Scrabble Tells Me "Hurty" Is Not A "Valid" Word Press

I'm going to this on Friday. Get ready for authors from Kitchen Press & Cannibal Books to take the grey brain matter that you own, rip it out, plant some poppy seeds in the mess, shove it back in your head, and before the reading is even over, flower-buds will poke the backs of your eyes and make you weep for the springtime blooming behind your cheeks:

Erin Elizabeth Burke Run Down the Emphasis (Kitchen)

Thibault Raoult I'll Say I'm Only Visiting (Cannibal)

Mathias Svalina Why I Am White (Kitchen)

Friday, November 2nd, 8 PM
Unnameable Books
456 Bergen Street
btwn. 5th & Flatbush

Refreshments served, but you may also BYOB.

****

I'm reading Robert Lowell. It's giving me a case of The Troubles. Have to write an essay on Life Studies. It isn't happening.

***
Unless this is my essay:

(Baby Tapir!)

***

Can you believe that this isn't from a Simpson's episode? But actually from Nabokov's Pale Fire:

"Dear Jesus, do something."

I say that in my head all the time now. I mean, I say it to Jesus. And this is the one good Lowell line:

"I myself am hell;
nobody's here--"

***

The freaking Halloween Parade is right outside my window.

I wish I had waterballoons.

Who needs therapy when you have waterballoons?

Good thing my Shrinky Mom doesn't know how to post comments on my blog yet. She does not appreciate it when I condescend her trade. Or when the movie "What About Bob" mocks it. Remember walking out of that movie, Mom? Word.

Inside Duck-Blood, Outside Duct-Tape Press

"Poetry is easy!"--Billy Collins

Well, I just got back from my reading in NE with Ana B-B and Ken Rumble, hosted by MS and ZS at The Clean Part series. They read their poetry brilliantly and it sort of revived my faith in the "stomach-heart" while confirming my faith in poetry all at once. But the Awesomeness that was the reading started well before the reading:

Friday:
-Ana and Ken arrive. We discover that "30 Days of Night" is only tolerable if you are drinking whiskey in the theater. And you come to the realization that one of the vampires looks like the poet Jim Behrle and that it's actually an allegory between the poetic aesthetics of Jim and David Lehman.

And you hear the line, "I can smell your blood."

-I am unconvinced that there could be an entire hotel sized store that only sells licorice. I believe it's called Licorice International:

They do, in fact, have a giant store dedicated to selling licorice and it's not actually a cute hotel, as originally suspected.

-We find a shrub that looks like green parted troll hair:


-Ana tries it on:

Mayhem ensues.

Saturday:
-Potato chips for breakfast.

-a Trip to the Farm:
a) A cat mummy was found in the barn and now it's framed:


b) There is a kitten. This kitten has fallen in a paint bucket and is now covered in dry paint. Which makes the kitten 100x more loveable and hard to put back on the grass once hugging has commenced.


c) homemade butternut squash soup and pickles and wine for lunch.

d) poets in the grass:

Did you know poets photosynthesize?

e) Ken has a gaint, two pronged "encouragement stick" and is proudly encouraging two cowpies:


-This happened (Ande,Zach):


-After the reading and bar-drinks, we went back to MS's. everyone read more poems. And this lady, ER,

read Paul Celan in German. I almost cried. Nothing this bad-ass has happened before in Nebraska, I'm sure of it. And then she read the poem in English and:

Count up the almonds

Count up the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you waking,
count me in too:

I sought your eye when you looked out and no one saw you,
I spun that secret thread
where the dew you mused on
slid down to pitchers
tended by a word that reached no one's heart.

There you first fully entered the name that is yours,
you stepped toward yourself on steady feet,
the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,
things overheard thrust through to you,
what's dead put its arm around you too,
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Render me bitter.
Number me among the almonds.

***
What can you say to a poem like that?

***
Well, you can say this:


Future Author Photo? I smell author photos like I smell blood:


***

Who am I? Who am I? I will be the one 10 yards behind everyone else, red mittens unraveling, encouraging a kitten to follow me into the pasture, through the fir-tree forest, with a wooden slingshot missing the sling:

Yes, I am kneeling & looking down. Yes, that's where the life is. Thank you, stomach-heart. Thank you for this I know.

Yes, how a slingless wooden slingshot can beckon.

