Late Enough 2B Drunk Enuff

Hello, again.

I'm pleased to forward the announcement that on Friday, March 7th, at 10 PM, Lil' Norton will host a knockout evening of poetry at St. Mark's Poetry Project.

Poets:

Anne Tardos
Seth Landman
Kareem Estefan
Patrick Lovelace
Laura Elrick
Kevin Thurston
Eddie Hopely
Diana Hamilton

See you there!

You go looking

for the new John Wieners, A Book of Prophecies, put out by Bootstrap Productions, but St Marx books does not have it in stock. As Prophecies is a little bit, sortof, definitely, the Book-o-the-Moment, you are letdown, BUT there await other booktreats, including new Robert Walser, so you allow life to continue.


from St Marx:

The Assistant Robert Walser, New Directions, 2007
Before Night Falls Reinaldo Arenas, Penguin, 1993
Singing from the Well, Reinaldo Arenas, Penguin, 1987
Snow Part Paul Celan, The Sheep Meadow Press, 2007
Being & Event Alain Badiou, Continuum, 2006


Other odd-end acquisitions of recent times:

Heliogabalus Antonin Artaud, Creation Books, 2003
Ulysses Annotated Don Gifford with Robert J Seidman, U of California P, 1988
Unsung Rod Mengham, Folio/Salt, 1996
Personae Ezra Pound, Liveright, 1926 [fifth printing: 1938]


Also, there was a little visit to the Strand, with the following purchases:

You've Always Been Wrong Rene Daumal, Nebraska, 1995
Standards of Bibliographical Descriptions Buhler, McManaway, Wroth, U of Pennsylvania P, 1949
The Review of Contemporary Fiction Dalkey Archive Annual 1, ed John O'Brien, Spring 2007
Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices Brenda Love, Barricade Books, 1988


Notes:

The Pound edition is particularly handsome. It was purchased in MA along with the Mengham, which proves to be one of the earlier titles from Salt (1996), when it was located only in Australia. Since, Salt has become one of the more interesting presses in the UK, though they are guilty of putting out a few too many books, a rare fault indeed. I'd always wanted one of the Gifford Ulysses Annotated & was lucky to find a copy at Alabaster Books, which is having a nice 30% off sale. The book is fun to read even without looking at the text. Would it not be interesting if all of the books on Joyce survived into the future but by some quirk none of the primary texts made it? What would the world think of Joyce then? Maybe they'd put his face on some of their currency, which is not to say this shouldn't be done currently, & in this country. New titles from a bunch of modern-era chaps are ultra welcome: Celan, Artaud, Walser, & Daumal, who had close ties to the 'pataphysical realm.

The new issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction is something of an oddity. Dalkey Archive was particularly formitive in my early reading & book buying career so it is strange to see an issue of all reprints, especially one that arrives after what seemed like a delay in the regular production of the magazine. The issue in itself is valuable, but I'm not totally convinced that its arrival doesn't indicate some sort of problem at Dalkey HQ. They recently moved, I believe, so perhaps the state of the new issue has something to do with that. Or of course the issue could indicate none of this, but I am worried. RCF has always been a great resource for in-depth info on neglected & interesting writers, the format of the magazine being one of it's strongest aspects: usually three 50-page articles on various writers followed by several dozen reviews of recent books of note. In this issue, however, excerpts are provided from Dalkey's back catalog, & it functions something like a greatest hits. There is the standard O'Brien rant-intro against the state of publishing quality work in this country, which is good to see as always. But then the reviews themselves seem dated, all featuring books from last year, in addition to one from 2005, & none from 2007. In each instance that an interesting book was reviewed, I found that not only had I already heard about it, but in many cases I'd already bought it & read it. Given that the review section of the RCF has always been a showcase for new things to buy & read, this is something of a letdown. Exactly if the fault lies with me acquiring things too fast or with Dalkey being too slow, I cannot say for sure either way. But I am concerned about RCF with this latest move. With hope they will be back to normal functioning status with the next issue. If not we may be in the process of losing one of our more necessary sources for excellent literary information.

The Daumal acquisition was a nice prelude to the 'pataphysical deluge that was to follow, one that I am still sorting out, & will report on soon.

Buck Downs @ St Marx

[begun June 7 07]

Last nite Buck Downs read with David Kirschenbaum @ famed St Marx Church. Kirsch, of Boog City fame, was the first reader. He is a purveyor of a sort of personal verse--he described his recent project as writing a poem at the end of the day about whatever went on that day. He then went back through these pieces, & seizing upon the common thread of references to the tv show The Gilmore Girls, read the makeshift sequence, to frequently hilarious effect. Unashamed of bearing the personal--not just emotion, but habit as well--his poems centering on the aforementioned show were particularly unique & interesting. This was preceded by a horseracing history longpoem that he described was in response to Elizabeth Willis mentioning Seabiscuit in one of her works (at the height of that horse's moviestardom). This poem, though it dipped into the personal, recalling instances & events from years past, worked much differently than the Gilmore Girls work, almost as if it were an ESPN retrospective of the finer nuances of that sport, where people seem to watch the big 3 races almost perfunctorily but rarely seem to really get. Kirsch not only gets it, but was able to convey the feeling & meaning to tv-less, generally horserace-less me, which I qualify as an affirmed success.

