June 28th at McNally's: Back Room Live

In a semi-dramatic, semi-minimalist effort to lighten my load before I move to Pittsburgh, I recently traded in the motorbike for a heavy, aerodynamically challenged, highlighter-yellow bicycle. It's kind of like riding a cast-iron can opener through very wet, very deep sand, and yet it took me down to McNally's Pub for Ms. V.E. Grenier's reading series a couple Wednesdays ago.

It's probably been about a year or so since I've seen an episode of Back Room Live, but I made the trek for the sake of seeing Gillian Hamel, Jenny Drai, Achiote Press co-editor Craig Santos Perez, and Sara Mumolo. Jenny Drai - the only person with whom I was previously unacquainted - finished her reading with a great auto-apostrophic poem about Kung Fu and hiding a bottle of good whiskey from the person who helped pay for it. Unfortunately, she claimed that she was going to retire it after this reading, but at least I was there to see its last (and first, I think) performance. I'm definitely not too proud to admit that I cherish scarcity.

Speaking of limited supplies and hopelessly steep demands, I also picked up a copy of Mr. Santos Perez's new chapbook "Preterrain" from Corollary Press, which is printed in an edition of 150 copies. Included are eighteen single-block poems interspersed with backslashes, as if the process of lineation has been reversed or, alternately, as if each poem's appearance becomes the altered facsimile of an original source text. I hadn't planned on writing a review here, but I will add that the title serves as a wonderfully understated binding material for the poetry that follows by suggesting an impossibly pre-"terra" and pre-"rain" landscape. It raises the question of perspective via this equation of pre-cartography with the non-existence of both land and atmosphere and, in this context, the poems offer a multitude of maps/lineations that resist the notion of a single, architectural authority. I'm mostly thinking of the untitled poem "vii," which I'm including here in its entirety:

lighting the architecture of every dwelling / we lose more
and more / representative of all they surveyed, every
nerve / the sense of inclusion in english, in one context /
they used to make compasses based on ocean currents /
imagine an anchor used to measure distance / imagine
an anchor as conduit, translating waves that touch into
direction / water worn lines rise toward the named shore

It looks like Corollary is selling them for $6. Groovy.

***

I've lately realized that my dislike toward Goodreads (and similar Facebook applications) stems from its ability to enable and exploit my complete mismanagement of that tendency to collect and accumulate. Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful for the exposure to all these brand-spanking-new publications, but these sites/applications have only inspired me to catalogue the books I already own (but am not making time to read) or, alternatively, to assemble lists of items that I hope to pick up when Berkeley - first the university, now the city - isn't bleeding me dry. Besides, I never really cared for the pervading "gotta keep up with the Joneses" mentality.

Anyway, I'm going to try to list all the books that I read over the course of the next month, mostly in order to motivate myself to dedicate a few undistracted hours per day to finishing some required reading. I'll usually try to include a couple thoughts, but not tonight.

A couple years ago, I found this book on the side of the road in Berkeley, and I just got around to finishing it yesterday. Dig it.

Upcoming Readings

I haven't read anywhere in quite a few months, and then there are suddenly a bunch of things that have all been scheduled around the same time. I'm partly writing this down so that I don't forget where I'm supposed to be...

April 25th, Friday: Celebration of Writers at the International House. 4-6pm.
April 29th, Tuesday: Creative Writing Minors Reading in the Maude Fife Room in Wheeler. 4-6pm.
May 1st, Thursday: Lunch Poems in the Morrison Library. 12:10pm.

One other event of note: Achiote Press is having a Spring Issue release reading on Friday, April 25th in Stephens Hall from 6-8pm. They've been working hard to put out good local chapbooks, so it should be worth stopping by.

Jack Hirschman at Moe's, April 15th.

Very quickly, I want to post these pictures I took of Jack Hirschman at Moe's last week. As we were coming down the stairs to the basement, we could already hear the unusual grit in his voice, which he explained as resulting from some sort of medical procedure that had jangled his vocal chords a bit. At least, I think that’s what he said. We came in a few minutes late and only caught the very end of it.

His voice, if anything, added to his reading, which was equally characterized by his affectionate, careful enunciation and the kind of occasionally squinted eye that reminds one of a mischievous grandfather. The audience, likewise, arrived largely devoid of pretense, and the room had a feeling of warmth and camaraderie that one doesn’t always encounter at poetry readings.

Mr. Hirschman read primarily from his newest book, "All That's Left," about which he joked, "it's only a week old, and already it's a dollar off." We were fortunate to hear a preview of Mr. Hirschman’s May Day poem, which you should go watch him read at City Lights on May 1st.

Disclaimer

I might start posting on here again in order to offer support for poetry, music, and art that I like and think people should know about. I have decided, after some limited and not particularly introspective consideration, that I won't apologize unnecessarily for the fact.