Vanessa Place on "the new masculinist lyric"

Like the new feminist lyric, the new masculinist lyric moves “away from an individual space towards a shared, connective space” (Spahr); the shared connective and collectives spaces manifest by these three poets smartly speak to the guyness of today, in bass and tenor voce.

Melissa Severin Broadside by Anne Benjamin

A fab limited-edition broadside of my friend Melissa's poem "New Permanence" will be on display at this year's Printers' Ball in Chicago, and she'll be reading at the art book event this Friday. Details below!

Click the image to read "New Permanence" (and then--on my browser, anyway--click again). And go to the ball, 'cause I can't!


(designed and printed by Anne Benjamin)

(we've got a blue sky theme going here at Pomo Expo)

PRINTERS' BALL ART BOOK READING

Friday, July 30, 2010 · 7:30pm - 8:00pm
Ludington Building - Center for Book and Paper Arts
1104 S Wabash, 2nd floor (Rm. 205) Chicago, IL

Earlier this summer, all 40 artists met at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Each writer brought an item to represent their text - a trophy! a typewriter ribbon! a snuffbox! - and each printer chose an item, then designed a broadside for the accompanying text. The resulting book is really beautiful: limited-edition, hand-printed, colorful.

Come to the Center for Book and Paper Arts (the 2nd floor of the building where Printers' Ball is) at 7:30 to see the broadsides and hear writers performing their texts. It'll be short, sweet, and awesome - a really special part of Printers' Ball.

P.S. Broadsides are on display from 6:00 - 10:30 - but don't miss the reading at 7:30!

P.P.S. This reading, like all Printers' Ball events, is totally free and open to the public.

WRITERS READING TONIGHT INCLUDE: Melissa Severin, Phil Jenks, Mary Hamilton, Christian Wiman, Suzanne Buffam, P. Genesius Durica, Lisa Janssen, Leila Wilson, Ed Roberson, Chris Bower, and Audrey Niffeneger.

PRINTERS ARE: Erin Page, Delicious, Rich Kelly, Jessica Taylor, Matt Nichols, Kathleen Judge, Angee Leonard, Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff, Jason Early, Christian Rylander, Sanya Glisic, CJ Mace, Daniel Mellis, Steve Walters, Josh Davis, Celene Aubrey, Jeremiah Chiu. Dan Grezca, Anne Benjamin, Jenny Beorksem, and Eileen Madden.

Put a MIDI in it

I did, using Paul Hughes and Caolan Madden's Dan Graham-inspired program. Here's a screen capture -- too bad you can't hear "I Want You To Want Me" blipping away in the background. But you can if you try your own.

Surfing in Milwaukee

DON'T FORGET TO BE YOUNG (à la Brion Gysin)

DON'T FORGET TO BE YOUNG
DON'T TO FORGET BE YOUNG
FORGET YOUNG DON'T TO BE
TO DON'T BE YOUNG FORGET
BE YOUNG TO DON'T FORGET
YOUNG DON'T TO BE FORGET
BE FORGET TO YOUNG DON'T
FORGET TO YOUNG BE DON'T
FORGET YOUNG TO BE DON'T
BE DON'T TO YOUNG FORGET
BE TO YOUNG DON'T FORGET
BE FORGET DON'T TO YOUNG
TO YOUNG BE FORGET DON'T
BE FORGET DON'T YOUNG TO
FORGET DON'T YOUNG TO BE
FORGET DON'T BE TO YOUNG
FORGET BE DON'T TO YOUNG
DON'T YOUNG BE FORGET TO
DON'T FORGET BE TO YOUNG
FORGET YOUNG BE DON'T TO
FORGET YOUNG DON'T TO BE
BE DON'T YOUNG TO FORGET
BE YOUNG DON'T TO FORGET
YOUNG TO BE FORGET DON'T
FORGET BE DON'T YOUNG TO
YOUNG TO DON'T FORGET BE
YOUNG FORGET BE TO DON'T
DON'T FORGET YOUNG BE TO
YOUNG TO FORGET BE DON'T
YOUNG FORGET DON'T TO BE
FORGET DON'T YOUNG BE TO
DON'T YOUNG TO FORGET BE
BE FORGET YOUNG DON'T TO
TO YOUNG FORGET DON'T BE
FORGET YOUNG TO DON'T BE
YOUNG BE FORGET TO DON'T
TO FORGET DON'T YOUNG BE
DON'T TO BE YOUNG FORGET
YOUNG DON'T BE FORGET TO
FORGET TO DON'T BE YOUNG
DON'T BE YOUNG FORGET TO
DON'T TO FORGET YOUNG BE
TO FORGET DON'T BE YOUNG
FORGET DON'T TO BE YOUNG
BE YOUNG DON'T FORGET TO
YOUNG TO DON'T BE FORGET
DON'T BE FORGET YOUNG TO
DON'T FORGET YOUNG TO BE
YOUNG FORGET TO BE DON'T
YOUNG DON'T FORGET TO BE
TO FORGET BE YOUNG DON'T
YOUNG BE DON'T FORGET TO
YOUNG DON'T TO FORGET BE
TO FORGET BE DON'T YOUNG
DON'T YOUNG FORGET BE TO
BE DON'T YOUNG FORGET TO
TO BE YOUNG DON'T FORGET


