1882)

* * * * *

New Poem by Nico Vassilakis

Diminished Use Value/Disturbed Surface

* * * * *

I'm Reading (with Lisa Robertson) at the Poetry Project

On January 19, 2011

* * * * *

Robert Archambeau Interview on The Argotist Online

* * * *

Ray DiPalma on PennSound

* * * *

David Antin Rethinks Freud

* * * *

Laynie Browne on PennSound

* * * *

Rosemarie Waldrop

reading at KGB Bar, November 22, 7:30 pm

Celebrating her new book DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION

Keith back on the air this week. 300,000 people signed the petition!"

* * * *

Anchor's Away

Guessing what might happen to Keith: Forbes

* * * *

Bring Back Keith Olbermann Now!

Sign The Petition!

* * * *
Colin Harrison and James Ellroy, two important mystery novelists were interviewed in June of 2009 by Sarah Weinman on her blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. If you enjoy contemporary crime fiction, this is an interview well worth watching.

* * * *
Outrage Misguided by Noam Chomsky

* * * *

The new (free) Ebook from Argotist Online is Tracking Systems by Alan May

2cd Avenue: The Occult Issue, guest edited by Alan Ramon Clinton

2cd Avenue: Volume 3 Contributors

Toni Simon: Anubis Bastet Sebek Thoth

Toni Simon: Earth After Earth

* * * *

October 31

Otloths issue 19 Southern Spring 2010
* * * *

October 31

The new Ebook from Argotist Online is IMPRESSIVE (BIG) INSTANT (BANG)! by Ivan Arguelles

* * * *

October 31

Poets and Artists December 2010-Edited by Didi Menendez

* * * *

The New E-book from Argotist Online is: Vernon Frazier's Margin- L

* * * *

The new Ebook from Argotist Online is: Jerome Rothenberg's The Jigoku Zoshi Hells, A Book of Variations

* * * *

Argotist Online E books


* * * *

Must Not Sleep- a complete novel online by Michael Brownstein

* * * *
Home Alone

In Real Life

* * * *
10/22

Today is David Bromige's birthday
Scroll down for Wood s lot feature

Toni Simon reading a selection from her poem Earth After Earth with projected illustrations at the 2cd Avenue vol. 3 Occult issue launch at The Creek and The Cave in Long Island City on Saturday 9/25. Full text with illustrations on the 2cd Avenue Website coming soon! A glimpse of overall editor and event organizer Paulo Javier may be seen at the end of the clip. Paulo Javier announced that Earth after Earth was one of guest editor Alan Clinton's favorites.

* * * * *

Contradicta

A couple in love are like two trapeze artists: jump, flip, free fall, reach out two hands are there. And for life, if you're lucky, like me.

[for Toni Simon]

* * * *


There are ideas whose purpose is to entice the seeker to go in circles; a fruitless search might end by revealing a cruel face behind a mask


* * * * *

found contradicta

[tattoos on the arm of a cashier at MOMA- 10/2/10- quotes from Charles Bukowski]

CREATE DANGEROUSLY

* *

Some people never go crazy- what horrible lives they must lead


* * * * *

Publishing as an Art Form

Poets and Artists November 2010-Dulce Menendez, editor

On the cover is a painting by Denis Peterson and reading his contributing poem for the painting USA Today is Geof Huth (when the site opens you will hear Geof Huth reading his poem)

* * * * *

Sheila Murphy interviews Mark Young

* * * * *

Ned Rorem 5 CD Set- Serebrier Conducts Rorem

Tuesday, October 19 Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble Ned Rorem

* * * * *

Mark Lamoureux Dance Poems (pdf)

