Monday, December 02, 2013

Stanley, McCreary, Robinson SPT


Stanley, McCreary, Robinson

Small Press Traffic
December 1, 2013
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia Street, SF
5:30pm

Geomantic particularities.
I'm pretty sure I'm a sorcerer.
You leaves get covetous.
Lamps of pure capture.
October is full of Libras.
Some people have old names but don't live very long.
Obstinate shimmering recondite.
Talking is basically the definition of skin.
Some poems are only instructions.
We'll all have tender feet in the new world.
They promised to make me smarter.
I move often toward a dream.
Any type of shirt with one button buttoned.
***
No one wants the embarrassment of absolution.
The worrying power of effigies.
I've got your Stockholm Syndrome right here.
Because I know how the roundabout works.
I don't think of a white bear so hard.
An entire summer spent speaking in code.
An eye swapped with the language of water.
Someone should tell the bees.
Like wet puppy & dirty pennies.
There is no really intimacy without remorse, but also there is gratitude.
I incite the etymology of mayhem.
Open your hand to show you held no weapon.
That's not an ice cream truck that's church bells.
Comfort isn't always comfortable.
We changed the story we solved the problem.
And now my feet are maps.
Waiting for anything is its own kind of fever.
The way moths fly, like they're broken.
***
Didn't monster imply narrative.
To be suspicious is to be suspicion.
To face into it [the unverifiable]
Breaking through its skin with our skin.
As if to evade all our futures with his present tense.
The evidence wasn't able to modify itself with a pronoun.
Rage is always past tense.
Variably audible to memory.
Theft has it own taxonomical condition.
Dirty teleology.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Bay Area Public School: Studying Crisis, August 29, 2013: JASPER BERNES, MAYA GONZALEZ, LAURA HUDSON




Strategies don't work.
Walmart as a new form of communism.
The factory line.
People can work less.
The progressive dimension to production.
But instead the factory line enables capital to exploit people.
De-linking as orphaning.
The Jetson's communism.

***

"Class belonging appears as an external restraint."
Austerity is on the lips of every bleeding politician.

***

Land as museum piece.
Or a bank, or reserve.
Turning pollution into a market.
Solutions inside of capitalism, problematic
because nature has no value in the capitalistic system.
Solutions that are not profitable will not be implemented.






Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Colleen Lookingbill, Jaime Robles, Maxine Chernoff, at Canessa Park Reading Series, 7-24-13

C.L.

Your consciousness is not contained in your body, but your body is contained in your consciousness.

Prayer unlooped.

Augmented accelerations.

The space absence will offer.

Welcome fugue of morning friction.

J.R.

Old English word for river -- exe.

Like Persephone, I have left my mother.

I'd forgotten the strength of silence, its mutability.

Interstices of pomegranates.

Wheels, spoons, flickering, clay.

Into time's contours.

M.C.

I read like someone's chasing me.

Small but wide.

A look that means less.

Your face was vaguer & therefore more intimate.

With boxes and owls (Joseph Cornell)

The possible is not enough.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Around three years ago on a Colorado trip with my mom I wrote this.

And today in the Rocky Mountain National Park:

Fishing Poem #2
       for zack

"the rough deific sketches"   — Walt Whitman

In the lack of the animate, the inanimate animates.

No one knows the combination and so the locked, sits.
Solitary.

The Civic Engineers and the no public access
and my mother pissed at America for this
is all thats left of America.

The bob bobs
and my eye waters,
the itinerant eyelash.

The road is closed past this point.

Becoming more and more aware
of my energetic states and how
I can manipulate them.

She caught a tree.

She wants me to sit on the rock.

I will sit on the rock.

Once the spider moves.

Read Walt Whitman
out loud & a deer
came by. From afar.
For a minute.

Getting caught in the thrush.

Afraid to sit next to anything leafy for fear
of poison.

She got a bite. We're eating dinner!
But he got away.  With the salmon egg.

