DAYBOOKS Reading, listening to, and looking at contemporary poetry
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DAYBOOKS Reading, listening to, and looking at contemporary poetry |
daybook 49 (2004)8 December | Jackson Mac Low died at the age of 82. The NYT obit is here.
daybook 48 (2004)28 November | Heard Stephanie Young and Jennifer Moxley read at Kelly Holt's house in San Francisco.
daybook 47 (2004)19 November | Heard Murat Nemet-Nejat read from his poetry and from the anthology Eda.
18 November | Heard Devin Johnston, reading mostly from Aversions and from new work, and Andrew Joron, reading mostly from Fathom, in the last event of the fall New Writing Series.
daybook 45 (2004)4 November | Heard Alice Notley read from two new manuscripts in the UMaine New Writing Series.
daybook 44 (2004)3 November | Heard Alice Notley give a talk called "My Lines," which chronicles the development of her prosody over the course of her career.
daybook 43 (2004)23 October | Read The Joyous Age by Christopher Nealon. > pub info
daybook 42 (2004)19 October | Heard Geoffrey Young and Tony Lopez read in the UMaine New Writing Series.
18 October | Heard Geoffrey Young discuss his thirty years of running the independent press The Figures.
daybook 41 (2004)7 October | Heard Cole Swensen read in the UMaine New Writing Series. Her set was drawn from the forthcoming Book of a Hundred Hands, an as yet uncollected sequence called "The Glass Age," her translation of Pascalle Monnier's Bayart, and her recent book from Alice James, Goest.
daybook 40 (2004)30 September | Heard Fanny Howe read her long sequence "The Passion," from Gone, in the UMaine New Writing Series.
daybook 38 (2004)21 September | Heard Marjorie Welish read from The Annotated Here and Word Group, and discuss slides of her recent paintings, in the UMaine New Writing Series.
daybooks 35 (2004)26 August | Read Knowledge Follows by David Perry. > pub info
daybooks 34 (2004)25 August | Read, belatedly, The Frequencies by Noah Eli Gordon. > pub info
24 August | Read three recent chapbooks: Iphigenia by John Wilkinson (pub info), home? by Rebecca Stoddard (pub info), and Ecology by Khan Wong (pub info). The latter two are in a series edited by Carmen Gimenez-Rosello and published by Noemi Press.
23 August | Read The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls by Eleni Sikelianos. > pub info
22 August | Read Hip Logic by Terrance Hayes. > pub info
21 August | Read Playing Bodies by Bob Perelman and Francie Shaw. > pub info
20 August | Re-read Self-Destruction by Laura Moriarty. > pub info > passage
19 August | Read Arcady by Donald Revell (Middletown: Wesleyan, 2002).
daybook 33 (2004)
18 August | Read Intimate Journal by Nicole Brossard. > pub info
17 August | Read Mola by Bob Harrison. > pub info
13 August | Read Not Even Then by Brian Blanchfield. > pub info
daybook 32 (2004)
08 August | Read Ecstasy Shield by Christopher Nealon. > pub info
07 August | Read What Ever Belongs in the Circle by Noah Eli Gordon. > pub info
06 August | Read Serenades by James Meetze. > pub info
daybook 30 (2004)
22 July | Read Figment by Rebecca Wolff. > pub info
daybook 29 (2004)
21 July | Read Alaskaphrenia by Christine Hume. > pub info
18 July 2004 | Read Macular Hole by Catherine Wagner. > pub info
17 July 2004 | Read the false sun recordings by James Wagner. > pub info
16 July 2004 | Read Dale Smith's chapbook My Vote Counts. > pub info
daybook 26 (2004)27 June, NPF Conference | Had breakfast with Don Byrd and Douglas Rothschild before pointing them back towards Albany. • Dinner and great conversation later with Miriam Nichols, from whom we learned more about the University of California's commitment to bringing out two new volumes by Robin Blaser, a collected poems that will include The Holy Forest and all the work since then, plus a thick volume of his essays and criticism (both to be edited by Nichols). • This adds nicely to the good news from Kevin Killian and Peter Gizzi that Wesleyan is committed to a five-volume set of Jack Spicer's work (poems, plays, letters, lectures, fiction).
