Sea Ranch Popsickle Island

In case you're wondering what the words in this subject line mean, let me tell you:

FRIDAY

1. Sea Ranch, issue 3 (a biannual journal (featuring a bipolar collection (of two poets (Chris Martin & me)))) is out and coming out tomorrow @ Friday @ 7:00 p.m. @ Unnameable Books, thanks to the duo (Alan Felsenthal & Ben Estes) over at The Song Cave.







SATURDAY


2. Popsickle 2011, Brooklyn's 2nd annual summer literary festival, is going (though it deserves a more active verb and preposition) down on Saturday from 1-8pm @ the Gowanus Ballroom with too many good ones to name (like Lonely Christopher, Dottie Lasky, Paul Foster Johnson—to name a few.
   
   A will happen immediately following the 7:45pm reading finale slot with Ariana Reines, Jason Daniel Schwartz & me. What else would you want*?



NEXT SATURDAY


July 30 New York Poetry Festival on Governor's Island. Enough said/TMI.

*A bookfair? Well, there will be one of those there too.

Reading-a-thon

(Everything is better when you add 'a-thon' to it.)

If you haven't checked out the sidebar, then you might not have noticed the upcoming a-thon.

1. Thursday - A joint reading of a collaborative reworking of Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno with Simone Kearney at the Gowanus Studio Space. There will be animals and a David-Lynch-themed slideshow.
2. Friday - I won a $50 prize, and now I'm going to read my prize-winning poems at a reading featuring the Birdsong gang and a band named PAPS.
3. Saturday - Simone-Kearney-Collab #2 at the Thierry-Goldberg Projects with that Bianca Stone and a collaborative Moby Dick erasure. There will be whales, but then there won't be whales.

If you come to all three, you will become suspect. If you go to one, I will see you there. If you don't, then we will drift apart but not irremediably so but reading-wise-ly so until about 2011.

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I didn't make a scrapbook of fall readings, but if I did it would look something like this:

Family Portrait

Here'a Anna Rabinowitz, Norma Cole, Craig Santos Perez, and me at Books and Bookshelves last Wednesday in San Francisco for Omnidawn's fall launch:

Yes, this is an adorable family. And, yes, Craig is holding Spam Lite.

And as long as we're indulging in some back-to-work-after-a-week's-vacation-Monday-bourgeois-nostalgia-for-idleness, how about a slideshow from said trip:



The confessional poets have given way to a new breed of confessional poet-bloggers. Or worse. Or a little better.

SUPERMACHINE issue #2

I'm going to be at a reading of SUPERMACHINE issue #2 on Tuesday, September 10.

Click on the SUPERMACHINE for more info about said reading. If you'd like.

7:30pm, Sept. 10, 2010

The Schoolhouse
330 Ellery St
Brooklyn, NY 11206

With all these:

Macgregor Card
Chris Cheney
Lonely Christopher
Corina Copp
Jon Cotner
Joanna Penn Cooper
Anne Cecelia Holmes
Lauren Ireland
Simone Kearney
Dorothea Lasky
Emily Pettit
Christie Ann Reynolds
Matvei Yankelevich
Matthew Yeager

Popsickle was going to happen. Then it did.

This weekend was good. Popsickle, the self-proclaimed "first monster literary festival" in Bushwick happened. I felt like we were sitting inside of a hot bucket—i.e. the hot bucket that it is contemporary Brooklyn (i.e. Bushwick) poetry.


How about some highlights.

1. The heat index:


2. The organizations representing organization:

BIRDS OF LACE, BODY ACTUALIZED CONTROL, BUSHWICKBK, THE BUSHWICK READING SERIES,CROWD, HTMLGIANT, MARKET HOTEL, POETRY TIME, STAIN, SUPERMACHINE, UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE

3. A poem by Emily Pettit—from her collaborative chapbook, Cock Fight—that goes:

I have this to say, Something was going to happen
and then it did. Our gestures exceeded
the speed of light. They were practical
efforts. Practical efforts, such as raising chickens.
Such as, someone buying many hotels!
Such as, standing and standing. Processing
information in your sleep. When you build
a fire in the snow it's a speculative treatment
of certain problems. I feel better when I feel
better. Let me explain the agreement. Or else
you explain impossible colors. Impossible
colors are a catastrophic visual failure
and not impossible. Not a ship sinking. A shore
out of shape. Some things will get lost. A neck.
The circle running. A true yellow blue.
There are always competing signals from one
system to another. There are options regarding
the ice. We can lick it or cross it. Further information
when you want it. Information always blinking.
A chime that rang. I fluctuate by night. I fluctuate
by night. In my head is a station where you
practice landing.

4. Egg Pizza.


5. That damn train in the window.