PhillySound: new poetry

Click HERE for Quale Press page to read sample and to order!

--posted by CAConrad

As a result of her ScarySexyScary piece she did for the cover of Daybook of Perversities & Main Events, people are still asking me about Kris Chau. If you live in or around Philadelphia, you can stop asking me & go see for yourself. You can catch one of Philly's hottest painter/illustrators at her Big Paintings solo show two weeks from today. Where? When? Here's where & here's when.

Opening February 8:

"You Folks" a solo show
Vagabond Boutique @ 7pm
37 N. 3rd st. Philly

Snacks! Drinks! Paintings! Prints!

Check it out check it out.

- Frank Sherlock

In support of US soldiers and their families in Canada -- please show up today at 11 in front of the consolate, 1650 Market Street, Philadelphia.

Conscientious objectors and their supporters testified to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of Canadian Parliament. On December 6, this committee adopted a motion recommending that the government immediately implement a program to allow war resisters and their families to stay in Canada, and calling for an immediate halt to deportation proceedings in these cases.

On Jan 25-26, building on this victory, actions are being organized across Canada, the United States, and in other countries, to demand that Canada "Let the War Resisters Stay!"

This day of action is sponsored by Refusing To Kill, in association with Global Women's Strike.

"I saw fundamental violations of basic human rights every day or two... and since I never saw one soldier or officer criticized or disciplined for carrying out such violations... I fear, and believe, that what I saw was only the tip of the iceberg in Iraq." -- Joshua Key, fled to Canada in 2005 with his wife Brandi and four children.

--posted by CAConrad

Interview is HERE.

Today is the one year anniversary of Frank Sherlock's near-death experience.

We are all grateful for his will to live and his strength to exert his will.

Come buy him a drink at THE BUBBLE HOUSE tonight, 3404 Sansom, Philadelphia. There will be a reading with CAConrad and Shafer Hall starting at 6pm. Frank and CA will read from their collaboration THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems.

Tonight is a night to celebrate our friend's life!

--posted by CAConrad

THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE POETRY HOTEL!
--CAConrad

...THE YEAR AWARD FOR 2007 GOES TO THE BIG MELT!
--posted by CAConrad

A holiday in place of a dream...

SO HAPPY to see POEMERGENCY ROOM by Paul Siegell is finally OUT! The OTOLITHS webpage has sample poems, including an amazing calligram!

BUY THIS BOOK!

The political world absorded into the everyday world where these poems notice how often we live with what we no longer can see. Blood stains every other line in every American day here.

The New World Fodder. Maybe. UH! Something like:


the decision-maker switches every time direction does—
the useful beauty of anyone initiating a new acrobatic,

no matter how ephemeral.

in the sight of which, overwhelming the well, feeling
lately like I’ve been typing into a typewriter without paper,

never wanted a light to stay red so bad before in all my life.
(from the poem "America stop honking I know what I'm doing")


So many fantastic poems in this book, let me share another excerpt that I Love:


Chime in
a band you love on stage in your city
Chime in
the sounds of "117 South 17th Street"

Stained-glass spray-paint break-dance hand-drums:

Chime in
like notes from a poembedded journalist
graffiti on the Walt Whitman Bridge
like Liberty Bell crack
with congrats fantastic
and America's amnesia of the American bomb

--Rip the pages, rip, rip the pages from your notebook!

Chime in
like a Poemexican mowing the lawn of the National
Constitution Center
(from the poem "A Good-Surprise Experience Awaits")


Looking forward to hearing Paul read from the book in Philadelphia in a few months with Kevin Varrone and Chris Martin! More later on that!
--CAConrad

P.S. also recently out from OTOLITHS is the latest in Tom Beckett's interview series "E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S" Includes interviews with the following: Mark Young, Michael Heller, Bob Grumman, Shanna Compton, Sandy McIntosh, Jim McCrary, Gary Sullivan, A.L. Nielsen, Michael Farrell, CAConrad, Anny Ballardini, Denise Duhamel, Nick Carbó, Jack Kimball, Geoffrey Young & Jordan Stempleman.

