Readings, Zukofsky, Notes on Music Tundra

Vanderbilt's Front Porch reading series gave a phlegmy gasp, then stared at it on the concrete for an hour, seeing sunflowers, Hearts, opposite-gender longing, dreamy dream-dreaming ( 1970's L.A. vegan-gore ).

East Nashville's Dino's Poetry Sucks reading series did its third thang, memories of which have already been usurped by hopes for the next occurrence ( among those coming to music city is "Scary, No Scary" author Zachary Schomburg ). Really.

// Musical interlude //

Evelyn Reilly's new Verse poem does good, but "Styrofoam" creates different spaces, more unrelated pillars are held/holding; in the ecopoetic ( cringe ) genre, a best because of leaking thresholds, converging awarenesses, the indistinct stations of elements co-among.

Thanks Library:

"... the chances of monopoly have been so carefully

seized that only on the other side of

one's bathroom nothing is foreign. Unless

charting the antarctic has something to do

with figures the heads of which are

just smudges away from the axis of abscissas

or one is merely exploring from a shower ..." sayeth Zukofsky

And...

all the 4:30pm glares in the world want you to fork it over: 'Pider - piderbits@gmail.com

Dear Trud, (2012)

Dear( est ) Trud,

The new( est ) year has come to us, it's still on the porch and settles / also is Horseless Review (!, # 10). See Lily Ladewig ( "...Workmen apply the bright copper
gutter...."; "I’m not listening to you. I’m wearing my listening face. The sky is vague but I am discrete." ), Carrie Bennett's grand fluent duncanesque form, et. al. Really do.

For those of you in the Nashville, I haven't the energy to comment on the Front Porch reading that took place this last holiday week. In fact, been dreading making dread with that instance of 'poetry'... best to not, wait for next one.

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.

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:

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.

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...

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: