Next Time

Doing a reading. Skipping the mic and passing out free issues of 9L and going to the bar for some laughs with Aaron & Lady Guth. Same difference.

Did you know Hobart has interns?
For serious....

Coast to Cost and In Between

Because I don't want you to be bored. Because I know going out can be expensive. Here you go. All free, all insanely amazing.

If you're in Chicago tonight:


If you're in Urbana-Champaign:


If you're in NYC:
Barrow Street Press Event

September 27, 2007

When: Thursday, September 27th, 2007, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Regina Peruggi Room, Marymount Manhattan College

Barrow Street Press and the Marymount Manhattan College Department of English cordially invite you to celebrate the press's latest book prize winner and enjoy poetry from past and present contributors to Barrow Street, featuring Jean Gallagher, Mary Giaimo, Ada Limon, Michael Tyrell, Jerry Williams, and Gold Star Road author, Richard Hoffman, who will be introduced by D. Nurkse.

A reception and book-signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact Dr. Jerry Williams at (212)517-0604.

But if you're in San Diego:

THURSDAYS @
IVY HOTEL

BEATNICK & FRESH ONE

Look beyond a refined façade and peel back the elegant cloak to expose the edgy dark side of Ivy. Get on the inside and let revelry commence. Expose your desires at Envy nightclub, a glitterati gathering place with distinct VIP lounge areas. Indulge your senses at Eden rooftop bar, pool and sundeck and sultry lounge. And experience the rich cuisine at Quarter Kitchen restaurant, San Diego’s finest new destination to see and be seen. Danger ahead. The voyeuristic allure of Ivy is mysterious and irresistible.

7-2am

21+

NO COVER

Ivy Hotel
600 F St, San Diego
www.ivyhotel.com


Woke up to an acceptance this morning. More on that as it comes.
Yes.

How is it Wednesday Already?

The FIXX. I'm reading there tomorrow with homies BK, Micah, and the mysterious Juan Sanchez. More details are over at the 9L blog.

You can see what Lillian's been seeing over at her website--freshly updated for your pleasure.

In some kind of swing--been writing heavily since the weekend. I hope more typewriters don't have to be gutted by my hand to keep it up.

Laurel's book is out. Can't wait to get it!

It's been raining. Gives me a little time to walk.
In the mail yesterday: title to the motorcycle, Mean Steets (never seen it).

If Left to my Self too long

Got this L.C. Smith typewriter, but the tension belt was snapped:


Tried to fix it with a bike brake cable:

But that didn't work.

So I took it apart today:









I started messing with it, and made a new friend:


And a creepy pet:


And that's that. I'll keep the pieces around for a while, but have the feeling that I'm going to cut off the keys to ebay 'em, send the rest of the parts to Max to sculpt.

I read a little today too. I trust y'all don't need a link to Blake.

Week Ends

Drove to Indy and back today, and I'll do it again on Sunday. Driving is one of the best things I do. They're renovating the damn that I pass and always say "DAMN!" I gots a poem about it. If it gets taken, I'll let you know all about.

Also, my first typewriter now belongs to Davenport:


I have faith he'll use it well. And with 4 daughters, my sense is that it'll be admired and preserved. If he had a son and it was anything like I was when I was young, it would be in pieces by yesterday.

I've relinquished the Underwood for the Remington. It's not for any real reason other than that I felt myself too attached to the Underwood, and I don't think it's healthy to be that invested in inanimate objects. So, I pass them along, and find new things to use. And the Underwood is really heavy and a little intimidating. BEHOLD!:


It's nice. I've already written a poem; happened immediately after I ate my own brand of soul-food. My soul is carnivores and thirsty.


That's a few slices of Dubliner on the side. Hell yes. Pick some up, and make someone you love happy, if only yourself.

And there we are. Matt came over, and we read poems to each other. Not only do we like similar stuff, but we also enjoy each other's work, and that makes me happy to have him around. Plus he reads Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Hebrew...which means he almost understands everything I say with my accent and hip lingo. Hip, I say.

It's bed time. Tomorrow's agenda: feed a cat; get fresh bread; make steak and eggs; purchase a new bottle of scotch.

Plug and Meditations

(photo by Lillian)
Arley read from her new novel Post yesterday, and it was fantastic. Full room, Q&A with unexpected nuggets of joy. I forget that I really have almost no idea what the fiction-people are up to, how they write, all that stuff. If you want to check this new title out, google around or click here if you're all about the amazon.

Ever get a nice note asking you to send more, but when you look at the poems you sent, you kinda think that they were maybe your "best" ones? Me too.

Weekend is full of meditations: drives to Indy Airport and back, disassemble L.C. Smith typewriter, replace the rear seal on Lara's transmission. It'll be good. I need these things. Been misplacing energy like crazy lately.

I'm Not Even Sure What Day It Is

Big Game Books is taking submission for their Tiny side Series. You know I submitted! You should too--or at go there and pick up some awesome little poetry-stuffs.

Sleeping Giant has new downloads for those who love the beats. I crank this in the studio while preparing envelopes to keep me in academia.

It's supposed to maybe rain today, so no riding. But I am going to walk, and feel like I've got an itch to listen to the latest Kid Koala. Or Frank Zappa. The downside of riding a motorcycle is the lack of a radio. The upswing: I sing while I drive. Croon, really. My helmet is like a little practice room, just for me.

I've put my Underwood Master up on craigslist. Hope it finds a new home. "If you love something, set it free"...and all. Only it's really heavy, so someone's got to carry it.

What's going on out there?

Yeah. Not a Problem.

We, as MFA students in the program at UIUC, have funding that isn't too shabby at all. In fact, it seems that all I owe the U at the beginning of every semester is something like $460. Not so bad, considering the paycheck, medical, waiver, and my 2 free teeth cleanings a year. I like it.

What I don't like: getting an email from the University Student Financial Services and Cashier Operations that begins "We appreciate your business!" They then would like me to take a survey so they know what I think of "their services."

A. I don't really know what they do other than process the fees. They don't cut my check; payroll does--and with spectacular attention to the 16th of every month.

B. I don't like thinking of my work at the University as "business" that they "appreciate." I didn't buy a car from them. (Further, last winter the heat was broken in my office until mid January.)

C. Is anything I say on that survey going to make a difference? Perhaps that "cashier operations" makes something relatively simple sound like it's a major job? I was an expert in all operations expected by a cashier at age 17 (that snarky comment brought to you by the Virgin MegaStore in Carl Place, NY).

I know that the University is a "business," just like all of higher education. I am aware of the corporatization of education in America, and that it isn't really a meritocracy at all--SO many people out there teaching poorly, not caring about their students, etc.

I'd just rather not be reminded by the fee processing office. Thanks.

A Whole New Week

I like putting up photos by Lillian, so here's another one:

(that's my red-booted foot next to Matt-in-black. We're definitely talking about something of poetic wonder and gettin' all intellectual 'n shizz. Doesn't 9L have a nice floor?)

Priorities for this week include applying to jobs, waxing and photographing motorcycle for insurance purposes, and selling the first typewriter I owned. I think it's about time. I'm sure eventually I'll replace the underwood 5 with something similar in a portable version. Also, gonna ship some records to DJ Joemama as thanks for the magnificent mixtapes he shipped over to me. I recognized some of the records from back in the Gallery days.

Maybe I'll book a flight to San Diego. Maybe I'll book a flight to NYC for AWP. Maybe I'll get some responses back from journals today and then send out more. Who can tell?

It's William Carlos Williams' birthday. I'm not typing a poem for fear I'll mess it up with a typo.

Has anyone else not gotten their copy of Poetry since early/mid summer?

Like a Fellowship, Only Not

There are 53 posts I'm preparing applications for. I wish we could bid on jobs--like, low-ball the competition: "I appreciate the $45K, but I can do this for $38Large. Simple as that." As it stands, I can do it for somewhere in the mid-teens...but my diet of pizza and eggs has to come to end at some point.

In other news,

A lovely gathering of the MFA program, complete with friends and children all over the place. Stood around with my adviser talking motorcycles. Way easier than talking poems.

With all this time (it's like I have a little writers colony all to myself, this apartment with a hammock, percolator, 10 typewriters), I've been reading lots and lots. Feel a little goofy about it, but I'm loving Letters To Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth. It say's "fiction" on the side, but it's clearly a sequence of prose poems. I enjoy them like I enjoy Ada Limón's Lewis writing to Ronald Reagan in This Big Fake World. A sort of charming male desperation that tugs at some loose string dangling around in here somewhere.

Here's a bit from that:
September 19, 1996

Some guy pushing a petition, a meeting, "You don't know me," I said. "I'm an avowed spectator." "Well, just come down and watch," he said. "That's just it, " I said. "You people aren't satisfied watching--you want to be the show, and to make this happen you're willing to give up the only thing in the world of any value: free time." In his mind, I could sense the word "evil" forming.

If You're in NYC

Here are a couple of events, if you happen to be in the NYC area.

THE QUETZAL QUILL @ THE CORNELIA STREET CAFÉ
Saturday, September 22 @ 6 pm

Readers
A couple of events:
ARACELIS GIRMAY author of Teeth
CATHY PARK HONG author of Dance Dance Revolution
EDUARDO C. CORRAL author of I've Got No Book

Curator & Hostess

RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ

$6 admission (includes a free drink)
A/C/E/F/V/B/D trains to W. 4th St. Stop in the Village
29 Cornelia St. 212-989-9319
CORNELIA STREET CAFÉ

AND ALSO!
Barrow Street Press Event

September 27, 2007

When: Thursday, September 27th, 2007, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Regina Peruggi Room, Marymount Manhattan College

Barrow Street Press and the Marymount Manhattan College Department of English cordially invite you to celebrate the press's latest book prize winner and enjoy poetry from past and present contributors to Barrow Street, featuring Jean Gallagher, Mary Giaimo, Ada Limon, Michael Tyrell, Jerry Williams, and Gold Star Road author, Richard Hoffman, who will be introduced by D. Nurkse.

A reception and book-signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact Dr. Jerry Williams at (212)517-0604.

Vroom.

Just got back from riding the bike around town. Hell yeah.

Lessons for the day: Driving into the sun makes it impossible to see anything. Don't ride West at Sunset.

The third issue of White Picket Fences just came out. Highly recommend!

New Books and Nightmares

Just got and read Adam Clay's The Wash. I feel like it's a book of psalms, some of which speak right at me, and others that speak to the lessons I haven't begun to understand I'll learn. Something like that. That idea might be my own, or it might be influenced by the psalm poems he's got in the latest Quarterly West (previously linked to). Anyway. Yes.

Meanwhile, I was going to jump right over to Bucolics by Maurice Manning, but started laughing when I saw on the inside dust jacket the price followed by "/Higher In Canada." Makes me wonder if Canadian booksellers get to make up an arbitrary price for American editions of Bucolics. Alas, I don't think I'll read it just yet. Maybe tomorrow. Hardcovers make me feel like it should knock around in my bag for a little bit before I get into it.

I had a horrible dream in the 2am hour of last night that I totally lost it at The Fixx. I don't see that happening on the 27th, but it was kinda terrifying. But Amy sent me an email that was all "there there, it's ok" and tucked me in. Go dig her latest guest-post over at Jewcy.

Think I finished my Teaching Philosophy today. Now I get to hit the market. Anyone wanna give me some Tenure?

Oh. She doesn't use the internet so well, but Mom's reading my blog now. HI MOM!

Sunday Sunday Sunday

It's time to find a new bar for NFL. The problem with college towns is that too many people work in these places, and the faces change every four months so there's never any familiarity, which is just something that one needs in a fine drinking establishment. Especially when sports are involved. Meanwhile, I want to say that "we" won yesterday (that's UIUC vs. Western Ill.) but that just makes my buddy say "Um, 'we,' as if you were playing on the team? Where you in a uniform?" It's not easy to defend fan-dom. The team won. Yippy.

