Did I Mention that LYN HEJINIAN IS COMING TO K.U.???!

That's right! Quoting the press release, written by sources close to the matter: "Award-winning poet, essayist, and translator Lyn Hejinian will visit the University of Kansas on March 6, 2008.  At 4:00 p.m., she will read from her work in the Spencer Museum of Art, on the KU campus. At 7:30 p.m., at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union, she will deliver the KU English Department’s prestigious John F. Eberhardt Lecture.  The lecture, entitled 'Outside Poetry,' will deal with literary works that combine or undercut traditional genres."  

Y'all come. (scroll down for more info)

Surrealism in Topeka

Sort of. Saturday night went to a reading, in a coffeehouse in a Topeka, Kansas shopping mall, by Anne Boyer (The Romance of Happy Workers, Coffee House) and Hadara Bar-Nadav (A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, MARGIE/IntuiT House). I guess I would call Hadara's poems neosurrealistica (with some emphasis on the realistica), and Anne's poems, while carrying more of an identifiable (representational?) social edge, is still pretty edgy in terms of representationality. In any event, it was a truly surreal experience hearing these poems next door to the nice Republicans buying meat at the Hy-Vee. Didn't a famous microcephalic social critic once say that life is just a blur of Republicans and meat? Well, it is around here. Except perhaps the poetry, which is well worth checking out (see, e.g., the LOCUSPOINT issue, at right).