and not only BUFFALO

Me at NY coffeeshop (photo by Tim Peterson)

My 2-week trip away from Tucson was not just about poet-publishers in Buffalo, but began April 8 in Olympia, Washington. Claire Sammons picked me up at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and I gave a reading, answered questions and engaged students and community in conversation, and met students individually for advice and critique, over the next few days at Evergreen State College, whose poetry & poetic needs are in the talented hands of Leonard Schwartz (author of Chax Press published A Message Back and Other Furors). I stayed with Leonard and his wife Zhang Er and their lively 9-year-old daughter Cleo (or is it Clio?). Zhang Er has, for some time, been one of the best listeners to my poetry, always having something insightful to say, particularly about the ongoing poem Pushing Water. This time was no exception.

Highlights of the Olympia stay were a seder at the home of Ariel and Sequoyah, and meeting their new baby, Isaac; hiking in the Capitol Forest with Leonard, Zhang Er, and Cleo, spotting the "ghost cat" outside the window, seeing early trillium blossoms, talking with the students about their work, particularly spending a bit more time with Claire and Corwin, talking for the radio with Leonard, meeting Ernestine Kimbro at the Evergreen Library, and of course the 3:30am wake-up and ride back to the airport with Claire. I don't have photos from this part of my travels, which is too bad. The radio talk with Leonard will soon be available for listening on the Pennsound web site.

After Olympia, I got to be home for a day and a half (this saved me, I think -- at least a little time with Cynthia & Nora, and an easter dinner with Sheila & Rowe & Brian, too!), then boarded another early morning flight, this time for New York City. Flew into LaGuardia, bussed to my abode there, The Hotel Alexander on W. 94th St., and quickly found, about 8 blocks north, on Broadway, Cafe du Soleil —I highly recommend that restaurant. And this was a Monday night, "steak night," with several steak options, all priced at $12.95. Mine was terrific. I ended up eating at this restaurant 3 times, and I would go back. Reasonably priced, excellent service, terrific food — possible to spend quite a bit here, but, if you watch the choices and don't drink 3 glasses of wine, actually quite reasonable. And on Wednesdays, as I recall, wine bottles are half price.

Tim Peterson at NY coffeeshop

The next morning after breakfast I took off for Grand Central Terminal, catching the train to East Haven, Connecticut, there picked up by Tim Peterson and his mother Lynn, and driven to Storrs and the University of Connecticut. Talk in the car was of Wordsworth, Spenser, allegory, David Jones, and Charles Olson. At 4pm I gave a talk at the university, sponsored by the Dodd Research Center (home of the Charles Olson archive) on David Jones and Charles Olson, issues of space and time in their work. A fair crowd, talk well received, but we hardly made a dent in the lovely spread of food and drink provided. Then we were off for a pizza dinner, with Richard and Lynn, Tim and me. I tried Dogs Head ale for the first time — it was fine, as was the pizza. Always great to see ALL of the Petersons!

I was lodged well at the Nathan Hale hotel on the U-Conn campus, to which I returned, and I was picked up the following morning (now Wednesday), by the Petersons, for a drive across Connecticut to the coast, then down to East Haven, where we saw a bit of Yale architecture, art museum (terrific Picasso/language exhibition), then the Beinecke Library, which is a wonder. Unfortunately, our visit there was cut short as we were literally hounded out. A foreign ambassador or other dignitary was about to visit, and security personnel with dogs came in to clear out the building — oh why can't the likes of them mix with the likes of us?

Lunch at the Anchor Inn, once proud purveyor of fine college fare, now a bit down from its historic heights, but still welcome to the hungry traveler. Then the train to New York and the only mis-adventure on the trip, as Tim, traveling with me, exited the train for a soda, not knowing the train was about to leave. He couldn't get back on in time, I couldn't open the door from inside, so I was off to New York's Grand Central on my own with Tim's luggage. He arrived about an hour later, and I was waiting for him. I think, perhaps, in my attempt to get all of his gear and mine, I may have left my calendar book, with all my travel contacts, on the train; somewhere about that time on this trip, I lost that book, so I didn't manage to contact several people I would have liked to have seen, though most made it to one of the events I presented over the next few days.