Do me a favor.
Keep an eye out for one of these:

It's a 1913 Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo, part of the list of Time's Worst Cars of all time which you can look at by clicking here. I find myself strangely attracted to a lot of the selections prior to 1975.

I had a dream last night that my aloe plant wasn't dying. But in real life, it's still dying. I didn't kill it. It came to me drowned and suffering. Reminds me of January 2001 when I accidentally left an aloe plant in a car in Tennessee. Poor thing froze solid. Change topic...

I'm back up to 10 typewriters. More on that as it comes together. I am exceptionally good at introducing new minor exercises in frustration into my daily life--hence the MGB, Honda CB 650, typewriters, poems, and desires for a tenure-track job.

At The Half

Yes. The NFL is back, and I'm stoked. If you're like me and don't own a tv, don't wanna buy one, I suggest the Pinnacle USB TV thingy, watch on the computer.




Totally in the hammock. In PJs. That's a High Life Light. I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but it magically appeared in my fridge. What can ya do?

FOOTBALL!

Did you come here for a poem? Okay. Here's a little something by the wonderful Christina Davis out of the Boston Review:

Severance

Chagall's Daphnis and Chloe

I cut away the woman sulking on the shore,
naked, dripping night-dark water, her face too
green.
And the couple fucking
in the upper left-hand
corner.
And the woman hunched over moon with her
flute,
luring the man to her seat in the right side of sky,
where the heart would beat
if this picture had one.
But the man balding beautiful into baby, into
"Christina
are you still awake?" head moon-bright, the man
wading
in an exclamation of moonlight,
now spreading his
arms out,
pressing down on the lake as if to lift himself up
out of a manhole.
I left him there, unattended to, a treasure.
And the
woman
was cold out of element, And the music sizzled in
the coming sun.
And the couple wrestled with clouds and had no
haven.

But the man
unmoored, man-star apart, I send to you, the
selves cut away,
the heart's odd ultimate art. An allowance carved
of the card
you once sent. A token, rinsed of our intimacy. A
wish.
Grow rich, and innocent, of me.

Another ON THE ROAD Post

I read it. I'll celebrate it. Maybe I'll get a bottle of port a little later. Have I ever told you how Davenport's a Kerouac-scholar? No shit. PhD & all.

I have to go over to the shop today and do some of my own work on the bike so I don't have to pay the mechanic nearly as much. I kinda wish I could just strap handle bars onto the MG. Maybe that's the next project.

...Pull My Daisy

A Day of Intense Labor

What I've learned this weekend:
- "Brisket" from the campus butcher shop is actually more like a prime rib or a pot roast. Too lean for all the fatty goodness to melt into the rest of Mom's wonderful recipe, so that it all just falls apart after 5 hours in the oven.

-Without warning, poems in my manuscript will up and eat the poem next to it. It's kinda cool to watch, like when you have, say, a bunch of bananas in the fridge that have turned brown at the tops while at the same time you're almost out of yogurt, and you're hungry, but don't quite know which to eat, but then you cut up the bananas and just put them in the yogurt, thus creating a meal better than both of the other things. Yeah, I did this the other day. And, yes, I like yogurt. It's tasty and kinda cheap.

- I long to be an English Department Head with a very large chair.
- Manuscripts titles are difficult to come up with, though entertaining to throw around the apartment.

-Writing a Teaching Philosophy is not very easy, especially because there is no 1 right way to write it. It's like an erector-set, which is way more complicated than Legos, and I only had Legos when I was a kid.

Yes.
That's how it is.
Waiting for Adam Clay's book, and also Maurice Manning's.

New Art by Vannoy

(Vannoy & I at Sunset Cliffs in 2003)

Chris Vannoy, Poet, Artist, Blue-collar Scholar and fixture on San Diego's Art Scene, has been busy busy. Here's some new art he's been working on. Can't wait to see what's new by Christmas, when I see him next.

If you love this stuff, and wanna tell him about how wonderful he is, you can email him: CVannoy777(at)gmail(dot)com.

Feel the new: