Friday, December 16, 2011

Un-swill: Poetry Sucks, Rd. 2 at Dino's




Dino's, Poetry Sucks, #2. An exhalation proves now warmer in than out. Dino's in warming inside pulls in the crowds well. And poetry. Advertised reader Nickole Brown cancelled, but Murray State University adjunct creative writing prof Pamela Johnson Parker read from an intimate, moving ( one not only because the other ) project ( "I Stand Here Ironing: A Fairy Tale"? ) on domesticity ( washed corsets, remove the steel, "...birth needed the abdomen for more birth..." ) that hushed throngs. She epigraphed Kenneth Koch. Hepburn, K. fringe.


Musical interlude of Mystery Twins and the bass notes carried outside, then PUJOL's hyper-literate lead man Daniel Pujol ( who made the cover of The Scene this week ) read ( in one moment echoed whitman-ginsberg: "...weeping internet of the Spirit..." ). A not unmusical poem.



Positive reinforcement, conditioned learning, stood, bear with fire, and hoola hooping, and coat-tails, and a tent whose glowy insides seduce the outsides, usually never collapsing.


Friday, December 9, 2011

The constant rooms, winter, / our minds dry; // much.


December thin make my eating my hair, eye, rescindingly, the hours the planet, what've let, fetters to the frozen puddle, to the river lungs on it there. "Moat, moat, moat." goes Julia Cohen.





Have you heard: GlitterPony is dismantling its glitter suit after this most recent (#13) (?)


Apparently, kicking across the abyss into a new GlitterPony 2.0 manifestion (which is I don't know what), but the quality is sure to remain sequin queen gag sized grand bird everywhere not the bees, not the bees (!) : Billy Cancel, Elizabeth Witte and Bruce Covey have soul power.




Jana Hunter &or The Lower Dens &or Jana Hunter as I Jaunt North Carolina way to take Black Mt. ruins, carbon-date fielding:




Monday, November 21, 2011

Poet's Corner at Vanderbilt: Houston A. Baker


The other night that got me sick I'm sure of it: the Houston A. Baker reading at Vanderbilt's Scarritt-Bennett Center, in The Front Porch. It's a cozy place to have a reading, part gallery, gift shop, socially-countered cafe, intimately lit reading room, always gentle crowds. And they do it once a month.


The reading was a joyous one, which is to say that poetics was not the sharp thrust at the wound which poetry readings tend to replicate. Smiles and graciousness were the foreground as Mr. Baker read for a mixed hour of storytelling and poetry, talking on jazz, The South ( "One has to do certain things in the country to escape the sense of country" ), The 60's, Leadbelly ( "I don't think you can be black and not be invested in The Blues" ), juking, how his wife became his wife (who was lovely as soap), and what he called an 'ancestral past' that remains present in his work.


Mr. Baker teaches at Vanderbilt and is the author of many books on black literature/cultural studies. Mr. Baker is an eloquent, intelligent, graceful person. As such, one is not able to determine, or perhaps does not care to determine, the point at which storytelling and poetry part ways ( there is a point ). While the evening was entertaining and interactive, only with the last poem of the evening did he move past traditionally communicative/descriptive language and address the sense of trauma ( this being one of the origins of The Blues) in events that necessarily lead to a creative exorcism of their inarticulate nature/ forming alternate avenues in order to address what is itself alternate ( of articulated/logical/known experience ). Mr. Baker's poetry is a poetry rung out of personal story, validated by his having lived it.



O, and he's down with Nate Mackey.







Friday, November 11, 2011

Psychic Meatloaf Poems Up / Horseless Stubborn



I dream of playing the saw with detachable bronzed fingernails, a nasty-crooked knife with a USB tip, inhaling quickfright at someone's sherbet-colored pet golem, dragging pallets of canned beer to the shack.

These dream-slips must needs be a result of gloving at Ward Schumaker's Moon Atlas repeatingly.


Hooray, veterans: Psychic Meatloaf has its latest issue ( #4 ) up and guess who forms the prow (?) Meanwhile, Horseless Press continues to hold its breath on issue # 10 of The Horseless Review ( with work by Cori Winrock, Chris Hosea, Molly Brodak, and Becca Jensen ), so listen to this while you wait...




