* * * * *

Steven Fama on Lamoureux' Dance Poems The Glade

* * * * *

Quixote radio

* * * * *

you are invited to the launch of

2nd Ave Poetry , vol 3: The Occult

guest edited by alan ramon CLINTON

Saturday, September 25
5-7 pm
FREE
The Creek and The Cave
10-93 Jackson Ave, Long Island City
(on the E, G, & 7 train, B61 bus)

featuring readings & multimedia performances by

mitch HIGHFILL * toni SIMON * hector CANONGE
charles BORKHUIS * priscilla STADLER
brenda COULTAS * jill MAGI * kelly SPIVEY
douglas a. MARTIN * mark LAMOUREAUX
downstairs after-PARTY with live set by dj DESPO


volume 3 also includes work by

kevin KILLIAN * leslie SCALAPINO * dodie BELLAMY
jeremy THOMPSON * rit PREMNATH * caitlin PARKER
tsering wangmo DHOMPA * thom DONOVAN
r. zamora LINMARK * thomas FINK * denise DUHAMEL
filip MARINOVICH * ca CONRAD * frank SHERLOCK
lyn GOERINGER * matt JONES * clayton ESHLEMAN
charles BERNSTEIN * stephanie GRAY * gerrit LANSING
vincent KATZ * rusty MORRISON * laynie BROWN
tim PETERSON * john HARKEY * r.m. ENGELHARDT
emmy CATEDRAL * yago CURA * ernest CONCEPCION
jonny FARROW * alan ramon CLINTON

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Around the time Toni and I moved to Park Slope, I wrote a piece about Hazlitt on this blog. That was 4/25-5/2 2004. Someone must have linked to it, and I noticed the link on my site meter. I reread it and thought to repost it.

* * * *

new issue: k a m a t e k a o r a (New Zealand)

* * * *

Anne Tardos, Nine, 40 A flow movie

* * * *

Alan Davies featured in Craig Dworkin's

UBU WEB Anthology of Conceptual Writing

* * * * *

Works Received:

Ray Di Palma: House of Keys (foldout chapbook, art and poetry): Longhouse, Longhouse Poetry

"But at least for the moment unable to think further, though/
with a sense of being a privileged insider whose querulous/
nature was never far from the surface and was always ready/
with a challenging response meant to be heard never more/
than in partial jest..."


* * * * *

Geof Huth: untitled 10 page privately distributed chapbook dated 9 September 2010

"dendritic /excercises towards (no, toward (no, to))
the thought thinking"

Geof Huth's email: geofhuth@gmail.com

Geof Huth's 365 ltrs

New Nico Vassilakis book from Xexoxial: Starings


* * * * *

Peacock Online Review #1 includes Anselm Berrigan, Joel Lewis, Alice Notley, others

* * * * *

OMG-TMI! NY Times


* * * * *

The New Book from Argotist Online is The Collected Essays of Adam Fieled

* * * * *

esque/oetry/ifesto

Issue 1- (flash- takes a minute to load)

via wood s lot


* * * *

Delirious Hem: A Tribute to Leslie Scalapino: Day 1 of 4

* * * * * *


Robert Reich Op-Ed NY Time September 2, 2010
How to End the Great Recession

* * * * *

Poets and Artists October 2010 Edited by Didi Menendez

* * * *

Text Festival

* * * *

Nico Vassilakis Staring Toward Vispoetics

* * * *

David Arner & George Quasha perform Tuesday (9/7) at White Box, 7:30 PM


David Arner/George Quasha perform Axial Sound Composition at White Box


which involves percussion, piano, proto-language, and urmusic.


Pasha Radetzki will perform at 7:30
Arner & Quasha at 8:30
Location on Broome between Bowery and Christie
329 Broome Street. New York, NY. 10002
Phone: 212-714-2347

Contradicta


Happiness is an attitude, not an outcome. When things go wrong, straighten out the dent in your attitude, then proceed.

* * * * *

Every minute of every day the gap between love and fame grows wider.


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



"Oh, well." Already you've taken a first step towards forgiveness and philosophy.


* * * * *


You went the right way, you went the wrong way, now you can rest.

George Quasha and friends perform Axial Compositions at White Box, 8/26

* * * * *

The new e book on Argotist Online is Paradigm of the Tinctures by Alan Halsey and Steve McCaffery