Got it off the hook without
getting himself hooked.

She felt the bite.
It wasn't the water.

The bird swoops down toward
the water, grazing. Like
skipping stones.

Ideas are in the past.
Only living is in the present.
Ideas stop the present.

The present is the present.

If I was into Conceptual Photography:
every tree in the Rocky Mountain
National Forest photographed
individually.

"The mountains look like they're moving away"  — kid

(_______) dookie

I hate summer.

Tour van named Arrow.

Good directions that are just good luck.


Saturday, May 04, 2013

Poetry Readings Numbers Game

Me and a friend (to establish the informality of this study) were talking about how it seems like there are more poetry readings that feature women readers than men in the Bay Area, and are we feminist now?


So I counted.

Maybe not the most scientific study, but I counted literary readings (including fiction, but not nonfiction) that I was invited to on Facebook for the month of April.

Certainly there are more readings that don't advertise on Facebook, and some readings on Facebook that didn't invite me (possibly). I tried to make sure to cut out obvious musical acts. However, out of some of the readings that I did not attend, some seem to involve writers/poets and music, and I am not sure if they were singing or what, but I'm still counting them if web searches proved them to be involved in the literary world in any manner. So.

The final count: 99 people gave readings in the Bay Area in April 2013. 56 Men, 42 Female, and 1 Gender Variant. Not feminist at all!

Why is this? Is this one of those our tastes dictate our consumption, and our consumption does not tend to steer us towards the more male centric readings? I don't know!

(I am available for readings, Bay Area.)


My list:


APRIL Poetry Readings 2013

APRIL 4 Rock Paper Scissors presents a reading of small press prose with:

Daniel Coshnear (Kelly's Cove Press)
Karen Lillis (Spuyten Duyvil Press)
Ocean Capewell (High On Burning Photographs zine)

APRIL 4
Wanda Coleman and Brenda Coultas
Poetry Center Book Award reading

APRIL 6
Anselm Hollo, a Memorial Tribute

Alan Bernheimer
Mary Burger
Maxine Chernoff
Brenda Coultas
Steve Dickison
Stephen Emerson
Derek Fencer
Gloria Frym
Tinker Greene
Donald Guravich
Paul Hoover
Alastair Johnston
Joanne Kyger
George Mattingly
Lucy Farber Mattingly
Sarah Menefee
Jim Nisbet
Eric Olson
Michelle Puckett
Kit Robinson
John Sakkis
Andrew Schelling
G.P. Skratz

APRIL 6
Amerarcana reading at Bird & Beckett

Ava Khoobor,
Patrick James Dunagan,
Christina Fisher,
Rod Roland,
Carrie Hunter,
William Rockwell
Jack Hirschman,

APRIL 7 SPT
Carla Harryman and Jon Raskin

APRIL 12 BAM RE@DS

Zoe Tuck & Wendy Trevino!

APRIL 13

PAWA and Arkipelago Books Presents an evening of conversation with author R. Zamora Linmark.

APRIL 13
THE BREW presents: A spoken word-music showcase with:

Jam Hands - Garth Bunse - Raul Gilbert - MG Roberts - Avrille Godchaux - Scot Young - Garrett Murphy

APRIL 14

Enjoy the poetry of Joseph Lease and Peter Burghardt at University Press Books

APRIL 14

The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno St, San Francisco

The following readers will perform their work:

Art Beck
Judith Ayn Bernhard
Neeli Cherkovski
Agneta Falk
Jack & Adelle Foley
Maketa Smith-Groves
Jack Hirschman
Clara Hsu
Ava Koohbor
A.D. Winans

APRIL 14

Manifest #14 features poetry from Kate Menzies, and Lindsey Boldt

APRIL 15
Quiet Lightning

Moneta Goldsmith » Rachel Ann Brickner » Matthew Rodgers » Mario de la Vega » Katie Wheeler-Dubin | Allison Landa » Jan Richman » Baruch Porras-Hernandez » Matt Pine » Charlie Getter » Katie Carter