Saturday, November 5, 2011

Another Nashville Poetry Reading: Dino's








First off, bless Dino's, let's start with that. For the cheap beer, the unashamedly patriotic as heck ambience, the smoldering balls of black meat that her working-class patrons put in their stomachs, and for existing as the strongest counterpoint I know of to bars that require trim posture and a social mouthpiece.


Visiting writer, Jake Adam York, associate professor of English and the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver Colorado, with enthusiasm I'd garnered for a night of poetry at at Dino's (!) The local nod to local-natives heavy. I have a pile I'm working on without wanting to add to it, Nashville.



So send 'Pider your translation of the dog's claw marks at the wood, a recording of howls, a list of ceramics terminology, a recording of you whistling, and send it to piderbits@gmail.com.




And watch ( listen to ) this, foxers:





Monday, September 26, 2011

"Here the gap is / by large machines / that / end..." / Poem with interrupture


interrupture has told they'll push a poem of mine, "Breaking of a Sleeve," in their next issue. interrupture #3 has a date with October sometime. I along Charmi Keranen, Brooklyn Copeland, the duo Adam Tavel & Jon Cone. Give them a shot, I enjoy, as a pawn, their crook-smooth visual dimension. Give them a shot.



Saturday, September 24, 2011

Scythe VI & 'Pider in the Fall



The new(est) Scythe, number 6, is bursted forth from a black background into a blue text. Also loitering there are Kiik A.K., and Benjamin Winkler.


At, so, in. Fall. Coffees. Cutting up old National Geographics. Going at a Super Muffin. Charles Mingus' Haitian Fight Song. Wondering which poet's stamp best aligns with whomever I send mail to ( If I wish you well, Stevens. If not, Plath. ).




Also, you breathless pucks, 'Pider steams ahead gathering submissions of *striking poetry, art, prose, even music. Send that R.I.P. Patrick Swayze schtuff to Piderbits@gmail.com



Monday, September 19, 2011

"off sigh,/ of fingertips, off collisions biting/ my hand..." / Two for Psychic Meatloaf & Billy Collins reading




Made the Billy Collins reading over at Vanderbilt on Friday. Meagen and I navigated that pulsing campus and joined many clapping people, young people, sensitive people, grey people. Plus, floor sitters. How does a poet fill a hall reading when poetry has so obviously slipped out of the realm of validity from the arts (?) Long representative of an accessible ( "I write for readers" ), amusing ( in one poem, he makes a dog speak: "the jingle of my tags drove me mad" ), meandering ( several poems begin or contain, "For no particular reason..." ), narrative ( The end of a narrative arc is what one expects to find at the end of his poem ) poetry, Billy is the most commercially successful poet I can think of ( therefore, he is poetry to most ameripeoples ). It's quite the trick, folding an inherently unmarketable little language into paychecks, commodifying it.


If you've recently had a frontal lobotomy, poetry doesn't yield in the way airport novels do**. As such, Billy's work shares more with moderate fiction or pop prose than with poetry. The New Critical distinction de-likened The Poem from a thrashing fish in your skiff ( that you must deal with ) to The Poem as fishy on a white plate ( that you consume effortlessly ). That last type has much appeal to the american. Yowzah, folks that have poetry in this manner seem unpoetic. I become less swagfull.





But, the new Fact-Simile ( #7 ) is up and out, and it's the last bi-annual issue they'll be doing. It's a once a year thang now. Put on that old Ratatat, check out this work, hit your universal refresher switch.



Also, George McKim is placing a couple poems in his next issue of Psychic Meatloaf. Elsa, my destroyed field / is still a place for you and Returned as From Balconies are soon to writhe issue # 4, out in late October.




**Recommended: What it be like.



Sunday, September 11, 2011

Nine Eleven Eyes





The editors over at Fact-Simile are, for the next one week only, making The O Mission Repo available to *read online for free. That's Travis Macdonald's lensing of the multi-authored account of the day, a decade ago. Or, **read the actual 9/11 Commission Report. Make it a part of your mid-day tea and toast.

*Do the former whilst listening to Alhaji K. Frimpong's Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu

**Do the latter whilst listening to Junior Kimbrough's All Night Long


Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Asylum, the hidden thing is disappearing..." / Two poems in Horse Less Review





Glad to hear this morning Horseless Review is including Christmas Island and June in Issue #10, due out sometime in Fall. If you've not heard of the Horseless folks, let that "epoch of assassins" end and slip on into a new one: #9 has grand work by Chris Hosea, Brian Foley, and Anne Shaw.


