Reading Alice Notley‘s poetry is like reading a new language for the first time and immediately understanding it. She’ll be giving rare U.S. readings in Sonoma on Thursday and in San Francisco on Saturday, and you should definitely try to make it to at least one of them.

Notley’s lived in Paris since 1992 and has supported herself through her writing and corollary activities her entire life. She’s “often identified with the so-called second generation New York School poets, though her work also shows the influence of Modernist writers like William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein. Taking on themes ranging from cultural politics to gender, Notley’s later style has evolved into a formally ambitious attempt to transcribe thought itself. According to Joel Brouwer in the New York Times, the “radical freshness” of Notley’s poems “stems not from what they talk about, but how they talk, in a stream-of-consciousness style that both describes and dramatizes the movement of the poet’s restless mind, leaping associatively from one idea or sound to the next without any irritable reaching after reason or plot.” Read the rest of this entry »

When I tell you there are pages of Krasznahorkai that rival any literature I’ve read, I’m not saying it because I like boasting for other people, nor am I saying it because I have any interest in the matter, nor because it’s reassuring to make bold claims (it isn’t), but because there are pages of Krasznahorkai that rival any literature I’ve read. The author, who lives in the hills of Hungary, is currently in the United States and will give a rare reading at City Lights on Thursday, June 28th. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Internet:

I am writing all over you tonight. I hope you don’t mind. This letter is going to be about me.

We’ve been together for a long time now, or so it seems, and I still feel like we don’t know each other that well. Do you feel that way? Like a hurricane?

Joking about the weather.

Dear Internet. Do you ever feel like people won’t leave you alone? I bet you are feeling this way. And if you are anything like me … Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s raining outside of my cozy home in the East Bay hills. It is quiet here, except for the tap tap on the roof and sometimes the howl of a gusting wind. Every few hours, there is the toot toot whistle of the Amtrak train. A fire crackles and sometimes roars in the fireplace as I settle in on the couch. In an hour or so, colleagues will arrive to spend the afternoon reading poetry and selecting the performers for the next Quiet Lightning. I am drinking a cup of Peet’s coffee (heavy cream, too) and eating a bit of chocolate.

I have spent the morning on Facebook, looking at pictures of old friends and telling jokes. I watched an amazing video from NASA. I listened to a favorite song by Chuck Prophet.

I am content. Read the rest of this entry »

Personally, I’ve not written much fiction. Scares me. Confessional poetry is more my game. Came to it because it seemed pretty accessible. How hard could it be to just tell my own stories, toss in a coupla good metaphors, rhymes and rhythms and voila! Those were innocent days. But it always starts easy, doesn’t it? Or shouldn’t it? I mean if we understood at the beginning just how hard it is to make a poem work, or finish a novel, or write a column or an essay, or raise a baby or keep a house, who’d do it? Fools rush in. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I got my second letter in the mail. The first one (“Dear people”, it begins) was handwritten and illustrated by Lorelei Lee. The second one (“Dear strangers”) was by Matthew Zapruder [check this out]. In addition to a beautiful, original poem, Matthew shared some insights:

“These Rumpus letters are actually a lot like poems. Like a poem, this letter gives me, the writer, an opportunity to write intimately to you, strangers. That’s also a great thing about being a poet: you get to write these little messages, free of all the obligations of commerce and purpose, and send them out into the world. You get to create spaces made of language where people can maybe feel things they wouldn’t otherwise feel. Like making free dreams people can borrow”. And: Read the rest of this entry »

The past couple of weeks I’ve thought and written about community and self discipline. How we don’t create in a vacuum, but must talk to one another. And, too, how we must challenge self-doubt and keep punking along. Rows in the water, children, rows in the water! Read the rest of this entry »

What a week of muse punking it has been! Having said a resounding “yes” to my artistic vocation (and continuing to do so), confirming events keep piling on. Everywhere I turn, it’s art and more art. That’s my world. Is it yours? No? Why not?

I mean, at least in my case, that it’s not just my day-to-day art practice that counts (though it is vital), but also keeping my identification with and relationships with other artists alive and kicking. I learned to be a student in a class with other students. I learned to be a worker by being a worker among workers. I learned to be a recovering alcoholic hanging out with other ex-drunks. I learned to be an artist in a group of artists. Solidarity is more than a slogan, comrades. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we published Steven Gray’s open letter to City Lights, claiming that Jarett Kobek‘s Jan 18th reading there from his novel ATTA was “evasive in the extreme”, and the final slide of his presentation—Mae West kissing W.C. Fields—”a meaningless conclusion that the neo-cons could live with, particularly as it lets them off the hook.”