APRIL 18 MFA MIXER 2.0 USF

*Jen Larsen, Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed my Body and Messed with My Head (nonfiction)
*Chris Carosi, Bright Veil (poetry)
*Lindsay Tam Holland, The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong (fiction)

APRIL 18 Woolsey - Brent Cunningham and Thom Donovan

APRIL 18 Hearts Desire Reading Series - Cedar Sigo, Jason Morris Sara Larsen

APRIL 19  Underpass Reading Series at Bica
ALLI WARREN / ANGELA HUME

APRIL 20 The Other Fabulous Reading Series

Brandon Brown
Donald Dunbar
Robert Gluck

APRIL 21
MAGED ZAHER & STEVE FARMER at SPT!

APRIL 25

Clark Coolidge and Steve Dickison

APRIL 25

1111 issue 14 party

SB Stokes
MG Roberts
Olga Zilberbourg
Ben Mirov
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier

and just added

Explore the compelling work of Cannon Dill (CCA alum).

APRIL 26

Under the Influence

Lizzy Acker
MK Chavez
Mariama Lockington
Genine Lentine

APRIL 27

Oakland's Backyard Open Mic
Featuring Youssef Alaoui

APRIL 28

Triple Publication Party!

Actual Café
Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s “The
Opposite of Work” (JackLeg Press), Steve Gilmartin’s "Comes Up to Face
the Skies" (Little Red Leaves Textile Series), and Maw Shein Win’s
“Ruins of a glittering palace” (SPA/Commonwealth Projects).

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Next Big Thing


Was tagged my j/j hastain AND Laura Woltag!, so here goes. Thanks j/j and Laura!!
***
What is the title of the book?
Inversion Twilight 
Where did the idea come from for the book?
It is actually part of a larger manuscript called Anti-Oedipus, and so I got the idea obviously from Anti-Oedipus. My previous book, The Incompossible, was a sort of translation (of abstract language into more concrete imagery, not French to English) from Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, and I enjoyed working with philosophy/theory so much I wanted to keep doing it. This time around, instead of translating philosophy into concrete imagery, I used the language from the Deleuze & Guattari text itself, collaged them together, and then in an effort to keep it from being too, too dense, I also wove in writings I did while listening to ambient music. Towards the end I deleted out a lot of the Deleuze & Guattari language as it really was too dense, so there is a sort of palimpsest of their writing with my own written over it.
What genre does your book fall under?
Epithalamium.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Although I envision Anti-Oedipus as female, I could imagine her being played by Jonathan Caouette in drag. I'm in (supposedly, I haven't seen it yet) about 5 minutes of his newest film Walk Away Renee. So. 
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Disjunctions and desire-machines, voicing what cannot be voiced that in the end can be, and the terrible, joyful process of becoming-schizo.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Have been writing and rewriting since 2008. For the most part I have been happy with the text, but have had quite a difficult time finding its form as a whole. I was unsatisfied with The Incompossible's unitary prose-poems (although it seemed to be necessary at the time) and so wanted everything in this book to be constantly different and evolving, in flux. (However this will not be apparent in the chapbook coming out.)
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Deleuze and Guattari obviously, but also on a personal level, the ending (an evolving process) of wanting what I cannot have, and the anti-oedipal, anti-capitalist path of finding a way towards having what I do have, or how having itself becomes unnecessary. Or how not having is a type of having, or finding a way towards having and not having simultaneously. 
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Mythology's invisible footprint, fighting the suicidal impulse, identity, writing as meta-life.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Birds of Lace is putting out Inversion Twilight this coming April.