* * * * *

Contradicta Book Titles

A Tragic Honesty- (The Life and Work of Richard Yates) -Blake Bailey

The Truth of Poetry- Michael Hamburger

Jack Gilbert: Poet Without a Career
Jim Finnegan

via Word Pond

* * * *

The Brooklyn Book Festival

* * * *

Argotist Online Interview with Sheila M. Murphy

Thanks to James Geary for featuring Contradicta: Aphorisms on

All Aphorisms All The Time

and to Jim Finnegan for the recommendation Uraprache

* * * *

Ten New poems from Ray DiPalma on Jacket 40

* * * *

The new book from Argotist Online is Ric Carfegna Symphony Number 2


* * * *

My Whole Street is a Mosque Mira Schor: A Year of Positive Thinking


* * * *

The latest Mipoesias

The new Argotist Online E-Book is Doom Cusp by David Meltzer

Jerome Sala (Expresso Bongo) on The Critic as Artist and Vice-Versa:Thoughts on Oscar Wilde, Wallace Stevens, and Nick Piombino (July 30)

* * * *
Mark Young writes about his father The Victorian Age


* * * *

Les Black "The Listeners" Eurozine
Via wood s lot

* * * *


Otoliths Number Eighteen

* * * *

The latest issue of Poets and Artists edited by Didi Menendez

* * * *

"Wikipedia refers to Sven Birkerts' 1994 study The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age, and the work of developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf, who pointed out the loss of "deep reading" capacity. Internet-savvy users, she states, seem to lose the ability to read and enjoy thick novels and comprehensive monographs".

The colonization of real-time and other trends in Web 2.0"

viaWood s lot
* * * *


Looking for Love: Douglas Messerli on Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts Green Integer Blog

* * * *



the new books on The Argotist Online:

The Blast Area by John Tranter

Pesticide Drift by F.A.Nettlebeck

Noise Difficulty Flower by J. D. Nelson

Solzhenitzen Jukebox by Ann Bogle
* * * *

Fragments of a Broken Poetics by Jennifer Moxley

* * * * *

Blogging is Dead: :Long Live the Blog by Joshua Corey

* * * * *

The new book on Argotist Online is A Year of Ordinary Moments by Rich Curtis


* * * * *

New from Otoliths Expanding The Radius by Mary Ellen Derwis, Joe Balaz

* * * * *

New Books from Argotist Online by Chris Stroffolino and Evelyn Posamentier


* * * * *

Norman Fischer interviewed by Hank Lazer on the Argotist Online

* * * * *

Fiber Optic Tapestry by Ligorano Reese- Kickstarter


* * * *

The new book from Argotist Online is


King Amour by Jack Foley

* * * * *

A Celebration in Poetry and Art for Didi Menendez

50/50 Words and Images for Didi Menendez

High Resolution PDF

Low Resolution PDF


* * * * *

The Project for Innovative Poetry

Today, Douglas Messerli posted a listing for me on his PIP blog:

THe Project for Innovative Poetry

* * * * *

--Nico Vassilakis-asemic poetry--"In this episode, the alphabet refuses to be belittled by word logic and takes its revenge by dismantling it".
--from: The Bleed A journal of vital, progressive visual, concrete and experimental poetries

* * * * *

Cpntradicta



While all lives end with death, most novels begin with one.



* * * * *



Everything in the world exists in order to end up looking for a book.

Video: Stop Gambling on Hunger


* * * * *

Amiri Baraka interview-- Argotist Online


* * * * *

Don Share on Ron silliman on W. S. Merwin as Poet Laureate Squandermania

* * * * *


Poets and Artists Summer 2010 (Didi Menendez, ed)

* * * * *

Argotist Online E-Books

The two latest ebooks for Argotist Online are by Alan Sondheim and Jeff Harrison. Here is the entire backlist of free ebooks from publisher Jeffrey Side:Argotist Ebooks

The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “Stories Short and Strange” by Bill Drennan.

Description:

“Stories Short and Strange” is the first volume of a unique collection by Bill Drennan. These tales are typically laced with blends of absurdist science fiction, satire, childish cartoonism and black space humour.

Available as a free ebook here:

Stories Short and Strange

* * * * *

The latest issue of Wig edited by Kristen Gallagher and Tim Shaner just arrived. This issue features watercolors by Steve Benson and writing from Laynie Browne, Del Ray Cross, Thom Donovan, Patrick Durgin, William Fuller, Kristen Gallagher, Judith Goldman, Brandon Holmquist, Rodney Koeneke, Richard Kostelanetz, Bill Marsh, Tim Shaner and Carol Szymanski. $10 to Tim Shaner at 130 E. 49th Avenue, Eugene, OR 97405 gets you 95 pages of exciting new art, poetry and commentary.

