Everything is Pretty Awesome, Pt 2

This weekend I got to see the following people read poems: Heather Green, Chris Hosea, Heather Christle, Idra Novey, Daniel Lin, Shafer Hall & Farrah Field. Additionally it was the first time I'd met Idra & Daniel & they both seem sweet as a chestnut tree dipped in some kind of delicious caramel sauce.

I actually didn't know Daniel Lin's work at all & he knocked me out. Check out this poem, which is in the current issue of Waccamaw:

Spoon Position

Daniel Lin

A common silver spoon turned
Concave side down makes an umbrella:
A hot stream of tap water falls off
Its edges in a tight, straight skirt.
One difficulty of a rich inner life
Is the possession of desires—-firm, fixed,
Furious and almost fleshed out—-
That are found to be essentially
Unexchangeable in the social marketplace.
The spoon turned up produces a fountain.

It's such a tight poem of using the poetic attention to recreate the world. I love it.

Saturday I spent the day with Cindy, Dave Carillo, Heather Green, Justin Taylor & JC. We went to Brighton Beach & drank Russian beer from plastic two liter bottles & met up with Joshua Cohen, who has a wonderful new piece on John Zorn & lower Manhattan real estate in the latest issue of Harpers. I got a little sunburnt, as usual.

Then we all went to a poetry party at Farraf & Jared's & afterward at 2am I spun Dan Magers on some kind of spin-swing in the DUMBO park & he laughed & he laughed.

Sunday I got the swine flu, but then I got better by this morning.

Then today I saw this trainwreck of a website.