26 June, NPF Conference | Started the days with Al Filreis's hilarious and disturbing plenary on "Modernism and Anticommunism in the 1940s," followed by Cristanne Miller's careful reading of Marianne Moore's work in the 1940s. • After lunch out with Louis Cabri and Andrew Epstein, heard Lyn Hejinian read from My Life, The Fatalist, and a new project, "Lola," as yet unpublished. • Attended a second panel on Olson, where Alan Gilbert discussed Olson's early work with the WPA, his shift into poetry, and some interesting parallels to Philip Guston's career, and Barrett Watten spoke about "Olson's Historicism." • Before the lobster banquet, participated in a candlelight vigil to mark the passing of Carl Rakosi at the age of one hundred. • After the banquet, I was unable to attend Monique Fowler's staging of the Bishop-Lowell letters (with Jack Wetherall, known to some of us for his role as Vic in Queer as Folk, playing Lowell), but I enjoyed conversations stretching far into the morning at the cash bar (an Orono tradition I first came to know back in 1993).
25 June, NPF Conference | In the morning heard Bill Howe, K. Silem Mohammad, Lytle Shaw, and Bob Perelman in a group reading, followed by a wonderful solo set by the Canadian poet (and recent winner of the Griffin Prize) Margaret Avison. • Lunched on campus with Avison, her friend Joan, UMaine grad student Robin Brox, and my colleague Burt Hatlen. • In the afternoon, attended a panel on Charles Olson, where I heard papers by Michael Kelleher, Burt Kimmelman, and Miriam Nichols. • After dinner, heard Marjorie Perloff discuss Beckett's "Phenomenology of War," followed by Joan Retallack, who took on the complex "politics and poethics" of Gertrude Stein's response to Vichy and WW2 more generally. • Chatted with recent-arrivals Stephen Burt, Mike Scharf and others at the closing cash bar.
24 June, NPF Conference | In the morning, heard Jackson Mac Low read "Hunger Strike What Does Lifemean" (1938), several poems from the 1940s, and an ample stretch of his Barnesbook, followed by Harvey Shapiro reading poems from throughout his career (with a focus on the early and late war poems). • Lunched on campus with Anne Tardos and Jackson Mac Low. • Attended an afternoon panel on "Robert Duncan and the Berkeley Renaissance," where I heard papers by Kelly Holt, Jeff Hamilton, and Andrew Mossin. • Hosted an impromptu dinner at home with Jennifer Moxley and guests Miriam Nichols, Joan Retallack, Kelly Holt, Kevin Killian, Anne Tardos, and Jackson Mac Low. • In the evening heard plenary lectures by J. Hillis Miller, who spoke of Stevens, Williams, and the concept of community, and Alan Trachtenberg, who discussed "The Noir Decade: Historical Perspectives of the 1940s." • Caught part of a group reading that included Susan Schultz, Aaron Kunin, and Barbara Cole.
daybook 25 (2004)23 June, NPF Conference | After a dinner at home with the recently arrived Kevin Killian, Lyn Hejinan, Bob Perelman, and Peter Middleton, heard Robert Creeley kick off the National Poetry Foundation's "Poetries of the 1940s" conference with a reading of his own and other people's poems. • Also heard Hejinian, Perelman, Barrett Watten, Creeley, Ted Enslin, and Mark Scroggins speak about Louis Zukofksy in this the centennial anniversary of his birth.