Baby Billy Collins Wear Press

"Oh Billy, you really outdid yourself this time!"--Billy Collins

Clearly it is time for a clothing line for children of poets:
MS and I were contemplating designing children's wear "by Billy Collins" that would have really cute animals all over it but with
Billy Collins' head superimposed over the animal heads. So a baby bib with a koala on it would have this for a body:

but this for a head:


BC actually looks really sweet in this photo so now I feel a little guilty.
***

This Wednesday, Komunyakaa and Zucker are coming straight at you to blow some poetry into your face:

In collaboration with POETRY and McSWEENEY'S,
The Poetry Foundation presents:

Kwame Dawes
Mary Karr
Yusef Komunyakaa
Patricia Smith
Rachel Zucker

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 7:00PM
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York City
Admission is free

****

This friday:

MiPOesias presents
~~ CYNTHIA SAILERS, DANA WARD and PETER DAVIS~~
Friday, October 26th @ 7 P.M.

CYNTHIA SAILERS is currently writing a dissertation on Narcissism and
Perversion in Pathological Group Organization. She is a board member
of Small Press Traffic, and previously co-curated New Yipes Reading
Series (formerly New Brutalism).

DANA WARD is the author of New Couriers (Dusie 2006), I Didn't Build
This Machine (Boog Literature, 2004) & The Imaginary Lives of My
Neighbors (Duration, 2003). Recent poems have appeared in Mirage
#4/Periodical, string of small machines, Small Town, & other places.
He lives in Cincinnati & edits Cy Press.

