It’s National Survivors of Suicide Day.  A grim topic to be sure.  But many of “us” (artists/poets and those who love us) have dealt with the death of a loved one from suicide or our own suicidal depression.  And there is certainly a tendency among us to die too soon by our own hands. (more…)

I’m doing a few of my LIS projects on artists’ books, and I’m currently doing one on contemporary poetic objects by women, incorporating works from Hex Press, Dusie, recombinant dna press, Big Game Books, dos press, ellectrique press, and a few others.  I came to the world-famous poetry library today to do some research and try to find some materials that I know are in here.

Libraries like this one raise the question of whether it is more important to catalog things excessively well or to have very good librarians who know the collection.  Ideally, you’d have both.  The curator of the collection isn’t here today, so I can’t get him to bring me the uncataloged materials that I know are here.  There is, for instance, a certain box of tissue paper, feathers and sequins (no words) by Amelia Etlinger that I can’t get because it’s not cataloged.  I need the curator to be able to find this strange thing.  But I also need it to be cataloged so I can ask someone else to find it (in the closed stacks) if the curator isn’t here.

Other problems include: where do you put art objects when a library is designed for books that fit on shelves in neat square-like ways? How do you catalog objects that don’t have copyright pages or colophons?  Part of the responsibility lies with the publisher/artist– I have materials from my personal collection that I only know the publication data of because I know the artist personally and either know how the object came about or know how to contact the artist for the publication data.  How do you catalog asemic/post-literate objects (that is, books without words)?

It’s a little infuriating as a researcher and as a poet, because I can’t find what I need and that experience makes me realize that if researchers can’t find these works, they can’t do research on them.  That’s basically an entire subgenre that relies on relationships/viral marketing/etc. to “be known” (the same is true of little magazines, but these are easier to catalog/store most of the time).  This “oral tradition” underlying the textual is certainly interesting, but it also makes things unnecessarily difficult.

To wit: if you donate objects/materials to a library or if the library buys your work, please include as much data about the object as possible on a separate sheet of paper so that future researchers know what’s going on and can write about your work. Please put your name on your paper before you hand it in.

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I drove to Lowell, MA last weekend, where I met the Bootstrap boys, Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher, for the first time. Bootstrap is the mother-press of which Outside Voices is an imprint, but we had never met in real life. The chemistry was instantly great, though, and we set up for my reading in the huge Lowell H.S. auditorium. I was able to project poems from Organic Furniture Cellar on a screen (as I did for the L.A. reading last October) and read along. When I do this, I don’t try to read the whole poems. I trace one path through the poem and don’t focus on completion. A couple of people I spoke to afterwards about the reading were surprised by this. Reading OFC is almost a performed erasure, and when I’m really “on” I devise a theme by which to erase the text and then read through it, creating a new text. In this way OFC is endlessly renewable, and just as its nonlinear plastic form is like the cloudspace of memory, its forgetting/erasure and replenishment/renewal (“make it anew”) is like the (re)newness of memory. (more…)

I’ll be giving two readings soon: one in Buffalo and one in MA. Check out the Readings page for details.


Although many of the assignments I have to do for my MLS degree are dull, simplistic activities, some of the larger projects involve researching things I’m actually interested in. For example, for one of my courses my partner and I are working on a virtual archive of Foursquare that will include readings, facsimiles of the back issues, and a video exploration of the way the issues unfold. And two of the projects I’m working on involve studying how artists’ books are cataloged and archived (Johanna Drucker has been working on this issue). So I was excited tonight when I went to the Albright Knox and saw the altered books of Noriko Ambe. Recommended viewing for those in the area.

Remember this?

And then 1410 Grady Ave, Charlottesville; 593 Meeker Ave, Brooklyn; and 547 Richmond Ave, Buffalo within the space of a year. But I just renewed my lease here at XXX Richmond Ave, Buffalo. I’ve lived here a year and about 2 weeks.  Yay for the security of staying in the same place for more than six months. 