Tagging: Amy Berkowitz, Sara Larsen, Suzanne Stein, Lara Durback, Erica Lewis

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Per Una Selva Oscura

Started a new blog. http://perunaselvaoscura.tumblr.com A Project blog. Somewhat similar to my old http://diaryofa36thyear.blogspot.com. But a little more complex. In this age of tumblr and reblogging I can kind of get the scrapbook feel that the paper version of Diary of a 36th Year had.

The Diary blog was written literally by taking piece/fragments of my written diary and collaging them together. I have mostly forgone the written diary except for notes while reading. So that is not the project. The project is a sort of attempt to pull out some sort of prose narrative. I talk about poetry I'm reading, poetry readings in a obscure he/she way, a vague "he" coming out of having a real "he" in my life! And since I crashed one of the Public School meetings on the bible, I am interested in continuing and using the very interesting biblical aspects/ as well as readings from a book on the history of yoga I recently started reading. To combine religion/spirituality with poetry concerns, with personal life, and finally dreams, which I finally started to be able to remember again after having a month with nowhere to be (first time in 10 years I've had that much time off at once!). And I will probably be mixing in some Linguistics/TESOL aspects from my classes.

I got the idea while reading Book 2 of Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book, Nights and Days, which is what I originally wanted to call it, but it was taken. Duncan talks a good deal about Dante, (not to mention a good deal about everything), so it seemed to fit. The Nights and Days section is a poetic meandering around the theme so far of night, with lots of exposition on stars, but it is really more the form and style of writing in this section, more than the content, that really inspired me. The idea of leaving jokey funny facebook posts behind, and writing in a poetic voice entirely — seems very appealing to me right now. Maybe too many people are witty these days, it is no longer appealing to me to be so. Combined with my new age in my new decade and my desire to be a teacher, which has somehow led to another level of interest in my writing. And I'm also started to view the prevalence of "witty" in some ways as connected to capitalism, when you are doing that you are selling something people want. I want to sell something I want.

But Inspiration #2 came about rather simultaneously as reading Book 2 of The H.D. Book, which came about through reading about how Kate Zambreno was writing a blog about wives of writers who wanted to be writers but never became writers, and how that blog ultimately became her book Heroines, and that inspired me to make a blog that could be a book, and could be a prose book. Trying to trick myself into prose through a device (but its so still poetry, but thats ok).

It is also organized by day. Day 1, Day 2 etc. But these are not real days since I'm about to become very busy with the semester. I'm thinking of them as biblical days. A logical end of course would be 365 days, but that seems a bit too much for a book, plus with the rebloggings, it would just be huge.

Thinking to research Dante a little bit more and those cute little circles of hell. Research the organization, etc. and see if I can do something with that...

Perhaps, yes.   Wikipedia says that the Comedy is made up of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas (Ital. pl. cantiche)—Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise)—each consisting of 33 cantos (Ital. pl. canti).  Perhaps I will stop on the 99th day.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Yogis uniting for workers rights, Hyatt


I expected more yogis couldn't even find any at first.  Joined the picket line for a minute. I want to start joining picket lines more often, very much a high! So much energy from the people. I asked do I need a sign to walk with you, and they're like no no here here, making room for us. I think I should wash my yoga mat that the homeless man used though -- he was kind of cute, he kept yelling out "I'm So Relaxed!" -- but there is some mysterious black stuff on the edges now.

I didn't know who Seane Corn was before but think she must be SO famous now.

Also thinking how interesting it is, how easy for some (those with money) to sell out to corporations, because they want the money. How to not sell out and stick to your values should be a component to all yoga teacher trainings, as is a little critical thinking maybe. Too much unthinking jockiness in the yoga world, trying to sell bliss because it is a selling point but not really teaching people the intellectual side of things, how can we have "union" -- yoga when the yoga being sold is so lopsided?