* * * * *

The latest issue of Provincetown Arr Magazine features a cover, interview with Charles Bernstein and an article/essay about artist Mira Schor

Blog-A Year of Positive Thinking

Ray DiPalma- Obloquium and Committer of Tidings- 7 Poems (Jacket) .

* * * * *

"Mr. E. was a self-made man who grew up in a poor immigrant family. He was a brilliant businessman, though, and for those at Pickwick who showed more than just a passing interest in the industry, he gave of his wisdom freely. ONe of the many pearls he shared with me was that although the best sellers are exciting, they come and go. It's basically a business of one's and two's when it comes to the backlist books that consistently make money for a bookstore over the long haul. More than three decades later, I believe this philosophy still holds true for independent bookstores."

An Alphabetical Life: Living it Up In the World Of Books- Wendy Werris- 2006

An Alphabetical Life- Goodreads listing

I received an email from Ron Silliman telling me that Peter Seaton died last month on May 18, 2010, of an apparent heart attack.

Peter Seaton and I met at City College (CCNY) in 1960 or 1961, when we were freshmen or sophomores. He was born on December 16, 1942. We spent many, many fascinating hours together discussing literature and reading each others writing throughout our college days. Peter's appearance changed little over the years. He had short, close cropped light brown curly hair, which later became gray. He wore glasses, frequently sunglasses or glasses with clear plastic frames through which you could invariably observe twinkling eyes, often a dark brown henley t-shirt and light tan corduroys, and though short in stature he had a distinctive walk, a rolling gait that sometimes reminded me of a sailor. Peter was a terrific marathon one-on-one conversationalist, a mordant, literary wit of the Holden Caulfield variety, an indefatigable reader who loved to endlessly talk and search for books and new ideas. This, combined with the fact that he was among the most private and secretive persons I have ever known, added immeasurably to the quality of mystery that surrounded both his presence and his absence. Other than the fact that he attended boarding school, he spoke little about his early life. One of his first short stories that may have been written for a writing class we took together was of a character obsessed with going out into the city on an inexplicable, lonely search for a certain hard to find poster. Our interests and directions concerning poetry and poetics remained parallel after graduation in 1964, often attending readings together at St Mark’s, reading The World magazine and other poetry magazines and discussing them avidly, through to the establishment of This magazine, and L=A magazine, up to the early 80’s. During the opening and middle years of Language poetry many of Peter Seaton’s long prose poems were published, widely read and influential. Peter and I did some writing collaborations and even some film experiments together in the late 60’s and early 70’s (we were then both big fans of Stan Brakhage) although these may now be lost or hard to locate. I may still have one or two letters or postcards that he wrote to me when I was living for awhile in Italy and Morocco in the late 60’s. It was he that told me that Bernadette Mayer, whose work we both greatly admired, was giving an open workshop at the Poetry Project in 1973. He always encouraged me in my writing and collage productions particularly, explaining to me that he was knowledgeable about this because his mother had once run an art gallery. I am sorry to say that we lost touch with each other in the early 80’s. Peter’s writing and poetry and his penetrating insights into poetry, culture, technology, language and life were of constant interest to me during our many years of close friendship in the 60's and 70's.

* * *
Penn Sound Obit

* * *

Wikipedia page-Peter Seaton

* * *

Peter Seaton Community Facebook Page

* * *

Eclipse Author Index, including three complete books by Peter Seaton Eclipse

* * *

Friend of The Dead

Have you checked out Joanna Fuhrman and Toni Simon's funny, charming and beautiful collaboration Friend of The Dead in Paper Bag Issue 1 yet?


* * * *

Contradicta

There are these split second inklings of eternity all day long, right before you start, when it feels like this time it's never going to end


* * * *


Forget make it new just make it quick.



--- My thanks to Ray DiPalma who has suggested that this aphorism, for a variety of reasons, might offer a highly suspect bit of advice.