Kobek has responded: Read the rest of this entry »

I went to the Jarett Kobek event on Wednesday night at City Lights (Jan. 18), where he was explaining his book ATTA. I thought I might be at odds with the premise that Atta didn’t like tall buildings and that’s why he went through with 9/11, but I wanted to hear Kobek in person and maybe ask some questions. I did learn a few things about Atta’s background, with Kobek having done some research (which he admitted was limited), and I was willing to accept his opinion that a story by Martin Amis in The New Yorker (“The Last Days of Muhammad Atta”) was horrible, but eventually I was one of those who walked out—and there weren’t many there to begin with. I lasted over an hour, until he ended his presentation by giving it over to a woman in London reading from her book on Skype. This conveniently left no room for questions and answers (which may have occurred at the end of the evening, but I was gone by then). Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, my demons tell me, “You’ll never write again. You’ll never paint again. Remember when you wanted to be an actor, you’ll never do THAT again. And forget about learning to dance. Or playing the guitar. Or singing. Or whatever…” They’ll tell me I’m too old, too fat, too weak, too tired, too busy, too poor, too lonely, just plain too much of a loser. It is a big ol’ ugly lie. Of course I can’t do everything. Not even Mozart or Picasso could do everything. They too, ended their work unfinished.

A tried and true technique for dealing with this kind of self doubt is to look back on what has been accomplished. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout the month of March, Emily Gable and Brianna Toth will curate an artist-run radio station and they’re taking submissions—through Monday, February 20th—for programming ideas focused on the concept of space.

Before we go any further, there’s something I think you should know: on Saturday, Feb 25 they are organizing a marathon reading of Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems—in its entirety—at Ocean Beach, beginning at noon and lasting, approximately, until noon on Sunday the 26th. This is the kind of thing we’re dealing with here (we’re going to need backup video cameras, blankets, and a makeshift hot chocolate stand). Here’s more: Read the rest of this entry »

A coupla weeks ago, I told you of The Edwardian Ball, and recommended it as a muse-punking expedition. To my unspeakable delight, local writer Sean Taylor (talented author of the short story collection Everything To Do With You) took this up and responded with the following essay. So, The Storming Bohemian proudly presents a column by our first guest punk: Read the rest of this entry »

The phrase “one day at a time” has permeated our culture through the influence of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is not a new concept. There is, for example, the old Chinese aphorism that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Health advisors assure us that a daily walk around the block, if done every day, can prolong our lives.

And yet one still hears of occasional writers who hold back for the flush of inspiration before sitting down to work, however long the wait. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in the 8th grade, I developed an overwhelming interest in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” I was obsessed. I read the play over and over again, listened to recordings, viewed films, attended stage productions, read critical studies. At the school I attended, I was required to complete a year-long research project to include a presentation. I chose “Hamlet” for my subject.

I not only wrote a paper, but created a stage set and costumes, crafted a model, argued for a particular interpretation and acting style and then demonstrated the ideas in a performance of the soliloquies.

In short, like many of us creative types, I was a pretty weird kid.

This kind of impassioned involvement with a work of art or favorite subject is typical of so-called “gifted children” (as if there were “ungifted children”), but is too rarely carried into adulthood.

Some of us, of course, will approach particular art projects—a series of paintings, a novel, a play—with similar passion. But rarely will we engage someone else’s work in this way. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was a child in kindergarten I worried about entering the first grade. In particular, I was worried about meeting the gym teacher, a lady named “Miss Tarbell.” My brother told me that she was a terror, and that her name was due to the fact that she was covered in sticky tar with bells hanging from it so that she clanged when she walked like a fire alarm. I can remember the peculiar state of my five year old mind in which I both doubted this could be true and yet thought it might be.