Also, Of Montreal is coming to town. Hissing Fauna plays in cars that have no radios even.


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Lulu.com Offer - 20% Off



Lulu.com, the small press, cousin-like book site to Amazon.com, is offering up a 20% discount for any order for only the next few days. Credit goes to the fresh-dressed kiddies stomping back to school for the year. Or, rather, their parents who will buy, um, wheelbarrows full of books.The sale continues until August 27th (Sat.), at midnight.




Now go get some small press books for employee-discount prices.


Recommended:
Equations by Adam Fieled
Blake's Tree by Joel Chase





Wednesday, August 3, 2011

August leaps, and leaps straight


Have a nice morning, putting on clothes. Opening the blinds. Spitting out coffee grounds.






Monday, July 25, 2011

"Evenly wilted evenly upheld/ an arrangement trimming the horns..." / Poem in Fact-Simile





A poem, from a wee bit ago, is due to be a part of Fact-Simile's forthcoming issue, the Spring/Summer ( 4.1 ) issue. In addition to putting out two magazine issues a year ( in print, and free online ), they produce handmade books and other fantastic book-type things ( poetry trading cards to shove in your bike spokes (!) ) from recycled materials. Here's their last issue, the Autumn/Winter 2010 issue.


Among this grand news: migraines from my mother's dna, the renewal of adoration for anything by Man Man, 'Pider administrative tasks/gathering art-music-poetry submissions ( piderbits@gmail.com ), chopping up a fat cantaloupe thus eating fruit all damn day.



Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Robot Melon #11 Out



The new Robot Melon ( #11 ) is up and dandy, it's almost like being the clay in the scene from Ghost where Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore somewhat copulate whilst mindlessly sculpting to The Righteous Brothers. That's how I work.

Also, how long has LPZ been charging a $2 fee to accept submissions? Which is kind of like the scene from Ghost where Patrick Swayze gets popped and dies. Where he transitions from participant to observer.



*Highly recommended: Playing only the tambourine, and Dig!



Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Projector Magazine Seeking Cinema Rambles





Chris Kerr, of Projector Magazine, is putting out the pirate flag and collecting booty. You got to be a spirit, you cain't be no ghost.



Dear Dears,

I am now assembling the third issue of Projector. Would you please do me the favor of forwarding the following call for work far and wide? Besides direct requests to my favorite writers and submissions through duotrope.com this is the main way I make the magazine. I already have terrific work in from some major poets and tall tale-tellers.

If you're associated with an MFA program or writers' group, I'd love it if you would spread the word to them folk too.

Call for Work:

Projector, the journal of creative response to film, is compiling its third issue. Submit stories, poems, and analyrical inventions about movies to projectormagazine@yahoo.com by August 31, 2011. Sample work at www.projectormagazine.com
. Payment is three copies.


-Chris Kerr





* Art of Mindy Alper


Friday, July 1, 2011

"Laying down in the unconscious fur..." / Poems in OSFR's Finishing Hammers



Happy July. June before it. August after it.


Russell Jaffe has put together a first. An online edition of his O Sweet Flowery Roses entitled, grandly, Finishing Hammers. A compilation of poetic engagements with the fast-rising sport of MMA ( not UFC ).

Hammers is worthy of note for its launch, arc, trajectory, and finish. The sport-poetry vein is long established ( Ol' WCW and Mr. Jack Spicer come to mind ), but always the sport is of a great or commonly agreed upon socio-historic connotation. Now that our attention spans are slight, even, and especially, the convergence of culturally aligned-produced forms of violence hold significance. Those forms of engagement. In his Harper's essay, "The Art of Suffering," Pascal Bruckner chirps, "Only things that repulse us teach us anything..." Men fighting men. The sport of how men do and can fight other men.

Whatever.

"Alligator," so named about the John Jacob Niles tune Little Black Star, is included in OSFR's overture-nod at Mixed Martial Arts.




Saturday, June 18, 2011

"Body washed like a thief..." / Two poems out in Anemone Sidecar



A functioning memory is best. Though forgetting is often the more respectful thing. And so, "The stars think I have a job but I do not." and "Anne Sexton," little beads that they are, can appear in Anemone Sidecar, Chapter #15, sometime this next week.

Also, knowing Nashville. Also, grand, spontaneous T-storms. Also, bug's bites. Also, calls from UNKNOWN. Also, basil. Also, birthdays. Also, poems for gifts.