The lastest issue of FENCE Magazine is out, and I've been looking forward to it because some of my (Soma)tic Exercises are included and dedicated to my friend Brenda Iijima. Brenda's amazing essay "Metamorphic Morphology Meeting in Language: P as in Poetry, Poetry Rhetorical for the Election Season" was also to appear. In the end FENCE editors rejected her essay on the grounds that it was too political, too much like a manifesto, or some such bullshit! AT A TIME WHEN OUR GOVERNMENT AND COUNTRY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY ONE MILLION INNOCENT LIVES BEING LOST IN IRAQ, and a host of other atrocities, BRENDA IIJIMA'S ESSAY IS TOO POLITICAL!?

Before anyone starts sending me stupid e-mails, YES, I'm well aware that editors can do whatever they want! But I can also be pissed off if I want! The good news is that it will be published in the debut issue of CRITIPHORIA, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime here is a sample of her brilliant essay:


from "Metamorphic Morphology Meeting in Language: P as in Poetry, Poetry Rhetorical for the Election Season"

"Poems can ooze like sludge, suck (more interesting than gravitational pull!)—syntax dangling thickly in clumps, slimy, greasy—hungry. Green up verbs to be. Lyrical Is (plural of I) join rocks in igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic processes. Contentious histories heat the fortified walls of denial's antechambers. Language intermingles. Diction can express the health of earthworms, microbes, intestinal flora, etc., (additional meanings of culture grow). Landfills belching methane offer us a cross-section of the sublimated quotidian—the consumer burial mounds where the discarded nouns of our lives lie wasting. Refuse lingual—new processes for poems to undergo. Words, dirt, filtration—rich, moist soil in the works. O dirt, expansive erogenous depth!"

--posted by CAConrad

AMETHYST PAJAMAS
--posted by CAConrad

details HERE!

Katalanche Press has released the new chapbook Over Here, a radical travelogue written during a joyride across the end of the Empire! Check it out over there.

- FS

San Francisco's POETS THEATER at Small Press Traffic!

--posted by CAConrad

DOROTHEA LASKY was born in St. Louis, MO in 1978. Her first full-length collection, "AWE," has just come out this fall of from Wave Books. She is the author of three chapbooks: "The Hatmaker's Wife" (Braincase Press, 2006), "Art" (H_NGM_N Press, 2005), and "Alphabets and Portraits" (Anchorite Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Crowd, 6x6, Boston Review, Delmar, Filter, Knock, Drill, Lungfull!, and Carve, among others. Currently, she lives in Philadelphia, where she studies education at the University of Pennsylvania and co-edits the Katalanche Press chapbook series, along with the poet Michael Carr. She is a graduate of the M.F.A. program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and also has been educated at Harvard University and Washington University.

Whatever you paid for that sweater, it was worth it
(from AWE, by Dorothea Lasky)

Be scared of yourself
The real self
Is very scary.
It is a man
But more importantly
The man is tall
And is everything in you that is an absolute reverse of all your actions
In you he will do things and in you no one will know the difference
Still the honey and the herb, the bright lights.

The piece of fiscal fish, the lemons,
The blank above with stars will praise you
But he, he puts his legs over frail women
And tries to get to the thing they won’t give up.
Just as true loneliness gets to the very real thing in you
Scary or not, is part man for all it is wanting and can’t get
To the place where it has married woman, it sits
In a sea of lemons, its tail dragged bloody across the floor.

Still, here I do not speak of mutilation.
The real self is not muddy, it is pure
Still here it is a thing of murder
The self comes off itself and murders the woman in its path
Her skirts effortlessly careening back there up into the stars.


MATTHEW ROHRER is the author of "A Green Light" (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of "Satellite" (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of "Nice Hat. Thanks." (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty." He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "The Next Big Thing." His first book, "A Hummock in the Malookas" was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the undergraduate writing program at NYU.

venus waning/apollo waxing his car
(from A HUMMOCK IN THE MALOOKAS, by Matthew Rohrer)

Then there was the night I decided that if I ignored everyone

I would transcend,


so I covered my ears with my hands,

stepped off the porch and rose like a wet crow


and the sprinklers chattered to each other over the fences.