20 June | Read Self-Destruction by Laura Moriarty. > pub info
17 June | Read Memnoir by Joan Retallack. > pub info
daybook 24 (2004)16 June | Read Selah by Joshua Corey. > pub info
15 June | Read Overboard by Beth Anderson. > pub info
daybook 23 (2004)8 June | Finished reading The Vienna Paradox. > pub info > passage
4 June | Began reading The Vienna Paradox, a memoir by Marjorie Perloff. > pub info
3 June | Read Le voyage à Reykjavik: Chronique (Paris: P.O.L., 1997) by Alexandre Delay and Emmanuel Hocquard.
daybook 22 (2004)2 June | Read Brief Capital of Disturbances by George Albon. > pub info > passage
1 June | Read Reticular Pop-Ups by Carol Szamatowicz. > pub info
31 May | Read "L'EXCÉS: cette mesure," a fifty-plus page new work included in Anne-Marie Albiach's Figurations de l'image. > pub info
30 May | Read Jelly Roll by Kevin Young. > pub info | Also read poems by Geoff Bouvier, Elisabeth Whitehead, Susanna Lang, Laura Sims, L.S. Klatt, Eugene Ostashevsky, James Shea, and Matthew Shindell in Jubilat 7. > pub info
29 May | Read Oxo by Pierre Alferi in Cole Swensen's translation. > pub info > passage
28 May | Read "In the Name of the Studio" and "Delight Instruct," the final two sections of Marjorie Welish's Word Group. > pub info | Also read Welish's interview with artist Lawrence Weiner in Of the Diagram. > pub info
27 May | Read "Begetting Textile" and "Word Group," the second and third sections of Marjorie Welish's Word Group. > pub info > passage
daybook 21 (2004)26 May | Read an interview with Marjorie Welish conducted by Robert N. Casper, Alexandra Forman, and Christian Hawkey in Jubilat 7. > pub info > passage | In the same issue, read poems by Gillian Conoley, Joshua Corey, Cort Day, Mark Lamoureux, and Caroline Crumpacker.
25 May | Read two interviews with Marjorie Welish, one conducted by Bob Perelman and the other by Carla Harryman, in Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish. > pub info
24 May | Read "Else, in Substance," the first of five sections in Marjorie Welish's Word Group. > pub info > passage | Also read Art in America by Jack Kimball. > pub info > passage
23 May | Read Adult Contemporary by Benjamin Friedlander. > pub info > passage
22 May | Read Music and Suicide by Jeff Clark. > pub info > passage
20 May | Read Sound Swarms & Other Poems by Dan Bouchard. > pub info > passage
daybook 20 (2004)19 May | Read Sara Veglahn's Falling Forward. > pub info > passage
18 May | Read David Perry's New Years. > pub info > passage
daybook 19 (2004)8 May | Heard Jackson Mac Low read from his "HSCH" sequence, followed by David Perry reading from Range Finder and New Years in the Segue Reading Series at the Bowery Poetry Club.
7 May | Spoke at the St. Mark's Poetry Project about "the disobedient poetics of determinate negation."
6 May | Heard Peter Gizzi lecture on Jack Spicer at the Poets House in Manhattan. Gizzi screened Bruce Conner's 13-minute film on the Kennedy assassination, Report (1963-1967), and played sound files of Spicer reading "Psychoanalysis: An Elegy" and from The Holy Grail.
daybook 17 (2004)22 April | Heard Jackson Mac Low, Anne Tardos, and Christian Bök read in the final event of the UMaine's spring New Writing Series. Mac Low read from a new ten-poem sequence called "HSCH" (after source authors Charles Hartshorne, Gertrude Stein, Lewis Carroll, and Gerard Manley Hopkins), while Tardos sampled from The Dik-dik's Solitude. The couple ended with a marvelous sound performance of one of Tardos's poems. • In the evening, Christian Bök did a solo set that included two sections from each chapter of Eunoia, a smattering of Schwitters and Ball, some uncollected material, and several pages of the recently reissued Crystallography.
daybook 15 (2004)8 April | Heard Rosa Alcalá read from her chapbook Some Maritime Disasters this Century along with assorted translations from the Spanish and a number of poems from her unpublished collection "Ghost Language." Keith Waldrop then read translations of Raymond Queneau, Edmond Jabès, and Jean Grosjean, as well as his own 2002 Litmus Press volume The House Seen from Nowhere.
