Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy New You New Year to You Too

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.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Luoma & Spahr at Open Space, 12/11


Sunday, December 11
at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents
a poetry reading by

Bill Luoma
&
Juliana Spahr

2815 SE Holgate Blvd., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Sunday, November 13, 2011

about "Object Poems" at 23 Sandy Gallery

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
of
that
he's
a
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.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Degentesh and Gardner, tonight at Mother Foucault's!



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

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Object Poems at 23 Sandy Gallery



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.

Friday, October 28, 2011

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



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

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Ashby & Cunningham at the Waypost, 10/16

Sunday, October 16
at 7:30 p.m.

Spare Room presents
a poetry reading by

Chris Ashby
&
Brent Cunningham

3120 N. Williams Ave., Portland

$5 suggested donation

Sunday, September 18, 2011

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


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

Monday, September 5, 2011

Abel and Lohmann at Stonehenge Studios, 9/11

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



Saturday, September 3, 2011

Stand on this picnic bench and look north

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!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Peaches and Bats #8


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

$5
(includes shipping in North America)

order via Paypal here:





Wednesday, July 6, 2011

my new chapbook from c_L

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.)

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

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


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

Monday, July 4, 2011

new Airfoil chapbook!

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.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Koeneke & Queequeg, 7/10/11


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

Monday, June 6, 2011

Truitt and Lohmann, 6/12



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

Friday, May 13, 2011

Cooperman, Kaupang & Raphael, 5/22/11



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

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"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

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

O'Brien & Weaver, 4/17/11


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

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Henning and Owen, 3/27/11


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


Wednesday, March 9, 2011

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

(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

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Dunbar and Schultz, 2/25


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

Sunday, February 13, 2011

new Airfoil chapbook!


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

Friday, February 11, 2011

Leslie Scalapino memorial reading tomorrow!


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.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Larkin and Sigo, 2/6/11

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

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Peaches and Bats #7


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

$5
(includes shipping in North America)

order via Paypal thusly:






or email peachesandbats AT gmail DOT com

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Maximus Poems marathon, 1/14-16

[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