Grand Central Terminal, NYC

I made it back to the Hotel Alexander, where my suitcase was waiting, a little late to be able to make the Alice Notley/Ron Padgett reading, which had been on my agenda. So instead I went back up to the Cafe du Soleil again, and had a lovely light dinner of salade mescluns and onion soup, with a glass of champagne. I then went to find a book for my daughter Kate, who was seeking a complete edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in Middle English. That ended up being harder to find than I thought, and while I couldn't find it that night on the upper West side, I eventually found one later at The Strand bookstore. I was well ready, then, for sleep.

The next morning, Thursday, was about visiting the Met to see the Pierre Bonnard show, which was stunning. Bonnard's late paintings, and his thoughts on painting, hit me at just the right time. I could see connections in his handling of interior/exterior divisions, as well as in his brushwork, to the poet/painter David Jones, who has been the subject of my research and reading for not quite a year now. I also simply felt awed by the paintings. I had gone there specifically at the request of my wife, the painter Cynthia Miller, whose own work bears more than a little relation to that of Bonnard. So I bought the catalogue for her, but in a way, for me. I was then able to drop my purchases at the hotel before having lunch with Kyle Schlesinger (Cafe du Soleil again).

Kyle and I then spent a few hours in Central Park amid the walkers and the cherry blossoms, and he interviewed me for a book he's working on, of interviews with poet-bookmakers. Kyle himself is the new (not so new now, though, as he's been up to it for several years) lion in this field, and is doing heroic service by documenting, presenting, and celebrating the work and thoughts of others in the field. I'm happy to be included in his work.

I stayed with him through the day, arriving at a few minutes before 6pm at Steve Clay and Julie Harrison's loft, also home of Granary Books, in Soho, where I was to give a talk in the "Threads" series, a group of talks by poet-bookmakers. The talk I gave was an early preview of what would be my talk at the Buffalo Poet-Publishers symposium a few days later. Before a choice audience of great friends and book people and poetry people and art people, including Simon Pettet, Tim Peterson, Jen Bervin, Jessi Atwood, Joe Sierra, Summer Browning, Steve Clay and Julie and their lovely daughters Ruby and Naomi, and just a few others (small "studio" audience, with the talk intended for web broadcast later via Pennsound), I gave this talk which traces my own life toward books, during (and forecasting after) books, and between the various places that poet-bookmakers find themselves between. A mix of memoir, poetics, poetry, and consideration of problematics of poetry & book issues, this was a truly important piece for me to write, and I was really glad it was received so well.

Mark Weiss at NY coffeeshop

Afterward, dinner at Fanelli's, where my diabetic diet had me eat the sesame chicken salad and only glance lovingly at everyone else's famous Fanelli burgers. I was in great company, though, and that was true throughout these travels.

Next morning, Friday, spent shopping at Columbia for my daughter Nora, finding not one but two t-shirts, though not the sweatshirt (it had to be a very specific one) she wanted. Then off for a late morning conversation with Charles Bernstein at his apartment, a few words with Felix Bernstein, too, and a lunch with Charles at Saigon Grill.

After that, I made my way to the lower east side to rendezvous with Simon Pettet outside St. Mark's. Simon is a love, my friend, one of my favorite conversationalists, my co-reader of Wordsworth and Keats, a part of my heart. We were together for five and a half hours, sharing thoughts on Keats, David Jones, Allen Ginsberg, recent poetry history, problems with ambition in poetry circles, our common friends like Ed Foster, Leonard Schwartz, and Zhang Er, and a lot more. We shared bench time, a walk through community gardens, a bit of time in front of Charlie Parker's last residence, a pint of beer in a local tavern, and eventually a lovely Hungarian goulash dinner at The Neptune (favorite meeting place and dining place, always, for Simon), a meal entirely off my diabetic charts (but ok, my one indulgence on this entire trip), and eventually parted about 7pm, where I went back to the hotel to read the Belladonna book by and for Emma Bernstein (also by Susan Bee and Marjorie Perloff, with an additional essay by Johanna Drucker).

Emma full of life and art, Emma we miss — my two lasting memories of Emma will always be of her in Tucson at about 5 years old playing with her doll Angelina, holding a person-doll conversation under the dining table, and Emma at 15 riding in the back of my pickup truck on the way to a dinner for the Tucson Poetry Festival. Losing Emma, for all who knew her and her terrific family, was the low point of the last seveal months, and will continue to effect us. Thank you, Charles, for the book, and for a lot more. The book is terrific, although one prime effect was that it made me want to be with my family, amid such primary connections.