daybook 14 (2004)1 April | Heard Stephen Rodefer read an ample set drawn from One or Two Love Poems from the White World, Villon, The Bell Clerk's Tears Keep Flowing, Left Under a Cloud, Passing Duration, and Four Lectures. Pages from the latter two texts were slide-projected onto a large screen while videoclips culled from various soft-porn movies starring Tanya Roberts flickered underneath, creating a sex-text palimpsest for the poet to improvise upon.
daybook 13 (2004)25 March | Heard Joshua Clover read from his manuscript tentatively titled "The Totality for Kids," followed by Karen Mac Cormack, who read selections from At Issue, Vanity Release, and Implexures. • Set list here.
daybook 12 (2004)18 March | Heard Anita Skeen read from her two most recent volumes & from unpublished work in the UMaine New Writing Series.
daybook 11 (2004)11 March | Read Discrete Categories Forced into Coupling by Kathleen Fraser.
daybook 10 (2004)10 March | Read Rouge State by Rodney Koeneke.
5 March | Heard Jennifer Moxley read a forty-minute set including "The Just Real," "The Occasion," and "Impervious to Starlight" at the University of Denver.
4 March | En route to Denver, finished reading the expanded second edition of Lorenzo Thomas's Chances Are Few.
daybook 09 (2004)3 March | Read Black Dog Songs by Lisa Jarnot.
1 March | Read A Carnage in the Lovetrees by Richard Greenfield.
29 February | Began reading Chances Are Few by Lorenzo Thomas.
28 February | Read Deer Head Nation by K. Silem Mohammad.
daybook 08 (2004)24 February | Read Songs Aside by Ted Pearson.
23 February | Read Avoid Activity by William Fuller.
22 February | Read The 60's and 70's, a chapbook-length excerpt from Deborah Meadows's on-going project The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby Dick.
21 February | Read Selected Writings by Cedar Sigo.
daybook 07 (2004)13 February | Heard Bill Luoma discuss his Random Media Server, aka "PeaceNick," before a lively mix of poetics and New Media students at the University of Maine.
12 February | Heard John Wilkinson and Bill Luoma read in the UMaine New Writing Series. Luoma read his 2002 Tinfish chapbook Dear Dad in its entirety and then performed about a dozen sounds poems from his as-yet unpublished "Some Math" sequence. Wilkinson opened with "Cité Sportif," a long poem soon to be published in The Gig, then read from the "Case in Point" and "Signs of an Intruder" sections of his new Salt collection Contrivances. • Earlier in the day, heard Wilkinson talk about the work of John Wieners. • Event link here.
daybook 06 (2004)05 February | Gil Ott, poet, editor of Paper Air, publisher of Singing Horse Press, author of numerous books—including the recent Traffic—died today at the age of 53. • Connect here to a memorial site at Philly Sound.
daybook 03 (2004)17 January | Read another batch of one hundred letters (September 1932 - September 1934) in the Williams / Zukofsky correspondence.
15 January | Watched two short (25-minute) films of Kevin Davies and Rosmarie Waldrop, respectively, reading from and discussing their work. The films are part of a series, shot and edited by Jim Sharkey, that documents the eleven poets who visited the UMaine New Writing Series in the fall of 2003.
daybook 02 (2004)13 January | Read Private Lemonade by John Godfrey.
9 January | Read the second hundred letters (October 1930 - September 1932) in the Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky.
8 January | Read the first hundred letters (March 1928 - October 1930) in the Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky, recently edited by Barry Ahearn for Wesleyan. • Also read Rachel Zucker's Eating in the Underworld.
daybook 01 (2004)7 January | Read Traffic by Gil Ott.
5 January | Read Lost and Found by Michael Gottlieb.
3 January | Read Fathom by Andrew Joron.
1 January | Read Up to Speed by Rae Armantrout.