PETER DAVIS' book of poems is Hitler's Mustache. He edited Poet's
Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books That Shaped Their Art. His
poems have appeared in journals like MiPOesias, Octopus, Court Green,
Rattle, and McSweeney's. His music project, Shot Hand, is available
through Collectible Escalators. He lives in Muncie , Indiana with his
wife, son, and daughter and teaches at Ball State University .
~~~~~~~

STAIN BAR
766 Grand Street Brooklyn , NY 11211
(L train to Grand Street Stop, walk 1 block west)
718/387-7840
http://www.stainbar.com/

***

Go!

Give Me Back My Gallbladder Press

I don't think I'm a very rageful person but if those doctors took out my grandmother's gallbladder, my 84 yr old grandmother who lives alone and has post-polio syndrome, without actually needing to, I might drive down to Rhode Island and personally break every finger on every hand on every doctor who thought it was a good idea to wield a knife and take an organ away from an elderly person who does not need to spend any more time lying in bed than absolutely necessary. Sigh.

In less vengeful news, after a mild scare, my grandma is recovering quite well now. When I went to visit her this weekend I picked flowers from her garden and placed them on the mantel. And then we watched ladybugs have sex on her wall. Which prompted her to say, "you don't need to know about the birds and the bees when you have ladybugs." True.

I also spent about 5 minutes collecting all the ladybugs that were skimpering around her walls and screendoor and letting them back into the wilds of RI. It is bad luck to kill a ladybug and I think that by proxy, it's bad luck to see one trapped indoors and let it die.

***

Due to:
a) having to finish Pale Fire
b) having to then write a paper on Pale Fire
c) having to read proposals for the editorial board meeting tomorrow
d) feeling mildly panic-y about other things that need to get done

I'm missing this reading as we speak:

Monday, October 22, 8 PM
Rachel Zolf & Matt Henriksen

Rachel Zolf’s newest collection of poetry, Human Resources, was released in spring 2007 by Coach House Books. Her previous collections are Masque, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Her absence, this wanderer. Belladonna* books published a chapbook of her poetry in 2005 entitled from Human Resources. Zolf lives in Toronto and was the founding poetry editor of The Walrus magazine. She is presently working on a new collection examining competing knowledges in Israel-Palestine. Once a teacher in the public schools, Matthew Henriksen is now a freelance copy editor and carpenter’s assistant. He has a chapbook, Is Holy, from horse less press. He founded and continues to edit the online poetry journal Typo with Adam Clay; curates The Burning Chair Readings; and co-edits and produces Cannibal with his wife, Katy, in Greenpoint.

Sorry Matt.

***
You should buy the new issue of the Denver Quarterly. I have a poem in it as do many others. And Those Others are awesome poets. G. C. Waldrep's two poems made me happy and I'll probably talk about them later. Also, Elizabeth Robinson's poems.
Current Issue


VOLUME 42 NUMBER 1, YEAR 2007

CONTRIBUTORS: Nin Andrews, Dan Beachy-Quick, Jack Boettcher, Deborah Brandon, Amy Catanzano, J'Lyn Chapman, Julia Cohen, Corina Copp, Eric Elshtain, Thomas Fink, John Gallaher, Elena Georgiou, Noah Eli Gordon, Gretchen E. Henderson, Noy Holland, Fanny Howe, Evelyn Ibarra, Megan Kaminski, David Lazar, David Dodd Lee, Kimberly Lojek, Dora Malech, Malinda Markham, Karyna McGlynn, Stephen O'Connor, David Parker, Simon Perchik, Kathryn L. Pringle, Elizabeth Robinson, Emily Rosko, Laura Solomon, Page Hill Starzinger, Brian Strang, Brian Teare, John Tipton, G.C. Waldrep, Daneen Wardrop, Marjorie Welish, Jordan Windholz, Margaret Wycisk

You can buy a copy of this issue (or 10 copies, Mom) for $10- send a check to:

DENVER QUARTERLY
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
2000 E ASBURY
DENVER, CO 80208

or go online and get yourself a subscription: Denver Quarterly

***

It's passed 8pm and I need to leave my office.

The Sugar Coat (Press)

Ok, I've been thinking more about the list of my favorite books from each year (sometimes more than one). I think I almost have my timeline correct. I have to start work in 10 minutes so excuse the mispellings, no time.

8th Grade: Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hughes' The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (I think this means I was a nerd/dork)

9th Grade: Mann's Death in Venice, Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener
(Thank you to my English teacher- these two short pieces totally changed my perception of literature).

Oh, and I totally fell for Love in the Time of Cholera. I haven't re-read it since then.

10th Grade: Leonard Cohen's Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (thank you Dad for buying this for me), Neruda's Selected Poems (thank you Mom)

11th Grade: Neruda (still) (I forget who else)

12th Grade: Plath (I forget who else)

Freshman year: Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Meville's Moby Dick (I can't remember what poetry but I took a great poetry class with Maggie Nelson so this frustates me)

Sophomore year: Berrigan's The Sonnets, Ashbery (anything I read by Ashbery), Berryman's The Dream Songs, Bidart's chapbook Music Like Dirty, JACK SPICER (can you tell that I took a contemporary poetry class?! Thank you Professor John Vincent)