The next morning I breakfasted with the terrific Jessi Atwood, Chax bookbinder and New York art school model, in Soho, and went with her to Chelsea to see Richard Tuttle's "Walking on Air" show, which is well worth seeing. Then across the street to the CUE Art Foundation (Jessi had to leave for work about this time), where I said hello to Ryan where Cynthia had her terrific show last year and where I read with Ron Silliman. Ryan as bubbly and enthusiastic as ever, wanted to know everything about Cynthia's work now and my New York outings.

I then had enough time to go back to the hotel for an hour or so of rest before going to the Bowery Poetry Club for my reading at 4pm with Akilah Oliver. That reading was a treat, both the doing of it, the talk with Charles Bernstein and Ulla Dydo and Tim Peterson and Mark Weiss and Akilah and others. I was so glad Ulla (our great Gertrude Stein scholar and elucidator) could come. And I was particularly happy to see Susan Bee and talk with her!

Tim Peterson and me at NY coffeeshop (photo by Penelope Bloodworth)

That night we went to a fine and inexpensive Turkish buffet restaurant, then for dessert (I had a bit from others' plates) and coffee at a historic lower east side (1st Ave at about 11th St.) bakery and coffee house, with more conversation with Mark, meeting Tim's good friend Penelope Bloodworth who was delightful, and Geoff Olsen (I think, though I am beginning to mis-remember names, not quite a week later —I met so many people on this trip!). About midnight or so I made it back to the hotel, and the next morning, early, checked out and caught the M60 bus to LaGuardia for a flight to Buffalo, along with Brenda Iijima. And that is the subject of a different post!

Brenda Iijima in Buffalo

What a terrific trip to New York, and always a pleasure to read for the audiences there, and this time, to give much more of a glimpse, through the "Threads" talk, into who I am and what I do, largely among people who share the work and the life in some important ways.

And it is absolutely terrific to be home in Tucson with my family, my loves.

Nancy Tokar Miller's IN RETROSPECT

Nancy Tokar Miller's "In Retrospect" exhibition opened yesterday afternoon, when she did a walk-through talk about her work, after which the opening reception was held from 5pm - 7pm. Quite a crowd! But the real attractions are the paintings. This is probably the most beautiful exhibition of paintings I've ever seen at the Univ of Arizona Museum of Art. Please, for yourselves, if you care about art, or painting, get there. You won't be sorry. I also hope you can come to the poetry reading there on March 25, Wed, at 4pm. Here's the announcement from the exhibition invitation:

The University of Arizona Museum of Art is pleased to present Nancy Tokar Miller's first career survey. Focused on important works since 1971, the exhibition reveals how Tokar Miller's practice has shifted and deepened, while remaining ardently invested in the fundamentals of painting: the communicative capabilities of line and gesture, the evocative brilliance of color, and the endless plasticity of the medium. Inspired by American Color-Field painting and Asian aesthetic traditions, informed by travel, photographs and memory, Tokar Miller creates formal relationships that convey a distinctive sense of spiritual calm.

The exhibition remains up through April 5, 2009. The museum is located at 1031 North Olive Road, just off the corner of Speedway & Park on the UA campus. Parking available in the UA Park Avenue Garage. Access UAMA by way of pedestrian underpass at the east end of the garage. Museum hours are Tues-Fri 9am to 5pm, Sat & Sun Noon to 4pm (closed Mondays & UA holidays).

On Wednesday, March 25, at 4pm:

Charles Alexander reads selections of poetry in response to Tokar Miller's artwork, in the Museum galleries.

An extensive catalog, with contributions by UAMA exec director Charles A. Guerin, art historian Paul Eli Ivey, gallerist Terry Etherton, gallerist Jennifer Doran, and poet Charles Alexander, accompanies the exhibition.

An added bonus: pages from the book WITNESS, by Nancy Tokar Miller and Kathleen Fraser, designed, printed, bound, & published by Chax Press in a fine art limited edition, have been mounted and framed and are included in Tokar Miller's retrospective exhibition. In addition, a case in the exhibition features the bound book in both a closed view and a view open to a double-page spread of dynamic visual/text interplay.