And "How long will you be gone?" my neighbor called nervously,

my neighbor whose saw I had borrowed,

and "Come down right now!" my landlord called out,

climbing to the roof of his Cadillac to reach me

as he got smaller and smaller.


And there I was with the stars hanging above my house like live wires

and the night sky the color of stockings.


I stuck out my tongue to taste the sky

but could not taste.


I inhaled deeply

but could not smell.


I used to look to the sky for comfort

and now there was nothing, not even a seam,

and I looked down and saw that it did not even reach the ground.


And my only company was the satellites counting their sleep

and the Sorrowful Mother swinging her empty dipper in the darkness,

the Sorrowful Mother picking her way through the stars over my roof.


And I knew I was nowhere and if I ever took my hands from my ears

I would fall.

www.noise-joy.org

--CAConrad

Many thanks to Stacy Szymaszek, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, John Coletti, and the many others who made this year's marathon at St. Mark's Poetry Project such AN INCREDIBLE DAY! It's one of those days where you realize WITHOUT A DOUBT that we are living in a time of magic and power, and you JUST HAVE TO GO AHEAD AND SAY magic and power AND NOT FEEL GOOFY DOING SO, because it is true.

Here's the list of readers (then I want to write a little more AND BITCH ABOUT ONE THING)

Philip Glass, Eric Bogosian, Ernie Brooks, Tony Towle, Open Music Ensemble, Brenda Coultas, John Godfrey, Patti Smith, Jordan Davis, David Henderson, Frank Sherlock, Rich O'Russa, David Mills, Jenny Smith, John Coletti, Joanna Fuhrman, R. Erica Doyle, Dan Machlin, Cat Tyc, Jessica Rogers, Renato Rosaldo, Stefania Iryne Marthakis, Rodrigo Toscano, Yoshiko Chuma, Elinor Nauen, Frances Richard, Phyllis Wat, Ed Friedman, Christina Strong, Stephanie Gray, Evan Kennedy, Lydia Cortes, Kim Rosenfield, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Shanxing Wang, Lauren Russell, Marcella Durand, Marc Nasdor, Brendan Lorber, Alan Davies, Stephen Motika, Bob Rosenthal, Susie Timmons, Eliot Katz, Maggie Dubris, Peter Lucas Erixon, Eve Packer, Chris Stackhouse, David Kirschenbaum, Bill Kushner, Tom Savage, Rob Fitterman, Cliff Fyman, Tara Betts, Jennifer Coleman, Allison Cobb, Jill Magi, Gillian McCain, Emily XYZ, Todd Colby, Elliott Sharp, Paolo Javier, Eileen Myles, John Giorno, Steve Earle, Donna Brook, Bob Hershon, Jen Benka, Carol Mirakove, I Feel Tractor, Lenny Kaye, Anne Tardos, Sharon Mesmer, Greg Fuchs, Douglas Dunn, Wayne Koestenbaum, Renato Gomez, Rebecca Moore, Michael Cirelli, Joe Eliot, Tracey McTague, Jess Fiorini, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Vincent Katz, Merry Fortune, David Vogen, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Jackie Sheeler, Penny Arcade, Michael Lydon, Filip Marinovic, Yuko Otomo, Steve Dalachinsky, Adeena Karasick, Barbara Henning, Tisa Bryant, Bruce Andrews, Sally Silvers, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek, CAConrad, Keith Roach, Daniel Higgs, John S. Hall, Maggie Estep, Michael Scharf, Wanda Phipps, Leonard Schwartz, Miles Champion, Citizen Reno, Jaime Manrique, Dael Orlandersmith, Uche Nduka, Laura Jaramillo, Nathaniel Siegel, Jim Behrle, Anselm Berrigan, Dustin Williamson, Macgregor Card, Amelia Jackie, Simone White, Hal Sirowitz, Peter Bushyeager, Guillermo Castro, Simon Pettet, Max Winter, Tonya Foster, Judith Malina, Hanon Reznikov, Ted Greenwald, Patricia Spears Jones, Avram Fefer, Taylor Mead, Lee Ann Brown, Denizé Lauture, Thom Donovan, Franklin Bruno, Drew Gardner, Kyle Schlesinger, Don Yorty, Kimberly Lyons, Katie Degentesh, Tracie Morris, Val Jeanty, Chris Rael, Michael Brownstein, Sparrow/Foamola, Ben Malkin, Erika Recordon, Mónica de la Torre, Emil Bognar-Nasdor, Bob Holman, Janet Hamill, E. Tracy Grinnell, Nada Gordon and Harris Schiff.