Buck was nice enough to meet with me before the reading for about an hour over coffee, talking mostly about the DC scene & his history as publisher of Buck Downs Books, with plenty of advice for my fledgling activities thrown in. Though he has given me several books over the past few months, & added In Memoriam D Thompson to that list before the reading, I went ahead & purchased two I hadn't come across before, including a dual book with Chris Toll called Recreational Vehicle/Be Light & a recent chapbook from Edge, Ladies Love Outlaws . The most notable of these is In Memoriam, as it is a beautiful, apparantly limited edition book (I think Buck said there are 250 copies). The rectangular covers are all white, the only decoration a light circular stamp on the bottom left corner on the front cover, indicating author & title.


From the front matter:

In Memory D Thompson is a series composed of rubbings taken from headstones in Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC. Each sequence was created by starting from a random point in the cemetery and proceeding, to discover each next word as the site and my ability to perceive it would disclose. It is a kind of erasure operating in reverse upon a text dominated by the names of the dead, pointing to some practical geomancy in which the materials on the earth are always only waiting to be activated.

The book is named for David E. Thompson (1939-1996), aka Davi Det Hompson, whose works in typography, sculpture, performance, etc., alone or with many collaborators, continue to remind me that the prevailing conditions of the area are always compelling reasons to work, and that living there an adequate principle to organize the results.

The insides of the book fulfills the promise of the cover & front matter. Averaging about a word per page, the poem, which is actually quite short, is stretched to extreme limits, as if the sentences were being read under a magnifying glass, or some similar mechanism. Each page is presented as a copy of the original rubbing, such as the following:

More examples of the text can be found on fascicle's website.

Buck is an animated & skilled reader. He was introduced by Greg Fuchs, who was nice enough to give me a little palm-sized book he recently put out along with a demo copy of a film he is working on. Much to my pleasure, Buck's accent came out in full force during his reading. Along with the way he held onto & swung the mic stand around like a rockstar, well he pretty much became a rock star for the duration of his set, as he read through several clusters of his patented postcard poems, even dipping into a backup group.

Though I'm more than happy to receive a lot of the great stuff Buck puts out & sends himself, the work he read indicated pretty clearly that he's due for another full-length book given the full treatment by a quality press. Perhaps Edge will deliver thus unto us? His Marijuana Soft Drink was put out in '99. Eight years hence, it's nigh time for another high-profile, far-reaching collection.

Afterwards some poets went out for drinks & invited me along, which allowed for good chat with Buck, Greg, & the poet John McNally, who has a book, Exes for Eyes, on subpress. Apparantly John doesn't make it into town very often so we were lucky to have him among us; & lucky for me he is a collector-type so we had a lot to talk about all night. Even after leaving the bar John & I ambled around the neighborhood for a while. Many thanks to him, & also to Buck & Greg.


..........................power dookie.


the limits of the leash
............and the living
............with the law
..on serial anonymous
replay............another kind
............of independent
............surrealist-blues
in the sweat equity

....sons of the Hill
..........in the Fall
..August is the motherfucker
or at least it is
this fiscal year

[from Ladies Love Outlaws]

Harry Mathews & Doug Nufer @ St Marx

Freshly back from seeing Harry Mathews & Doug Nufer read at St Marx. I wasn't familiar with Nufer, though he was totally great, & the books he had for sale seemed truly interesting & attractive, but I had to pass for lack of cash. Nufur ended his reading with a great splice-song combination of the Noel Noel xmas thing & The Star Spangled Banner. One of my finest ever moments as an American came when someone who was waiting in line with me to get a Mathews autograph who had missed the Nufer part of the evening asked me for a recap, & I totally blanked on the name of the song, saying something about the "Noel thing" & then totally bumbling on the home of the brave shit. I was impressed with myself. Harry signed two books of mine that I brought along for the occasion, The Way Home put out by Atlas & Burning Deck's Country Cooking & other stories. The title story from the Burning Deck is actually in both volumes, & Harry said that the Atlas version is the "correct" one. I haven't compared the two closely, but certainly will. Whatever copy you may happen to come across is worth checking out though, as the story is quite hilarious & incredibly well-done. Both volumes are actually pretty interesting, as the other things included vary greatly in style & content but are always great, & frequently funny. "Singular Pleasures" is included in the Atlas volume, & is also available separately from Dalkey Archive; it's a collection of one-page stories of all types of people masturbating in all sorts of ways. While it's plenty funny, it's pretty sexy as well, always causing one of those should-this-be-awkward moments of aroused reading. Yes, when I read the book I can't help but nurture a nice stiffy, but I can say that I've never finished myself off after completing the book, which would seem to be the ultimate reading of the text. Next time I shall rectify this oversight. With hope, Harry would approve.