* * * *

Shadow Poetics



Juliana Spahr- notes for a talk for rethinking poetics-swoonrocket

* * * *

Seinfeld's anomie:Expresso Bongo (Jerome Sala)


* * * * *

A Renaissance in the Art of the Book 1946-1981-Center for Book Arts- Curated by Kyle Schlesinger

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On March 18, 2003, I attended a reading at Cooper Union that included Ann Lauterbach, Anne Waldman, Michael Lally and Robert Creeley, which I wrote about on this blog: March 19, 2003. Regarding Michael Lally's poem ("March 18, 2003"), I wrote: "Michael Lally read a very powerful long poem in that personal homespun style of his, enunciating so many offensive acts and policies of the far right that he made us understand that we have far too lightly critiqued these vicious movements for the past 50 years in this country, while endlessly muttering to ourselves, the audience seemed reluctant, even after 30 minutes, to allow him to step down." This post, by the way, is included in the book fait accompli, published by Factory School in 2007.

Tonight I had the amazingly moving experience of hearing Michael Lally read that poem again, on his new CD "Lost Angels." The album includes 9 other incredibly cool tracks with two excellent jazz combos behind him. The album includes "My Life 2" and "Before you Were Born," and is available from :Monomania Records. If you were not present at that reading back on the night before the initial bombing of Iraq, or even if you were, you should not miss listening to and having this amazing CD.

Anubis Takes Joanna Fuhrman and Toni Simon on a Guided Tour Through Park Slope

Paper Bag Issue 1


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OCHO 30

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RE-ENGLISH-- Daria Fain and Robert Kocik--Governor's Island, June 4, 2010

with Aretha Aoki, Margot Basset, Chung-chen Chang, Stephen Cooper, Levi Gonzalez, Hasuki Homma, Masumi Kishimota, Kora Koimtzi, Athena Kokoronis, Martin Lanz, Mina Nishimura, Peter Sciscioli, Kensaku Shinohara and Samita Sinha.

As part of an ongoing collaborative "research" project conducted by Fain and Kocik that they call The Prosodic Body one of the dancer/singer/workshop member/performance artists recited the following "anonymous 17th century protest poem" titled "Goose":

"The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common
but leaves the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone when we take things we do not own
but leaves the lords and ladies fine who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don't escape if they conspire the law to break;
this must be so but they endure those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common
and geese will still a common lack till they go and steal it back."

This poem powerfully captures the aims and insights of the "commons" philosophy enacted in the piece and later discussed throughout the film presentation. I was sorry to have missed the earlier panel discussion that included Fred Ho.

The other night Toni and I watched the last of the 5th season of episodes of The Wire.. Although we've been sad to see other tv series end - I noticed this time Toni was particularly perturbed. There were a number of reasons for this, but one of them, I'm sure, was the series' political astuteness along with the excellent acting and narrative power to support the cultural and social points being made, and the stories being told, many of which were based on actual events in recent years in Baltimore..

Like The Wire, but here more in the realm of experimental high art, the Fain/Kocik Re-English has much to offer in the way of social/political critique, the difference being that in this collaboration solutions are being actively sought, and the early seeding of an actual social movement may be observed. The performance went on for about forty-five minutes and there were fourteen performers. Each performer enacted individual movement scenarios, and one by one the performers recited pieces written or collected by Robert Kocik,including the one quoted above. There were sung elements as well, and pre-verbal phonemic utterances that were sometimes said, sometimes chanted and sometimes sung. HIstory, political critique, music, movement, shamanistic chant, and psycho-lexical experimentation and many other elements have been brought together and developed in the Fain/Kocik research mode towards a philosophy they have described as "The commons." The group has been in evolution for over four years, Fain describes the effort as a form of "economic research", ironically referring to the financial struggles of the group as well. It is gratifying to witness the survival of a group that has an aim that combines the political, the social and the artistic.

For me, one of the most exciting moments of the piece was performed by Margot Basset. I can only describe it by saying that she virtually transformed her voice into that of a large, chirping, wailing, whooping, crying bird, in a manner so shamanistically powerful as to bring the energy of the room into another spiritual dimension entirely; this could only have happened in the context of the convincing and moving efforts of the entire troupe, who, it is almost impossible to believe have mostly worked in a piecemeal "commons" fashion employed by the group, as Daria told me later when she and Robert Kocik found me and Toni relaxing on the beautiful Governor's Island lawn as they were leaving after the film and performances. [At that moment Toni and I were in astonished wonder at the synchronicity of our discovering a few minutes earlier that our nephew Michael Burakoff's band Keepaway was then in the process of doing a sound check for their concert later that night at the nearby sound stage at the moment we left after the Re-English piece and the film about the Commons. Put that together with the fact that Governor's Island is my birthplace (my father was an officer stationed there at the beginning of the Second World War), and you've got a series of synchronicities more complex that I can easily process.]