A child’s state of mind. Innocence? I guess. A genuine belief that anything is possible. For an artist, the absolute confidence that I can make it so, whatever “it” is. How can an actor, for example, play Gandalf the Wizard? Read the rest of this entry »

A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Brian Teare is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. He has published poetry and criticism in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, as well as in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. He’s published three full-length books—The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, and Pleasure—as well as the chapbooks Pilgrim, Transcendental Grammar Crown and ↑, and his fourth book, Companion Grasses, will be out from Omnidawn in the spring of 2013. After a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, he’s now an Assistant Professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Brian Teare is currently one of my favorite poets. His poetry is beautiful and combustible, often weaving themes of sexuality with place and the economics of rurality. I read his work in a seminar at Lesley, fell in love with one of his poems in particular (“Trick Noir”) and emailed him up. Fortunately for me, he was receptive to having conversations about his work, and to being interviewed. Read the rest of this entry »

I was at an event once where a writer (a good writer, whom I admire) was attempting to win a literary trivia game and not doing very well. She burst out in frustration, “What the fuck! I’m a WRITER, not a READER!”

I hope she was joking.

But, truthfully, I have often met writers who say this, and many similar things. I’ve heard, “I don’t have time to read books.” And, “Writers are supposed to be loners; workshops are for losers.” And, “I don’t waste time at literary events.”

Do you ever feel like that? Get over it.

Suggestions for this week: Read the rest of this entry »

When I’m at my best I don’t know where I’m going. Writing is an exploration and I’m a detective, a treasure hunter searching for clues. I still write to communicate, which as I get older is less about screaming and more about connecting (though it’s about screaming, too). More than anything, writing is what I want to do with my time.

There are other great reasons to write. To tell a story, to be heard, to create art, to participate, to add to the general discussion, to make a political point, to make the world a richer place. As in most pursuits, remembering why you came to it is as important as being ready to change. Read the rest of this entry »

About six years ago, artist/teacher/community activist Todd Brown astounded me at his workshop, “The Art Of Not Knowing.” It was my first-ever art class.

After a few preliminaries, Todd said something that changed my life. It was like receiving enlightenment from a zen master. His words hit me right between the eyes:

Forget about making a picture. You don’t know how. You don’t know how to do anything. So don’t try. Instead, just concentrate on processing a surface. Read the rest of this entry »

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare happily lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written a book of essays, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (South End Press, 1999, 2009), a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion (Homofactus Press, 2007), and has been published in many periodicals and anthologies.

Eli speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice. Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference. When he’s not writing or on the road, you can find him reading, hiking, camping, riding his recumbent trike, or otherwise having fun adventures.

I know Eli through Rebekah Edwards, a Queer/Gender Studies professor at Mills College. Two years ago, Dr. Edwards taught The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion and asked Eli to come to class and speak with us. The book is beautiful, and Eli is a magnificent speaker and activist. Read the rest of this entry »

Is there anybody in America who is not plagued with ambivalent feelings this time of year? Religion, family, politics, hope, war & peace, guilt, memory, guilt, disappointment, guilt: all the hot buttons are on trigger every December. For an artist, hot buttons are opportunities. My reaction is to load them into a metaphorical gatling gun and shoot them at my muse to see what bleeds.

That’s rather a gruesome image, I’m afraid. But the holidays can be a rather gruesome time. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections: The Eye That Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Steven’s poems and criticism have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, and Triquarterly; as well as in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poets and The POETRY Anthology, 1912–2002.

Steven has taught literature and writing at Bennington College, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University. Recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he currently directs the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge. More information about his work can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

There are so many ways to punk the muse. Last week, I talked about visiting specialty bookstores. Visiting places of all sorts—bookstores, museums, caverns, mountains, river rapids, foreign lands—is perhaps the most time-honored muse-punking device imaginable. Few writers or artists fail to travel. And those that stay put (consider Vermeer or Emily Dickinson) distinguish themselves with exceptionally deep interior travel.

Interior travel. Now that is something worth thinking about. Read the rest of this entry »

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (forthcoming from W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award.

Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Writer’s Center. She has also received scholarships and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Disquiet International Literary Program.

She holds degrees from Florida State University and Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University where she is a doctoral candidate and a King/​Chávez/​Parks Fellow. She also serves as Poetry Editor for Third Coast and Editor at Large for Loaded Bicycle. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I caught the initial explanation of ITCH: Investing in the Creative Hunch.

Founder Todd Brown calls it “a pilot initiative of a new form of social-cultural networking. Connecting projects in theater, dance, music, literature, and visual art, the ITCH creates opportunities for the general public to participate in the behind-the-scenes of artistic production while increasing social networking opportunities in real time and space.”