Junior year: First semester was a lot of Charles Olson and a lot of William Burroughs, Second Semester: Carson's Autobiography of Red and also Beauty of the Husand. Jack Spicer.

Senior year: Lauterbach's If In Time (thank you Danielle for lending me this and then letting me steal it). Jack Spicer.

Ford Fellowship: Morrison's Beloved, Isben's When We Dead Awaken (this made me not want to get out of bed for a week), Butler's Excitable Speech, Benjamin's On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History and also The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (can you tell I was taking lit theory?)

Lauterbach and Jack Spicer.

'06: I think I just really enjoyed reading Elizabeth Willis's books last year. Lauterbach and Jack Spicer.

'07: Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Lauterbach, Jack Spicer. (So far)

What I gather from this list is that I'm indebted to my english teachers/professors, my parents, and a few close friends. Sadly, I have a huge list of books I'm pretty sure I'd love and that I should find and love on my own, but of course, somehow I never quite get to it. If I could rearrange my life in priorities that were not career or financially based, these books would be close to the top of my list.

Please also note that between 8th grade and 12th grade I was still reading 17 Magazine. Oh wait, and in 8th grade I totally liked Catcher in the Rye. Ahh, teenage angst.

This is a real ad for the benefits of sugar. I think this is from the early 60s. Man, we Americans have no idea what we're talking about:

Can I Throw My Face Through Your Face? Press

I found a clothing & furniture line that basically feels like the poetry I write (and collaborations I do). Or hope I write. Maybe happer than how I write, but I'd consider this the "up side." Is that weird? It feels good.

Look, it is a pair of shoes that come with little kid dancing shoes attached- so that you can waltz your kid across the floor and their feet won't slip off your bigger shoe:


Look, it is a person inside a night tree:


Look, it's a rocking chair bear:


Do I need to explain it more than this?
I can't afford to buy the leaf-sweater at this moment, but I'm working on it.

***

Right now I'm reading Pale Fire and enjoying it a great deal. It made me think about how every year through school there has always been some book that blew my dome off. This year I think it's The Rings of Saturn. But can you remember the one book you loved above all else for each year since you were a kid? I want to make a list but it will take me a while because some years are blank. In 8th grade I know I loved the short story Bartleby the Scribner (sp?) and in 9th grade I think it was Mann's Death in Venice.

Billy Collins vs. Billy Zane Press

I think they should have a Poem-Off. It would be a tough call. Tough, but fair.

"Are you personifying Alcoholics Anonymous in your poems?"--Billy Collins

"I love your poem...But, do you think I need to 'wash' my hair?"--Billy Collins

***
Good things brewing:

Frank Sherlock recently recorded a Studio 111 Session at Upenn which is available on PENNSOUND. You can find the feature here.

You can go here to hear CAConrad's Studio 111 set.
You definitely need to see CA's photo.

***

I gave half the info last time I mentioned this so now I'm totally with you, 100%:
This Friday, October 19th at 10pm the tiny is hosting an event in
celebration of our third issue at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's
Church.

Friday, October 19th, 10PM

Come out and celebrate the recent release of the third issue of the
annual print poetry journal the tiny

With readings by: Nick Piombino, Anthony Hawley, Kristi Maxwell,
Andrea Baker and Will Edmiston

Music TBA

Issues of the tiny will be available for sale at a reduced rate of $10
(regularly $12)

The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church
131 E. 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

***
There is no way you won't like this reading, so you best come along now. Scurry.

***

I'm going to a reading for Sampson Starkweather and Chris Tonelli this Saturday in Rhode Island. Mini road trip for a poetry reading- what more could I ask for? Well, for Diet Dr Pepper or Fresca not to give me cancer. Sigh.

***
Oh, and this week, also:
Wednesday, October 17th, 7:00pm

POETRY IN MOTION®: 15TH ANNIVERSARY READING

With Nina Cassian, James Fenton, and Mary Jo Salter.

Admission is free.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Union Square
33 East 17th Street, NYC

***
Mary Jo Salter is the mom of my good friend. FYI. But I will be in class when this shakes down so...

Suck it?

***

I haven't finished a poem since a little before sept 20th. This is driving me a bit nuts. I have all these lines written in flyleaves, but not even that many, and I haven't typed them up to make sense of it all. I'm too tired.

***

My grandma just had her gall bladder removed. That sucks. Do you not need your gall bladder? I have not done my research, but this was sort of an emergency operation so I was caught off guard. I should go research.

***
I'm going to give you a real list of things I acquired this weekend:

8 rubber hammerhead sharks
1 rubber orca
1 rubber ball (to bounce down the street)
1 black winter hat
1 pair of red gloves