I’ve also started my second year of adjuncting at UB and have worked PT at the Buffalo Philharmonic for sixteen months now.  And my cats are 4 years old.

I keep waiting for things to calm down, to have disposable income (for poetry, for anything) but it’s still work, work work for low wages, and I just started the MLS program at UB (which is going ok so far).  So “calm” probably won’t happen for awhile.  But a hectic schedule is better (and less expensive) than being unemployed and moving around a lot.

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Buffalo kids like to do it up big.  Every year during the Small Press Book Fair, we have marathon readings– this year’s lasted for (if memory serves) 7 hours.  This Friday, starting at 8pm at Sugar City (19 Wadsworth), we’ll have a huge reading.  One of the House Press poets, Barrett Gordon, is getting married, and all the House Press boys from Chicago will be in town.  Thus the reading line-up (coordinated by Mr. Russell Pascatore) looks like this:

Eric Unger – Barrett Gordon – Tom Joyce – Peter Pascatore - Jack Topht – Jen Karmin – Mock Syringa – Greggreg – Emily Caligari – Nick Gordon – Jill Mertz – David Gluchowski – Jessica Smith – John The Gentlemen – Chris Fritton – lindsey-tidy0;s Grate – Johno (grandfather clock) – Dietrich-Olivier – Zev Gottdiener – Russell Pascatore – Zachary Keebaugh

Ready? Go.

I’ve had PTSD, I’ve had Depression, but the thing that creates a constant buzz, makes life constantly a little more difficult than it should be, is Anxiety.  Looking back on my life I think I’ve experienced Anxiety for most of it, at least since I was 12 or so.  It’s currently a livable condition in the sense that it doesn’t interfere with my everyday life–I’m able to work, maintain intimate relationships, maintain superficial relationships (an art in itself for someone who tends to be all-or-nothing about everything), etc.  At work, telemarketing, I experience the most anxiety, and then only on nights when one particular manager is in the room, because he’s unstable and unpredictable and it goes right to those deep triggers that say, “irrational angry man. hide.”  Then I drink lots of kava kava tea.

Besides kava kava tea on the front lines, I take a B-complex and steer away from caffeine (I drink 1-2 cups of green tea per day).  I don’t get enough exercise (read: any) which would probably help.  Sometimes I take valerian.  I dislike chamomile and licorice (which seem to be included in most “relaxing” teas).  I don’t have health insurance so I can’t get meds until school starts, but the process of getting meds is its own minefield of anxiety triggers (I don’t know who these doctors are who hand out Prozac like candy, but I’ve always had a hell of a time getting any medication–I’ve even had to argue about birth control) so I’d prefer to stick with herbal remedies.

So my question to you, knowing that many of my readers are artists who experience it too, is this: what do you do to stave off The Anxiety?

Not a whole lot going on here.  The usual poverty and working (I have resigned but there are two weeks to go before course prep for the upcoming semester takes over), plus some personal stuff that depresses me.  The huge backlog of poetry editing projects hanging over my head, parts of which are more pressing than others.  At the end of the month, school will begin, with the entirely too many courses that I’ll be teaching/taking simultaneously, which will hopefully leave me no time for poetry (which has become an enemy) or anything but the most superficial social interaction.

I’d like to set up a couple of fall readings in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Eastern Canada, and/or Great Lakes areas. Any takers? Boston, Toronto, Cleveland, NYC, Philly, DC…

UB Poetics student David Hadbawnik is starting a reading series with the goal of bringing “townies” (Buffalo area poets not affiliated with the Poetics Program) and Poetics Program poets together.  This schism is just one of many on the Buffalo poetry scene.  Given Buffalo’s population, it’s kind of surprising how many poetry cliques there can be.  Anyway, the innaugural reading is a bit of a bust because the Gown part of the Town & Gown lineup bailed, so I will be stepping in to read instead, although I’m not a Poetics student and haven’t been in, oh, seven years? The “townie” for this reading is Michael Sikkema, whose work I blogged about before.  He’s a great reader, and he’s moving away so this will be his last Buffalo reading for the foreseeable future, so you should come.  But if that’s not enough of an incentive, I will also be reading, so you can come hear me read, or just come to hang out with me on the one night in a billion years I am not either at work or too tired after work to be social.

