Peaches and Bats' Blague

Happy New You New Year to You Too

2011-12-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

LAST DAY OF THE YEAR

The last day of the year

is not the last day of time.

Other days will come

and new thighs and wombs will share the warmth of life with you.

You will kiss mouths, you will tear up documents,

you will travel and enjoy so many celebrations

of birthdays, graduations, promotions, glory, sweet death with symphony and chorale,

that your days will be full and you will not hear the outcry,

the irreparable howls

of the wolf, in solitude.

The last day of time

is not the last day of everything.

Always a fringe of life remains

where two men sit down.

A man and his opposite,

a woman and her foot,

a body and its memory,

an eye and its brilliance,

a voice and its echo,

and who knows? -- maybe God also?

Accept with simplicity this gift of chance.

You deserve to live another year.

You wish you could live forever and drain the centuries to their dregs.

Your father died, your grandfather died.

Many things in you are already dead, and others squint at death,

but you are alive. Once again you are alive,

and glass in hand

you wait in the dawn.

The comfort of getting drunk.

The comfort of dancing and shouting,

the comfort of the bright red ball,

the comfort of Kant and poetry,

all of them . . . and none is a solution.

And now -- the morning of a new year.

Things are clean, orderly.

The tired body freshens up with lather.

All the alert senses are functioning.

The mouth is eating life.

The mouth is choked with life.

Life streams from the mouth,

smears the hands, the sidewalk.

Life is fat, oily, deadly, unauthorized.

--Carlos Drummond de Andrade,

translated from the Portuguese by John Nist

ANTI-WAR POEM

for Robert Harris

It's New Year's Eve, of 1968, & a time

for Resolution.

I don't like Engelbert Humperdink.

I love the incredible String Band.

The War goes on

& war is Shit.

I'll sing you a December song.

It's 5 below zero in Iowa City tonight.

This year I found a warm room

That I could go to

be alone in

& never have to fight.

I didn't live in it.

I thought a lot about dying

But I said Fuck it.

--Ted Berrigan

Peaches and Bats #9 will be out in late January 2012, with new works by Chris Ashby, Laynie Browne, Allen Edwin Butt, John Coletti, Andrew Hughes, Sarah Kelly, Maryrose Larkin, Glenn Mott, Sheila E. Murphy, Nate Orton, Eléna Rivera, Linda Russo, Cindy St. John, and James Yeary. See you soon.

Luoma & Spahr at Open Space, 12/11

2011-12-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 11

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents

a poetry reading by

Bill Luoma

Juliana Spahr

Open Space Café

2815 SE Holgate Blvd., Portland

$5 suggested donation

about "Object Poems" at 23 Sandy Gallery

2011-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

I missed the opening and the reading for 23 Sandy Gallery's show "Object Poems," curated by David Abel, but I've been to see the show twice this week. If you live in Portland, you must go. The show is up until Saturday, November 26th (on which day the curator and some of the artists will be in attendance), and the Gallery is open Thursday-Saturday, 12-6 p.m.

It's been an amazing autumn in Portland for visual-literary-synaesthetic looking, asemic clerkdom, poetic objects and the quivering outward cilia of book arts, with Gallery Homeland's terrific "Reading.Writing." curated by Lisa Radon back in August, and now this. We might have a renaissance on our hands. Here are some things.

MaryAnn Hayden's three gorgeous broadsides are the only flat, printed, paper objects in the front room (unless you count Cuneiform Press's Bumpers, whose potential three-dimensionality is implicit), and I'm glad David broke his rule for them. My favorite is T, "inspired by a particularly gorgeous red and green and very silver and shiny long-haul truck."

The text reads:

is he ever

proud

that

he's

little

mural

Mark Owens's Through, like many of his works, comes with instructions:

1) Collect small objects

2) Push them through the book

3) Think of this action as making a poem

4) Repeat

[photo by Kerry Davis]

And Owens and Maria José Gonzalez Arredondo's Which Way In: a dream migration game (for internal landscapes) instructs:

1) Roll the dice

2) Go to sleep

3) Dream in the places that land face up

[photo by Kerry Davis]

Abel's own Molecular Text #2: Solids is the cleverest use of bubble-wrap and sharpie I've seen (and I've seen quite a few at the preschool where I work).

James Yeary has taken a lime green highlighter and highlighted every word in a paperback copy of Beckett's The Unnameable, but left the most spaces between sentences open.

Kristin Prevallet has made paper and lampshades from her old notebooks, which didn't solve her storage problem.

Leo and Anna Daedalus have presented ten rocks with their English translations. When I asked Leo whether he could translate one of my poems into rocks, he replied that it was possible with the right equipment, though he might have to resort to homolithy.

Geof Huth offers an array of reified pwoermds--my favorite is birchth.

[photo by Kerry Davis]

A merciless little card instructs viewers not to touch Norma Cole's book Collective Memory, but the accompanying poster at least allows one to read--in the tiniest type--the text of the commonplace book which forms its understory. I remember, from Vaclav Havel, "I always sign in green ink, the color of hope," and, from Clark Coolidge, "The road to folly leads to one's own forms."

Entirely touchable, though, is Nico Vassilakis's Random Doses, which he encourages viewers to rearrange and then photograph using a disposable camera on a pedestal. When I returned to the show yesterday, the 6 letters were in the terrific arrangement below, which the gallery owner informed us had been made by a 14-year-old boy earlier that afternoon.

There's much more. Go see.

Degentesh and Gardner, tonight at Mother Foucault's!

2011-11-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 9th

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a reading by

Katie Degentesh

Drew Gardner

Mother Foucault's Books

523 SE Morrison St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Object Poems at 23 Sandy Gallery

2011-11-03T12:31:00.001-07:00

Object Poems
Curated by David Abel

23 Sandy Gallery

623 NE 23rd Ave. at Sandy Blvd., Portland

November 4 – 26, 2011

Special Events

Artists’ Reception: First Friday, November 4, 2011, 5:00-8:00 p.m.

Poetry Reading & Performance: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
Curator On Site: Saturday, November 26, 2011, 12:00-6:00 p.m.

Hartigan and Gorrick at Open Space Cafe, 10/30/11

2011-10-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 30th

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Patrick Playter Hartigan

Anne Gorrick

Open Space Café

2815 SE Holgate Blvd., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Ashby & Cunningham at the Waypost, 10/16

2011-10-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 16

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents

a poetry reading by

Chris Ashby

Brent Cunningham

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Roy and Kemp at the Waypost, 9/25/11

2011-09-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 25th

at 8 p.m.

Spare Room presents a reading by

Arnold J. Kemp

Camille Roy

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Abel and Lohmann at Stonehenge Studios, 9/11

2011-09-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Studio Series: Poetry Reading and Open Mic

featuring
 
David Abel & Sam Lohmann
 
Sunday, September 11
7:00 pm 
(open mic at 8:00)

 Stonehenge Studios 
3508 SW Corbett Avenue

 Free and open to the public, the Studio Series is held monthly on second Sundays.
 The Ross Island Café/Grocery is now open for light fare before readings.

For additional information please contact organizer and host leahstenson@comcast.net.

First in the neighborhood and then online
Comic Book Bondage Cover of the Day

Record snowpack and the first hot Saturday

No denuciation continues a raffia

They don't believe in times of day

water running over stones

As a dark blue moiré patch

Under the evening star, undelivered mail

Blue sponge by giltish scrubber
wrenches and shovels and coils of wire and Chinese brooms in dizzy informality
-- Sam Lohmann & David Abel

Stand on this picnic bench and look north

2011-09-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

The sweet folks at Publication Studio Portland (a.k.a. Jank Editions) have published my book of poems, Stand on this picnic bench and look north. It comes in any number of file-folder colors, and is available as a print-on-demand book or e-book from their website, or at their store at 717 SW Ankeny St. You can also read it online using their "free reading commons."

They say:

Portland poet and editor of Peaches and Bats, Sam Lohmann, gives us a new book, Stand On This Picnic Bench and Look North. This collection of Lohmann's poetry delves into the language of landscapes – urban, rural, and domestic – that is unavoidably entangled in memory. "Americans think all landscape is narrative," and Lohmann indulges this cultural inclination with surprising effects and implications.

Thanks, Publication Studio!

New Issue!

2011-07-20T18:37:00.001-07:00

Peaches and Bats #8

features poetry by

Jeff Alessandrelli

Norma Cole

Ray DeJesús

Nathan Hauke

Lauren Levin

Paul G. Maziar

Jesse Morse

Chris Nealon

Kate Schapira

Jen Tynes

Michael Weaver

Deborah Woodard

plus

an interview with Norma Cole

and

drawings by Paul G. Maziar

64-page handsewn zine with letterpressed cover

(includes shipping in North America)

order via Paypal here:

my new chapbook from c_L

2011-07-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

James Yeary's doomalicious and protean c_L press created this beautiful chapbook of a poem of mine called Lines on Canvas or What I Know or Have Seen of His Life. I'm so happy this exists.

You can read James's sweet blurb and instructions for ordering here at the Calendar of Catabolic Guilt.

(Also, this poem is part of a collection of landscape poems called Stand on this picnic bench and look north, forthcoming from Publication Studio. I guess I like long titles.)

Peaches and Bats #8 launch reading, 7/13/11

2011-07-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Reading Frenzy and "The Firm and Aerie"
present a launch party for

PEACHES
AND
BATS
8

with readings by
Paul G. Maziar
Jesse Morse
&
Michael Weaver

Wednesday, July 13
7:30 p.m.

Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St., Portland

free

new Airfoil chapbook!

2011-07-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

bell-lloc, a book of eight eight-eight-syllable-line-stanza'd poems about Mallorca, the moon, and medieval macaronicism by the wonderful Chris Piuma, is available here.

Koeneke & Queequeg, 7/10/11

2011-07-03T13:50:00.001-07:00

Sunday, July 10

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a reading by

Rodney Koeneke

Queequeg (Daniel Comiskey & Ryan Tranum)

Open Space Cafe

2815 SE Holgate Boulevard, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Truitt and Lohmann, 6/12

2011-06-06T19:34:00.001-07:00

Sunday, June 12

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a reading by

Sam Truitt

Sam Lohmann

Open Space Cafe

2815 SE Holgate Boulevard, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Cooperman, Kaupang & Raphael, 5/22/11

2011-05-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 22
at 7:30 pm
Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Matthew Cooperman
Aby Kaupang
&
Dan Raphael

The Waypost
3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

2011-04-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

"Time, perfect or syncopated time, is when a faucet dribbles from a leaky washer. I'm more than sure an adolescent memory can remember how long the intervals were between each collision of our short-lived drip and its crash into an untidy sink's overfilled coffee cup with murky grime of old cream still clinging to the edges or a tidy rust stained enamel sink that the owner of such has given up on the idea that that maintenance man is ever going to change the rhythm beat of his dripping faucet by just doing his job and changing that rotten old rubber washer before time runs out of time.

