Literarisches Events (in and around Lawrence KS)

  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Thursday, September 11, 7:00 p.m., Spooner Hall, KU Campus.
  • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD. Lawrence. Friday, September 19, 7:00 p.m. Lawrence Public Library. Sponsored by Raven Bookstore.
  • DENNIS ETZEL, JR. & RACHEL CROSS. Lawrence. Thursday, September 25, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • TONY TRIGILIO. Lawrence. Thursday, Oct. 2, 4:00 p.m., English Room, Kansas Union, KU Campus. FREE.
  • CALEB PUCKETT & JUSTIN RUNGE. Lawrence. Thursday, October 16, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.
  • BEN LERNER. Kansas City, MO. Thursday, October 23, 7:00 p.m., Epperson Auditorium, Vanderslice Hall on the KCAI campus, 4415 Warwick Blvd.
  • KRISTIN LOCKRIDGE & ROBERT DAY. Lawrence. Thursday, December 4, 7:00 p.m., Raven Bookstore, 6 E. 7th St.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Letter to a Young Poet

Dear Young Poet,

You need to know:
I don't care about your exotic vacation locale,
or your feelings about the peasants there.
I don't care what happened to your pet.
I don't care about your sex life.
I know that's hard to believe.

I don't want your vatic nuggets of wisdom,
esp. that one? - at the end of your poem?
Even when you're old enough
to dispense them plausibly,
leave it to the self-help books
and checkout-line philosophers, ok?

Please don't talk to me in present tense
unless you are transcribing something
actually happening as you write.
If you're writing while it's actually happening,
please get a life. . . . Especially a sex life
(look, if you were raised Catholic, we know for sure
it's not as fascinating as you're making it sound).

Don't tell me what I do ("you do this, you do that").
You're not here.
I know what I do, and that's not it.

And don't use foreign words if you can help it.
Esp. when describing your exotic vacation locale.
OK, you went to high school. We know.
You don't have to tell me anything
about yourself to make me feel sorry for you.

If you "weird up" a confessional poem,
it's a weirded-up confessional poem.
Everyone will know this
(writing confessional poetry in 2010
is like writing "thee" and "thou" in 1968
in a poem w/rhyme and meter -
so if you do it, do it proudly).

Feel free to use "thee" and "thou."
Think of it as "Post-TheeThou" poetry.

And then and then you don't
have to think about line
breaks at all. Or you could go back
to writing stories in prose.

O yeah and BTW it's like
what we imagine knowledge to be, b/c
I have wasted my life
reading poems
that have already been written before.

Thank you very much for your consideration.
Please do not hesitate to contact me
if I can be of any further assistance.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Sunday, April 11, 2010

MEADOWLARK MARATHON POEM PLAYLIST

Here is a playlist of poems read at the Meadowlark in Denver, Fri., 9 April 2010. It's not a forensic reconstruction, but doggone it, it's the best I can do. Read, link to, pass along, ignore, mythologize.

To click on the readers directly, click here.

Kathleen Ossip - "The Deer Path," The Believer (forthcoming May 2010).

Daniel Borzutzky - "Budget Cuts Prevent Me From Writing Poetry," PFS Post; and "In Other Words," in One Size Fits All (e-chap; Scantily Clad 2009).

Janet Holmes - From THE MS OF M Y KIN (Shearsman 2009). Janet also edits Ahsahta Press.

Tony Trigilio - "The Manchurian Candidate (1962)," MiPOesias Summer 2008, 55-56.

Sandra Doller - "He Works for a Smithy," from Chora (Ahsahta 2010).

Keith Newton - "I Lived Among Girls," included as part of a video collaboration in SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records (2009). Keith is the editor of Harp & Altar.

Charles Alexander - Coda from “Pushing Water” (unpublished – for parts 1-32 of this long poem, see Charles’ book Certain Slants, Junction Press 2007). Charles is the publisher of CHAX Press.

Chris Davidson - "It Really Happened," "The Opossum," and "Farewell" (these last part of 52 Songs).

Shanna Compton - "Fabulous Fake," Spooky Boyfriend 1; "Argument Nine" (audio), Dusie; "Collapse Seems Too Romantic a Word," No Tell Motel (24 March 2010). Shanna publishes Bloof Books.

Rachel Loden - "Scarified Beauty"; and "Black Sun on a White Sun," New American Writing 27.

Jennifer L. Knox - "Nice 'N' Easy Medium Natural Ash Brunette," Octopus 12; "Burt Reynolds FAQ," Abraham Lincoln 3 (summer/fall 2008).