Details: July 10, 7:30-10pm, 82 Russell St. (Lower), Buffalo, NY

One of my favorite aunts recently sent me some granola and some cash (thank you) and reminded me that I haven’t been blogging lately.  Well, there’s really not much to say.  There are some interesting poetry things now and then to tell you about, but basically I’m working and trying to pencil in some summer fun, too.  I went camping over the 4th of July weekend.  I got a new adjuncting gig at Medaille, which means I’ll be teaching PT at both SUNY Buffalo and Medaille (a very small local college) next semester while pursuing my MLS degree.  Till school starts at the end of summer, though, I’m just trying to hang in there.  Dead-end minimum wage jobs suck, but I like my coworkers and I need the money, so I work.  In six weeks or so I’ll be able to quit and rejoin my career path, and all of my energy will once more be directed toward a serious career–not just a job that pays the bills.  Till then my life is mostly sucky and boring.  You’re not missing anything.

Is technically available now from Edge Books. I imagine that there’s a lot of overlap between readers of her blog and readers of mine, so you probably already know this. And if you read her blog then you already know about Elisa Gabbert’s interview with her and Mark Wallace’s commentary (I wanted to mention this post on feminism and poetry from Mark too, which is probably old news to everyone else by now, but just in case). I have a big stack of books on my desk that I want to mention here, well actually it’s a small stack, maybe a dozen books and chapbooks, maybe 10% or less of what I’ve received over the past 6 mos. But here in Jessica Land we’re still scuttering around like ants in a kicked bed, so….

..

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Spell/ing () Bound is a tripartite book, arguably harkening back to the Oulipo tradition,* by Cara Benson, Kai Fierle-Hedrick and Kathrin Schaeppi.  I saw it at the Dusie Press reading in New York last month, shuddered at the $15 price tag, and decided that it was one of those objects I must have.  The price is fair, even low considering what the labor and materials for this book must have cost, but I’m poor and miserly. But when rare book objects present themselves, one cannot haggle with one’s inner Scrooge.  Thus I ended up with #49 of 135 copies of this beautiful book.  You can buy other numbers at the ellectrique press website.

The amazing thing about Spell/ing () Bound is how fully conceived it is.  There’s not a false step, but there are many surprises.  I’m not sure how closely the collaborators worked together or what their parameters were when writing their three individual parts, or whether the magic came together in the editorial process, but it seems like each combination brings off a new meaning and metacommentary.  The book performs its own poetics, as each combination comments on its formation.  It’s delightful to thumb-dance through the pages, seeking out new tracks of meaning as the elements collide.  Poetic collaborations are, in my opinion, very rarely successful.  To pull off a collaboration with three people leaves me with feelings of awe, jouissance and respect.

* I say “arguably” for two reasons: first, that Oulipo seems a rather misogynist tradition and thus such a wonderous success of female collaborations would probably not have found sustenance enough in the dried-up womb of Oulipo to have been birthed there.  Second, to claim such a heritage assumes a progress narrative that I don’t want to get into.  Those arguments notwithstanding, the “large number of physical combinations of poetic fragments within the confines of a single bound book” cannot help but remind one of Raymond Queneau’s One Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets.

I don’t think I mentioned this here. But, I am going back to school this fall for the Master of Library Science degree.  (more…)

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A toss of the dice will never abolish chance. Take advantage of Jeff Encke’s “fire sale” of this amazing poem published on playing cards.  Jeff writes:

When you find a moment, please take a look at the card gallery on my Website (preview the deck for sale HERE) and follow the link to the homepage to read more about the project. For sales prices and PayPal links, scroll to the bottom of this e-mail.