Paitings pictured here by Nancy Tokar Miller:
top Essaouira, 2000, Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 62 inches, Courtesy of the artist
next Elephant Terrace, 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 62 x 79 inches, Courtesy of Etherton Gallery

Aviary Corridor

Listening to a midi file of section one of Tim Risher's Aviary Corridor, right now, I have little sense of the complexity I heard not quite two weeks ago, and again not quite one week ago, at performances of this work in Bothell, Washington, and in Seattle.

I don't consider myself a "lyric" or "lyrical" poet in a traditional sense, yet I do believe I use my ear, in writing, always. Each word, in fact quite often each syllable, just has to sound right. And that's exactly the sense I had when listening to Risher's composition which set my text for soprano voice, singing with string quartet, flute, and piano. The work has many qualities of contemporary music, such as repetition rather in the manner of minimalism, dissonance, oddly sounded violins (to my ear, although quite beautiful odd soundings), and more. Yet it also had the sense of very precise music as in early music, and baroque music, though without the shift to more rococo sensationalism. It did not surprise me at all to find that Risher has played early music and that he has composed "new music" for baroque ensembles. The performance also benefitted from terrific musical direction by Mike Katell and great performances by Megan Drake (soprano), Jesse Myers (piano), Erik Anspach (flute), Tim Strait (violin), Heather Elsa (violin), Melissa Hughes (viola), and Brad Hawkins (cell0). The performance on April 25, and the subsequent one on May 2, could never have happened at all without the indefatigable work of Jeanne Heuving, the support of her colleagues at UW-Bothell, and the support of the members of the subtext collective.

You can scroll down on the compositions page of Tim Risher's web site to Aviary Corridor and listen to the midi files for parts one and four. But you won't get the sense of inter-instrumental dynamics and wonder he has put into this piece. A recording was made of the U of Washington, Bothell performance, and I hope I might someday listen many more times and provide a more complete description of the work, and perhaps put a part of it on this blog. For now, you'll have to do with the midi files and the text.

Aviary Corridor

1.
hallelujah
chorus
swift
fusion

MULTITUDES

despite the agony of worship
underneath a tree

2.
which is not which is not
the world
in a green coat

SCREAMING

among a different
other

3.
The world above
or contains
and

aviary
corridors
(hummingbirds fly through red hoops)

forensics multiply
UPON
stemmed tides

4.
for a minute
a bit of wood
remembers
the markings
indiscriminate
threshold
of painful lodgings
deals composed
tonight, who is watching

5.
tremolo
in the attic
or echo

twice willing
aforementioned sins

Redeem

a night's loding
or fractional

6.
underpass mural remembers
garden to garders

one can not
say the past
aloud
or
speak a person

7.
I know a man
who said that
wisely
take the fifth
on Stone Avenue
two miles north
to a light
turn
a direction
stirrups render
singly

8.
no thing
attaches
he needs
a bowl of soup
Tuesday
watch the thermometer
for a time
something alters
or runs
around a river
wet

9.
she becomes
watch now
or enter
firmly
the only
manner music
frayed
at the edges
she
comes

10.
a language
depicts, detains, detours
toward statement
one means a friend
or two
takes twisting
tongues
Deliver
or find first
figs, branches

Right now this is my favorite version of the poem, and you can find it here on the EPC site, put there some years ago by Chris Alexander. You will also find there something of the history of the poem and the visual art work of the same title by Cynthia Miller that preceded the poem. This poem keeps getting a lot of life, and I don't know what's next, except that we hope for, and are working toward, more performances of the musical song cycle.

A slightly different, more condensed version of the poem (and I also like this version quite a lot) is available in my newest book, Certain Slants, available from Junction Press.

IN NEW YORK JANUARY 13-16

I'm looking forward to seeing all my New York and NY area friends soon, particularly at the following events with Manhattan locations:

January 14, 2pm - 4pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (at Bleeker)
Book Launch Celebrating the Following Books:
Certain Slants, by Charles Alexander (Junction Press)
Mirth, by Linda Russo (Chax Press)
Since I Moved In, by Tim Peterson (Gil Ott Award winner,Chax Press)
After Image, by Charles Borkhuis (Chax Press)
Swoon Noir, by Bruce Andrews (Chax Press)
Analects on a Chinese Screen, by Glenn Mott (Chax Press)
Born Two, by Allison Cobb (Chax Press)

January 15, 8pm
Poetry Project at St. Mark's
131 E. 10th St.
A Poetry Reading by Tim Peterson & Charles Alexander

See you there!

