Moments

Moments.

Still here.

4th Street Art & Music Fest Tomorrow in Jersey City!

Let’s hope it doesn’t rain…

I’ll be setting up my stuff somewhere around the 10am hour. Weather permitting, I’ll be out there all day, hocking some art.

I have some ink art to sale, some collages, and these weird, new pieces that I am calling “art screens.”

More information about the rest of the Art & Music fest can be found here.

Also, local band (and friends)  Square Wave Punch will be playing around 6.30pm.

We will be here (in relation to the PATH, should you require the PATH):

There is even an after-party at Lucky 7s.  Woo-hoo!

Fun!

Life as a New York Poet

First off, apologies for what I assume is a late repost of this essay.  I just bumped into it in my Google Reader on The AWL last night.  Am behind in reading HTML Giant too, but I suppose I will see soon if they too linked to this essay as well.  Here’s the link to The AWL post.  Pretty funny, as The AWL is proving itself to be.  I’m a new reader of the blog, just burrowing in, getting running gags, etc.  Here’s the direct link to Daniel Nester’s essay “Goodbye to All Them” published by The Morning News, a site that I don’t really read but that I bump into now and again.

Now, when I read this essay last night I immediately wanted to post the link to my Facebook but then decided against it, so as not to seem * dramatic*, as I have a bunch of “poetry friends” on Facebook and didn’t want to make it seem like I was *aligning* myself with Nester’s message.  So, I’m posting it here because I think other “New York Poets” should read it.  Not because I want them to agree, not because I agree, but because the essay is there and it is bold.  Does it take some cheap shots at the “poetry community”?  Yes.  Does it make the “poetry community” look like a snively bunch? Yes.  But does he hit the nail on the head, as it were, about much of “poetry community” precedents and practices?  Yes.

I am not interested, though, in presenting an arguement for or against this essay.  Bumping into this essay was a nice surprise for me right now.

I write poems.  I love poems.  I love the feeling I get when I am looking at the things around me and I notice the shining in them.  I love that that is something I can share.  And for what it’s worth, that it is something that will always be mine, no matter the “community.”

New Fou is up!

Fou 3 is live.  Check it out here.  Sweet.  Good work Peebles, Sewell, and Soucy.  Looks great.

Happy (late) Birthday to me

I commemorated this year with an art project.  It now has a blog.  It sure feels good to make things.

After the darkness…

…comes…errrrr…..David Foster Wallace?

This is the first thing I read when I woke up Saturday, retyped in its entirity here:

(I really don’t think he would have minded.)

“A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked.  She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked.  Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times.  One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

This is the first story in Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. I just finished reading The Broom of the System, Wallace’s first novel, which reads very much like a “first book” in that the plot is quasi-wonky and a bit belabored, but is still immensely impressive for its scope and non-linear linearity.  One of my favorite things about the book is how Mr. Vigorous (of the publishing house Frequent & Vigorous (hehe)) tells his girlfriend the stories he reads from the slush pile at night while laying in bed.  The stories, as you may expect, are heavy with metaphor.  My favorite is the one about a guy who has a problem loving too wholly and too immediately and he goes to therapy to try to figure out how to stop doing this and he figures that if he just tries to get involved with someone that he actually doesn’t much care for and isn’t quite attracted to that he can temper his exuberant loving tendency.  So he does that.  He meets a frumpy girl on the subway and approaches her and because she is this frumpy, shy girl he doesn’t really have to work too hard.  But the girl on the subway, as you may imagine, has a whole host of personal issues that she is dealing with, and she also wears this scarf around her neck everyday and as the subway girl and the exuberant loving tendency guy go through the relationship motions more and more (because the exuberant loving tendency guy has found out that he actually does care for the subway girl, like legitimately cares) he gets curious as to why she never takes the scarf off until finally she feels comfortable enough with him to do so and he learns that she has this tiny little tree frog living in a little hollow in the side of her neck.   I love this.

I haven’t been so taken by someone in their entirety since Bill Hicks.

Luckily, I still have a lot more Wallace to read.

Also, I’m trying, I’m trying:

Hey Self Defeater

I used to seriously believe in coincidences.  Then I seriously didn’t.  And now I think the world is just full of jokes.

First thing this morning was Mount Eerie, which logically led to me downloading Mark Mulcahy’s Fathering.  All of this abates and agitates the grinding in my heart.  The perfect pain.

Then, this arrives in my inbox:

Yes.

I am attempting to own this.

So, I’m reading today…

…turns out that I am a really bad blogger.  Should have most definitely posted this about a week ago, but here it goes anyway:

Lawless Pebbles Backyard Miniseries

3-6pm

Help us put the “ass” back in “class” and join us for readings by:

Ada Limon
Mark Lamoreaux
Dan Hoy
Jackie Clark

And bring something to drink!

DIRECTIONS TO THE PLACE

Take the Q to 7th Ave and walk down Park Place until you get to 318, between Underhill and Washington. Or the 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza:

http://maps.google.com/maps?tab=ml

It’s a beautiful day.  Kind of ideal for a backyard miniseries, no?

The Glow is Gone: Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum

I kind of can’t stop listening to Mount Eerie’s album Lost Wisdom today.  This morning on the train I finished reading an interview with him in this month’s Believer (which is surprisingly and happily online for you to enjoy).  I’ve been a fan of Elverum for some time, mostly through his work under The Microphones moniker.   The interview also prompted me to go in search of music by the band named Eric’s Trip, who Elverum cites as a big influence.  In fact, Julie Doiron who sings and plays bass and guitar for Eric’s Trip is the very lady who sings with Phil on Lost Wisdom.  Mount Eerie has a Halloween show scheduled at Market Hotel in Brooklyn and another tba show in New York the following day.  He’s got a new double album for sale now, plus a whole lot of other neat stuff for sale here.   Thank you music, yet again, for making us less alone.

Congratulations to Ben Mirov…

…for winning the Diagram/New Michigan Chapbook contest with his manuscript I is to Vorticism.  From what I understand there were over 400 entrants (myself included)!  No small feat Mr. Mirov.  Am a few dates late in posting this but nevermind that.  Congratulations are still in order.  Awesomeness.