Tonight, Brown and other project leaders will meet for a potluck discussion about the idea, overviews on some of the works-in-progress, and a casual meet and greet. You can read a profile and find out more info about the meeting here, but below are some soundbytes I particularly like: Read the rest of this entry »

I spent some hours this week browsing Fields Book Store on Polk. Founded in 1932 by George Fields, a devotee of Gurdjieff, the store for many years now has specialized in the field of metaphysics and the occult. It has one of the widest (and weirdest) collections in this area you will ever find.

I love this stuff. Scientists report that when we think about religious and occult matters, it stimulates certain parts of our brain that can induce mystical experiences, perhaps something like getting high on marijuana. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

I made it to City Arts & Lectures for the first time this past week to see Miranda July in conversation with her longtime friend Julia Bryan-Wilson, and I’d like to share some of the things I heard. For those of you who don’t know (you probably know), Miranda is one of my favorite artists; if you don’t know why you should click here, here, here, here, and it’s not too late to go here.

“Yes, I wanted the solution to my script,” she said, “but also sort of to life in general, and it seemed better to talk with strangers than to just keep spinning in my own head and my sort of fictional world.” Read the rest of this entry »

As The Storming Bohemian I have written a fair amount over the last couple of years about creative consciousness lost and found.

No one gets into The Garden of Making for free. No one is guaranteed safe passage. And often we find ourselves outside the gate. It feels sometimes like the childhood game of chutes and ladders. One misstep and down we slide. Then we have to find another ladder and on we go, up and down through the long afternoon until the final descent into the undiscovered twilight from which no traveler returns alive. Read the rest of this entry »

The reason we have that sweet spot is that we want our students to be connected to and engaged with writers who are just at the next level above them. Because that’s who you’re really going to learn from, and who you really need to know, because those are the people you’re going to hang out with, those are the people you’re going to read and are the closest to what you’re doing. Read the rest of this entry »

The avant-garde is the people of the world. Never more in my adult life have I realized that the avant-garde is the people of the earth [than] now. No artists, no movement—art movement—can come that will be superior to this motion that’s happened with people all over the world to change the world. Finally. Finally and at last. I’m not talking to idiots. You’ve all felt this! You’ve felt it in your life—don’t tell me you haven’t. You’ve felt it many times in your life. You might have it good, but you’ve seen people eating out of trash cans. I’ve seen grandmothers getting cans so they can make a few dollars. Come on! And we’re supposed to be a society of fairness and democracy. Please! It’s not so. But now has begun a moment that actually is the democratic movement in the world. And that’s why I can only say as a poet I put my words in relation to that. That’s what the poet’s imagination should be.

— Jack Hirschman in conversation with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Selz at Meridian Gallery on November 4th, 2011.

The Q&A followed a couple of readings, which Ferlinghetti “was told to keep… short so we could have a good bullshit session.” The conversation dealt exclusively with the Occupy movement.

(Evan Karp)

It was 2pm on the sunny day of the opening night of Litquake XII and instead of working ahead to meet deadlines I took my advance copy of Josh Mohr‘s Damascus [out this Tuesday] and Roberto Bolaño’s  The Savage Detectives into Precita Park. This time of year is my New Years, after all, and I wanted some time to myself. I don’t do this often; I don’t have a job, and haven’t for the 2.25 years I’ve lived in the Bay Area. Despite that, I don’t take advantage of what might be considered “free time.”

I came across this passage from The Savage Detectives:

I would show him my paintings and he would say fantastic, I love them, that kind of thing. I’ve always found that oppressive. I know he meant what he said, but still, I felt oppressed. Then he would be quiet, smoking, and I would make tea or coffee or bring out a bottle of whiskey. I don’t know, I don’t know, I would think, I might be doing something right, I might be onto something. … The truth is that one day it was all over and I took a look around me. I stopped buying so many magazines and newspapers. I stopped having shows. I started to teach my drawing classes at the high school with humility and seriousness and even (although I don’t make a big deal about it) a sense of humor. Arturo had disappeared from our lives long ago.

Essentially, for those who haven’t read this book, a couple of poets start a new literary movement amongst their friends and roam South America and other parts of the world in search of anyone who might know more information about an obscure poet upon whose legend they have largely based their movement, unheard-of or otherwise disrespected. The effects they have on the many people they interact with range from adoration to denouncement; told mostly in a series of encounters with the two (or one of the) poets, The Savage Detectives is a sprawling debate about the genesis and function of art.

In the passage above, we see one clear example that runs through many of the ‘narrators:’ the effect of their encounters was—if nothing else—an increase in the conversation about the meaning of art. Is their movement a revolution? Is it a legitimate form of art?