Friday, January 04, 2013

Favorite Netflix Streaming Movies Watched in 2012


Skyline

Downton Abbey: Season 1

Stranded

Faces in the Crowd

The Bothersome Man

Melancholia

The Scarf

Thor

Timecrimes

Archangel: Pt 1-3

Stargate Universe Seasons 1-2

Accident

Farewell My Concubine

YOGA: The Movie

Battlestar Galactica: Ssn 1

The Phantom of the Opera

Fish Story

Ashtanga, NY

Columbus Circle

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Reading/Performancey things I gave/did 2012


Much shorter list :(

January 22:
11th Annual Poets Theater Festival (Debt Play) - Counterpulse

June 4:
Greene/Hunter Poetry Reading - Bird & Beckett

June 16:
SPT PRESENTS: Endless Summer - CCA

July 28:
reading/going away party at zack's: with jess heaney, tom comitta, zack haber

October 17:
Live at 851: with Suzanne Scanlon, Jess Dutschmann, Ivy Johnson, Alexandra Naughton





Readings attended 2012

Evan Karp went to at least 134 poetry readings in 2012! 

So I counted. I only went to 41, wait 42, forgot Quiet Lightning, wait 43 I forgot David Brazil, Eleni Stecopoulos, and CJ Martin at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library. OMG. Oh, he says "literary events" but anyway.

School seems to have slowed me down a lot. 42 altogether, only 9 between Sept-Dec.

2012 Readings Events


Alice Notley

Live at 851: Gabriel Blackwell, Joshua Mohr, Derek Fenner, Zack Haber

iduna: an opera in one act  (didn't really see this but I went)

Manifest Reading and Workshop Series #12, Erika Staiti, Alana Siegel

SPD Lit Crawl Creature Features Micah Ballard, Julien Poirier, Rebecca Farivar, Ben Mirov, and Claire Becker.

Live at 851: Suzanne Scanlon, Carrie Hunter, Jess Dutschmann, Ivy Johnson, Alexandra Naughton

Live at 851: Book Launch: Jarett Kobek, M Kitchell, Elly Jonez, Lorian Long with special guest John Tottenham

CCA Reading! Thom Donovan, Suzanne Stein and Sara Larsen

San Francisco I'LL DROWN MY BOOK Launch

RE@DS: Kevin Killian & Andrew Kenower

The Other Fabulous Reading Series: Ben Mirov, Alana Siegel, Adam Fagin

Studio One  kathryn pringle and Rebecca Farivar

C.J. Martin reading for Julia Drescher and erica lewis POETRY READING, Susan Gervitz's


David Brazil, Eleni Stecopoulos, and CJ Martin at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library


Canessa Park Reading Series presents: Nicholas Leaskou, Jay Thomas & Delia Tramontina

Live at 851: Nick Sturm, Rachel Hyman, Diana Salier, Steve Orth, Tom Comitta, Amy Berkowitz, Rod Roland

San Francisco Book Launch for Kevin and Rob-Alley Cat Books

reading/going away party: jess heaney, carrie hunter, tom comitta, zack haber

Woolsey Heights presents Dodie Bellamy, Jason Jimenez and Francesca Lisette

Featherboard: kathryn l. pringle, Alli Warren and Brent Cunningham

Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics

Endless Summer SPT reading: Francesca Rosa, Erin Wilson, Micah Ballard, Joshua Clover, Juiliana Spahr, Taylor Brady, Michael Cross, Lara Durback, Melissa Eleftherion Carr, Suzanne Stein, Sara Larsen, Melissa Mack, Alli Warren, Alan Bernheimer, Kit Robinson, Loretta Clodfelter, David Buuck, Karla Milosevich, Cynthia Sailers, Carrie Hunter, Margaret Tedesco with Pam Martin, Del Ray Cross, Samantha Giles, Ron Palmer, Anne Lesley Selcer, Sara Wintz, Jill Stengel, Kevin Killian, Beverly Dahlen, Matthew Gordon, Sarah Rosenthal, Sean Negus

