Superimposition: Leslie Scalapino (1944-2010) & Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)

A Joyful Gardener Sprite?

Anne Waldman on Peter Orlovsky's last breaths:

Tibetan Book of the Dead readings, in full final repose arranged with blue shirt, hands folded, consciousness a joyful gardener sprite?

no fear, no fear working its way out…

Carol Muske-Dukes on LA Liminal

and other books about "loneliness and memory":

Becca Klaver's L.A. LIMINAL (Kore Press) is another first book that illuminates -- "a star show: hip, lit, and hallowed". Read these poems for new insight into Los Angeles, our spectacularly illusory city -- by a young poet with incorrigible energy and brilliance.

--The Huffington Post

Carol is my former professor from my undergrad years at USC (where she founded the PhD Program in Literature & Creative Writing), the Poet Laureate of California, and the author of Married to the Icepick Killer: A Poet in Hollywood, which came out when I was living in LA and, I'm sure, influenced LA Liminal. So, that's to say that I know her, but also that she's the ideal reader of the book in so many ways and I'm really grateful for her support. Thank you, Carol!

I'm Reading for the InDigest 1207 Series on Tuesday!

InDigest 1207 Series

Zachary German
Leigh Stein
Becca Klaver

Tuesday, June 1, 2010
7-9 p.m.

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
New York, NY

InDigest 1207 was started to further the mission of InDigest Magazine: to create a dialogue about the arts, through the arts. By having authors speak to or read from another author who has influenced them--positively or negatively--we hope to show that the process of writing (and reading) is not done in a vacuum, but is an interactive process. Authors have previously brought in e-mails, text messages, song lyrics, paintings, and student writing, as well as poetry and prose by other great authors.

Yoni Wolf of WHY?

listens to poetry.

I don’t know what the difference is really, between poetry and song, except that I’m starting to figure it out. Some poems are easier than others to turn into songs in a way, based upon the rhythm and the text or whatever. But I think of it as being the same occupation really; I just think that a lot of songwriters get away with a lot of bullshit. So do poets.

"The Hollows"

Charlotte Gainsbourg, "Time of the Assassins"

Not sure about the horses, but I like that dizzy almost-falling-over-in-the-field stuff.

Switchback's Reading Period Ends in a Week!

Entries by women looking to publish a first or second book will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, June 1.

That's one week away!

Cathy Park Hong is the judge.

The entry fee is $15, plus a $2 fee that ManuscriptHub charges to upload your manuscript there, which is the one and only way to submit.

Read the complete guidelines, and find links to upload your manuscript and pay your fee via Paypal here! Email me at becca at switchbackbooks dot com with any questions.

Check out the brilliant & illustrious past winners of the prize!

• Marisa Crawford's The Haunted House
• Kathleen Rooney's Oneiromance (an epithalamion)
• Caroline Noble Whitbeck's Our Classical Heritage: A Homing Device

LA Liminal Review Copy at TSky

Tarpaulin Sky has a review copy of LA Liminal sittin' on their shelf.

Do you want to review it and get a free copy? Plus two Tarpaulin Sky titles if they accept it? All for you just using your words? WHAT A DEAL.

Now That the Papers Are In

I can crawl out of my cave and do all sorts of belated stuff like say, Hey, did you see the New Pornographers on Jimmy Fallon earlier this month?

Matador reports that Dan Bejar was "in the house," which is super hilarious when you watch the video because he's not actually playing with the band. Maybe you care hear him singing? Can't tell over the whistles.

My favorite part of a New Pornographers show is the "coaxing Dan out from backstage" part. What can I say, my dad made us sit and watch a lot of James Brown videotapes when we were little, and "coaxing Dan" somehow reminds me of all those crazy cape capers.

Things I like: spectacle; shunning spectacle.

Upon Finishing Paper 2 of 3, I Present To You, Gender-Sensitive and Good-Humored World, Synonyms for "Phallocentric" as Conceived by Facebook Buds

the malestream
life
dickfocused
boring
bored
cocklocked
$0.70 to $1.00
Giant Welter of Oppression (GWOO)
GWOOTASTIC
academic
mantasia
mantastic
mantasy island
bronarchy
kingkongdom
ballsroom
frat farm
dudepocalypse
penile colony
unemployed
sausage festive
phallocentrical (I believe that's a dry humor)
Ballsdungsroman
dross report

This Is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Continues with Kundiman Poets!

Over at Delirious Hem:

Where do you draw your poetic lineages from the poetries of Asian American female or gender-non-conforming poets? How do you (do you) intersect with feminist poetics? Other communities of women?Transgendered/gender-variant communities? Racialized communities? Tactics and tricks, fragments and fears, languages and loves? How does Kundiman contain these desires or break out of them? What is your Kundiman (love song)? What is your horror?What is your broken record? How do you participate? Resist? Do you feel conflicted about your relationship to these? As the previous This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like suggests, feel free to take liberties with these questions! Answer them at will, alter them, transgress them, make someone else you admire answer them! Images, maps, whisperings, inkings, handmade/bound tales welcome! Tell me something crucial and bloody and wrestled, something that matters to your existence as a Kundiman poet!

Mairead Byrne's "Tokenism"

Loved this revision and literalizing of the "token" metaphor, and wholeheartedly agree:

I want to be a token. I want to be the token woman on your committee. I am great at being a woman; I'm sure I could be a token if I tried. Does it involve jewelry? Or gifts? Never mind. [read the rest]

Graduate Student Reading at Rutgers Tomorrow!

THREE + THREE

3 Rutgers PhD Students with New Books of Poetry

[Tavi Gonzalez, Becca Klaver, Michael Leong]

+

3 Rutgers PhD Students Participating in NaPoWriMo*

[Patrick Chappell, Caolan Madden, Fred Solinger]

=

A Festive End-of-Semester Reading!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

3:00 p.m.

Murray Hall, 510 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Writers House, Room 002

Octavio R. Gonzalez, The Book of Ours (Momotombo Press, 2009)

Becca Klaver, LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010)

Michael Leong, e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009)

Book Signing & Wine Reception to Follow.

*The National Poetry Writing Month challenge: write a poem a day in the month of April. To participate next year, visit runapowrimo.blogspot.com.

No Slake

Oh, I see--

that anchorless yearning

that seemed like teen residue

is the same as wandering

around the bodega looking

for something else to buy--

an all-American yearning

born of

corn syrup and sodium

starved for to-be-invented

tastes

tasting the potatoes

in your McApplePie

let's all start saying what we want

quit waiting for an offer

I go hungry, hungry, hungry