. . .

"Dannie [Richmond] is me with his own sense of will. Instead of hands strumming or bowing he uses his feet, hands, skin, metal, and wood. When I met Dannie several young drummers had just about burned me out time-wise, and they were sound deaf and tone deaf. Also they did not know, as Elvin Jones and I discussed many years ago, that you don't play the beat where it is. You draw a picture away from the beat right up to its core with different notes of different sounds of the drum instruments so continuously that the core is always there for an open mind. While you make it live now and then you go inside the beat, dead center, and split the core to the sides and shatter the illusion so there is no shakiness ever. If one tries to stay inside dead center or directly on top of the beat or on the bottom the beat is too rigid on the outside where it is heard. The stiffness should only be felt inside the imaginary center of the exact tempo's core. The top, the bottom, the sides, the back are where my favorite drummers, Dannie and Elvin, play, though differently. They tease the mind by not telling you exactly what everyone knows - where one, two, three, and four are. For ensemble work before I met Dannie, Elvin fit my taste. He still does but it's Dannie who's with me and I'm lucky he has stayed with me. There isn't time to teach a lifetime of music to kids who don't know a drum is an instrument, not a donkey for freeloader, horn-happy soloists to ride tempo on because it's easier to listen to drums beat out tempo, wrong or right, than to think for yourself the tempo a musician like Dannie or Elvin suggests to you, yet not too obviously."

--Charles Mingus

liner notes for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

O'Brien & Weaver, 4/17/11

2011-04-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

Sunday, April 17

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Geoffrey G. O'Brien

Michael Weaver

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Henning and Owen, 3/27/11

2011-03-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 27th

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Barbara Henning

Will Owen

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Edwards, Fernandez, Kaplan and Klein, 3/13/11

2011-03-09T19:14:00.001-08:00

(poster by James Yeary and Sam Lohmann)

Sunday, March 13th

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Dan Kaplan

three Canarium Books authors:

Joshua Edwards

Robert Fernandez

Ish Klein

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Dunbar and Schultz, 2/25

2011-02-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 25th

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Donald Dunbar

Susan Schultz

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

new Airfoil chapbook!

2011-02-13T20:44:00.000-08:00

marrowing by Maryrose Larkin is available now, here. The reader is the poem.

Leslie Scalapino memorial reading tomorrow!

2011-02-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

Leslie Scalapino
Memorial Reading, Reception, & Exhibition

Saturday, February 12
2:00 pm

Eliot Hall chapel, Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland

Please join us for a memorial reading, reception, and celebration of Leslie Scalapino, with presentations of her poetry and selected artwork from her personal collection.

Contemporary poets and members of the Reed community will participate, including
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Allison Cobb, Alicia Cohen, Michael Cross, Samuel Danon,
Sarah Dougher, Judith Goldman, Endi Bogue Hartigan, Jeanne Heuving, Maryrose Larkin,
Denise Newman, Standard Schaefer, James Sherry, Ellen Stauder, Konrad Steiner,
James Yeary, and Reed students.

Artists represented in the exhibition include Petah Coyne, Susan Bee, and Etel Adnan.
A reception will follow the presentations.
Cosponsored by Spare Room and Reed College.

For information, news, writing, and scholarship regarding Leslie's life and work, see the new Leslie Scalapino web site.

Larkin and Sigo, 2/6/11

2011-01-29T14:43:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 6

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Maryrose Larkin

Cedar Sigo

Open Space

2815 SE Holgate Boulevard, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Peaches and Bats #7

2011-01-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

Peaches and Bats #7

features drawings by:

Dana Dart-McLean

Daniel J. Mitchell

Nate Orton

and poetry by:

Jennifer Bartlett

Jen Burris

Allen Edwin Butt

Joel Chace

Jen Coleman

Adriana Grant

Lindsay Hill

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Sarah Kelly

Sam Lohmann

Kyle Schlesinger

Cedar Sigo

James Yeary

64-page handsewn zine with letterpressed cover

(includes shipping in North America)

order via Paypal thusly:

or email peachesandbats AT gmail DOT com

Maximus Poems marathon, 1/14-16

2011-01-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

[poster by James Yeary and Sam Lohmann]

Spare Room presents a marathon reading of Charles Olson's The Maximus Poems, in honor of the poet's 100th birthday

Friday, January 14, 4:00 - 9:00 pm
Switchyard Studios 109 E Salmon Street
readings by: Jacqueline Motzer, Jesse Morse, Zachary Schomburg, Christopher Luna, Dan Raphael, Laura Feldman, Michael Weaver, David Abel

Saturday, January 15, 2:00 - 7:00 pm
galleryHOMELAND 2505 SE 11th Avenue
readings by: Alicia Cohen, Sam Lohmann, Jennifer Bartlett, Jaye Harris, Donald Dunbar, John Hall, Susan Rankin, Dan Raphael, Rodney Koeneke, Endi Hartigan

Sunday, January 16, 2:00 - 7:00 pm
YU 800 SE 10th Avenue
readings by: Lisa Radon, Linda Austin, Tim DuRoche, Patrick Hartigan, Meredith Blankinship, Joseph Mains,

Jamalieh Haley, David Weinberg, Castle, Paul Maziar, Drew Swenhaugen, James Yeary

Peaches and Bats at Publication Fair tomorrow!

2010-12-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

poster by ContainerCorps

Publication Studio is hosting their second annual Publication Fair tomorrow in downtown Portland, and I'll be sharing a table with Forrest Martin's Death: A Magazine for the Enthusiast and the Non-Enthusiast Alike. I'll be hawking Peaches and Bats, Airfoil chapbooks, and installments of James Yeary and Nate Orton's My Day zine series. Come say hi!

December 19, 2010 11 am - 8 pm
@ The Cleaners at Ace Hotel, SW Stark & 10th Street, Portland, Ore.

Publication Fair

It's back! Our annual holiday Publication Fair, featuring Portland's innovative, globe-trotting awesome publication projects all in one room, vending their wares to you. Plus hot cider and free popcorn. Here is a partial list of vendors at the Fair (updated as we go, links coming soon):

Pinball Publishing

Stand-Up Comedy

Reading Frenzy

Ooligan Press

Marriage Publishing House

Nudity In Groups

Cumbersome Multiples

Tin House Press

Veneer Magazine

IPRC

Poor Claudia

Dill Pickle Club

Monograph Bookwerks

Triangular Press/ OCAC Book Arts

Container Corps

Little Read Writers

Cooley Gallery publications

Ampersand

Plazm

Peaches and Bats

1430 Contemporary

Em Space

Justin Bland

&Review

Obsessive Consumption/ Kate Bingaman Burt

gaze books

Octopus Books

Publication Studio

Mark the date: Sunday, December 19, 2010, 11 am - 8 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Alexander and Gallagher, 12/12/10

2010-12-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 12

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Kristen Gallagher

Chris Alexander

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Avenue, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Hawkey and Waiting for Stretchers, 11/28/10

2010-11-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 28, at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents

a reading and a performance by

Christian Hawkey

Waiting for Stretchers

Open Space Café

2815 SE Holgate Street, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Les Figues Press reading, 7/14/10

2010-11-12T10:40:00.001-08:00

Sunday, November 14

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a reading by

six Les Figues Press authors:

Amina Cain

Jennifer Calkins

Doug Nufer

Pam Ore

Matthew Timmons

Christine Wertheim

at The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Cohen and Warsh, 11/7/10

2010-10-23T15:46:00.001-07:00

Sunday, November 7
at 7:30 p.m.
Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Alicia Cohen
&
Lewis Warsh

at The Waypost
3120 N. Williams Avenue, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Mittenthal and Schaefer, 10/3/10

2010-10-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 10th, at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents

a poetry reading by

Robert Mittenthal

Standard Schaefer

Caffé Vita at Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Choi and Currin, 9/18/10

2010-09-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 1oth

at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Don Mee Choi

Jen Currin

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Kimmelman and Schlegel, 8/1/10

2010-07-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 1, at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents

a poetry reading by

Burt Kimmelman

Rob Schlegel

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Polyvocal Poetry in Ladd's Circle! 7/18!

2010-07-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

Spare Room presents

Portland Polyvocal Poetry

Sunday, July 18th
2:00-4:00 pm

Ladd Circle
(SE 16th & Harrison, between Hawthorne & Division)

FREE

Performers, poets, and friends will gather to test the capability of the poem as conversation. Many of the poems performed on Sunday will be from years past, and by poets no longer with us; others contemporary and presented by their authors. All will be performed by multiple voices, some by speaking or singing chorus, and several will include the opportunity for audience creativity and participation. Please bring your own refreshments and accommodations for seating (towels or folding chairs).

Compositions by

David Abel
Kathy Acker
Endi Bogue Hartigan
Crg Hill
Bethany Ides
Jackson Mac Low
Jesse Morse
Jacqueline Motzer
Charles Olson
mARK oWEns
Chris Piuma
Leslie Scalapino
Nico Vassilakis
Karl Young

arranged and performed by

David Abel
Alicia Cohen
Tina Frost
Endi Bogue Hartigan
Crg Hill
Lindsay Hill
Bethany Ides
Maryrose Larkin
Devin Lucid
Jesse Morse
Jacqueline Motzer
Morgan A. Ritter
Standard Schaefer
Michael Weaver
David Weinberg
James Yeary
You

Tynes and Ides, tonight!

2010-07-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 11th, at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Bethany Ides

Jen Tynes

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Peaches and Bats in St. Johns, 7/10: Koeneke, Mains & Raphael

2010-06-28T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Market Day Reading Series and "The Firm and Aerie" present

a launch reading for

Peaches and Bats #6

hosted by Sam Lohmann

with poetry readings by

Rodney Koeneke

Joseph Mains

Dan Raphael

Saturday, July 10th, at 12:00 noon

at St. Johns Booksellers

8622 N. Lombard St., Portland (next to the farmers' market)

free

Blankinship & Poe, 6/27/10

2010-06-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 27

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Meredith Blankinship

Deborah Poe

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta Street, Portland

$5 suggested donation

Peaches and Bats #6

2010-06-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

Peaches and Bats #6

features poetry by:

Taryn Andrews

Aaron Barrell

Bill Berkson

Meredith Blankinship

Norma Cole

Beverly Dahlen

Joel Felix

Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi

Rodney Koeneke

Kimberly Lyons

Joseph Mains

Scott Metz

Hoa Nguyen

Deborah Poe

Dan Raphael

Stacy Szymaszek

Dana Ward

Mark Young

64-page handsewn zine with letterpressed cover

(includes shipping in the US)

Order via PayPal here:

or email peachesandbatsATgmailDOTcom for mail-order instructions

Atkinson and Kunz, 6/13/10

2010-06-07T21:26:00.001-07:00

Sunday, June 13, at 7:30 pm
Spare Room presents
a poetry reading by

Félicia Atkinson
&
Drew Kunz

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta Street, Portland
$5 suggested donation

Now available: Chris Daniels' POROUS NOMADIC

2010-06-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

There's a new airfoil chapbook, porous, nomadic, by Berkeley's Chris Daniels. You can order it here. Rodney Koeneke blogged about it, with characteristic acumen, here. And I just stumbled on this 2006 interview between Chris and Kent Johnson, mostly about Fernando Pessoa and translation, over at Jacket.

