Sunday, September 14, 2003
skies - clouds = SF, CA (Spicerville)
i worked in Giovanni's Room Bookstore too many years to fully appreciate the Castro
it's one big Giovanni's Room out here and i'm happy people are having their lives in it and having love in it but i'm starting to understand why these queer teens say being bisexual is more radical and deviant
where's the straight end of town? where are those wild and freaky heterosexuals at? lend me your ear and you can have mine awhile
Maggie and i are staying in this great apartment on Valencia a house-sitting gig for friends of Mary Burger's
the garden is lush with herbs and cactus and some fern trees and fern shrubs with vines covering the fence to hide the tennis court on the other side but nothing can hide the Pah-Pah-Pah of the rackets hitting the balls and the occasional ball winging in over the fence whacking the grill spilling my barley tea rolling to a bright green fuzzy stop
i drew some crazy eyes on it and fangs and tossed it back to hear "hey, c'mere, look at the ball. who did that?"
our first night here we went to a reading by Renee Gladman and Hung Q. Tu for Small Press Traffic
it was the 2nd time i'd heard Renee read the first being in Philadelphia a night where i just couldn't seem to concentrate but on this night i was a captive of her strange story of mutating maps
Hung Q. Tu is someone i've never heard read before and couldn't hear at first (my Neil Young ear was too weak (Neil Young BLEW out my right ear at a concert years ago and i was really there to hear Sonic Youth NOT his sorry old ear bleeding ass!)) but then it turns out he just wasn't using the mic properly and someone helped him out
it seemed at first it was his voice that made me relax into the message but then i realized it was really what he was saying and i was trusting his every word and absorbing the lines and seeing his tools
his politics were always present and sometimes funny "Where's Waldo in American domestic policy" maybe that's not exactly correct but it's how i remember the line
it was quite a night for me in that i kept meeting poet after poet whose work i've been reading for years or in the case of Kevin Killian a poet i've known by phone and e-mail
kari edwards was there a poet whose sexy challenging poems i've enjoyed on the Buffalo List and elsewhere for awhile as was John Norton and Leslie Scalapino
i found out later that Laura Moriarity was there and i wish i had met her
i remember when i first laid my hands on her book RONDEAUX in a used bookshop outside Lancaster PA i nearly read the whole thing sitting in a little wicker chair by a fan that was blowing smells of hay and cow shit over me which didn't keep me from reading but kind of stuck in my brain with a vengeance of sweet flavor
maybe i'm fourteen but these people are my rock stars not that i was an ass with autograph book in hand but i wanted to say hi
Leslie Scalapino's husband is sexy wow here i am saying this on the Blog what the fuck is wrong with me? but he IS sexy! what a lucky woman! i had to get away from her because i kept looking at him instead of her when i was talking about my feelings for IT'S GO IN one of my favorite books of poems on visual art (actually in this case it was a conversation or collaboration her poems and Petah Coyne's sculpture) next to Cole Swenson's book TRY (who i also recently met when i was in Iowa)
speaking of that reading in Iowa WHAT IS WRONG with those people!? Lee Ann Brown and Monica Young gave an AMAZING reading and the audience acted like they were at a funeral
maybe it's just the way things are in Iowa when it comes to poetry readings what do i know i mean the most i know is which roads my relatives take to the liquor store
but back to San Francisco Maggie and i made dinner for Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy last night
they're every bit as exciting and fun as Eileen Myles promised!
the stories of making the Spicer biography were an amazing thing to hear about
i read Dodie's cards (this has become my tarot reading tour having read at least 8 or 9 in Iowa)
i feel like i'm babbling here so i guess i am
guess i'll shut up now but just wanted to share all the great poetry moments of the trip (so far)
more later
CAConrad
it's one big Giovanni's Room out here and i'm happy people are having their lives in it and having love in it but i'm starting to understand why these queer teens say being bisexual is more radical and deviant
where's the straight end of town? where are those wild and freaky heterosexuals at? lend me your ear and you can have mine awhile
Maggie and i are staying in this great apartment on Valencia a house-sitting gig for friends of Mary Burger's
the garden is lush with herbs and cactus and some fern trees and fern shrubs with vines covering the fence to hide the tennis court on the other side but nothing can hide the Pah-Pah-Pah of the rackets hitting the balls and the occasional ball winging in over the fence whacking the grill spilling my barley tea rolling to a bright green fuzzy stop
i drew some crazy eyes on it and fangs and tossed it back to hear "hey, c'mere, look at the ball. who did that?"
our first night here we went to a reading by Renee Gladman and Hung Q. Tu for Small Press Traffic
it was the 2nd time i'd heard Renee read the first being in Philadelphia a night where i just couldn't seem to concentrate but on this night i was a captive of her strange story of mutating maps
Hung Q. Tu is someone i've never heard read before and couldn't hear at first (my Neil Young ear was too weak (Neil Young BLEW out my right ear at a concert years ago and i was really there to hear Sonic Youth NOT his sorry old ear bleeding ass!)) but then it turns out he just wasn't using the mic properly and someone helped him out
it seemed at first it was his voice that made me relax into the message but then i realized it was really what he was saying and i was trusting his every word and absorbing the lines and seeing his tools
his politics were always present and sometimes funny "Where's Waldo in American domestic policy" maybe that's not exactly correct but it's how i remember the line
it was quite a night for me in that i kept meeting poet after poet whose work i've been reading for years or in the case of Kevin Killian a poet i've known by phone and e-mail
kari edwards was there a poet whose sexy challenging poems i've enjoyed on the Buffalo List and elsewhere for awhile as was John Norton and Leslie Scalapino
i found out later that Laura Moriarity was there and i wish i had met her
i remember when i first laid my hands on her book RONDEAUX in a used bookshop outside Lancaster PA i nearly read the whole thing sitting in a little wicker chair by a fan that was blowing smells of hay and cow shit over me which didn't keep me from reading but kind of stuck in my brain with a vengeance of sweet flavor
maybe i'm fourteen but these people are my rock stars not that i was an ass with autograph book in hand but i wanted to say hi
Leslie Scalapino's husband is sexy wow here i am saying this on the Blog what the fuck is wrong with me? but he IS sexy! what a lucky woman! i had to get away from her because i kept looking at him instead of her when i was talking about my feelings for IT'S GO IN one of my favorite books of poems on visual art (actually in this case it was a conversation or collaboration her poems and Petah Coyne's sculpture) next to Cole Swenson's book TRY (who i also recently met when i was in Iowa)
speaking of that reading in Iowa WHAT IS WRONG with those people!? Lee Ann Brown and Monica Young gave an AMAZING reading and the audience acted like they were at a funeral
maybe it's just the way things are in Iowa when it comes to poetry readings what do i know i mean the most i know is which roads my relatives take to the liquor store
but back to San Francisco Maggie and i made dinner for Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy last night
they're every bit as exciting and fun as Eileen Myles promised!
the stories of making the Spicer biography were an amazing thing to hear about
i read Dodie's cards (this has become my tarot reading tour having read at least 8 or 9 in Iowa)
i feel like i'm babbling here so i guess i am
guess i'll shut up now but just wanted to share all the great poetry moments of the trip (so far)
more later
CAConrad
