Lists Are Just, Like, Some Things To Do Press

I left NYC this past weekend to check some important things off of my To Do List, like:

Purchase a used coffee maker (from the 80s?):

Almost purchase a game called Probe (from the 50s?):

Enjoy the wildlife
a) badger? beaver? squirrel!:

b) two headed, 4 armed, friendly octopus:

Play basketball:


Feed cows hay:


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There are 500 things going on this week.

1) TUESDAY
John Ashbery in NYC
David Lehman, moderator
6:30pm, Wollman Hall, 55 W 11th St, 5th Fl.

2)WEDNESDAY
Denis Johnson
Robert Polito, moderator
6:30pm, Tishman Auditorium, 66 W 12th St, Free
Denis Johnson is author of the National Book Award winning Tree of Smoke.

Praise for Tree of Smoke:
“To write a fat novel about the Vietnam War nearly 35 years after it ended is an act of literary bravado. To do so brilliantly as Denis Johnson has in Tree of Smoke is positively a miracle.”
--David Ignatius, Washington Post

“Denis Johnson has delivered his masterpiece.”
--Chris Offutt

“Prose of amazing power and stylishness”
--Philip Roth

“Once Johnson gets his hooks into you—it takes about two sentences—it’s pretty much impossible to stop reading”
--David Gates, The New York Times Book Review


3) FRIDAY
a Chair Burning Retrospective
at East Coast Aliens

Friday, April 18th
Doors 7:30 pm, readings from 8-10 pm
Directions:
eastcoastaliens.com/SALON/content/map_and_directions_to_east_coast_aliens_greepoint_brooklyn_new_york

You know all these poets. Which is why you're coming with me, right? I haven't heard Andrea or Brenda read in a while. I went to college with Tim Peterson, he was in my poetry workshop with Maggie Nelson in 2001. He wrote fantastic poetry then but I haven't read his work since, although it seems like he's quite busy. I'm looking forward to saying hi to Tim.

8-8:30
Jim Behrle
Thibault Raoult
Andrea Baker

8:30-8:45
Walter Baker

8:45-9:15
Dorothea Lasky
Dara Wier

9:15-9:30
Walter Baker

9:30-10:00
Craig Morgan Teicher
Tim Peterson
Brenda Iijima

SUNDAY:
Ada Limon and Alex Lemon at Four Faced Liar, MCed by Shafer Hall, who says:

The terrific poets in question are Alex Lemon and Ada Limon. Their bios are below, but I can personally vouch for their physical attractiveness and for the extremely high quality of their poetry. The day is this Sunday. I think it's the 20th. The time is 2:30pm. The place is the Famous Four-Faced Liar, 165 W. 4th St. & 6th Ave., Manhattan, etc.

Don't miss this.
From a side way,
Shafer

Alex Lemon is the author of Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2008, Open City, BOMB, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Tin House, AGNI, Gulf Coast, Pleiades and Best American Poetry 2008. He is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsbury Review, and co-editor of LUNA. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. A memoir of his is forthcoming from Scribner. He lives digitally at www.alexlemon.com .

Ada Limón's first book, lucky wreck, was the winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize and her second book, This Big Fake World, was the winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize. With an MFA from NYU in creative writing, she's won the Chicago Literary Award and fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is the Copy Director for GQ Magazine and teaches a Master Class for Columbia University's MFA program. She is particularly fond of rivers and is at work on a third book of poems as well as a novel.


NEXT MONDAY:
Frank Sherlock & Kate Greenstreet
Monday April 21
St. Mark's Poetry Project
131 E. 10th Street
8pm

Frank Sherlock is the co-author of the newly released Ready-to-Eat Individual with Brett Evans. Publisher Bill Lavender says, "In New Orleans, USA, during the Year 1 A.K. (After Katrina), Frank Sherlock & Brett Evans sifted through the ration fossils to put words where the food used to be. The latest development resulted in a poem that is a State-of-the-City and post-apocalyptic journal, sealed by a retort pouch and blocked from future contamination. The resulting taste and texture are much more realistic and natural than those normal dehydrated and freeze dried histories."

Kate Greenstreet is the author of case sensitive (Ahsahta Press, 2006) and three chapbooks, Learning the Language (Etherdome Press, 2005), Rushes (above/ground press, 2007), and This is why I hurt you (Lame House Press, April 2008). Her second book, The Last 4 Things, will be out from Ahsahta in 2009. Her poems can be found in journals like Cannibal, Fascicle, and Handsome. New work is forthcoming in Filling Station, Practice, and The Columbia Review.

***

Ah, so much to do. And on Saturday I'm going up to Hastings-on-the-Hudson to hang out with my friend who got in the massive car wreck I told you about in March. There are lots of trees and soccer fields in Hastings. But no 4 armed octopi.

**

Oh, if I am playing a scrabble game with you on Scrabulous, I'm sorry but I don't have internet at home right now and it's blocked at work. So don't give up or think I'm copping out. Hopefully I'll be able to crush your low scoring selves by the weekend.