E t A l. III went swimmingly, absolutely swimmingly, Andrea, Spencer, Gary careened along a velvet arc for and upon us all, those sweet faces that showed and unknown and known and talked to and untalked to. Thanks to them coming out to have the night for us, may I return the favor in any way I can, physical labors included, valet services across the country perhaps.
Next E t A l. reading will be an astonish triad of readers - Visiting poet Kristi Maxwell (!), whose TO INSIST ON THE 'SOMENESS' OF EVERY ASSEMBLAGE has embedded itself into my subconscious since the day I read the word 'someness' then bootlegged it in .pdf is one of the coolest contemporary poetics works I've lately read/heard about ( + J. Frost's Martyr, Young Americans ); Ericka Suhl and her EXHALATIONS took my lungholds last I heard excerpts at last October's Regenerates event; Tiana Clark, nashvillian poet whose fervored, intimate, genuine, honed form structure but turning within pieces are a joy to be covered with. I am first provoked then you can too.
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Next E t A l. reading will be an astonish triad of readers - Visiting poet Kristi Maxwell (!), whose TO INSIST ON THE 'SOMENESS' OF EVERY ASSEMBLAGE has embedded itself into my subconscious since the day I read the word 'someness' then bootlegged it in .pdf is one of the coolest contemporary poetics works I've lately read/heard about ( + J. Frost's Martyr, Young Americans ); Ericka Suhl and her EXHALATIONS took my lungholds last I heard excerpts at last October's Regenerates event; Tiana Clark, nashvillian poet whose fervored, intimate, genuine, honed form structure but turning within pieces are a joy to be covered with. I am first provoked then you can too.
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Unmissed - the 2nd year MFA reading, Vander - Saw em all read, Anders the mesmerizing storytelling orations, certainty with lived experiences in a body contained, skin against the cold by mountain the peaks of which hurt or red the skin with the water clear and fish and torture in the fire by seasons there; Birdsall felt amongst the fiction most successful fiction as her common, urban, manner of tale betrayed exactly what she intended, a comedy of absurd and real and vice-like perturbations, attendance the fact that fiction most successfully runs at comedy ( uncertainty franticly ) and poetry toward frightening declarations ( pedagogy ); Theo U. his straight line narrative arc, fish in the sea man on the boat sensory tale was like a summer free and laborious all body, lived binaries, minimalist non-existensial solipsisms were refreshing I thought, a bit quick paced in delivery but such the manners of a mass reading and perhaps youth (though 4+1 years is what I heard as inside joke ); Simon H. had it, the inside dope on the actions and processes of the bad men, the good ones, the straightening and crooked dedicated ones, imagery smashed up the scene as it might should, and the suspension from the will to explain ( and thus over explain, by which fiction is most commonly established, framed, given order, order being the thing that fiction takes that poetry does not sustain ) arc and direction to the bursts of captivating prose, this new, this unknown, and appreciated.
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Also sort of half saw the Literary Death Match at The Stone Fox, then sort of had to duck out early from the Literary Death Match, did see Tiana Clark who gave a brave bracket of words to the entirely packed house, what a turnout to the thing, though I heard she did not take the entire thing home.
Also caught, apparently along with the rest of the scholastic Vander crews, the Jane Hirschfield reading. Now here a containment, a restraint that operates along the lines of two primary creases - compression and the narrative assumption (or hope, or lean toward ordering, or audience/reader intuition of such relation of linearity of parts, accessible syntax in the tradition of acts I, II, III…). Compression in the sense of tibetan, koanesque, haiku, more bucolic, bare, contemplative erasure of explanatory details for the ruminating immersion of being in the processes ( had mentioned as much as admiration toward Gary L. McDowell's newer work & trajectory/impulses ) of signposts, of blips by which we see, and are given idea of, the entirety of the radar. There is an ease, a joy, a folding back from these into 'active rest' ( meandering, groping, ogling, ownership from look/examination, a stopping or slowing when the mind begins to separate from order into what cerebral syntax/subconscious provocations - I saw a guy on the street do a similar back take at a lady's booty yesterday, we almost collided me watching him watch her back portaits, this still fresh in my mind ), putting the lemon tree actually in the poem a la Spicer in the imagist manner. All in all a fun reading, though, company had mixed reaction as a re-entry into poetry readings around town, perhaps my developed contextual barometer is off now, sludged. Whatever.
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Next Readings around town -
4/20, monday - visiting world champion slam poet Xero Skidmore, The Post, 6-7:30
4/20, monday - Matthew Baker, Melissa Cundieff Pexa, Zachary Greenberg, Alumni, Vander, Furman 114, 7-8
4/24, friday - Anne Charlton, Edgar Kunz, Dave Wright, Lyrical Brew, Barnes & Noble, Vander, 7-8