WOW! WHAT A GREAT FUCKING DAY! Let me bitch about something first though.

When Eileen Myles was introduced to the stage she walked through the enormous crowds handing out copies of the poem she was about to read. As she did so she talked to us about the buildup of the poem, and of how it was a fragment from a much larger poem she is working on. All of a sudden THIS ASSHOLE from the audience started yelling at her, which threw everyone off as we were preparing for the poem. He was yelling this shit about how, back when she was the director of the Poetry Project he asked her for a reading and that she REFUSED to give him a reading and that she ranted at him about how much she hates men. He was ACTUALLY accusing her of hating men, and that he couldn't get a reading because HE was a man and SHE was a man-hating lesbian!

Some of us yelled from the back of the room SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU ASSHOLE! Eileen marched to the microphone and yelled back at him THAT'S AN OUTRIGHT LIE AND YOU KNOW IT! He said something else and she yelled back BECAUSE I'M A LESBIAN!? STRAIGHT WOMEN HATE MEN TOO! And of course anyone who has read her work knows that there are all kinds of amazing men who are her friends, they show up all over her work.

AS A MATTER OF FACT I'M A GAY MAN AND I BET YOU I HATE MORE MEN THAN EILEEN MYLES DOES! This JERK OFF really pissed a lot of us off. I turned to the woman next to me and said, "MAYBE HIS POEMS SUCK! BUT NO, IT COULDN'T BE BECAUSE OF THAT OF COURSE! IT HAS TO BE BECAUSE SHE'S A MAN-HATING LESBIAN THAT HE DIDN'T GET A READING!" Her boyfriend laughed but she looked at me like I was a little crazy. Oh well, I thought it was funny.

BUT SERIOUSLY! HOW FUCKED UP AND COWARDLY IS THAT!? You CHOOSE THAT time to confront Eileen Myles about a reading you didn't get! And by the way, she hasn't been director of the Poetry Project for at least two decades, right? WHAT AN ASSHOLE! She handled him well though, YELLING BACK AT HIM! AND WHY NOT YELL BACK AT HIM!? HE NEEDS SOMEONE TO YELL AT HIM!

There's a certain type of straight man I've encountered over the years like this dude. They are a minority, this group of yahoos, but they think their cocks are dipped in gold, or something, and when lesbians are involved in any kind of dispute with them THEY GO RIGHT TO THAT RIDICULOUS PLACE OF ACCUSATION! The leap is so incredible that it's mind blowing when you witness it. I've seen it a lot over the years, and every time it happens I take a deep breath and say REALLY!? WOW!?

Lesbians are the one group (besides celibates of course) NOT consumed by men. Straight women are consumed by men, and GAY MEN are obviously consumed by other men. But lesbians are completely REMOVED from that arena of centuries of what and how to do and say and act for the sake of some men. I say some men because of course it's ridiculous to say ALL MEN. A lot of men I know don't seem to have any problems with lesbians, in fact I know quite a few straight men who have fantastic friendships with lesbians. But there's this type of straight man who is threatened by lesbians and becomes completely unreasonable, and sometimes it's with women they've NEVER EVEN MET BEFORE, but we're all at a bar, or out somewhere, and a debate ensues, and they ACTUALLY GO THERE with this accusation about how she just hates men because she's a lesbian. NO, MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE SHE'S NOT USED TO HAVING TO AGREE WITH YOUR DUMB ASS ALL THE TIME TO KEEP PEACE OF MIND, AND MAYBE YOU'RE NOT USED TO A WOMAN WHO ISN'T INTERESTED IN KEEPING PEACE OF MIND FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SICK EGO!