Daniels and Abel, 5/21/10

2010-05-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

There's going to be a reading this Friday to launch the new Airfoil chapbook, porous, nomadic by Bay Area poet and translator extraordinaire Chris Daniels. Come listen!

Smorg Reading Series presents

Chris Daniels

David Abel

Friday, May 21st

at 7 pm

The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

Free

Lots of poetry in town this week!

2010-05-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

See you there.

Wednesday, May 12, 7:30 pm
Bruce Boone & Maryrose Larkin

Spare Room Reading Series
Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta
www.flim.com/spareroom

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

Saturday, May 15, 7:00 pm; Poetry & Video
Sam Lohmann, Chris Nealon, & T'Chaka Anghelos Sikelianos

Tangent Reading Series
Clinton Corner Cafe
2633 SE 21st Ave.
www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html

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

Sunday, May 16, 7:30 pm
David Wolach, Jen Coleman, & Cara Benson

Spare Room Reading Series
Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta
www.flim.com/spareroom

Boone and Larkin, 5/12/10

2010-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 12

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a reading by

Bruce Boone

Maryrose Larkin

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Some extracts from Gertrude Stein's "Natural Phenomena" (1925)

2010-05-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

[from the "Landscapes and Geography" section of Painted Lace and other Pieces, Yale U.P., 1955. Photos by me. Model: Michaela. Audio linden by Bethany Ides.]

“What did they seize when they saw they seized it when they saw it.”

“Arrange a way.

“A way to have bright and brighter.

“When back to back and back can there be can they be satisfied. As soon.

“At noon at once.

“Natural phenomena make earthquakes at once.

“Natural phenomena make pansies soon.

“Natural phenomena resist color.

“Natural phenomena appointed, apart and practically appeared.

“Natural phenomena make it difficult not to look.”

“Mountains—exchange.

“Lakes—express.

“Rivers—attract.

“Valleys—connect.”

“We said we at once said we said twice we said flying and we said the pigeons and yellower. If yellow is not seen it is as much as flown. This makes an oriole and near white and pink and colored shrubs which may be trees.”

“… and naturally and as naturally, to look is to leap and not for instance.”

“Would it be very certain that rain and its equivalent sun and its equivalent a hill and its equivalent and flowers and their equivalent have been heard and seen and felt and followed and more around and rounder and roundly. Is there also a hesitation in going slower. She said yes.”

“This is natural this is unnatural. It is natural. It is natural that from the stand-point of white all color is paler. It is natural that from the stand-point of day-light all color is whiter it is natural that from the stand-point of snow-white all color in day-light is blue white or cloud white or green white, or in day-light, day-light. It is natural that from the stand-point of white all color is as light. From the standpoint of white naturally from the stand-point of white. It is natural from the stand-point of white all color in day-light from the stand-point of white from the stand-point of white all color in day-light all color from the stand-point of white. In day-light white from the stand-point of white, chalk white and from the stand-point of day-light from the stand-point of white. Naturally.

“Who knows the difference between solid and solidly, between solidly and solid. Who knows the difference between the moon solidly, between the solid as soon between solidly and soon. Who knows the difference between soon and solidly, between solid and soon. Who knows the difference between noon and moon who knows the difference between solid and moon between solid and soon. Naturally.”

“Phenomena consist in building, horses, chairs, windows and stones. Natural phenomena consist in silks bureaus butter and lamps. Natural phenomena consist in shouts in leaves and in nests, natural phenomena consist in shoes lives and roads.”

“She left them as that was it. A Phenomena of Nature is big trees and high grass and roads and as it was.”

“Those which to choose makes when they have to line it with itself and by this means they can allow and from the middle up and from the middle down. They do believe that it has been nearly done. Because of care. Because of water and welcome. Because of their importance. Because of their importance they allow that they are around them by this time and they do so noisily exchange volcanoes for thunder earthquakes for rainbows and houses for land and even before that they see. They realize around the way that they came that they must and disturbance to exchange for easier and habitable arches.”

“They meant it as it was. By nearly all of it. It is not of any use it is in use and so and for and by this time and they have nearly nearly to be more more aware and not having hammered hammered makes joining joining through this in the mean time by the way. Naturally they had it their way.”

“Lists of Natural Phenomena.

“Thunder winter and lightning lakes, borders and feathers shawls hangings and traceries birds hours and at once.”

"The sense of time is a phenomena of nature. It is what adds complexity to composition. There can be past and future which succeed and rejoin, this makes romantic realistic and sentimental and then really the three in one and not romantic and not realistic and not sentimental. The three in one makes a time sense that adds complexity to composition. A composition after all is never complex. The only complexity is the time sense that adds that creates complexity in composition. Let us begin over and over again. Let us begin again and again and again.”

Yeary and Orton, Cotner and Fitch, 4/21/10

2010-04-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

[poster by James and Nate]

Wednesday, April 21, at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a reading by

Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch

(reading, with a special guest, from their book Ten Walks/Two Talks)

and

Nate Orton & James Yeary

(reading, with live drawing, from their serial zine My Day)

Concordia Coffee House, 2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5.00 suggested donation

Beer, Killebrew and Klein, 3/21/10

2010-03-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday, March 21, at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

three Canarium Press authors:

John Beer

Paul Killebrew

Ish Klein

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

What We Are Learning is a book

2010-03-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

For two years (2008-2009) I had the pleasure of working with Colin Beattie and Alyse Emdur to co-edit a monthly email magazine called What We Are Learning, in which we compiled short accounts of things our various contributors (about 167 individuals over the course of 24 issues) told us they had learned each month. As a collaborative writing project it was a very instructive challenge, in which the three of us, drawing on disparate backgrounds in journalism, social-practice-based art, and poetry, attempted to create a cohesive style and represent, in a respectful and entertaining way, the experiences of others. "December 2009" was our final issue, and now a print version of the complete magazine is being published as a "Jank Edition" by Portland's Publication Studio.

Here is the preface Colin wrote for the volume:

We wanted a portrait of everyone alone, together. We kept record of the discoveries, agonies, and oddities lived by our strangers and friends.

We said: “Tell me what you’ve learned this month, a revelation, a heart-break, a new way to tie your shoes. It could be anything, but be specific.”

We distributed monthly accounts of your progress for two years. Those accounts are gathered in this edition and presented to you as a proof of life.

Publication Studio's website summarizes the book thus:

For two years, What We Are Learning issued a monthly compendium of brief reports from several dozen friends, telling what each of them had learned recently. This book gathers their reports into a uniquely compelling narrative that displaces the drama of the individual with the pleasures of the collective. What We Are Learning is one of the most provocative and successful experiments in dispersed authorship that we have seen.

I'm very happy that this exists, and grateful to all the contributors.

Bill Berkson, 2/21/10

2010-02-10T18:47:00.001-08:00

Sunday, February 21
at 7:30 pm
Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Bill Berkson

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta St., Portland
$5 suggested donation

2010-02-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

"I was solicited to write the affairs of my own time, by some . . . but they do not consider that to purchase the glory of Sallust, I would not give myself the trouble, sworn enemy as I am to obligation, assiduity, or perseverance; that there is nothing so contrary to my style as a continued narrative, I so often cut myself short in my writing for want of breath; I have neither composition nor explanation worth anything, and am ignorant, beyond a child, of the phrases and even the proper words to express the most common things; and for that reason it is, that I have undertaken to say only what I can say, and have accommodated my subject to my strength: should I take one to be my guide, peradventure I should not be able to keep pace with him; and in the freedom of my liberty, might deliver judgements, which upon better thoughts, and according to reason, would be illegitimate and punishable."

--Montaigne, "Of the Force of Imagination"

(trans. Cotton)

"Sentences are shortness of breath.

. . .

Sentences protect us from the storms at their margins.

. . .

If I could tell you about this sea

I wouldn't show it.

. . .

I write through my story, I have it in for myself.

. . .

To be, to be continued (double-negative, tentative title)."

--Clark Coolidge, "Partial Nurtures"

Cobb and Morse, 2/7/10

2010-02-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 7

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Allison Cobb

Jesse Morse

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St., Portland

$5 suggested donation

New Airfoil Chapbooks blog!

2010-01-30T13:14:00.000-08:00

David Abel and I are publishing a new chapbook series, under the name "Airfoil." We've started by publishing ourselves: Airfoil 1 is Commonly by David Abel; Airfoil 2 is Onlooking by Sam Lohmann. Now there is an Airfoil Chapbooks blog where you can buy them, or just look at them (they're pretty).

P&B 5 reviewed at "Reading Local"

2010-01-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Karen Munro of Reading Local: Portland for her kind review of Peaches and Bats 5.

Annotated Torso of an Interview

2010-01-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

David Shapiro in conversation with Sam Lohmann,

March 2009

(in Peaches and Bats 4)

I admire David Shapiro’s poetry very much, and I’m happy to be able to present this interview. His poetry is synaesthetic and hyperkinetic. It begins from the analogies between language and music, language and painting, language and architecture, language and physics; then it finds the fissures in these analogies and, with a keen tragicomic skepticism, pushes them towards or past their breaking point. It is beautiful and useful to watch.

I contacted Shapiro about recording a brief interview on a recent visit to New York, and he very kindly invited me to visit his apartment in Riverdale, the Bronx. He gave me a frenetic tour of the paintings on his walls (by Jasper Johns, John Hejduk, Michael Goldberg, Fairfield Porter, and others), offered me a piece of an immense multicolored Mardi Gras cake (I’m afraid I declined), and showed me dozens of his own collages made mostly from postcards, children’s stickers, and Bedazzle jewels. (One of these, a double portrait of Ludwig Wittgenstein, appears below.) Then we sat on a sunny couch and talked for about two hours. When I listened to the recording afterwards (a friend had lent me a very nice digital recorder) I found that, due to an error of my button-pushing finger, I had only recorded the first thirty minutes of the conversation, a sort of epic preamble before I began to ask questions. Thus I offer a torso or severed stem of a lost interview. Over the next few months, I transcribed the recording and sent Shapiro some additional questions, which he answered by email. These appear as footnotes.