1 pair of scizzors to make the gloves fingerless

That's a true story.

Rinse & Repeat Press

This is what I felt like before my reading:

This is what I felt like after my reading:

Thank you to all of my friends who came out, you rock. Ana and Sam charmed the pants off of the crowd with their poetry. Which is why we'll be starting the No Pants Poetry Series. Well, maybe not.

Merrill Merrill Merrill (from the Book of Ephraim):

We, though, were ancient foes,
I and the deadline.

***

a lullaby of awfulness

***

Promise to last this lifetime. That will do.

***

As through smoked glass, we charily observed
either that his memory was spotty...
or that his lights and darks were a projection
of what already burned, at some obscure
level or another, in our skulls.

***

Hadn't- from books, from living-
the profusion dawned on us, of "languages"
any one of which, to who could read it,
lit up the system it conceived?- bird-flight,
hallucinogen, chorale and horoscope:
each its own world, hypnotic, many-sided
facet if the universal gem.

***

The point- one twinkling point by now of thousands-
was never to forego, in favor of
plain dull proof, the marvelous nightly pudding.

***
Ok, enough Merrill for now. Want to see something that is both cute and gross?:


(baby porcupines)

No More Cheap Shots at Billy The Kid Collins Press

Ok, just one last one. Then, no more. Promise.

"I was moved by these poetic gems of death, devotion, and house renovation. Too bad God is lame."--Billy Collins

"Don't you really like my Billy Collins quotes?"--Billy Collins

"The thing about Billy Collins is you never really know what the fuck he's talking about- it's that complicated." --Billy Collins

"Actually, the thing about Billy Collins is that we know all too well."--Some Better Poet Currently Writing Better Poetry

***
Ok, I'm done.

***

Dear Readers & Friends,
The first paper edition of Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal is now available for
pre-orders and will ship in late November.
(Online issues will continueunabated--Spring '08 will be guest-edited by Bhanu Kapil.) T

ARPAULIN SKY JOURNAL Issue #13
$12 includes shipping in the US($6 for contributors to the issue)http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/index.html Featuring new work by 52 contributors: Rosa Alcalá / Samuel Amadon / Lucy Anderton / Claire Becker / Cara Benson / Ilya Bernstein / Joseph Bradshaw / Popahna Brandes / Daniel Brenner / Lily Brown / Julie Carr / Laura Carter / Jon Christensen / Heather Christle / John Cotter & Shafer Hall / Patrick Culliton / John Deming / Sean Thomas Dougherty / Danielle Dutton / Sandy Florian / Hillary Gravendyk / Annie Guthrie / Brent Hendricks / Anna Maria Hong / John Hyland / Lucy Ives / Karla Kelsey / Steve Langan / Barbara Maloutas / Sarah Mangold / Justin Marks / Teresa K. Miller / Jefferson Navicky / Bryson Newhart / Nadia Nurhussein / Thomas O'Connell / Caryl Pagel / Nate Pritts / Elizabeth Robinson / F. Daniel Rzicznek / Spencer Selby / Brandon Shimoda / Lytton Smith / Sampson Starkweather / Mathias Svalina / Jen Tynes / Prabhakar Vasan / Della Watson / Theodore Worozbyt / Bethany Wright / Kristen Yawitz

Pretty exciting. I bolded some of the poems I'm already excited to read. Prolly everyone else's work will blow my mind onto my wallpaper as well. Yay. I mean, Ew.

***

This Saturday:

BATTLE HILL POETRY FESTIVAL AT THE GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY
SATURDAY OCTOBER 13, 2007 7PM
Green-Wood Chapel
25th street Entrance of Green-Wood Cemetery (25th street/5th avenue in South Slope-Green Wood Hts)
R train to 25th Street, walk up the hill one block from subway
ADMISSISON: $5-10 SLIDING SCALE
RSVP at battlehillfestival@gmail.com

Over 20 poets will read & local blues musician Bennett Harris will play during the refreshment breaks.

bernadette mayer
brenda coultas
jennifer coleman
jim behrle
megan burns
jessica fiorini
julie reid
philip good
dave brinks
brett evans
karen weiser
ce putnam
lauren claire ireland
anna moschovakis
shafer hall
macgregor card
genya turovskaya
anselm berrigan
joe elliot
gina myers
brendan lorber
allison cobb
todd colby
edmund berrigan
etc etc

Cool. I'm going to go for an hour or two.

***

I am totally wearing a dress.

***

I got new sheets, as I said I would. Except they are green, not pink. The pink ones were completely lame and I couldn't justify buying them not to mention they made me feel a little pervy. So the green- which matches my blanket anyways. I swept my floor and put all my summer dresses away, which was sort of sad. I was sitting on my couch and said outloud, "Well, I guess summer's over" and MF stopped eating a brownie and said, "Dude, it's mid-October."

Self-observation: There are some seasons I am aesthetically made for but not thermally made for.

***
Come to my reading tonight?

***

Ok, I still am planning on posting Merrill excerpts I like. To Come.

When I used to get really stressed out as a kid about certain things I just wasn't getting done and I'd think back over the previous few days to see how I could have organized something differently in order to have accomplished what I wanted to, my Mom would say, "Sometimes life just gets in the way, Julesy." And sometimes that's true. I mean, we always have to be aware of our own culpability/responsibility- but sometimes unforseen things pop up that really do take priority over whatever you had slotted at the top of your To Do List.