[make your own Gysin-esque permutation poem]

Michael Leong's Writing Ritual Is Better Than Your Writing Ritual

Before sitting down to write, I methodically lay out my instruments as a good dentist always does before a nervous patient. Side by side, I place: a toilet scrubber, a left-handed Allen wrench (my muse stubbornly insists on the term ‘zeta key’), a ridiculously sharp record needle, and a small collection of novelty pencil tops in good to excellent condition. I religiously avoid dairy products[. . . .]

The Scoop on Buffy Season Eight

Coming soon to Pomo Expo: a look at the motion comic series of Buffy Season 8, created by my friend Jeff. And yup, it's Whedon-overseen, so it officially belongs to the Buffyverse. As do I.

Brion Gysin's Dreamachine

Brion Gysin: Dream Machine
7/7/10 - 10/3/10
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY

Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles.

We ran though a long avenue of trees and I close my eyes against the setting sun.
An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colours exploded behind my eyelids: a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time.
I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees.
Was that a vision? What happened to me?

--extract from the diary of Brion Gysin 12/21/1958

You are the artist when you approach a Dreamachine with your eyes closed. What the Dreamachine incites you to see is yours... your own. The brilliant interior visions you so suddenly see whirling around inside your head are produced by your own brain activity. These may not be your first glimpse of these dazzling lights and celestial coloured images. Dreamachines provide them only just as long as you choose to look into them. What you are seeing is perhaps a broader vision than you may have had before of your own incalculable treasure, the "jungian" sort of symbols which we share with all normally constituted humanity. From this storehouse, artists and artisans have drawn the elements of art down the ages. In the rapid flux of images, you will immediately recognise crosses, stars, haloes... woven patterns like pre-Columbian textiles and Islamic rugs... repetitive patterns on ceramic tile... in embroideries of all times... rapidly fluctuating serial images of abstract art... what look like endless expanses of fresh paint laid on a palette knife.

--Brion Gysin

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gysin’s Ghost: Poetry Marathon
Sat, Sep 25, 2010
3:00 PM
New Museum Theater

Three generations of poets participate in a daylong poetry reading on the New Museum’s seventh floor. Invited are poets that knew Gysin personally, and who participated in the community surrounding concrete and sound poetry; poets that have acknowledged Gysin’s influence; and those who engage in his life’s work of pushing the boundaries of writing, with the goal of tangling and overlapping these three groups to create a dynamic tribute to Gysin. Invited poets include John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Tim Griffin, Monica de la Torre, and Kenneth Goldsmith, among others.

Dlugos, Trinidad, APR

There's a suite of poems by the late Tim Dlugos in the July/August issue of American Poetry Review. Dlugos' friend David Trinidad has spent the last couple of years editing A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (forthcoming from Nightboat Books in early 2011).

Here are some gems from the sample poem on the APR website, "It Used To Be More Fun":

I wanted to be famous as, but younger,

the New York Ingenue School

of poetry and life

I was a poet, the same excuse

and boast my heroes used

Say it loud, I’m not proud

of handiwork like that.

it was more fun before I knew

my poetry could never be a spaceship

to speed me far away, or that I’d always be

outside it

Yup, it's that good. Go read the whole thing!

I'm reading Patti Smith's JUST KIDS

You should read it, too, if you believe in magic or synchronicity or if you have ever lived in New York City or loved the places where poetry and rock music collide.

I've never thought of a book as a lucky charm, but I think this book full of handmade gifts & amulets is all of these: charm, gift, amulet (Robert Mapplethorpe-crafted beaded necklace, no doubt).