arc of light / dark matter 17

With a new book coming out of work, for the most part, quite different from my 1992 book, arc of light / dark matter, I want to stress how that kind of work is still with me, still really important to me. I don't want it to be lost. Here is part 17, to which I randomly just opened the book.

able to buy more socks, examined by lips, at an austere angle, what my name is, beginning an orange without an anticipation of biting or sucking, music by any other question marking time a made thing compromising the improvisation, hips palpitating, rich fibre, two voices one with melody the other as if grunting were rhythmic punctuation, not broiled or otherwise heated with spice, killing to lessen the world's music never considered by those opposed to the war, brown hair, holding a microphone with mixed purposes, agnostic, fit for a sleeping cat with white stomach never heard the news, no one in the world, her glasses, red a skin or not shared, fully clothed at least until, the myth of self, just saying what the ear allows as speech without a sense of expression made, reception as in love of water, good for the hair and skin even without rubbing another, soul as site, moves together, almost incomprehensible words grinning, the end of a sentence encountered with no color except perhaps red for that moves, from a wound a window to see why the bomgs decided this was a time to fly, foreign films several times a day thanks to cable's unending novelty or slow repetition, asking the moon or forgive me, arm rubbed bu cat's nose, chimes delivered, photographic intentions snapshot or otherwise, and in friendship, to discuss our dreams as though plurality were possible, peace, echoing easier access and would you, of eggs, enter my room laughing but cognizant of bodies and their availability, stung, a little too effervescent the mind can, to want to calm you when pronouns are ways of spreading the blame, sustain us formally considered as a plea for stopping, milking cows, abject

CERTAIN SLANTS, Gil Ott, SINCE I MOVED IN

My next book, Certain Slants, has been sent "to press" by the publisher, Junction Press. I'm very happy about that, and looking forward to reading from it on January 15 at the Poetry Project, in New York, right after it's printed and bound.

There's not a lot that it's easy to reprint in this blog, because of the often varying margins, indentations, i.e. the use of the space in the book as a contributing part of the methodology, structure, and meaning of the poems. But here's one of the shorter pieces, from a series of Cardinal poems.

Cardinal 19

jewels glow and breathe out
as though stars go somewhere

else

headlands to desert to
streets with stone houses
all in all, black ink white paper
rubbed or printed

where the lines
bear or redeem

little but the organ’s intent
to form a language
of us, our homes are yours as well

as well

it composes, blooms whether little
or much water recommends face
to face

wash over the children
in the light
before it goes

This poem, like Cardinal 18 that precedes it by several pages in the book, was written with Gil Ott in mind. I remember seeing Gil at our home in this desert city, after his residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, and visiting him at his home in Philadelphia, among its stone houses. I think of both of us printing black on white, words and images, and I think of us both as fathers. It's a notation remembering a friendship, a language remembering and pointing toward a life, as well as simply a notation, a group of words, a movement of its own.

Everything flows through and in words.

I'm thinking about Gil again because I've sent "to press" (from Chax Press) a terrific new book by Tim Peterson, Since I Moved In, which is the first winner of The Gil Ott Award, an annual book series from Chax Press. The editors (Nathaniel Mackey, Eli Goldblatt, Myung Mi Kim, and I) will select one book a year for the next four years (five counting this first book), largely through the generous contribution of Julia Blumenreich. We also believe we will find funding to continue the series beyond the first five years.

Here's a poem from Since I Moved In, by Tim Peterson.

Hemlock

Something’s going haywire among the fens;
nettles aping naturalness until they touch you
versus the pretty important password you imbibed:
dark liquid is a good idea. Scratch a late hour,
you replicate yourself in our dark hair attempted access.
Growing out of dirt, like dirt, we archive,
in a central location, the morning’s blades. At last
our long grasses pose a security compromise;
rights you relinquish to acquire a strained wisdom
like a post office anesthetized by foppery –
hot cheeks, the fishing emails. I’m sorry,
you’ve been turned off. The inchworm
crawling up, uh, that thing there in a dark time.
A bunch of malarkey in the weeds wasn’t music,
was it? Crossed that line without friends as a scab amends
greased gladiolas, the swan tank full of weeds.
Your ancient seed: we dug it like a house
looks out onto a lake paralyzed
by adept seeing. It grows up around them throats
O pungent carapace, O immersion in that home machine.

If you find this book, buy it, and read it, you won't be sorry. And I hope you pick up Certain Slants, too.