—Sam Lohmann

David Shapiro: You know, a lot of my poems come out of my dreams, and I don’t like to admit it, but I found, maybe because I was so despondent as a young man, from age four or five giving concerts and practicing, my dream life was very dense, and I would dream poems. I told my son:

“Why don’t you have a poem in your dream every night?”

And he would say, “Oh, you’re Chief Poem-in-a-Dream.”

We loved to write together, and it made being a father even easier—meaning: when you’re a father and you want to do something else, it’s a mistake; so I found something I liked to do with him. We would paint side by side; he would paint things from Sesame Street—or ask me to; he would paint very abstractly.

But one of the things that happened: I started to have what is now called lucid dreams, where I knew what I was getting, and a lot of my poems were gotten in dreams. Kenneth Koch used to warn against “indigestible dream fragments” and I understand, there’s a kind of minor surrealism where you know that it’s a dream—as in a bad poet saying, “It was all a dream.” But I began to get up to about 16 lines that I could memorize, and a lot of the poem called “The Devil’s Trill Sonata”[1] was written in dreams. Fairfield Porter, who’s one of my favorite artists, said to me one day:

“How did you write these poems?”

And I said, “Well I should tell you the truth, a lot of it does come from dreams.”

And he said, “Oh, that accounts for its dreamy quality.”

And I took that as a put-down and began—for a very long time I thought very specifically about the quality of description, which people love to praise in certain poets; for example, Elizabeth Bishop is praised by Paz as having a good descriptive intelligence. But I don’t pass, as she does—it’s a Guy de Maupassant exercise—I don’t pass a tree and think, What’s the one word that would describe this tree better than any other word in the world? I did that when I was about 12 to 15, a lot of that, so I regard that as practicing scales. But if lately I do notice something it’s that, just as there’s a weakness—I spent a my whole life as a kind of red-diaper baby, so politics and the politics of socialism and the history of the Russian revolution and the history of the progressivist movement in America, all that was so close to me, but I do feel it may be a weakness, because I know that a friend once said:

“Oh, I’m not putting you in this political book, David, because your poems are not political.”

And I said, “It’s been my whole life, I was on the FBI lookout list longer than some Language poets have been languaged.”[2]

But it’s true that, I guess obviously, some people might read my work and I sometimes worry that it’s almost too much about obsessive love. I remember a woman said to me:

“There’s not enough sex in your poetry.”

And I said, “I think it’s like math, I think there’s enough sex in mathematics and there’s enough—”

But one wonders whether in this bad century—the last one was called the worst so far, so we can say, but of the last few years it’s pretty bad–one can say, why is it that I seem incapable of something that you see in the Bard, this amazing ability, as in Richard III—I hate Richard III in a certain ways, but Coriolanus I hate so much that I remember loving—Bernard Shaw said, “Shakespeare’s greatest comedy: Coriolanus!” Eliot loved it.

Sam Lohmann: I haven’t read Coriolanus.

DS: Well it’s, at any rate, the genius, the military genius inside Shakespeare is amazing, and it’s amazing to see an entire play with hardly any relaxation into the sweetness—Even in Macbeth you have: “Where they most breed and haunt I have observed / The air is delicate.” There’s this change. So it’s as if you were writing in the same meter for 46 pages, and you were mostly concerned with the politics of an Oedipal complex writ large, murder and honor. At any rate—so I worry.

I once said to my wife, I think that people can write as well, and have, as The Comedy of Errors, but when you get to something like the Winter’s Tale you feel as if Shakespeare has something to contribute that no one else does. I was listening to Pericles the other day and for about three acts I thought, This is just—not very inspiring. But then at about the fourth act or so you get goosebumps and you suddenly think, Oh, someone else is now writing—the greatest writer who ever lived. I mean the end of Pericles is extraordinary, the last two acts.

So at any rate—what is this to say? So a lot of my poems are inspired by dreams, sometimes very specifically: a piece of paper will come down . . . Oh, and my son once said:

“Oh my god, I did have a poem in my dream!” (He usually said no.)

And I said, “Oh, what was it?”

And he said, “An angel was in it.”

And I said, “Amazing! Great that you had an angel!”

And he said, “And the angel carried a scroll, you know, like a scroll, dad.”

I said, “Unbelievable, very great, what could be better? And what happened?”

He said, “Well he opened the scroll, and there was a poem on it.”

I said, “Fantastic! So what did it say?”

He said, “I couldn’t read it, it was in cursive.”

But then I said, “It’s good just to have had the dream, to have had an angel who showed you a scroll with an illegible—That’s fine, that’s good.”

So sometimes I’ll get 16 lines, sometimes it’ll just be—like in a poem called “Father Knows Best,” I had the dream, which was a theological version of the TV show, “Father Knows Best.” It was so strange, and I just wrote it out. My wife didn’t like me waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning, and so I finally decided I could control my dreams; and a psychoanalyst’s son, the poet Larry Wieder, once said to me—not Lawrence Weiner the artist but Larry Wieder the poet—said, “Why would you want to control the one thing that should be uncontrollable, or uncontrolled?” But I used to like waking up with my work done—like I would wake up, write the poem out, and I felt good for the day, that I’d written a poem. Which reminds me that Lou Reed said to Andy Warhol:

“I’ve been working.”

And Andy presumably said, “On what, Lou?”

And Lou Reed said, “I finished a song. Almost two.”

And Andy said, ”Go back home! One or two poems? Ridiculous! You should go back and do ten or fifteen!”

So a lot of poems were written in many many different ways, because I liked a multiplicity of attacks, like writing in the morning and writing in the afternoon and writing in the evening. But also, I believed for a long time that what one should do is read everything in [Ezra Pound’s] TheABC of Reading, as it were, and then read everything he left out. So that was my essential idea, was to read everything that was of a certain perspective. As with art history, I used to think: Just read everything if you can that Meyer Schapiro’s ever read, and then read all the things that he footnotes. But at any rate, I think that with poetry, I’ve learned a lot from dreams because even trying to deal with a simple phrase that may appear in a poem—I think when I was 15 I saw: “The Cuban car door is smashed to bits.” I was never able to use it, but I was sort of inspired—I think it was the end of the world, in those days, in 1962, I was 15.

But I was jealous of Bill Zavatsky, who went to a Jungian and had 5 page dreams, 10 page dreams—enormous dreams are dreamt by Jungians—Jung and Freud joked about, their patients dreamt the dreams of their particular ideology—Freud got Freudian dreams, Jung got Jungian dreams.

And I have a friend, we debate this—Rodger Kamenetz, who wrote The Jew in The Lotusand who just wrote a book on dreams, and he thinks that I’m aestheticizing dreams, and what he wants to do is to show “the truth in dreams,” that is not—though he’s a poet, he doesn’t—I try to say that I don’t see the distinction.

One day I did go to sleep thinking, I never get this “God’s voice” necessarily, or I don’t get these amazing dreams that the Jungians do, snakes and archetypal symbols. That day I had a ten-page dream. It was very upsetting: God spoke, and he said: “There is nothing wrong with the architect.” And when I woke I didn’t know whether he was meaning there’s nothing wrong withme, “The Architect,” the supernal architect, or with my wife, who at that time was studying to be an architect.

Dreams have often amazed me, but I think very much because—since Rimbaud is one of my favorite poets in the entire world. I remember liking Kenneth Koch because he said, “Arthur Rimbaud—perhaps the greatest poet who ever lived.” And later when we were in England (he was visiting me in Cambridge) he said “Ah, Chekhov.” I had just been praising Vanya as my standard. And he said, “Yes, I often think that he’s the greatest writer who ever lived.” And it wasn’t that often that Kenneth was merely audacious with taste. He liked my taste, he said it was perfect, I had influenced him by showing him Shklovsky, Kawabata, Braudel, Benjamin. Shklovsky—he liked a sentence of Shklovsky’s—[3]

SL: That’s pretty good.

DS: —And, etc., etc., etc. And with Kawabata he found a new way to write stories. But he didn’t like anything that I told him that was religious. I would say to him how the Talmud should be read, because it was just like having twenty new books by Kafka. Wouldn’t do it. I told him to read a book that I’d written—and mentioned him in!—with Derrida. He said:

“What’s the title?”

I said, “The Body of Prayer.”

He said: “Nope. Won’t do it.”

Even though he was inside it! He had a great trauma—he grew up among assimilated Jews in Cincinnati. And you feel that amazingly as a weakness when he writes “To My Jewishness.” It’s funny, but it’s also an impossible childhood in which he didn’t—What he wanted to have is what he found in Harvard and New York, and he says it again and again. What he found was a culture that was closer to John Cage than to—and Zen than to—Judaism. One time when I told him I might write a Ph.D. on Job, he said to me, “Oh, you’re not going to become another Jewish intellectual, are you?” (I didn’t do it.)

But I think that what is amazing about dreams, that the surrealists knew, is that—not that it’s a vacation, but that it’s also the everyday. That must be in part what Kamenetz means by saying it’s the truth. There are many different attitudes towards dreams—one of them is Crick, who just said: “It’s just washing the computer out at night, it’s not interesting at all.” And if it was interesting, someone said, and Crick agrees, why would we mostly forget our dreams? That would seem to be an interesting aspect of the meaning of dreams. Freud seems to overdo the absolute determinism of the meaning of dreams. But I’m not so sure—the Jewish religion sometimes says, if you’ve had a bad dream: “A dream uninterpreted is like a letter sealed.” If you’ve had a bad dream, you should do something which is called “The Amelioration of the Dream.” You hire a certain number of people around you from your village, and they give you good interpretations of your dream.

But one of the things that I guess we all wonder about is whether—The dream is so open, but this is what we like in poetry too. As a matter of fact the Talmud mocks those who believe in dreams too much, because you can interpret them—and they give examples—in every possible way, bad or good. On the other hand, there is a kind of Californian kitsch—which is why I didn’t want to mention it to Fairfield—of using it like a tie-dyed batik, because it’s colorful. At its best though—I agree with John Cage who once said to an organist: “Can you play this?” and it was a piece of wood. You should be able to play a dream, in many ways.