During the spring and summer of 2004, I wrote, designed, and printed a book of poetry on a deck of stylized, casino-quality playing cards. Design-wise, I took my inspiration from the multitudes of art card decks I found on the Internet from artists throughout the world. The wealth of deck variety and obvious intelligence and creativity that went into the design of the cards I found astounded me. Hoping simply to approach the level of quality I had seen, working collaboratively with a friend in Boston on the design, I took four months to research and create all 55 card faces.

For one deck ($7.50, including S&H), click HERE.

For two decks ($12.50, including S&H), click HERE.

Might I suggest that this is one of the best ways you might spend $7.50 on a book of poetry.  But then, if you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure you’ll be as excited as I was. (I bought two decks and have been shuffling one. The other is still in the plastic wrap.)

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I’ve decided to write single poems for single readers such that writing is publication and the reader I appeal to is the one precise reader who receives the poem.  This is partly practical: I don’t have the time or money to write many poems or make multiple copies.  It’s partly on curmudgeonly principle: there are too many poems in the world, floundering around looking for the right reader, trying to appeal to large audiences in hopes of catching that single sensitive soul (a tuna net for a dolphin).  And it’s partly that I am satisfied writing one poem for one person. A poem is always a valentine, it is always about love (that connection between mortals, that fragile language-game) even when it isn’t “about” love; it always says “remember me when this you see.” A poem has to be an open letter because the writer and reader will die, are mortal, must appeal to others to remember their love.  A closed letter, a valentine with one specific recipient, a poem addressed to one reader, is never really closed: it always risks being found out,intercepted or read afterwards (does it hope to be, even in seeming to “risk”?).

As I love: my poetics.

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Here.

There’s a stack of cool stuff on my desk I want to tell you about, but I don’t have time right now to do it justice.

honestas

.

what do you think of that building

without knowing the architect ….. knowing

the architect, what do you think of

that building ….. the answer:

they have expanded cheaply,

beautifully, or otherwise in the

streets, holes and parking places

.

the fire which consists of burning iron

discovered early, is like iron

itself ….. love is that unity with the happiness

of another ... mind and body, …. such

pools, …. winged fishes

.

‘a’ is a fig and reducible

‘o’ is the same thing, ... shamed

in the garden ….. what do you

think of that garden without

knowing the gardener ….. knowing

the gardener, what do you think

of that garden ………. the answer:

the glass perfectly dark, or

burning in pieces

.

Robin Blaser

Love Your Layoff: An awesome blog from Foursquare poet Katie Kemple.

At the moment I’m gainfully employed and have been employed at least 20 hrs a week for almost exactly a year. But before that, there were some spotty months. And this year I’ve gone 4 or 5 weeks without pay at one of my two jobs.

(This is also why I don’t blog a lot anymore, or write poetry much anymore. Most of the time I’m thinking about one of my jobs or how to get another job or how to balance my checkbook for the month.)

Charles Alexander covers the Poet-Publisher Roundtable, etc.  My own thoughts, perhaps, one day– if I ever have time!

If you have a Ph.D. in English, experience working in libraries (especially Special Collections), and an interest in 20th Century poetry, there’s a great job posting for an Assistant Curator at the UB Poetry Collection.  The salary is $50-55k, which is a good salary in Buffalo. Heck, you could buy a couple of houses for that.

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Since this post on the Scorpio Woman is the most popular page on my blog, I figured I would supplement it with some more astrological insight.  Before I do so, I want to say that astrology is a lot like chance-determined poetry.  There are so many factors to take into account when determining a chart or a daily horoscope that there are hundreds of thousands of combinations for any given chart on any given day.  This in itself is fascinating.  But then there’s the use-value–why do people turn to astrology, and what motivates astrologers? Thirdly, why is astrology such a threat to “rational-minded” people (often men)… there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatios.  What is “rationality,” anyway?  Astrology raises more questions than it answers, which is part of the point of astrology.