I argue that art is what we make it, only as meaningful as we make it. The generations after us will pay attention—on some very real level—to the degree that we pay attention; they will engage with art to some extent in reaction to how we engage. This is true of the people we come into contact with, too. The poets who go around saying “fantastic, I love them, that kind of thing” encourage people to take themselves and their creative works more seriously.

Is there anything more valuable than this? I have a really hard time declaring any of my time ‘free,’ at least in the conventional sense. As Nietzsche says: “Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! But your fiery eyes should tell me: free for what?”

Free to spend my time engaged in self- and communal improvement. I think it’s rather important you know about Josh Mohr’s novel.

I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a part in Damascus when an art installation has been completed with the participation of a live audience. The installation involves the nailing of live fish to wooden boards beside illustrations of soldiers who died during the Iraq War. Syl is the artist.

“Let me remind you of something,” Syl said. “This isn’t the art show. The show hasn’t started yet. You all are a part of its genesis. The show starts once the fish begin to decompose. It starts once this room stinks so much of death that you can’t think of anything else except mortality. There’s nothing in your mind but the fact that twelve people hanging here all died because of that one single lie. All these massacres in the name of oil. “You,” Syl said, and pointed at a young woman, “you’re next.”

One by one, the public helped Syl nail a dozen fish to the wall—one for each portrait. Read it! But after the bar closes, Syl remains with a couple of friends.

“Art should stir shit,” he said.

“Totally.”

“Once it does, then people can take their side. Art should be an accusation. That’s what it’s all about.”

(Nicole McFeely)

There is a science to Jim Nelson’s writing, and I’m not just talking about the way he structures his sentences, paces his dialogue. I’m talking about perspective. I met Jim after watching him give a sneak peek reading of his first book and the newest of the Invisible City Audio Tours, Everywhere Man. In it, a mysterious stranger haunts a group of programmers responsible for converting millions of photographs tourists have posted on the internet into a digital tour of San Francisco. Present but faceless in every photo, Everywhere Man is the hole in their digital perfection. The tour invites readers to help solve this mystery by taking them on a journey through the story’s settings via San Francisco’s Historic cable cars. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

“Art is anything that is pointless and intentional,” says Chicken John in The Book of the IS, vol 1: Fail… to Win: Essays in Engineered Disperfection. Edited by Benjamin Wachs, this sprawling opus on life as art is Chicken’s self-proclaimed “greatest failure,” an admission he made Friday night at the celebration of the book’s release at 111 Minna Gallery.

Easily 1,000 people were in attendance to support the author, who unfolds his life philosophy in a series of 9 true anecdotes that range from his 2007 bid for Mayor of San Francisco—an experiment in performance art that became a serious bid for the office—to his creation of and ringleading role in Circus Redickuless—a traveling show that consisted of talentless anti-performers, no script, and a penchant for chaos. With an introduction by Dave Eggers, who “wouldn’t be here if not for Chicken John,” Fail… to Win attempts to convince us “to stop avoiding conflict…[and] to cultivate our criminal minds.”* Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

“If you’re going to write a book, you might as well swing for the fence; you might as well just go find something that’s a really big topic and then kick it over like a trash can and see what spills out.” So said Jarett Kobek at the release of ATTA, “a fictionalized psychedelic biography of Mohamed Atta that circles around a simple question: what if 9/11 was as much a matter of architectural criticism as religious terrorism?”

Howard Junker, who first published Kobek, was on hand to read from the book [click for videos, read excerpts here and here]. But both had plenty to say. Junker read his Open Letter to President Obama, much in the spirit of this past week of protests. The phrase social-media fueled is of particular interest: swing for the fence; you might as well just go find something that’s a really big injustice and then protest it and see what happens [more soon].

At City Lights Books, where the “legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent Read the rest of this entry »

(Nicole McFeely)

There is a science to Jim Nelson’s writing, and I’m not just talking about the way he structures his sentences, paces his dialogue. I’m talking about perspective. I met Jim after watching him give a sneak peek reading of his first book and the newest of the Invisible City Audio Tours, Everywhere Man. In it, a mysterious stranger haunts a group of programmers responsible for converting millions of photographs tourists have posted on the internet into a digital tour of San Francisco. Present but faceless in every photo, Everywhere Man is the hole in their digital perfection. The tour invites readers to help solve this mystery by taking them on a journey through the story’s settings via San Francisco’s Historic cable cars.