But I do think that there are dreams—for example when my mother died, I saw a gigantic pool, and the pool was carved with these words: “Laugh loudly, love, as my voice laughs in the grey water.” And that wasn’t a dream that I could predictably say could be anything, or could be contradictory to itself. It was a mourning dream. It was mournful and it was spectacularly precise. Because my mother had always told me that her father was—not only was he a great singer, but people liked to have him in theaters because he would laugh with an astonishing laugh. So this “Laugh loudly, love, as my voice laughs in the grey water.”—it was sort of—as Eliot said ofOthello—cheering me up. There was a case of a wish and a lie and a dream, or a wish, a truth and a dream.

So I just start with this problem for poets, which is whether you put—as I do sometimes—you put two apples on a table and say: “Treat these without contempt”—which is my negative-capability exercise. Allen Ginsberg came to one of my classes—people said, “Oh my god, that’s Allen Ginsberg!”—and there was his friend, Peter Orlovsky, and they were my students. I said to my wife, “They’re very talented students.” I particularly loved Orlovsky because he was so simple and filled with a kind of maniacal—what would one say?—naiveté, or innocence, or sweetness. But Allen particularly liked that exercise: “Treat something without contempt.” And for me it’s interesting to see people who within seconds—like Keats’s friend who was doing the grasshopper and the cricket said, “Oh little cricket, oh little cousin my cricket, oh little cricket”—it’s filled with contempt. And Keats starts—and this is the great “revisionary ratio” as they say in Yale—for me, it’s amazing that he says: “The poetry of earth is never dead.” I mean, to start with this gigantic thing, it’s sort of like the way—Allen liked the haiku:

O snail,
climb Mount Fuji,
but slowly, slowly.

I mean, that’s treating a snail with the minimum of contempt, and I think that’s what Keats meant by, you know, stay in uncertainties.

You find that people say “The windless building!” or something, to which Kenneth and I used to say, “Well, why should it have wind?” I mean, there are certain kinds of descriptivenesses that are so additional. Fairfield Porter said, of my painting, he said, “Try to be unashamed. Let your color just be a color. Be unashamed like a child.” He said my doodles were better than my paintings, and he put one of my doodles up in his bedroom, I was very happy. But I think people also look for ways out. Like I said to him once:

“Can you teach me foreshortening, the laws of foreshortening?”

And he said, “Of course.”

And I said, “Oh, would you do it?”

And he said, “Yeah.”

“When?”

He said, “Tonight.”

And I waited all night as I said like a day student, or I waited all day like a night student, and I got prepared—He said to bring—Oh, he gave—Both of us had a tablet of paper, and I said:

“Okay, what should I do?”

And he said, “Draw what you see.”

And I said, “Okay . . . But you’re gonna teach me foreshortening—“

He said: “Draw what you see.”

And I slowly got the Zen sense that this was him instructing me that there was no easy interpretation of this dream of what you see. There are friends of mine like Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe who think that the optical revolution in impressionism is The Revolution, and that we’ve all been destroyed by the whimsy and irony of conceptualism—let’s say out of Dada and out of Duchamp, but also out of Andy. I respond to that now—I think there’s a lot to be learned from impressionism, and certainly the post-impressionists had a great influence on, for example, the New York School—Bonnard and Larry Rivers were very important allies at some moment, and Fairfield also learned so much about, he said, essentially what painting was: light. He was always going—when he was in a museum with me, or anywhere else, he would say: “Light, light.”

But on the other hand, people have said (you can look this up in a kind of Scientific American manner) that if I scooped out my brain, I would not be able to see better—the mind and the eye are connected. (Not to sound like Leo Steinberg, who says about the same thing.) So, those who thought they could get away with a purely optical revolution—unfortunately the purely optical in impressionism is filled with subject matter. What Meyer Schapiro always showed about the impressionists was that they were dealing with themselves, the middle class on parade. Seurat is not merely little dots, Meyer was always saying; they’re not even little dots, they’re constantly changing shape and they’re part of a humor, and part of what I would call the sort of restless universe, and they’re part of an Egyptian desire for monumentality: and, and, and.

So—I just say in poetry—I’ve been amazed that lately anyone could think that life, so filled with hectic tragedy and right now economic catastrophe—you would think that it would not be a century in which one would think, as many have, that zero degree is the degree, or that poetry should somehow be purified of subject matter. To me, and this is what’s been called maximalism, it just seems as if the joy of poetry for me, and maybe this is not true of everyone, has been liberty. I know people of the Oulipo school who think the joy of poetry is how you deal with rule systems—not that even Oulipo thought that that was the finished work. But, yes, I understand that rules and scales and arpeggios are all rather important. As Goethe said, “In rules lie mastery.” But on the other hand—or something like that: “In . . . measure lies mastery.” Someone like—a poet who will be nameless—well, I think we can name him—Richard Wilbur said that what he likes is that the genie is in the bottle, that’s how he gets his power. But I thought that it’s actually how you explodeout of the bottle, that the genie has a lot of power out of the bottle, not in the bottle.[4]

So, I have to say of certain of the avant-gardes, as I read them—and I don’t feel like complaining directly by name—but there must be hundreds of people that I know who seem to be thinking about a poetry that would be drained of most emotion—you see that actually a white-on-white painter like Ryman has tremendous emotion, so I’m not saying it necessarily happens—but that one of the things that’s happened in our day is a kind of dogmatic dryness.

I know that there are readers—from 1962 there was a lot of reading of sort of grey-on-grey. Well, it was a way to shift attention away from a sort of golden saxophone of Dylan Thomas’s voice. (Jasper Johns the other day said to me: “Oh, you’re not going to attack poor Dylan are you?” I’m not, I love him, but certainly one has gone a very long way from that.)

When I first read Theodore Roethke I loved his poems—very precise about plants. I was about twelve, and I memorized them, and I liked his long poems, like “The Lost Son.” This startled Kenneth Koch when I met him, and Kenneth gave me [John Ashbery’s] The Tennis Court Oath, and I remember in August, 1962, I had this amazing experience of thinking, Oh, this poem seems rather dry, and dried out, and ugly in its own interesting way. And then I thought:

I moved up

glove
the field

I had seen this written out by Kenneth in a review in The Partisan Review, so I knew it, and I had also seen, what I loved about John, in the Allen anthology—“How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher / Of life, my great love?” But anyway, this one seemed to be more the “Huh?” than the pathos. And I thought to myself, He’s using the word I as if it’s any other word in the dictionary. And I thought: Well, that’s interesting. And then I remember just going further, and reading: “You girl / the sea in waves.” And I thought, Well that’s very melodic, that’s as if he’s putting melody inside a lot of static—interesting. I mean I was a violinist and I thought of everything in terms of music, and so I thought—actually I made the mistake of thinking, I must say that a lot of times I thought to myself, A little bit like a Debussy where the melody sort of floats up, and—well, it might’ve been related to gamelan, and thence to John Cage and Morty Feldman, who loved the gamelan. But I was reading this poem, and one of the things is, you know:

To employ her
construction ball
Morning fed on the
light blue wood
of the mouth
cannot understand
feels deeply)

and I thought—And the other thing about it was that it reminded me of this new artist (for me), Robert Rauschenberg. (We were published together in Location magazine, and there was a real cat on a George Segal lover couple . . .) And I thought, It’s really very many-layered.

But anyway, as you can see, I was slowly being converted to this poem. By the end of the hour or two he was my favorite poet. And I often tell my kids, when they’re talking about their taste: “See if you can revolutionize your taste every once in a while.” What if I had stopped with Roethke? Or, one might say, what if I had stopped with Kenneth’s shout out to me, when we were walking to play tennis in 1962, he said to me:

“You’ll see that there is only me, John and Frank.”

And I said, “You mean as great poets?”

He said, “Yes.”

And I said, “Well, what about Martin Buber?”

He said, “W-w-w-what about Martin Buber?”

I said, “What about Martin Buber, for example.”

And he said, “He’s a minor Jewish philosopher, why are we talking about him?”

And I said, “Well sometimes it’s as good to be a minor Jewish philosopher as to be part of a team.”

And I used to write something called “Resentments: The New York School.” [5] From the very beginning I didn’t believe that such a multiple situation could be torn down to a working dogma, it wasn’t something that I liked. And as a matter of fact he was wrong because there was James Schuyler, a pretty amazing poet. At any given moment—

I said to Serra once, “Who do you think is good?”

And he said, “Me. I’m the greatest sculptor.” We were at a wonderful conference of hundreds of sculptors and painters at Documenta, in Marburg, Germany—no, in Kassel, Germany, 1977.

I said, “Nobody that you respect? For example—no one?”

He said, “No, I’m the greatest.”

And I said, “But surely you like Carl Andre, your friend.”

He said, “Yes. Carl and I are the sculptors in America, no one else.”

And I said, “But of course, of course your dead friend, Robert Smithson—my favorite artist in many ways—is also somebody that you respect.”

“Yes: Smithson, Andre, and me, that’s all,” he said, and gave me the sense that things were finished. So it was very interesting being a critic, because you saw as you went from artist to artist that every artist regarded themselves as the center.

De Kooning once said to Elaine de Kooning that he had listed the artists that he respected on a query, but no one had listed him. He said: “What happened?” Well, one of the things that I think has happened in my day, which is fine, is that—Well, there was an intellectual dictator in T.S. Eliot. Then Delmore Schwartz used to say: “Let there be an end to literary dictatorships.” But there’s probably no way, with poetry—there’s such a multiplicity of people calling themselves poets, so—With Judaism, for example—it’s very hard to say what’s Jewish. I met an architect who I thought was very mean to me by saying that if my grandfather had repeated a word, he’d be quote “dead meat in my synagogue.”

Jews don’t have Popes, so I’m used to the concept that there may be a custom in Latvia, but it’s not the custom for people speaking Ladino; or somebody may have a custom that is broken at different times, while someone else has a custom of “Never break with the custom!”—that’s the custom, or the law. I feel as if poetry became therefore—In the ‘60s a lot of it meant liberty. You know, “Has anybody ever looked out the window and seen a painting by Matisse?” is a line by Kenneth Koch, meaning that he wanted fresh air, he wanted something in his own way like a Howl, he wanted something more mad and crazy and open, as the Fauves had been, as the Dadaists had been.

A lot of his quotations were from John Cage. I quote John so much that some kid when he died said to me, at Bennington:

“Oh, Professor Shapiro, that guy you’re always quoting died.”

And I said, “What? Who?” Because I thought, I quote a lot of people. Someone was mocking me on the internet, he said: “Shapiro is finished. We all know what he does. He says: ‘Some famous philosopher would say this about this.’ It’s all over. That’s what he does.” And I thought—I mean it’s true that sometimes you have to watch out for quotation. A great Israeli poet said to me:

“I notice you quote.”

And I said, “Well, that’s our tradition.”

He said, “Yes, but you always quote agreeing. Sometimes you should quote against.”

