Eleven Eleven Reading on 11/11/11 with 11 poets.

Really liked Eric Selland, but he is very academic type, a little unconscious of anything outside of that, and went way over his time limit. He asked rather late, am I over my time? And a woman in the audience said Yes! But he went on like he didn't hear her, and then Hugh finally got up and went over towards the end of the aisle and started clapping at the end of the next poem, so everyone else clapped and the poor guy realized he was done.

I liked what he was reading a lot. Lots of translations of Japanese haiku, which he says originally was one line, it was only through English translation that they became 3 lines, to fit with the english language. He wrote in the kindof abstract poetic style I love. "Self as grammatical formality" "To confront interpretation" a lot of lines with that device - "To..." "To..." is that called something? "The body, geology of the unimagined" (not sure if I'm remembering that one right). I'm not sure if that is him or the Japanese poets originally but I'm going to look for his books...

Also liked Rusty Morrison, she is always deep, mostly talking about death. I was thinking during her reading how there is so much pain in everyone, in all of us, and how at the same time, we make this stuff, this poetry. What are we doing? The life force attempts itself. Loved seeing Jessica Wickens again, who I read with a while back, does Twitter poems. She has a book too I need to find.

Regretted not making the Black Surrealism thing at Poetry Center at the same time, and MISSING Will Alexander! How could I? But got my cool African-american poetry fix through Amaud Jamaul Johnson, who I'd not heard of and want to look up his books now. He read in a very slow paced way, which made me feel spiritual, sat up straighter, aligned my bandhas. Felt focused. "It's all pie-chart & phylum."

The rest of the people were the prose writers so I really have nothing to say but they were funny.