Anyway, this incident PISSED ME OFF and STILL has me pissed off! That fucking JERK! I don't even remember the poem because I was so irritated! He really needs his ass readjusted! WHAT KIND OF ASSHOLE DOES SOMETHING LIKE THAT!? Someone nearby said to me, "Oh maybe he's not well." "FUCK THAT!" I said back! I'm so tired of shit like that being said! YEAH, MAYBE IT'S TRUE! BUT SO WHAT!? This man has obviously been carrying this invented LIE in his head for so many years, and has probably been telling it to so many people he knows in New York or wherever the hell it is he's from, that it's just NATURAL to yell at her in public! HAS NO ONE EVER TOLD HIM TO SHUT HIS FUCKING MOUTH BEFORE!? It can't be possible! I would hope he's told to shut the fuck up at least once a day if that's the sort of shit he goes around yelling at people! Slandering people! I wish I still had George Delaney's poem A CURSE UPON ALL SLANDERERS to send to him!

Besides THAT ASSHOLE, it was a great day! It was also my birthday, and my 20th anniversary of being vegetarian, and I was happy to get to go to ANGELICA'S KITCHEN with my friend Laura Jaramillo. Starting off the new year with miso soup and brown rice and seaweed was nice. Laura kicked ass at the reading later that night. Frank Sherlock blew everyone's mind, and John Coletti read a BEAUTIFUL poem about Frank that made us all really happy! Here's that poem by John:


Gary Larson


I heart Michigan’s closest ally

Frank’s mini-heart-attack

now nothing to say

passed out “Vinegar”

tattooed on hand

cock-block brain covered

in Emmy slumber

earshot sun holes collar out

one great anti-band-aid

doing blow in the frozen food aisle

don’t you swear in private sometimes?

all your public private language


Jessica Fiorini, John Godfrey, Thom Donovan, Tonya Foster, Stephanie Gray, Greg Fuchs, all were so good, and the music of I FEEL TRACTOR and SO LIL were also great! There's something about THE LAST HOUR, and if you've never been to this marathon before you would probably think, AH MAN HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY GET ANY BETTER! Even if you're burnt out, THAT LAST HOUR! Ending with Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint and Stacy Szymaszek WHICH WAS PERFECT!

Every year I look forward to hearing Philip Glass. When he sits down at the piano I want to THROW MYSELF under it and listen like George Sand did when she fell in love with Chopin, but anyway.... I don't. I haven't. Not YET!

Sparrow's band FOAMOLA was pretty fantastic! And Sparrow has this GREAT new poem:


Motorcycle

My bicycle has grown
up, into a motorcycle:
now so manly, and loud.


Patti Smith sang a haunting, beautiful (as well as creepy) song about the recent assassination of Bhutto. It was good, but I get so tired of her Jesus injections. First of all, WHY is Jesus, and Jesus being a baby from Bethlehem even coming up in a song about Benazir Bhutto's assassination? Bhutto was Muslim, her assassin was also Muslim. I don't know, I just don't get that at all, but it's a good song so long as you don't try to figure such things out. And not that I have anything against Jesus in her songs, it's just it never seems to make sense when he appears.

I missed a lot of people I had wanted to hear, but it's impossible to sit through the entire event. I arrived just a little too late to hear Carol Mirakove and Jen Benka, but they were handing out copies of the poem they read, and it's so good, and want to share that with you now:


It Is Possible, Today, in 2008

(C) 24 hours in a day, one full revolution

(J) It is possible that public policy affording civil rights will be won as the result of litigation.

(C) The president is insignificant, but what the president does, matters.

(J) It is possible that elected officials will introduce legislation affording civil rights in response to public demands, and that other elected officials will vote to enact the legislation.

(C) "Once things are out in the open, people have to deal with it." (nader docu)

(J) It is not possible that they will act on such demands unless the culture has changed first.

(C) Everyone has a sexual orientation. Some towards greed.