And I thought that was very brilliant. It was David Avidan, who died, terribly, in Israel, I mean very unsupported. But that was a very good insight.

On the other hand, it’s true that I don’t mind having high standards. Arthur Koeninger, who’s a theologian, said: “No matter what you believe in Judaism, at least you’re getting high standards.” Now high and low standards are interesting too, because I come out of pop art. And I remember when Kenneth once said to me: “Don’t you think Andy’s a little naïve—I mean, pressing a live rat between the pages of a book?” And there was a little distance that some of the people who had actually created pop art—I mean, there was Kenneth who from the fifties had written about Mickey Mouse and other things. He said, “Well, people don’t care about Clytemnestra but they do care about Minnie, and Donald Duck.” But they found it very difficult sometimes to suddenly see [slapping his thigh] the brute simplicity of Andy. And it stirred them up a lot.

I’m just saying that for a certain period in my life I was interested in smashing language, fragmenting language. Someone said that I learned from Joe Ceravolo[6]—no, we were both together, and I felt that we were all, about ten of us—a few more—were interested in this sort of Cubo-Futurism (a word that Kenneth Koch said was so ugly that it would take people away from our work). But I liked the idea that in that way there was something shared. (People ask, is there shared taste?)

I mean, when I first met Frank O’Hara he actually said he hoped I didn’t mind that he had gotten me published in The Floating Bear. I said of course I didn’t mind, I thought that was very generous. But when that was all over, he also knew a lot about music. When I played for Allen Ginsberg the Nigun of Bloch, he said to me:

“Did you just make that up?”

And I said, “Well, it’s called ‘Improvisation by Bloch.’” I teased him, because I thought: He must be a fool to think that I’ve just improvised one of the great ten-page pieces by Bloch! Whereas Frank O’Hara called a friend and said: “Who’s the violinist who you think is playing this, Grumiaux or someone else?” In other words, not only did he know it, but he knew it, he liked it, he knew how I played, he was interested in music from the beginning to the end. Well, that just sounds, if not hyperbolic, certainly that sounds condescending on my part. But what I found was that from the second I met Frank I thought he was a genius, and I did think this at other times in my life. But I never saw him as tabooing something. Sometimes he just thought that something was silly—like he asked me which were my favorite paintings in MoMA, and I made the silly statement that I liked Hide-and-Go-Seek by Tchelitchew. And he said: “Why?” Which taught me a lot, as Pound said about—somebody laughed at Pound, and he said, “It saved me three years.” I think it was Ford Madox Ford, or Hueffer.

SL: Yeah, rolling on the floor.

DS: Yeah. As Williams’s father said: “What are you talking about with these gold things?”

“The backs of books.”

“Then why didn’t you say it?” It’s not as if it is so easy to say it, but—

Two things that I thought about Frank, was that he said: “Anyway, I don’t think you need much criticism, since, let’s face it, most criticism”—this is in a letter to me in ‘62—“most criticism is just what the critic prefers to your work.” In other words, I think he very quickly was a kind of student of [William] James, who talks about: There are two people who walk down the hill, Jack and Jill; we think they’re idiots; they love each other. Who knows more about them—we, who don’t really know them at all, and think they’re silly, or they, who think they’re really doing something?

At any rate, this is to say I thought there were wonderful things happening in Joe Ceravolo’s poetry, and in Frank Lima’s poetry which was very different—Frank was writing about the streets, was influenced by Lowell and—a lot of different things were happening in him, like Villon. You don’t expect Joe Ceravolo to suddenly have the tone of an angry jailbird, you know—he had the tone of a dignified engineer, who was lofted into outer space by Reverdy.

But one of the things that you can really say about my poetry is that, yes, it’s Jewish, and it’s Russian. For people who say that I’m just a disciple of John Ashbery—it’s not true, because the first thing that I was influenced by was Pasternak and Russian poets who were recited to me in my home, and also Hebrew prayer. Also, because I’m a classical violinist, I’m influenced more by Mozart than by anyone! Also, if you don’t believe in “the other arts”—as Harold Bloom once didn’t—influencing the other arts, there are a lot of things in my work which are not close to the perfect pastel taste and reticence of John Ashbery.

[1] SL: “The Devil’s Trill Sonata” is a very long and complicated work to have been composed in dreams. What sort of process did you go through to construct it as a poem?

DS: I tried to build up a sonata that might resemble the extremely eccentric Tartini “Devil's Trill Sonata.” I think, by bizarre association, I thought also of the “Devil's Trill,” a caprice by Paganini in his 24 caprices. So I had a theme of the extreme musician, who is thought to be inspired by the devil. I think I end with the Dante line to reinforce this violin-mythology. But what I wanted most of all was the possibility of a poem that could include all the cartoon characters of the world and also Hamlet and Ophelia. I had thought a long poem might be like a reduction in such books as children buy that give them plots of novels and nothing else. I was inspired by the emptiness of the idea of plot. I was going through personal grumbles as Eliot said and wasn't sure this poem would signify socially anything to anyone, but I was mad to do it. I wanted the changes of tempi as in Tartini and sometimes thought to pattern the poem very directly, bar by bar, on the sonata. It wasn’t pleasant to be lost in such nightmares, though, and I meant it to be terrifying. Yes, I received lines from dreams: “Be mute for me, contemplative violin,” I received in Corbière's French, which is logical since it is a caricature of his “Be mute for me, contemplative idol.” Of course, I think of other poets as masters of a monotony that I get too impatient to continue. Though I have dreamt of a poem as La-Merish as Morty Feldman's endless triads, I'm not sure I am ever going to be a master of minimalism. Let's call what I do anything, even maximalism. Meyer Schapiro told me “They want more meat,” as a conclusion to a discussion of why many had lost sympathy in the 70's for abstract minimalist work. I'm not prescribing anything. Sometimes, however, as Jakobson said to me, some diets do not seem fulfilling. Mustard is not enough, even for our Kruchenykh zaum poems.

[2] SL: What are some ways in which this sense of politics appears in your poetry?

DS: I am a red diaper adult. I can't imagine myself not wrapped in the melodrama of justice and even that quaint idea of revolution. Of course I am old for a socialist and older still for an anarchist. I render onto Caesar as little as I have to render, not in the way of taxes, where I am a lamb, but in the realm of lions and civil arguments and resistance as poet and friend. I tend to be very mawkish where Tolstoyan pacifism is concerned. Though I no longer think I am the perfect pacifist, it takes a very strong cascade of argument for me to budge towards militarism. All of my books are political and social, but I hope they also keep away from piety. Koch said to me, “Can't you be a revolutionary and keep your sense of humor?” I tried, I try. Early poems were published in South Africa against apartheid. “A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel” is a long mini-waste-moraine, as Joanna Fuhrman calls her works, in the sense that I am trying architecturally to make a melancholy incline. I may sometimes attack this problem too directly, as when Haldeman and Erlichman are hallucinated on the stage of my poetry. But I am pleased sometimes to be as simple as my Jan Palach odes, set to architecture as it were by Hejduk and dedicated by Havel. To me, that was an example of a poem that traveled, that reached a kind of destination.

[3] SL: What was the sentence?

DS: I think Kenneth always found the humor in Lucretius. “Happy is he who watches others’ ships go down at sea,” for example. In Benjamin he found flexible wit. But Shklovsky is transparently witty. I loved his Letters Not about Loveand of course all the theoretical essays, vivid as vectors. The sentence was something that I almost recall: It is easy to be unhappy in love; all it takes is for one not to love. The point is that Kenneth appreciated the clear cartoonish La Rochefoucauld wit of the Russians. He loved the lowness of Pasternak’s similes: “as hot as the top level of a Turkish steam bath.

[4] SL: I know that you sometimes use traditional forms such as the villanelle, and also that you admire John Cage. Do you ever use chance methods or other constraints as part of your writing process? Do you ever see collage methods as a form of liberating constraint?

DS: I have been inspired by the painters of my time. Of course, this includes Manet, Braque's collages, Johns’s lightbulbs, Fairfield Porter’s shrewd observations and anomalous lines. I don't like to be dragged into a reactionary argument, but as a violinist of course I believe in practice. However, I have known teachers who can use concerti excerpts as well as scales to learn to play a note cleanly and clearly. I fell in love with forms I think through Pound's curriculum. Because of music and even listening to Caedmon records in childhood (Stevens, Cummings, Frost, Eliot, etc.) I loved to imitate voices, as in a shower of tones. I could “do” Gielgud, Sandburg, Vanya, Antigone. I love to imitate, and anyway Aristotle has defended imitation as humane many thousands of years ago. I found doing l00 villanelles very funny practice. I have never written a good sestina, a Platonically clear sestina, except once when I saw lines of color as sestinas after my mother’s death. I started to paint sestinas of simple lines for a year. Collages with stickers are my comical way of adjusting to my wife's antipathy to me ruining the floor with oil. I don’t have a studio, and though I dream of being able to paint without ceasing except to write without ceasing, I take it that this is my fate. Sometimes I go for too long without serious drawing, but I don't think poetry is a pencil and I do think poetry can strive to be a hand or voice or pen. I'm not in love with Michaux’s painting, but the idea of it I love. I was raised by Victor Hugo and his inky techniques and wonder. I do love Artaud when he agitates a portrait. I don’t love Ernst or Magritte as poets, but I am moved by Braque's statements, Redon’s notes, Gaugin’s lies, Van Gogh’s letters of course most of all, Delacroix’s intimacies and nobility. Anyway, I have had the good or bad fortune to have been raised in a country (my parents’ imaginary living room) where poetry, painting, music, even dance (my sisters had a school for others), and philosophical political argument were “one.” Like a tree in which there are thirteen arts, all sisters. I grew up in what Hölderlin might call the lap of the gods or the lap of the humans, and certainly with good luck I admired the spinning dynamic of all the arts. My father was a doctor who most loved sculpting and playing viola and listening and political argument. My mother was a pianist, a singer, and a very fine teacher of children. She taught me years of Hebrew in a few weeks. She was a genius, it has kept my feminism authentic. At any rate, this is what I love in the works of Meyer Schapiro—the tremendous devotion to all the axes of the aesthetic. And he regretted, he said, the failure of socialism in his time.

[5] SL: What was this?