Peter Davis - "Poem Addressing People Who Love Heavy Metal But Don't Know Anything About Poetry," "Poem Addressing People Who Are Reading this For the Third or Fourth Time," "Poem Addressing My Contemporaries, Many of Whom I Am Competing Against for Sweet Teaching Positions." These will appear in Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! (Bloof, forthcoming - scroll down). There are also probably links to some of them somewhere on Peter's blog. We just can't be sure.

Ana Božičević - "Intervals of Please," Wheelhouse (winter/spring 2009).

Joseph Harrington - “The History of Sexuality,” A cappella Zoo 4, and "[history becomes fate when]," from Things Come On (forthcoming Wesleyan UP 2011; also in P-Queue 6, p. 113).

Aaron Belz - "Avatar"; and "My Last Duchess," "Regret," "Dial Tone," "My Chiquita," and "Love-Hat Relationship," all in Lovely, Raspberry (Persea 2010).

Susan M. Schultz - "Old Women Look Like This," Honolulu Weekly 7 Apr. 2010 (excerpt in sidebar). Susan publishes Tinfish Books.

K. Silem Mohammad - 2 Sonnagrams: “‘TV Gunfight: Tut, Tut! Tivo Bullfight: Huh, What?’—T. T. Mutt” [from Sonnet 38 (“How can my muse want subject to invent”)], Open Letter 14.2 (2010); and “Uh Huh, Uh Huh: I Dry Fried Air, I Eye a Freed Ferry, I Fry Runny Ray’s IV” [from Sonnet 104 (“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”)], trnsfr 2 (2010).

Steven Schroeder - "Never Loved a Shovel" (title stolen from The Clash); "Get Your Fucking Shinebox" (title stolen from Goodfellas); "Face like a Barndoor" (title stolen from Robert Creeley), forthcoming in The Journal.

Katie Degentesh - "I Wanted to Be Closer to God," from Reasons to Have Sex (working title), some of which will appear in A Public Space 11.

James Belflower - From "Johnny Cash Poems," originally published in Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks (unarchived, alas). For similar work by James, see EOAGH 5 (only it's Blanchot instead of Cash).

Chad Parmenter - "Vivienne Eliot Stands at Her Window to Pray."

Kate Greenstreet - "[He stands beside the body of the man he couldn't help]"; and "suddenly as night," in The Harp & Altar Anthology, ed. Keith Newton and Eugene Lim (2010).

Jorn Ake - "Watching Hogan's Heroes in German," from Boys Whitstling Like Canaries (Eastern Washington UP 2009).

Reb Livingston - "Lament for Fronting," Coconut 14; "Spell for Refunding Her Who Bozoed a Wineglass," No Tell Motel; and "Diminished Prophecy 6:3," Gargoyle 55.

Ben Doller - "[Your ode is too short...]" and "[I wasn't outraged...]," both from FAQ: (Ahsahta 2009).

Jeff T. Johnson - “Separation Anxiety” and “What Was That Again,” Cannibal 5.

Luc Simonic - "Joy at a Truck Stop" (reg. req.); "Giving Up on Poetry at a Young Age" (scroll down).

Amy King -"Necessary Instinct"; and "Brooklyn White Ink Party," Moria.

Thanks to the readers - it was a knockout.

Friday, March 19, 2010

The COUNT-DOWN BEGINS!

It's down to the wire at Up From the Ground - only two more weeks until . . . well, until the first ten months' worth are enshrined forever as a PDF. The blog will continue (apparently). But since the last few posts will be at the beginning of the PDF/MFA, Jen is using them as "introductory" material. So, if you've been wondering what the hell she's doing, now's the time to find out!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Alex Chilton is dead

there goes the last vestige of my M'phis youth . . .

Thursday, March 4, 2010

I shall write no more
poems of the flat
declarative statement.
Starting now.
It’ll be great.
I promise.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

if you use blogger, are you ever tempted to punch the button that says "monetize"? i mean, it's just a button - all you have to do is push it. and you're monetized. everybody's getting monetized. why not??

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Inexpert, I
notice with the attention
and drifting inattention
of poetry

- Kaia Sand, Remember to Wave

Monday, February 22, 2010

A.) “People willingly believe what they want to believe.”

- Julius Caesar, The Gallic War

B.) "There's a sucker born every minute."

- attrib. P.T. Barnum

C.) "The customer's always right."

- American saying

D.) "The fool sees not the same tree that he wise man sees."

- Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

E.)  "A word, to the wise, is sufficient."

- trad. saying; attribution unknown

E.) ". . . silence, cunning, and exile."

- Joyce, Portait of the Artist

Friday, February 19, 2010

Can we do anything with social ills besides descry and decry them? Or engage in senseless individual acts of violence?