That said, I want to make an attempt at an answer to two questions that people often search for when they arrive at my blog: how does one seduce a Scorpio woman and how does one manage to keep her? (more…)

Last weekend was the third annual Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, which brings together poets, artists and bookmakers from the East Coast, New England, the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Canada. It’s a regional event, I suppose, over a large region. The first night there was a marathon poetry reading, and Saturday vendors set up shop at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum and bought, sold and traded poetry.

Unlike the majority of the AWP Book Fair, the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair focuses on craft–the book as handmade object. So there is a lot of beautiful stuff to see– screenprint, letterpress, sewn binding, etching, gocco, and many types of binding. The visual poem has a certain privilege here, since the visual aspect of bookmaking is privileged. (All of this is due to organizer Chris Fritton’s aesthetic.)

One of the things that caught my eye this year was the poetry of Michael Sikkema. According to his new Blazevox title, Futuring, Sikkema “was born and raised in rural Northern Michigan” and has been through the Bay Area and Buffalo poetry communities, resulting in an individual style that isn’t particular to any scene. There’s Niedecker, Eigner and Grenier in here, to be sure, and I would like to think there’s a particular Buffalo influence, but all of that is already more than “local.”

I should mention that although Sikkema’s work is new to me, and might be new to you, it’s not new to other people: Gina Myers posted this blog entry about Futuring months ago, and she published his chapbook CODE OVER CODE in 2006 with Lame House Press (review).

Futuring probably wouldn’t have caught my eye from its place within the vast and uneven Blazevox library if I had not been at the marathon Small Press reading on Friday. This reading lasted for over five hours and most readers had 5-minute slots. Audience members were a buzzing beehive of greetings, arrivals, goodbyes, departures, and other such human noise, so it was hard to give any reader the attention he or she deserved. In such a setting, specialness stands out– Outside Voices author Ric Royer, for example, gave an incredible performance. Sikkema’s performance caught my attention and drove me to investigate his work further–exactly what a poetry reading is supposed to do (but rarely does, at least for me). At the podium, he drew tiny books from his breast pocket and read from them. Of course, I was immediately enchanted by the size of the books.  I borrowed them from him after the reading and liked the content of many of them.  They are 1″x3″, with about six handwritten pages inside, staple-bound with blank construction paper covers.  Asking him about them, I learned that they are “details”; he mentioned Grenier’s smaller works.

(Here I would like to mention, in passing, the Eigner-Grenier microtradition.  Eigner not as a producer of small books, which he wasn’t, but the microcosm of influence and poet-love between just those two men.  I feel myself as a follower treading in that very thin trail of a tradition.  Although both Eigner and Grenier also have other influences, and I have other influences, the Eigner-Grenier bond has its own weight.)

Reading Futuring, which like Organic Furniture Cellar uses the page space openly, my favorite poems are “The Surfaces” and the series of “Calendars for Hazel.”  I have less fun with the poems that sit on the page in more conventional way, but they’re easier to reproduce here, so I will use a couple of them to give you a sense of the language:

the fossil record

fills in with static

your “rain leaves mirrors

in the earth” is made of time

like likeness

and

all the apples footsteps

the stranger we can become

the better and sooner you say

with your eyes see this

all into YES

To hear Sikkema read, go to Sugar City on April 9 (7-10p, endocrinology reading series) or Rust Belt on April 23 for the Futuring release.

[P.S. This isn't a review.  I don't review books; I don't know how to review books.  I point to things I like.  I like this. Thumbs-up.]