DS: As soon as I met Kenneth Koch, I had agreements and disagreements, and we knew it till the day he died and one might say, I too died a lot. He loved humor, and I also loved tragedy. He loved good humor, and I sometimes appreciated self-pity too much and masochism that he hated in Frank O’Hara too. I took it for granted that I was part of the Jewish circulation of things; he had an allergy to the very word God. Nothing could stop him from being as Jewish as he actually was—a lover of surrealist zaniness. Black humor when he finally unleashed an ode about his army days. Black humor where he really loved to impeach bad poets—see Pleasures of Peace for a caricature of anti-war arts. Kenneth led me to keep a kind of essay in which I distanced myself from some of that a bit. Everyone keeps his distances if he or she wants to grow. Brancusi said this of keeping away from Rodin. I too had to become something that was not a mere mascot version of the NY School. I don't like being called second generation or 18th generation either. There are two volumes about my work, by Thomas Fink and by Fink with Joseph Lease, but most of all I appreciate those who see that I have had a distinct tone since I was 9 or at least 13. This may be a unique flaw in me. Someone at a reading pointed out this seeming homogeneity of all my poetry. It is not true that I write one poem, except in a Borgesian sense that that is all we ever can do. However, I try to revolutionize myself sans cesse. The essay, which I can't find, was one of the exercises that one makes to underline a position or location. I wrote for example very cubo-futurist works for a few years, among other things, so I have never been very impressed by the cubo-futurisms of 1970’s and onwards. I have hundreds nay thousands of poems in boxes and bins and storage and warehouse, in desks and file cabinets, but I don't want to bring out things just to prove a stylistic point: “I am more linguistic than thou.” But I am filled with the glory of language as much as anyone it has been my good fortune to meet. Kenneth on our first walk said I would see there were only a few poets alive: Kenneth himself, O’Hara and Ashbery. I said, “What about Martin Buber?” That conversation never ended. Kenneth is like a syncretistic mix of Pop art and its hardness, ab ex and its wildness and delirium, and a classical desire for clarity as in Ovid and Ariosto. He was born to write plays, born for humor as resistance, born for satire and for sexuality and love. He told me: “Being in love makes me clear.”

[6] SL: On the other hand, you must have learned from Ceravolo, as he must have learned from you, simply by knowing each other for years and writing together. What do you think you learned from each other?

DS: I think Joe and I were more like pals, copains, than teachers and students with each other. I found him depressed and anxious about work and family, when I had little interest in work and family, being 15. But I also found him endlessly strange, as if he were inside his own eclipse. I loved that purity in him, and those wide expanses between letters and words: "Oak oak." I felt annoyed when his friends treated him as a saint and me as a Jewish intellectual tramp. What helped us all was the other glue of our friend Frank Lima, who completes a strange trio of us. Lima had all the Catholic twists that came like my Jewish-Russian background. We were all slightly inebriated with the idea of language, but Lima and I were also confessional and angry, and Joe was purist and a kind of St. Francis of poetry: “I want to give my food to a stranger / I want to be taken / I am thinking about my friend.” I think Joe found it hard to deal with my “mixed” poems. He kept to a single great tone of grey-blue, a conceptual grey-blue as in Cézanne (Rubin’s insight here.) The struggle in all of us was how to wreck narrative, unburden our lines from mere confession, strike through syntax, uncouple grammar and coherence, and end up however with an effect as powerful as Moore, H.D., Pound or Reverdy or Apollinaire. Ted Berrigan sometimes seemed to me to lack the pluralism of understanding us all three. But it was a difficulty to dogmatists, and even pluralists can be dogmatically monist about their pluralism. Ted loved Joe, and so did I, but I saw in Joe an endless discipline of engineering poetry, as in his “day job.” Joe also had no pretense except the highest. It is hard to imagine this homo religiosus not being friends with everyone and everything. He and Frank loved each other despite enormous differentia. I loved his long poems and his ambition for the tiny world of bugs and lyrics. We need more complete works of Lima, Ceravolo. A lot of literary history is simply false because of some expungings or what Silliman has called disappearances. Lima and Ceravolo, “precious pair of poets, genius in both, but what is genius?” It would take a long essay to build up a sense of the sociology of those moments. I did find it amusing that Ron Silliman picked up or was picked up hitchhiking by David Melnick, and I had spent all of a summer l967 preaching to David about Ashbery and Roussel. David told Ron evidently that I was his favorite poet with Ashbery, but Silliman never mentioned this till very recently. A lot of the techniques of the “Language” group, I must say, came from this contagion with another set of poets. When I met Melnick, he was reading Sartre every day like a worshipper. After our months-long conversation, David was writing false translations as I told him to, triply acoherent rounds and much else out of Roussel and even myself. And so we find a great link in which I turn out to be a comrade or paternal, as I often think, toward the Language school. And I am about to say my most arrogant comment: I have never seen anything since my cubist youth that was to me technically amazing or new. Clark Coolidge I was anthologizing in extremis in my NY School [An Anthology of New York Poets, edited by Shapiro and Ron Padgett] and also Bernadette Mayer. What in these seemed pre-linguistic? Ceravolo's long acoherent odes—what has gone beyond them in formal shattering and vividness of simple shifters? Dubito, dubito. And yet all poets compete and don't compete, the “more angels the more room.” But in art, one can hardly claim to have done something new in drips, if they looked done by Pollock in 1947, a snowy day in which I was born at the moment of the first all-over. Let me say that I often find critics and academics who haven't read Dick Gallup in C Magazine—a long poem called “Life in Darkness” that would be accepted as a poem written tomorrow by 99 percent of those thinking of themselves as innovators. Yes, this saddens, angers me. But Ron Padgett says wisely also: “We are lucky to be writing and getting our work out at all.” But the thick lived life of poetry is sometimes expunged by false canons. I really have this as ressentiments, a lover’s quarrel with poets. Or a loveless quarrel with critics. Now let's say something cheerful, like: “I breathe slowly and I rarely dance.”—Satie! The author of the endless Vexations knew how to be humble in a bar of pianists and poets.

morning glories

2010-01-10T13:55:00.000-08:00

by Tom Blood

like whistles, I am stiff and singing on a ledge

and am reminded of my old form, the mirrors

that stare on, willing and able

where the moon sets the sun

and the moon beggars about

in a sheet bird

waterfall withering the cloth moon

oh, godly world

burglar of the boat

a balloon dragging the wind down

as a water skimming over

so I wander as Moses, without an Egypt or an Israel

looking into the centuries ash

for what appears as a fire escape in this crap building

is seeing pumpkin sprout in the moon’s belly

it’s nothing, really, it’s nothing, but it is not always through the first world we see

the being and end yester trees with grace among us

as when the drowsy fairies take the guardian poodles away from our temple memories

and our swimming hands are allowed to turn the pages of the world

it’s nothing, it’s just the fog coming to night us over

(in Peaches and Bats 4)

PIX/TXT

2010-01-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

by Phoebe Wayne

All these microcurrents of wind - or - they’re coming from a direction I can hear - gossamer screen across the landscape - elsewhere - buffeting - truck brakes accepting the grade - projecting a compass rose - my effort - little moth, my head - up some carpeted - stairs to an apartment - a picture missive - sentiment - little window - noun - noun - another seat - glitter screen over scape - projecting an old - oblique map - the rose garden - nanocurrents of imaginary - nanocompass - scape grades blue to white - a grid across a landscape - of events - halflegible - rumor - or - lost language - county marks - guides - an elsewhere consisting of - fashion magazines - a museum feeling - tracking muscle memory - powders, gases, brushes - public nostalgias rolodexed, sold - where the perceived horizon enters - my every move through it - grinding down the grade - microfiber - socks up the stairs - or - wooden truck - elsewhere sentiment - rose in my throat - in my ears - I stoppered - the wind - into a landscape - gloss hours - missive buffeting - my little - moth effort - glitter net - net sentiment - halflegible - net grade - net hours - perceived compass rose - throat - I can hear - buffeting - up to slick rose stairs under - oiled socks - leaning page - downgrade - these trees blow around - my - stoppered ears - gloss hours overlay - the hillside - my ears - other windows - microwindows - nanogrades - some more - lost gusts I can hear - carpeted moths dotting an elsewhere, projecting - rose - oblique track blowing - into the trees - garden apartment - current landscape overlay - current nanosentiment - head grade - oiled wind - a direction coming up - a little noun - I brake - at the sound

(in Peaches and Bats 4)

Ascending with Flowers

2010-01-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

by Laynie Browne

(from The Book of Moments)

“You’ve missed the turn,” I tell him, “that was the street, Retract.” But he doesn’t hear me or register exactly. He is still looking for the street. It’s an old argument of streets, what one person may see or think they see from a certain vantage which seems to skip or belittle the vantage of the other. But we have an appointment. I am holding the directions. “First, Retract Street,” I say, “We should have turned right. We missed it. We should go back.” He doesn’t go back. We are curving around and around. Meanwhile, Bhanu’s description about the ritual is replaying in my mind. Ascension. Near the gravesite. Hidden. We are curving around and suddenly less green and many shuttered shops. We stop to ask someone. He says, “You want the other side of the mountain.” In the dream we never reach there, just drive endlessly round. But I have the entire moving portrait here, in what appears to be a single drop of water. The storm teased and drove us indoors with lightning but the rain did not begin until the middle of the night, illuminating the room, drumming the veranda, loudly.

Here is the portrait. On the other side of the mountain is a green area. We are outside in a little alcove or thicket. We are also in a dark teahouse with lavish potted plants. We are asked what type of tea, but then we are told “gentian.” When the cart arrives suddenly our whole seating area is surrounded by elephant-ear sized dark green leaves. I touch one leaf which is black and my hand colors. The attendant looks at me and then away, as if embarrassed that I’ve touched the dark leaf. Someone tells me, move away, while the tea is prepared. Then I am seated in a metal carriage and given a large armful of flowers, fresh cut and abundant. Stargazer lilies, pink, among others, white and fragrant. The carriage begins to ascend. I am literally above the gravesite now. This is a way of visiting. One ascends with the spirit, mimicking departure, as if in company, then descends. Visitation of below the earth by rising up. And then coming down suddenly my youngest son is beside me and he is demonstrating that one has to pedal, or climb, in order to get down. So I follow his example and there I was on the ground, holding abundant flowers at the gravesite and simultaneously seated at a teahouse. The leaves have been cleared away and I am instructed to drink.

Gentian, Gentiana lutea. Common names: Bitterwort, Felwort, Baldmoney, Ryntem Root. Genus name derived from Gentius, ancient King of Illyria (180-167 B.C.E), who, according to Pliny and Dioscorides, discovered the medicinal use. Commonly administered in the Middle Ages as an antidote to poison. Parts used: roots. Highly regarded as a bitter tonic. And, for those who suffer uncertainty, are easily discouraged. They may be progressing well but any small hindrance disheartens.