A full-time computer programmer with both a BA and an MFA in Creative Writing, Jim manages to merge two seemingly disparate worlds: the hard science of code and the creativity of fiction. But these worlds aren’t so different, and in Nelson’s hands they come together with a balance that makes this fantastic story unusually real.

Everywhere Man launches on October 15th, just before the Lit Crawl, when Jim will accompany other Invisible City Audio Tours contributors in Clarion Alley for an extended reading from the book. I recently spoke with Jim about Everywhere Man (and Everything Else). This is part 1 of 2: Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

In the past, this story began a lot earlier, with a lover and a best friend. A sleepy old railroad town in the Southeast. But then, the story started even further back. No time for reflection.

The defense objected to my staying in the courtroom after my testimony, the first of the trial, before it began. When the judge overruled this objection, I knew my story was starting all over again.

The purpose of each counsel’s opening statement, the judge explained, is to outline what they expect to demonstrate in the course of the trial—nothing more. My counsel—the state—would attempt to prove the defendant, Edrick Lamont Faust, guilty of aggravated battery; that the incident primarily concerned his attack on me, for which he was charged. Read the rest of this entry »

(Charles Kruger)

Sam Sax, Nic Alea and Andrew Paul Nelson organized New Poetry Mission a few months ago. What they had in mind was a reading series that would exclusively feature “new shit.” They talked about reading material with the ink still wet. They also wanted to raise the critical standard in responding to the work. They had concluded that too much unconditional acceptance was hurting the scene. They meant to take a stand.

The result has been a mixed bag. Certainly, the series has attracted poets with talent, energy and something to say. On every occasion, the room is crowded with enthusiastic performers and audience. There is always some excellent work. Indeed, about six weeks ago, I wrote a very enthusiastic review.

But, sadly, the recent resignation of the diligent Andrew Paul Nelson has been a disappointment. Read the rest of this entry »

(Nicole McFeely)

Beautiful. Simple. Quiet brick. Mixed wood. Cushioned chairs. They offered us cookies and tea, but should we touch anything? Should we? The Matthews seem friendly with one another. Friendly enough to call them The Matthews. They sit close. Whisper and laugh, and we all whisper too. Why do we feel the need to tread so lightly when everyone is so kind? “Some places are sacred,” Evan says to me serenely yet firmly before smiling to shake someone’s hand.

This is sort of like my shoshin, or Beginner’s Mind. These are the first observations I took down sitting in the rows of chairs set up inside the Zen Center while waiting to see Matthew Dickman and Matthew Zapruder read at the final night of Nothing is Hidden. Waiting and wondering what their poetry had in common with Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and why Evan had told me that I could not miss this event. Not should not, could not. When that man says something like that, I listen. So, I decided to cover it, though I didn’t know much about The Matthews yet, and it was my night off.

Oh, yet. You and your foreshadowing. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

You can’t pick this up but it can still infect you.

“I was left alone in the courtyard, and for a minute I couldn’t believe that Mexico City was really out there.” If punctuation could float away… there was something so dubious about that period, how it fell exactly there, that I copied this sentence into my notebook. I was sitting alone in the middle of the crowd gathering at Sugarlump for the release of Chris Colin‘s eBook Blindsight. There was a sign of a book with a slash through it on the front of the door, and on the bar, where I sat, a signup sheet asked for pledges to purchase the book. “God is watching,” it joked, he joked that god is a thing that was once very real, like books, that will eventually become extinct—although invisible isn’t necessarily unreal, like eBooks, or… you got it.

Mexico City was not outside. It’s 2011. This is the edge of where 24th and Latin America still seems like an old-world-new-world intersection.

“At a certain point you need to steep yourself in reality,” says Quim Font Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

After adding the brilliant Jen G to replace Andrew Paul Nelson, who is busy with the band, the new shit show is in danger of becoming too slam/performance -centric. “So there’s been an awful lot of pro-Santa Cruz sentiment spoken up here in the last five minutes,” G said after 3 or 4 poets in a row got up and repped the city. “As somebody who’s lived there, I can say, doubtlessly, that that place sucks dolphin cocks from hell.”

That issue notwithstanding, the quality of the work this past week included a smattering of superb poems, most notably those of Terry Taplin, Daphne Gottlieb, Jasmine, James Cagney and Leo Bryant… But it also included as many moments not worth sharing. There was one surreal stretch of time during which the whole room joyously sang Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

Dear Reader,

What can we expect […?] Everything, but we won’t get it.