Yep.

"I Have My Billy Collins Quote of the Day Ready."--Billy Collins Press

On his own, new book:
"These poems could disarm Iran. Or a roadside bomb. But not an amputee. The roadside bomb did that. I mean, these poems aren't too bad. I swear. Trust Billy." --Billy Collins.

The cover of Billy Collin's next book on Pumpkin Haiku:


I'm sorry, I'm mean-spirited today.

Come to my reading tomorrow. I will compliment you.
For example, "Your eyes are forest green, like that yonder girl's L.L. Bean backpack."
Ok, I can do better, "I think you're so hot."

I'm off to buy some new sheets. I'm pretty excited about this. I have had blue sheets for a while so I might go pink this time. Then I might just give my apartment a scrub down. Serious things on my night's agenda also include:
1) Proofing my chappy with Hangman Books.
2) Grey's Anatomy
3) Finding Ludwig so I can wish him a Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday, Ludwig.

I guess that leaves two things on my list.

oh, also 4) type up the Merrill lines that I fell for in The Book of Ephraim.

Is There Good News For People Who Need Good News? Press

Maybe. First you get the good, then the bad.

Good:

Reminder: Matthea Harvey is reading this Thursday.

Reminder: I'm reading with Ana B-B and Sampson Starkweather this Friday.

New: Next friday (Oct 19th): poetry project- 10 pm- tiny release party-
With Anthony Hawley, Nick Piombino, and Andrea Baker, and two other names that are slipping my mind. Andrea Baker says, "I’ve never read that late before." Which means you've never seen her read this late, which means you should go.

New: My roommate got a job. This might mean I get all the free tea in the world, as Ludwig will be working at a tea shop. This means that when I come home, Ludwig might not be sitting on the couch in his undies, watching a documentary of sorts or channel 13- he might be out serving tea! My world is changing, but I think, for the better.

News You Can Be The Judge of:

NBA Poetry shortlist:
(Poetry Judges: Charles Simic (chair), Linda Bierds, David St. John,
Vijay Seshadri, and Natasha Trethewey.)

Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton & Company)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006
(W.W. Norton & Company)

Ok, Bad News from Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/9/19311/4373

Five Hours

That's how long it took the Bush administration between the time they learned of a secret "security breach" by a private U.S. company allowing for the monitoring of some al Qaeda internet communications, and the time the administration leaked it to Fox News, thereby alerting al Qaeda to the breach and closing down "a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network."

Five hours:
A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release. [...]

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.
What can you say? When your entire foreign policy expertise is based on leaking information to Fox News in order to keep the population in a constant state of low-level fear, sometimes you have to blow actual intelligence information in order to do it. Them's the breaks.

***

Yeah.... I'm going to be honest...It's news like this that reminds me why I stopped reading the NYT in 2003. I'm easing into my subscription to the Economist..but it's slow going, especially since I also need to read and write a paper on Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover by tonight at 7:30pm. Right now it's rubbing me the wrong way. I'd rather be reading Jack Spicer lectures. But I'll post the lines I do like from Merrill's project tomorrow, maybe. If you play your cards right.

Spitting on the Sidewalk Is Very Unattractive Press

Well, before you read this post you should scroll down to Sunday's and memorize the date & location of my reading this coming Friday. Go. Ok, now that's you've done that and are entirely planning on attending the reading, you can continue.

My Canadian friend got my into Feist a few months ago because the singer is Canadian (right?) and I really love this song, "I Feel It All." I like this version but unfortunately you have to look at Jimmy Kimmel's face for a second or two before it begins:


This is the pretty adorable video to "1234," the song that got her on TV:



Last night I was walking home from a reading and to the deli near my apt to buy some bubbly water and I saw this lone construction worker atop the elementary school that's under repair. The whole building is encased in scaffolding, and since it was 10pm it was very dark. He was standing on the second to highest level of scaffolding, roped to the wall, drilling with one spot light on the small area he was working on. The light was an eerie green, a personal beacon. I don't know, there was something very beautiful about it, harnessed to your work in the dark, one man and his one light. I watched him for a bit and then went home.

The Bones of My Bones Have Grown Soft Press

Saturday night I ate a lot of potato chips with a bunch of people in Manhattan.

I spent today in NJ working on the format for the second issue of Saltgrass. I went through the Holland Tunnel listening to the new Animal Collective albumn. I've only listened to the first few songs though- sounds very electronic but I'm digging what I hear. There are lots of noises that sound like how being underwater feels.