Anyway, In the film shown immediately after Re-English, one goal for the Commons group I feel particularly crucial is the integration of the needs of the individual with that of the group for, up until now, it seems to me all political systems have failed to maximize the potential of these two elements working together on each other's behalf; a goal actually aimed for and often achieved in this choral, soloistic, combinatory, harmonic and planfully anarchic, polycultural, artistic and social theatrical enactment.

Commoning on Governor's Island-Wild Horses of Fire (Thom Donovan)

Thom Donovan on The Phonemic Choir

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Ron Loses Link List

While Ron reconstructs and builds his next link list, check out his latest one:

Rons Link List

David Markson, r.i.p.

"Farewell and be kind."
The last line of This Is Not A Novel (2001)

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Jay Sanders interviews Charles Bernstein in Bomb

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A selection from Ron Silliman's Revelator in Poetry Poetry Foundation

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Once again: Don Share's selection from Contradicta on Squandermania

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Poets and Artists July 2010

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R. I. P. Peter Orlovsky; La Times
R, I. P. Louise Bourgeois Silliman's blog Wall Street Journal
MIra Schor- A Year of Positive Thinking
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Leslie Scalapino links, Silliman's Blog

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Alan Davies on why poets should write negative reviews, and how I tried to discourage him from doing so. Alan writes: "I have a friend (Nick Piombino) who has more than once advised me to not write a book review unless I have good things to say about the book. Nick himself doesn’t write book reviews / which might be an indication of how many books of poetry he’s found to be worth reviewing (?!)".


I can imagine that I gave Alan this advice, I don't remember doing so, but if I did it was possibly as long as 30 years ago! I am quite sure I wouldn't have given this advice to Alan within the last 20; I think in the past 20 I would know better than to try to deprive him of his peppery critical zest!

Alan also makes the point that I haven't reviewed anyone of late. Actually, I have posted quite a few poetry reading reviews of late on this blog, but I do want to take this occasion to mention that I edited in 2007 and 2009 two issues of OCHO, published and produced by Didi Menendez. OCHO 14, by the way includes a hefty portion of the work of, well, Alan Davies and OCHO 21 includes the work of 14 other poets whose work I obviously admire. Silliman says of Davies work in OCHO 14:" Davies, on the other hand, offers a wide range of works, including some (textually) discrete poems, a long critical work that organizes itself as an a review of Anne Waldman’s Outrider, then a series of excerpts from a longer text – it seems too limiting to call it a poem – entitled This is Thinking. Davies hasn’t been publishing a lot in recent years & to see this much work at once, this much first-rate work, is completely bracing. He hasn’t lost a step & is every bit as uncompromising as ever. This actually can make Davies a difficult read at times, but it never is complexity just for the sake of showing off. He continues to be the Diogenes of the New York langpo scene. At the same time, Davies always comes across as sweet, vulnerable, friendly, somebody you’d love to know. I’d say that Davies’ contribution is worth the price of the issue alone, but I’d say that of well about Gordon, Vassilakis, Mesmer & several other of the contributors." Not a negative review, but, I'm sure most readers will agree, interesting, at least.

OCHO 14 was also reviewed by Nick Manning in Jacket 35

But I will admit to being a subscriber of the following aphorism of Henry James:
"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind". Like most others, I can only claim this as an ideal. Certainly not as a political position, but when it comes to poet friends, well, yes.

Still, the article gives me much to think about.


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Contradicta

The way to know people is to care about them. The way to care about them is to forget most of what you know about them.

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If you are looking to get paid as a writer just remember that silence is golden- not your silence, their silence.

Leslie Scalapino passed away on May 28, 2010 in Berkeley, California.

Leslie Scalapino

Blogging and Narcissism Once Again

Oh, Deja Vu: On Social Media and Narcissism [Redux]--Butterfly Hunt--Ernesto Priego