— Frank O’Hara, “Personism: A Manifesto”

We almost always leave this letter for last. At this writing (now then, of course, but in that old now), the issue is almost complete, so tantalizingly close to finished that its future already stretches before it. Still, it does not yet exist. We could stop right now and it wouldn’t be — this is the incomprehensible power of Almost. All our contributors’ ceaseless toiling and all our ceaseless-except-for-copious-coffee-breaks efforts would be for nothing. The issue would stay locked away, awaiting its finish forever. Yet here you are, dear reader, (in the new now) reading this — so it seems Almost must have stretched itself further towards its shining future and made contact.

So begins the introduction to issue #3 of We Still Like, which confirms everything I recently said about this incredible small batch journal: the design is impeccable – they bound the things themselves with literal brass tacks, people – and the content is smart, funny, diverse, and incredibly inviting. I almost stole one Read the rest of this entry »

(Charles Kruger)

In Japan, Jack Hirschman would surely be designated as a “Living National Treasure.” In America, he should at least receive honors at the Kennedy Center. But alas, it is America after all. But San Francisco, I am happy to say, appreciates its own treasure: Hirschman was appointed San Francisco Poet Laureate from 2006 through 2009, and continues to be honored as poet in residence for the Friends of the San Francisco Library, for whom he curates and hosts the reading series Thursdays At Readers as well as organizes Poets 11 and the San Francisco International Poetry Festival.

A few days after attending Thursdays At Readers on Aug 4, he and I sat down together at Cafe Trieste in North Beach (famously, his “office” for many years) to talk about the series and the poetry scene in general. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

As I set out to write about this past week something unexpected happened: my conscious mind admitted that no matter how loud it is, insistent and commanding, controlling, it really is but the chauffeur of my subconscious. All my drives and deeds the constant need to subsume it. I know best, I say; I push the days forward with all of my might, and push with my pushing way into the night; I know best that I am tired.

O subconscious, divulge to Litseen the ever-sinking, manifold meanings of Litseen. Reveal the memorrhaging of roadside headlights in deermind. Still on road, keep moving! Portend the pre-teloi, so we may peer into mirror and find Read the rest of this entry »

(Charles Kruger)

My beloved and much-admired writing teacher, the great Jack Grapes, often tells his students, “Talent is the enemy of genius.”

He is making the point that in matters of art, doing something correctly according to all the right rules and principles can be a straightjacket, locking the writer into a student-type voice that makes no mistakes but is so committed to a preordained path that the accidents which can send the work tumbling into the abyss of the deep voice, where genius has a chance, are simply not allowed. The writer gets where s/he set out to go, but the journey is never very exciting.

Jack often explains this with a metaphor about “the cutoff to Bakersfield.” Say what? Read the rest of this entry »

(Anchester Xyletol)

Featured Event: Thursday, August 11th: We Still Like: ALMOST

“Operating on the simple-but-radical premise that we won’t wait for permission from cultural gatekeepers to put what we create into the world, that writing should not be used as an empty signifier to establish elitist cred and that art can engage real people and real ideas about our real lives,” We Still Like is the small-batch of literary journals, with writing so potent it forces you to reevaluate your grasp of language and the power of literature, and is the perfect accompaniment for The Bold Italic’s 3^rd Base: A Dogpatch Microhood Event. Editors and Co-Creators of We Still Like Sarah Ciston and Chris Pedler will host a release party for Issue 3: ALMOST (Rickshaw Bagworks, 904 22^nd St, 6pm, Free). See The Bold Italic for more details. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

If you weren’t at Quiet Lightning‘s recent show at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, and you haven’t seen the photos yet, do that now. Whether you were there or not, it seems (according to their website) that Quiet Lightning is happy to hear any suggestions for the second installment of The Greenhouse Effect — not only QL’s first series but the first-ever, of any kind, at the first conservatory in the United States of America. What will they think of next, you ask? What will you think of next?

It is true: QL is not yet organized to the point of having committees and, well, in short: an infrastructure beyond the recently formed board of directors. But as new readers participate in this literary nonprofit each month, and the monthly shows — of which there have now been 20 — increasingly represent a more vast and unpredictable swathe of the Bay Area (and beyond!) community, it is increasingly obvious that anything might happen. Read the rest of this entry »