PhillySound: new poetry

This was sent to me today from the poet Merry Fortune:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/

YIKES!
CAConrad

Have to share this marvelous new piece of writing from Sparrow! He's a mad genius, and lovely, and tough!
--CAConrad

today I wrote this imaginary letter to myself, for my Phoenicia Times gossip column:

A Letter

Dear Sparrow:

My wife is in charge of folding laundry in our house. Every two or three days, she fetches a pile of clean clothes and drops it on the floor of our bedroom. There it sits for a time -- from 40 minutes to six hours --until she folds it.

One day, in a stray moment, I went over to a pile and rearranged some of the clothing. I placed three brown socks on top, and pushed in the bottom of an undershirt. Then I stepped back. The pile looked better! I had invented "laundry sculpture."

Now, every time there's a new heap of clothes, I work on it. Often I make the pile taller. I try to harmonize the colors. Gradually, I have learned the importance of red in laundry. When I really like a sculpture, I take a photograph. I'm saving these photos to show in a local gallery.

Abe Tessert

Have you seen the latest issue of SHAMPOO magazine yet?

Recent Philadelphia transplant (originally from Atlanta) Paul Siegell has a great poem there!

I'm not sure if the SHAMPOO editors named their magazine after the famous Goldie Hawn / Warren Beatty / Lee Grant flick, but I like to think they did. Don't tell me the answer, unless it's this one.

CAConrad

Do you know your neighbors? What kinds of lives take place around you?What kinds of noises are there? Have things noticeably changed sinceBush took office?

Please join us at the Kelly Writers House on Thursday, April 27th at7pm, when six writers will read commissioned work about themicroclimate and micropolitics of their neighborhoods, within 100meters. Featuring:

check out CUENet & please spread the word for anyone in the Camden area.

thanks!
hassen

editors of the POETRY zine COCK-NOW! appear this SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(they were snowed out a couple months ago, but this Sunday... this Sunday... this is the Sunday!)

COCKNOW!

Performing Sunday will be:

Ifwhen (ex-All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors) - IFWHEN

Zelda Pinwheel - ZELDAPINWHEEL

So L’il - SOLIL

Panda Riot - PANDARIOT

The Fire is located at 412 Girard Ave. And the show starts at 7pm & is $7 (though probably more like 7:30 [though Ifwhen (So L’il’s sister band) are opening and are PHENomenal]. The order should be like the listing above (Ifwhen 7:00, Zelda 8:00, So L’il 9:00, Panda Riot 10:00).

The Fire's website - THEFIRE

--posted by CAConrad

I ate at Su Xing by chance last week, and it was so good I wanted to recommend it. It's chinese vegetarian, it's better than any chinese vegetarian I have had (I had the General Tso Veggie dish), it's a new restaurant, it's comfortable, it has take-out, the service is fantastic. It's at 1508 Sansom (btw 15th and 16th).

Will

Hassen, that link to Bramhall's work is fantastic! It's a WHOLE BOOK of work! I read a little, and will go back to get more. "Lenin matters as a judge for social chewing." That's fucking tattooable!

This life for the poems, man oh man, loving poems more and didn't think I COULD! Just got back from a trip to Buffalo, where, oh, I walked through the archive. That, a, mazing, sanctuary of poems. Michael Basinski is a SERIOUS gem, a real generous soul. He took Buck Downs, Kevin Thurston and I on the tour of a lifetime for poetry. For years I've considered my time spent at the Poetry Library in London to have BEEN IT! Next to Jonathan Williams's home FULL OF BOOKS OF POETRY, but no no no. It really is TRUE, the collection at Buffalo is -- quite seriously -- THREE OR FOUR TIMES LARGER THAN THE POETRY LIBRARY IN LONDON!

I've been hearing about this collection in Buffalo for years from friends. And let me be honest that in the back of my head was always this thought, "Wow, I'd love to go see it, but there's no way it's as big as the London library." Yeah well, I was very wrong!

Michael Basinski was such a fantastic host, he was more than happy to honor my request we look for a copy of Susie Timmons's book LOCKED FROM INSIDE, the book that so many (from Eileen Myles to Erica Kaufman, to Anselm Hollo) talk about as this true Magic Force. And there it was, on the shelf, right where it should be. Wow! It's so delicious to actually HOLD something you've been aching to see, and read but is out of print!

Shit, that was so beautiful, makes life seem worth any amount of bullshit!

Christine Thurston drove Buck and I to Niagara Falls. Neither of us had ever seen the falls before, and there's just no way to prepare for it. It's the Grand Canyon in reverse, or something, I don't know! It's just impossible to explain unless you SEE it! I mean, I've seen pictures and film footage all my life and it just canNOT compare to being there. And I know how much everyone complains about all the weird tourist trappings built around it, but to be honest, when we were THERE, and I mean, right AT the water, then below it looking up, not even the sun mattered, for the moment. Pure, exhilarating awe. A special alarm goes off and your blood gets jammed with some kind of Special Occasion Sugars.

Everyone I met in Buffalo, especially the poets, were great! We talked and talked and talked about poetry talking and talking about poetry and it was wonderful talking so much about it! Kevin and Christine were the most generous hosts, opening their new home to us. Cannot possibly thank them enough.

Buffalo is my one of my new favorite cities.

Blissed out,
CAConrad

Allen Bramhall just sent me his book, Simple Theory, published by Potes & Poets Press in 2002. I think you can still get it from SPD Books. It's a gem. I couldn't wait to get on here to share. The style's peculiar with both fresh, literary wit & serenity, for my laziness to further expound.

The title poem has a couple of my favorite lines of late. It's probably obvious which ones &/so I won't point...

    Simple Theory

    the wheatfield looks lovely
    because people say so. that must
    be a
    poem or perhaps just a
    title for the familiarity
    that words breed. there is no
    wheatfield so lovely
    as the time it took
    to say so. or really, what
    day could grow greater
    than the morning greeting? the
    wheatfield springs from a
    logic, words on
    one's lips. if one is not
    ecstatic then
    one has traveled wrong. the
    wheatfield fills the eye, space
    brings a determined
    marking to our careers. there are
    poems placed in every
    conversation, they are
    why we stay up late.



And a kickass lettre (titled Lettered) from Tarzan to Jane. One line reads "now that I'm downcast and under the impression, you will have to play fiercely along." It's signed "true to you and colonies of yes,//your love, T" !! Makes me gleeful.

I've not read the entire book yet. As much as I'd like to. I reserve newer books of poetry for the nightstand, read before sleep. Perhaps fortunately, I can only absorb a few at a time before my lids conclude...
these are fine, if not best, lullaby poems for adults, in any event.

~hassen

PS AND LET ME INSIST - check out his stunning work up at The Mag.

THE BROOKLYN CENTRAL LIBRARY
at Grand Army Plaza presents

Poets Coffeehouse featuring:

THOMAS DEVANEY, JOANNA FUHRMAN,
& DAVID SHAPIRO

Tuesday April 18, 7 PM
Central Library, Second Floor

http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/events/culturearts/

--TD

Directions: Subway: 2, 3, Q 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza
or Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum of Art station,
or Q to 7th Avenue.

Car: From Manhattan - Brooklyn Bridge and left onto Tillary,
then right onto Flatbush Ave. Or take Manhattan Bridge,
which turns into Flatbush Ave.

# posted by a Philly Sound Poet PhillySound : 9:23 PM