[sources: Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal; The Bach Flower Remedies by Edward Bach]

(in Peaches and Bats 4)

Alexander, Bettridge and Schlesinger, 1/10/10

2010-01-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 10

at 7:30 pm

Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Charles Alexander

Joel Bettridge

Kyle Schlesinger

Concordia Coffee House

2909 NE Alberta St.

$5 suggested donation

More Snips from "The Crystal Text"

2010-01-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

[Continuing from previous post, these are copied as I wrote them down, correctly or not, while listening to the Spare Room's collective's marathon reading of Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text, on December 19th in Portland.]

"in the time of no pronoun"

"The definition of now is the false later

an all this will never take place in."

"I could write anything, couldn't I?

I could hate the light of a world for not dovetailing to my taste.

How did those birds get in here?

I could. I won't."

"As if hearing the wind only once in ones own life,

a single poem written."

"I live by the light of your density, sharply."

"The regardless whatever is its essence."

"and watch the clocks lock hands"

"and irritate my thought with its ballast

and rake my brain with its tines

as if air was all it could pin up.

Rouge is not the color of bricks.

Neither is the crystal clear."

"writing in a vast book

the exigencies of the stopped snail"

"pituitary investigative rink silence"

"in a barn of rustled threads"

"give me some unfastened knowledge"

"His head was raining.

His eyes were in the crystal."

"I would go to live with gravid begonia."

"Living close to the rain sometimes opens ones mouth while dreaming."

"a teenaged kid in bricabrac,

checked shirt and bevelled forehead"

"Know the word compassion?

Sounds like a sheet of white-hot pasteboard."

"window higher than you could see through to anything but sky patch"

"Time to go out, even if you are."

"The door opens, and the thithers come through."

"a pester way of knowledge"

"Giant tender inkling

whistles when you think of it,

top of the zero growing hairs,

lungs and a full blast tendency."

"The meat of winter is staling on the planks

and there's a minor squirrel fitting in place."

"Salad with sherbet and chair rungs.

Bronze cymbals with a throaty tone."

"red candies lit where dawn should come"

Snips, as heard, from the Clark Coolidge's "The Crystal Text"

2010-01-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

"steel in the hand of the migrant borrowers"

"The size of the world does not matter."

"My words have always been written across vast distances.

I've often not known what I had in my hand."

"beacons occulting in fog swaths of the furthest sandspit"

"Ear living in cleavage of wheat remnant.

Hearing caught on a lozenge of calcite."

"the floor is strong stone

and you're going to smell the slump"

"I wanted to see things until their names appeared and led.

It didn't seem that it would amount to a paper life."

"a strong stone of mention"

"a handout in the well of the dream,

a hell of the wrongly inhabited apparel court"

"self-stroked fire"

"I want the lines to dive"

"roars in heaven

in nodules of the apple

throat

commit leaves"

"and I can hear the slightest curve of the tongue,

kitchen clatter in leer"

"Should I really have to know what kind of sentence I like?"

"The crystal is a house one is inhabited by."

"a Balthus land letter,

all my tomorrows in a single vein of sand

or sound

or grained light"

"If only speech could talk."

"Linkages are not all supports.

Sometimes some things just sit."

"this whole, this barnlike settled city"

"not to know how to empty the hen"

"The postman opened his palm.

There was a date. There was a stretched stone."

"I'm of a mind that

a mire in me makes"

"Still, I didn't have to imagine blimps

when they all hung in the sky

like a war I knew nothing about.

Brighter days when I was dim."

"What is a word's name?"

"If I am asked what I'm doing

I look, and make up for that person."

"Forgetfulness allows me to move"

"The way thought about writing is always afterthought.

He waited behind the empty car

to think of what he might have done."

"A morning with no daytime to halt it.

A peek into the side of the glassine sea."

"The beachfront with the wallpaper.

A smile with a scissored crab."

"a certain alga contains rotating selenites"

"collapsed in a calypso of eclipses"

"terribly sad but a great big fat fact"

"investigation of a fraud was itself one"

"We know, and we hone no endings."

"Cattlecar mottled with starlings,

firetruck gilding out of harm's way.

A vote for fog."

"We have focused so much on meanings we are left with maybes."

"Crystal with terraces for fastening cloud cracks."

"birds of a feather,

capillary banter,

irradiant hue"

"to see light as a fire"

"The house on Oxen Street with the boards stained scarlet."

"We must come home again and again

endlessly same day."

"The precision bungling of all thought matters."

I wrote these down as I heard them at Spare Room's marathon reading of Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text on December 19th, at the Waypost Cafe in Portland. Some of these are sure to be misheard and misquoted; the punctuation and linebreaks are all guesswork. The reading was a delight. Rodney Koeneke wrote about it here. More snips soon.

Peaches and Bats #5

2010-01-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

Peaches and Bats #5 is finished! It's a 64-page handsewn chapbook with a letterpressed cover and photocopied text, featuring poetry by:

Eric Baus

Allison Cobb

Robert Dewhurst

Michael Farrell

Emily Kendal Frey

Anne Gorrick

Alina Gregorian

Matthew Hattie Hein

Derek Henderson

Robert Kelly

Sheila E. Murphy

James Yeary

It's available for $5 (postage included). Just send an email to peachesandbats AT gmail DOT com, and I'll tell you where to send a check. Or use the Paypal button below.

Publication Fair in Portland, 12/20/09

2009-12-15T21:19:00.001-08:00

[poster by omfgco]

I'm very excited to be participating in this event for small and smaller publishers in Portland. I'll have a table with issues of Peaches and Bats (including brand new number 5!), plus some items from the Airfoil chapbook series, and possibly some issues of David Abel's Envelope series of free broadsheets.

Here's the info:

Please come to the Publication Fair this Sunday, 11am-6pm at The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel (SW Stark between 10th + 11th). See the best in books, magazines, and printed matter from your favorite PDX printers, publishers, and publication vendors. Enjoy popcorn balls and hot cider. Take part in free public info sessions about the ins & outs of future publication. Buy great books!

Among the participants:

Ace Hotel / Ampersand / Container Corps / Cooley Gallery / Dill Pickle Club / EM-SPACE / fourteen30 Contemporary / Hawthorne Books / IPRC / Mark Searcy / Marriage Publishing House / Publication Studio / Octopus Books / Official Manufacturing Co. / Ooligan Press / Peaches + Bats / PICA / Pinball Publishing / Reading Frenzy / Red 76 / Stand Up Comedy

For more information visit: http://www.publicationstudio.biz/events/

marathon reading of THE CRYSTAL TEXT, 12/19/09

2009-12-11T17:24:00.001-08:00

[poster by Sam Lohmann and James Yeary]

Saturday, December 19

from noon till quits (around 5?)

Spare Room presents

a marathon reading of Clark Coolidge's book-length poem

The Crystal Text

at The Waypost

3120 N. Williams Ave.

free--come or go at will

The readers will be: David Abel, Meredith Blankinship, Joseph Bradshaw, Jen Burris, Allison Cobb, Jen Coleman, Endi Hartigan, Patrick Hartigan, Rodney Koeneke, Maryrose Larkin, Sam Lohmann, Jesse Morse, Mark Owens, and James Yeary.

Is this the only way I can now speak, arms

on a board to a dumb stone? The silence

of written words is perhaps correct for this

connection. An off-note to think of oneself

shouting against wall of crystal. Better to breathe

on it, dampening and misting its striations. Best

to be writing (whatever?) here in this book

in its presence. The window glass is but a

gross imitation of the crystal, as speech is of poetry.

As a closed book is the strength of a hand

brought to a perfection. Poetry is the closed voice?

--The Crystal Text

Curry and Vassilakis, 11/29/09

2009-11-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 29, at 7:30 pm
Spare Room presents a poetry reading by

Crystal Curry
&
Nico Vassilakis

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta Street, Portland
$5 suggested donation

Peaches and Bats' Blague

Happy New You New Year to You Too

Luoma & Spahr at Open Space, 12/11

about "Object Poems" at 23 Sandy Gallery

Degentesh and Gardner, tonight at Mother Foucault's!

Object Poems at 23 Sandy Gallery

Object PoemsCurated by David Abel

November 4 – 26, 2011

Special Events

Hartigan and Gorrick at Open Space Cafe, 10/30/11

Ashby & Cunningham at the Waypost, 10/16

Roy and Kemp at the Waypost, 9/25/11

Abel and Lohmann at Stonehenge Studios, 9/11

Stand on this picnic bench and look north

New Issue!

my new chapbook from c_L

Peaches and Bats #8 launch reading, 7/13/11

new Airfoil chapbook!

Koeneke & Queequeg, 7/10/11

Truitt and Lohmann, 6/12

Cooperman, Kaupang & Raphael, 5/22/11

O'Brien & Weaver, 4/17/11

Henning and Owen, 3/27/11

Edwards, Fernandez, Kaplan and Klein, 3/13/11

Dunbar and Schultz, 2/25

new Airfoil chapbook!

Leslie Scalapino memorial reading tomorrow!

Leslie ScalapinoMemorial Reading, Reception, & Exhibition

Larkin and Sigo, 2/6/11

Peaches and Bats #7

Maximus Poems marathon, 1/14-16

Peaches and Bats at Publication Fair tomorrow!

Alexander and Gallagher, 12/12/10

Hawkey and Waiting for Stretchers, 11/28/10

Les Figues Press reading, 7/14/10

Cohen and Warsh, 11/7/10

Mittenthal and Schaefer, 10/3/10

Choi and Currin, 9/18/10

Kimmelman and Schlegel, 8/1/10

Polyvocal Poetry in Ladd's Circle! 7/18!

Tynes and Ides, tonight!

Peaches and Bats in St. Johns, 7/10: Koeneke, Mains & Raphael

Blankinship & Poe, 6/27/10

Peaches and Bats #6

Atkinson and Kunz, 6/13/10

Now available: Chris Daniels' POROUS NOMADIC

Daniels and Abel, 5/21/10

Lots of poetry in town this week!

Boone and Larkin, 5/12/10

Some extracts from Gertrude Stein's "Natural Phenomena" (1925)

Yeary and Orton, Cotner and Fitch, 4/21/10

Beer, Killebrew and Klein, 3/21/10

What We Are Learning is a book

Bill Berkson, 2/21/10

Cobb and Morse, 2/7/10

New Airfoil Chapbooks blog!

P&B 5 reviewed at "Reading Local"

Annotated Torso of an Interview

morning glories

PIX/TXT

Ascending with Flowers

Alexander, Bettridge and Schlesinger, 1/10/10

More Snips from "The Crystal Text"

Snips, as heard, from the Clark Coolidge's "The Crystal Text"

Peaches and Bats #5

Publication Fair in Portland, 12/20/09

marathon reading of THE CRYSTAL TEXT, 12/19/09

Curry and Vassilakis, 11/29/09

Object Poems
Curated by David Abel

Leslie Scalapino
Memorial Reading, Reception, & Exhibition