Helen took some great pictures of Veil at the infusoria exhibit. I also found the text for Veil, which has been lost since I originally created the piece for Bridge St. Books in 2002– there are six passages embroidered in morse code. (“Passages,” ha, because it was created as a doorway installation! I’ve been reading Laura Riding’s poem, “Poet: A Lying Word” this morning which makes this piece more resonant. I loved that poem as an undergraduate, so it was probably a major influence for this piece.)

Beautiful pictures from the Handmade/Homemade exhibit are up! (Thank you Deborah!)

The infusoria exhibit also has a blog!  (And what is more enchanting about it, the sensitive portrayal of Michelle’s work or the pictures of setting up the exhibit, with the fragile objects under bell jars?) (Thank you Helen!)

Celebrate National Small Press Month by attending the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, to be held March 21, 2009 at Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, 453 Porter Avenue, Buffalo, NY.  Come early for an all-night reading extravaganza March 20.

Stop-gap solution for the color/formatting of the blog… I don’t really have time to fix it right now (or the cash to invest in CSS access).

Some new readings have been added to my reading schedule. One of them (4/20) is not a reading but a roundtable discussion of small-press publishing that’s part of this Poet-Publishers: A Contemporary Small Press Symposium.  And one of them is a ginormous reading that’s part of the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair (3/20).  And if that weren’t enough, the last (5/19) is part of the Dusie Press night at the d.a. levy lives reading series, which celebrates the small press.  There seems to be a theme here…. There are a couple of other events in the works, too.

The reading Friday at St. Mark’s with Flim Forum, to celebrate the a sing economy anthology, was rad.  It’s killer to read in that space.  At this reading, Deborah Poe (who’s co-curating Handmade/Homemade) told me about the magazine Filter.

I also attended the Belladonna* tribute to Emma Bee Bernstein and release of the Elders Series #4, which made me want to buy the whole Elders Series, especially the ones featuring Jen Scappettone/Lyn Hejinian and Tracy Grinnell/Leslie Scalapino.

I neglected to renew my CSS privileges on wordpress and now the colors are weird… oh well.

I asked my students what their favorite books, movies, and colors were and whether they had a job. These were some of the more frequent answers, in order of popularity: (more…)

I haven’t been paying attention when people send me announcements about their chapbooks, but I did take a look at Megan Kaminski’s “Across Soft Ruins” and in doing so I discovered Scantily Clad Press’s beautiful interface. Raises the bar from the typical .pdf file, not that there aren’t gems coming out every day in .pdf format.

infusoria

Helen White has organized an exciting exhibit of women’s visual poetry for Brussels/Ghent next month called infusoria. If my piece “Veil” arrives in time, it’ll be one of the pieces on display.

Unrelated but related: I’ll be reading Friday, Feb. 27 at 10 p.m. at St. Mark’s as part of a Flim Forum press reading. I’ll be reading from A Sing Economy and maybe a poem or two from “What The Fortune-Teller Said” (chapbook forthcoming from dusie/a+bend).

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Kate Pringle's Right New Biology

Kate Pringle’s RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (with cover art by Danielle Lawrence) is out from the never-fail Heretical Texts.  The whole set this year looks very promising.  I’ve also heard Erica Kaufman’s Censory Impulse (which we’ve had a foretaste of in chapbooks such as the one from Big Game Books) and it’s on my list of things to buy/read.

You can buy the 5-pack of this year’s Heretical Texts for $50.  Kate will tell you how here.  You probably already know that it is always best to buy directly from the publisher because then they don’t have to pay middlemen and are able to stay in business. Also, seriously, Heretical Texts publishes nicely made books with super high quality avant-garde content that will keep you on your toes.  5 books for $50 is a good deal and safe bet in this case (where with other publishers it might not be, or might be somewhat of a gamble).

I am not here. I’ve been granted about 10 more hours per week at the BPO (plus occasional weekend concerts) and school’s back in session (two sections of ENG 201; 50 students), averaging 40-60hrs/wk depending on the grading and concert schedules. So I will be here much less frequently.

Reposting from Ron’s blog this book review.

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