This Thursday Matthea Harvey is reading, she says:

I'm doing my first NYC reading from Modern Life, my new book of poems, on Thursday October 11th at McNally Robinson at 7:30 pm. I'll be reading with Tracy K. Smith, author of The Body's Question and Duende.

Here's the address:
McNally Robinson Booksellers
52 Prince Street (between Lafayette & Mulberry)

Hope you can come!

Yrs,
Matthea

****

I hope you are planning to come to my own reading this Friday. There are 2 other readings that I know of, but HAHA, I will only post about mine:

Friday, October 12th 6:45pm– Julia Cohen & Sam Starkweather & Ana Bozicevic-Bowling
Hosted by the ever-lovely Sommer Browning

Pete's Candy Store
(Take the L to the Lorimer stop)
709 lorimer street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn - 11211
(718) 302 - 3770

Julia Cohen's chapbook, If Fire, Arrival, is out with horse less press. Her other chapbooks, Who Could Forget the Sensational First Evening of the Night (Hangman Books), When We Broke the Microscope (Small Fires Press), and The History of a Lake Never Drowns (Dancing Girl Press) are forthcoming this year. She lives in Brooklyn.


Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, NC at a monster truck rally. He edits your children's science textbooks. His poems and essays are recently published or forthcoming from: Octopus, Jubilat, LIT, Tarpaulin Sky, RealPoetik, Absent, Sink Review and other places. His chapbook The Photograph will be available from Horse Less Press in November. He lives in the woods alone.

Ana Bozicevic-Bowling is a Croatian poet writing in English & the author of two chapbooks: Morning News (Kitchen Press, 2006) and Document (Octopus Books, 2007). Her recent poems are or will be in Octopus Magazine, The New York Quarterly, the Denver Quarterly, In Posse, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. Here's another one in The Courtland Review. She coedits RealPoetik and works at PEN American Center in New York City.

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If you go, it's OKAY to be overpowered by the strong imagery & emotional potency of the readings, my GRANDMA will be there to hold your hand. And afterwards, if you are still reeling from the effects of such a vivid, and beautifully surreal experience, my MOM will give you a free shrink appointment to cope with your hightened sense of reality. Right mom?

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I watched The TV Set, a movie with David Duckovny and Segorny Weaver (I just butchered the spelling of their names, sorry but you can sound it out). Do not see this movie. It is boring & bad. I saw it with D. Ludwig and he got up half way through to make a hamburger and when it ended he said, "That's it?"

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Ok, no time for spell check since I need to run out the door to go to this, note from the fiction writer Justin Taylor:

This Sunday (October 7th) at 7 PM, I will be reading my fiction with Rachel Sherman (The First Hurt) and Lucy Corin (Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls; The Entire Predicament) at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, upstairs in Sadies Lounge.

We will be celebrating Lucy Corin's story collection The Entire Predicament, which is just out from Tin House Books.

The event is free. Mo Pitkin's is located at 34 Avenue A. For more venue info, including a menu: http://www.mopitkins.com/sadies.html

MathBear Gets Stuck with the Bill and PoetryBear Laughs & Laughs Press

The reading last night RULED. The Realpoetik editors gracefully introduced all of the readers and S. Starkweather and E. Gabbert particularly rocked out. When a poet stands on stage and somehow embodies their work, even if the poem does not reflect their personal philosophy or direct experience, it's quite a lovely phenomena. And I call it a phenomena, probably using the word incorrectly, but to mean that it's a hard thing to accomplish- a raw contact with words that enliven emotion.

dictionary.com tells me: Phenomena:
an appearance or immediate object of awareness in experience

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Anyways, I'm eating roasted chicken tonight w/ vegetables, which is cool. I don't think I've had a hardy meal in a while.

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I thought you might like this:
On how Bob Dylan chose his career, from a Playboy interview, 1966 (don't you want to be famous enough to eff with people's minds?):


Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

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"Eight year olds, dude."

Sugar & Bandaids Press

There is a rubberband war going on. You may not know it, and it may not affect you (yet), but it's happening. This has been mailed in an envelope like anthrax- no note but a return address & a silent laugh:

Ew, giant rubber bands are scary, wobbly things- yet they pervade your life if you're in publishing.
The next move:

I think that a waterballoon would really step the retaliation up a notch but other people might not be ready for it. Can you send a waterballoon via NYC courier mail to another publisher?

Le jeu sont fait.

On another note, I love this photo by Julie Doxsee, it looks magical:


If you enjoy trees on the darker side, check out: http://jonpack.com/julia/ by Jon Pack. I have permission to share these photos, yo.