(J) It is possible that resistance to poetry and the resistance to political participation in the United States have been rooted in the same fear, and that this fear has been, in part, one of feeling deeply;

(C) 28 we'll always have february

(J) and that this fear has been, in part, one of assuming responsibility that is the interconnectedness of our lives;

(C) 20 four fives & five fours, reflexive a double ten

(J) and that this fear has been, in part, one of accepting our power.

(C) 25 a perfect square

(J) It is possible that we will not allow lies to accumulate truth.

(C) that we will give impermanence a chance to prove itself

(J) It is possible that we will vote for the candidate who will kill the fewest people.

(C) 26 twice unlucky, tread careful

(J) It is possible that in the revision we will have been in love.

(C) actually we are in love

(J) It is possible that we will lay mirrors in the street

to bring heaven down to earth.

poem for New Year's Day, January 1, 2008, by Jen Benka and Carol Mirakove


Also out is the latest edition of BOOG CITY, and it's the best one I've ever read! It's a BOOG CITY Reader of New York City poets, edited by Laura Elrick, Brenda Iijima, David A. Kirschenbaum (David's also the publisher of BOOG), Mark Lamoureux, Christina Strong, and Rodrigo Toscano. 72 different poets are included, and it's an anthology you really should get your hands on, it's SO GOOD! I read it from cover-to-cover and wanted MORE! Write to David Kirschenbaum at editor@boogcity.com

One of the first things I like to do when I arrive on New Year's Day is attack the book table! It's only once a year that they drag these gems out of the basement! There's also a lot of books for sale that people bring in to donate of course, but the books they bring up from the basement are books you CANNOT find anywhere else at this point! The prices are fixed, $5 for ANY paperback, $10 for ANY hardback! I bought four books (I would only allow myself to find four I first saw that I really wanted AND THEN LEAVE THE TABLE! It's impossible otherwise and you'll want to spend your rent money). Lewis Warsh's 1977 book THE MAHARAJAH'S SON, which made my jaw drop when I saw it! There were four copies of it, and in PERFECT condition! I almost wanted to spend my $20 there and give three away! Barbara Henning's SMOKING IN THE TWILIGHT BAR, a terrific 1988 book put out by United Artists Books. Jim Behrle's book SHE'S MY BEST FRIEND, put out in 2006 by Pressed Wafer. And Ted Greenwald's book WORD OF MOUTH, put out by Sun and Moon in 1986.

THE GREAT THING ABOUT THESE FOUR BOOKS was getting to hear three of them, Ted Greenwald, Barbara Henning and Jim Behrle read later on! It was my first time hearing or seeing Greenwald, and he IS A SEXY OLD MAN! GRRRR! Barbara Henning is also someone I had never heard read before, and now I want to hear a much longer reading, read more of her poems. Jim was FANTASTIC, his readings always are! Stay tuned for Jim's reading as part of Dorothea Lasky's tiny tour, online someday soon!

Joanna Fuhrman gave me her new book MORAINE for my birthday, which was terrific of her! And Erica Kaufman gave me a book she co-published with Belladonna by Lila Zemborain called MAUVE SEA-ORCHIDS, translated by Rosa Alcala & Monica de la Torre. Ben Malkin gave me the latest CD from GOODBYE BETTER, with his band SO LIL, I FEEL TRACTOR, IFWHEN, and others.

It was terrific spending time with Thom Donovan, who let me crash on his couch. He showed me books I hadn't yet seen, ALWAYS MORE NEW POETRY TO FALL IN LOVE WITH! In particular I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the books STREAMING, by Larry Kearney, and SLEEPING WITH DEMOCRACY, by Gregg Biglieri.

2008's first day is PROOF of our unending supply of talent! I was sure to say at the microphone when it was my turn to read that, "when I was a kid, first learning to Love poetry, I was reading poets who were mostly dead, SOME OF THEM FOR CENTURIES! But today I'm 42, and I'm TELLING YOU that my favorite poets today are my friends!" And it's SO TRUE! And it's SO WEIRD! Weird because, when I think about that KID that I used to be, he had no idea, NO IDEA that by 2008 he would hear, and know and like and befriend such talented poets! It's a great life, so far!

CAConrad