Bird & Beckett Books- Black - Kelder - Thibodeaux

Poetry at the Long Haul: Juliana Spahr, QR Hand Jr, Dereck Clemons

Quiet Lightning- Zack Haber, Karen Penley, Mariama Lockington, Aaron DiFranco, Valerie Chavez, Zoe Brezsny, Matthew Rogers, Max Tomlinson, Joe Case, Maureen Blennerhassett, Chris Carosi, Brian S. Hart, Cybele Zufolo, Samantha Rubenstein, Casey McAlduff

Amerarcana 2012 Release and Reading

Poetry at the Long Haul: Dan Thomas Glass, Megan Kaminksi, Sarah Rothberg, Janey Smith

Good Friday Poetry-Books and Bookshelves, Alana Siegel + George Quasha

Bowerbird Treasury: The Reading/ Reckoning

Sara Larsen, Rusty Morrison and Dennis Phillips reading at Canessa Gallery

Manifest Reading Series #6

Live at 851 Presents: Thomas Patrick Levy, Andrea Kneeland, Sarah Fran Wisby, Lindsey Boldt and Shruti Swamy.

RE@DS reading: Tom Comitta (Didn't really see this but I went)

2/11: House Reading - Durback, Thomas-Glass, and Young-Lauren & Tony's House

Live at 851: Lonely Christopher, Keely Hyslop, Janey Smith

Poetry at The Long Haul...Camille Roy, Lindsey Boldt, Steve Orth!

Manifest Reading Series #4

a reading and conversation with Tim Trace Peterson, j/j hastain and Monica/Nico Peck

a reading and conversation with kathryn l. pringle, Erin Moure and Andrea Rexilius

Wintz, Rankine (absent) & Bellamy

an evening with Cecilia Vicuna

an engagement with Sherwood Forest

11th annual Poets Theater festival


TESOL/Linguistics related books of 2012 (mostly "still reading")

Linguistic Theories Of Humor (Humor Research, No. 1) (Humor Research, No 1)
Sex And The Brain



Favorite Books read in 2012 that I gave 5 stars to on Goodreads


Touch To Affliction
Stephens, Nathalie

A 22 and 23
Zukofsky, Louis

Nilling: Prose
Robertson, Lisa

Knot
Doris, Stacy

Two Books
Martin, C.J. 

Sand
Phillips, Dennis

Hurdis Addo
Giles, Samantha

Chinese Notebook
Agrafiotis, Demosthenes

Undying Love, Or, Love Dies
Toufic, Jalal

To After That
Gladman, Renee

Infinite Variations
Nelligan, Marci
Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. the Joy of Cooking
Lin, Tan

The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures
Spicer, Jack

Song for His Disappeared Love/Canto a Su Amor Desaparecido
Zurita, Raul

Applies to Oranges
Thorson, Maureen 

Schizophrene
Kapil, Bhanu

Event Factory
Gladman, Renee

To Carry You Being
Haber, Zack


Goodreads Reviews 2012

Half sex, half Buddhism, the way everything should be. Finally starting to read my 2011 ugly duckling presse subscription books. Writing deep in a surface way. I had the orange hardcover library edition. Cathars vs the Catholics. Collage of underlined lines. The book I want to be reading whenever I'm reading another book. I like how he seems to have this one thesis, and all his books, whether poetry, prose or a hybrid of the two, are really all about this one thing. I wrote some *really cool* stuff about this book in my spiral notebook, which I can't find. Thinking deeply about Devo. Great right after waking from a nap and not putting your glasses on. The way that the actual subject matter of the book very slowly dawned on me was really cool. I also liked the Muslim interpretation of "Silent Night, Deadly Night." I'm so depressed. I was confused and thought this was a zine listing Robert Duncan as author instead of editor, but then I realized it is an essay by him that begins with two poems as epigraphs to his essay. Entertaining. I totally don't remember taking this from your house, but I guess I did. I found it in my bag. "Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundred of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn them into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be." Want to read the whole thing just two at a time like this. That the question that despair asks has no answer.