So I think I have a cover for my new chapbook with H_NGM_N B__KS. This is the sketch sans the text for "Who Could Forget The Sensational First Evening of the Night":

Hands of grass, grasses of hands, or field of hands? You decide.

This Sunday 7pm:
ZINC
90 West Houston
between Laguardia & Thompson
Mike and Mark read.
To find out what the last names are of these poets, & who they are, you must come to the reading. That's all you get for now. Mainly due to the fact that I cannot spell one of the poet's last name correctly. Intriguing, no? A little bit?

Why Do You Wear Babyface's Baby's Face Like A Mask? Press

Yup, it's been a while. So that's why I'm going to hit you with two things that made me laugh like a person who went to bed at 1am and got up at 5am to go to work because that's how life just is right now:

My friend mistakenly wrote "potential" as "poetnail"

Ew. "I see great poet-nail in you, son" Ew.

And my own dork-sarcastic request to "hang with the gang" as "hang with the hang."

This has promptly become one of my favorite things to say in my head. "Hang with the hang, dude."

Rock 'n roll, deal with it.

And yes, I plan to go to bed early tonight so that my punch-drunk-ness subsides tomorrow. Long week and it's only half over. Being drained is precarious at work- it means that I sort of did this 80's-backstep-runningman-dance-move right into the VP yesterday, which was my failed attempt to ask a co-worker about lunch who was across the office.

Nice.

My little wreckless arms & legs. My head spins like a pinwheel. Little bird can you beak me a nest?

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As I said, tomorrow there is a RealPoetik reading I'll be at. However, this reading does have an apocalyptic rival, straight from the editor of the anthology's mouth:

What: Apocalypse Reader reading. Shelley Jackson, Diane Williams, Matthew Derby, & Jared Hohl will read from their short stories that were published in The Apocalypse Reader, an anthology of new and selected fiction about the end of the world that came out way back in June of this year. I will be presenting my authors, and following the reading there will be a Q&A and book signing. Books will be available for sale at the event.

When: Thursday, October 4th. 7 PM.

Where: Wollman Hall at The New School (5th floor of the 11th street building; enter at 66 W. 12th street, cross through courtyard)

Cost: FREE.

Nice things they've said about us: "a vivid collection" – LA Times
"so engrossing, so explosively creative that I wound up reading well into the early morning hours" – Huffington Post
"there may be no collection that better demonstrates the range and possibility of the story form" – Paste Magazine
"deliciously entertaining" – The Villager

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I went to see the Mountain Goats and the BowerBirds on Monday with KA. Oh the Bowerbirds made me swoon. A girl languidly playing a big drum and then switching to the accordian is hot. And the guy who sings sang very clearly so that all of his words sounded even better than on their album. I came to hear them, to be honest. The Mountain Goats are 90s beseeching emo-rock to me, which I have a place in my heart for, I do. The voice, the guitars, you got me. Ok?

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This is a sad Neruda poem:

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

All these fellows were there inside
when she entered, utterly naked.
They had been drinking, and began to spit at her.
Recently come from the river, she understood nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The taunts flowed over her glistening flesh.
Obscenities drenched her golden breasts.
A stranger to tears she did not weep.
A stranger to clothes, she did not dress.
They pocked her with cigarette ends and with burnt corks,
and rolled on the tavern floor in raucous laughter.
She did not speak, since speech was unknown to her.
Her eyes were the color of faraway love,
her arms were matching topazes.
Her lips moved soundlessly in coral light,
and ultimately, she left by that door.
Hardly had she entered the river than she was cleansed,
gleaming once more like a white stone in the rain;
and without a backward look, she swam once more,
swam to nothingness, swam to her dying.

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That was one of the poems I loved in high school. I think I appreciated the quiteness of the walking mermaid, her sort of half-understanding and half-quiet rejection of this world. And the sadness does not come from her turning away from the raucous incivility that is civilization, it comes from turning towards the nothingness. The sadness in that Neruda sees no alternative. But of course, you were not born in a watery grave, you are not the stranger to speech & cloths, so you must talk and dress in a way that makes you and those you love the white stone in the rain. Maybe that's the hardest trick of all. But we must always be trying, no? To put salve on the cork-burn. It's not about backwards glances, it's about trying to include those you love in the open glances you give, or about opening the glance. Ok, that's my emo-Neruda-schpeel for the day.

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YouTube suddenly won't let me have emdedded links to music videos. How do I fix that? I was going to hit you with some Babyface but now I can't.