This is from 10 years ago; Smith rips off the "shroud of ambiguity" surrounding her relationship with Mapplethorpe on every page of JUST KIDS, and thinking about his art, it's easy to imagine that's a gesture he would have appreciated.

Mapplethorpe's Lady Lisa Lyon.

My Favorite Emmy Nominations

Going to college at USC taught me to love award shows and treat their evenings as holidays. Competitive, score-card-keeping holidays.

Comedy series

Curb Your Enthusiasm [did you see the Seinfeld reunion season? well it's out on DVD now and I own it so come over]

Outstanding Actress In A Comedy Series
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Outstanding Actor In A Comedy Series [AKA men I pretend I am when I'm in a weird or uncomfortable situation]
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory
Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Steve Carell, The Office
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series
Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother [4th year in a row, maybe they'll give it to him as a way of backhandedly awarding this. Yes there it is again! that vid gets the Pomo Expo Most-Recycled Award. Conceptually stunning!]

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series
Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live [why has no one ever thought of this before? OK I guess they did last year]

Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series
Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien [SNIFF! and I do not get TMZ or TBS or whatever the hell on my rabbit ears. which also explains my broadcast love herein.]

[see the rest here]

FUNSTYLE, $5.99

If it's a mockery, it sounds like a funstyle one:

"batshit weird" -- Pitchfork

"Phair, like [Laurie] Anderson, knows she's part of the very systems she mocks" -- L.A. Times music blog

"The final track is called 'U Hate It' and mocks us (mostly male) critics: 'I think I'm a genius/You're being a peen-ius.'" -- Village Voice

Click image to listen to "Bollywood" & buy.

When the Company Goes Public, You've Got To Learn To Love What You Own

The Riverfront Times talks to Carl Newman about what makes a Dan Bejar song a Destroyer vs. New Pornographers number.

Also! Bill Callahan has written an epistolary novel, Letters to Emma Bowlcut, out July 20 from Drag City.

Call For Papers: Gaga Aporia

Gaga Aporia: Art, Pop Culture, and the Academy

Lady Gaga is the performer of our zeitgeist. She has not only captured the fanatical, adoring, and fleeting attention of pop culture, but has also moved the pens of academics, struck up the ire and love of feminists and gay activists, and raked the discussions of both liberal and conservative pundits. A phenomenon (or performance?) of pop super-stardom, Lady Gaga bleeds into other disciplines; she is a force to reckoned with in fields such as queer and gender studies, fashion, politics, gay rights, disability rights, art history, performance studies, culture studies, literary studies, museum studies, musicology, and film. This symposium will investigate ways of thinking about and understanding Lady Gaga through a wide range of disciplines and theoretical approaches.

Our goals as a symposium will be first to contextualize and analyze Lady Gaga’s own artistry and performance, and second to investigate how studying Gaga affects our various disciplines, thereby challenging the borders and epistemological foundations of academic scholarship and popular discourse. Thus, we aim to approach Gaga both in terms of her own work, and as an imperative for us to reevaluate our own givens and methodologies. The symposium will conclude with a discussion of the meta-narratives that emerge from evaluating Gaga within the academy: we will consider the place of scholarship in pop culture (and vice versa), the institutional challenges that accompany such an endeavor, and what could be a socially-active and dynamic scholarship existing outside the confines of the academy.

[Check out the call for papers]

Gina Myers on LA Liminal

Over at NewPages, Gina Myers has this to say about LA Liminal:

And though this is a book so heavily based in and about Los Angeles, the humor, intelligence, and emotion will speak to anyone who has dreamed about something more than what he or she already has and to anyone who has experienced loss of those dreams.

I'm especially excited to have Gina review LA Liminal because I've also written a review of her fab first book of poems, A Model Year (Coconut Books, 2009) -- to be published soon.

Let Me Link You Up

The PoFo y yo bring you some 4th of July poems

I played Exquisite Corpse again at WWAATD

Marisa Crawford at Verse Daily

James Reiss on Simone Muench

Johannes Göransson on Kate Durbin

New issue of Krystal Languell's Bone Bouquet

Kate Zambreno is July editor at Everyday Genius

Birthday Medley

	Stars on 45 - Stars on 45 (Medley) .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

This song was number one on my day of birth! (Yes I am excited that it's a medley.)

Or, it was Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes," according to this birthday chart-topper website.