Hiroshi Sugimoto: 7 Days / 7 Nights

I’ve been to the Hiroshi Sugimoto show at the Gagosian 21st street gallery twice this week. It is by far the most impressive presentation of work I’ve seen since the Sophie Calle show Take Care of Yourself. I call back to that because both of them used tremendously large spaces & transformed the space into a kind of ether, which the aesthetics experience occurs. In both of them the movement between pieces is an essential aspect of the art & the process is not serial as much as redirectional.

The Sugimoto show is two huge rooms with seven enormous photographs of seascapes in each room. Some of the seascapes are so blurred & faint that the photograph almost looks like a darkroom failure. This is definitely the kind of art that I could imagine some anti-intellectual movie lampooning – like a pretentious douchebag like me goes on & on about how visceral & intense the piece is & then the camera pulls back to reveal a nearly empty canvas.









But it is visceral & intense! The photographs are masterfully printed, so that as you approach what at first seems to be a Rothko-esque blur ripples & waves of the sea’s surface reveal themselves. And they continue to reveal themselves as you get closer & then at some point you come in so close that the ripples become pure texture. Nearly edible or wooly. And then inevitably I start thinking of Richter & other such texture fetishists. But Sugimoto’s choice of the primal set of sky & water reinvents my thinking about these texturists. Like Michael Earl Craig says in the latest issue of Octopus:

To those people who are always talking about “surrealism”
can I suggest opening your fucking eyes?

If you do this, you will see mothballs. And a green nightgown.

The things we think of as the realm of art are never only art. There is no art for art’s sake, there is only the reinvention of seeing & thinking. Sugimoto is such a fascinating artist because he gets to this place that is highly conceptual through an amazing craft. The quality of the photographic prints in themselves are a marvel. It might sound weird to say, but the grey tones he gets in his blurry, foggy skies are the most sumptuous, enveloping greys you may ever see. The details in the surface of the seas belie a strenuous darkroom work ethic & are breathtaking

In a brief interview on Kultureflash Sugimoto talks a bit about his mindset:

SS:There is a quality of painting to your work. In that it's slow, it requires you to pay attention to texture and surface. The image is in relation to surface while very often most photography is about just image.

HS: Well, I just had lunch with Howard Hodgkin in his studio, I found it very interesting how the painter spends time... It's the same principle for me, I imagine my vision then try to make it happen just like painting. I don't go out with my camera looking for some image, I already have my vision first. The movie theatres for example, the vision was there already. The reality is there, but how to make it like my reality.

And when you walk into the second room, that’s when the religious expanse of the first spacious room is coupled. It’s a bit of a trick, so I don’t want to talk about it too much, but it’s a trick that made me feel more reaction than I had since seeing the Rothko show.

So if you have a few spare tens of millions hanging around—I don’t know much about economics but I hear things are going really well—feel free to buy me the full set of these photographs. I think they’d look good in my apartment, right next to my plastic femur.

Doing Things & Listening to Things & Going to Things & Other Such Things

The latest issue of Octopus is spreading through the web. I'm happy that there are many poets who have been a part of team Octopus before & mostly poets who are new to the magazine.

Working on our new chapbook, an amazing batch of poems from Shane McCrae, whom you might know from seeing his work around, including this poem that I love that was from Octopus 10. The chapbook contains a series of poems working through similar issues with the same aesthetic & intellectual drive. It's totally amazing & i can't wait to get it into people's hands.




MULATTO


Mule with a black boy’s head a little mule


Young mule a black boy’s head old Spanish word


I had a black boy’s head I was not changed


I had a young mule’s legs I was transformed




A little mule a little master lit-


tle master littler mule a teacup mule


I carried tea and brayed at the horses in


The fields my mother my half-sisters all




Horses in the fields and in the master’s bed


My father’s bed I carried tea I was


Not changed to the master and his only son


My master my half-brother my half-sis-




ters in my father’s bed I was transformed


My father’s only son my other self


My other half invisible and lived


The only one of us in the visible




World in the world where horses do not speak


And humans do not hide in horses’ bod-


ies I have never seen that world but eve-


ryone who goes there comes back white erased








************************************************






Experimental, Etc has the entire 10cd boxset of Improvised Music from Japan (which I've coveted for years) available to download. They additionally pointed out that the Lightning Bolt documentary is available in its entirety on Youtube.





*************************************************




I was sick with the flu last week & while I'm still trying to lay low there are lots of things I do not want to miss coming up this weekend:


Another wonderful set of poets at the Stain of Poetry series:

Friday, January 30 @ 7 p.m. - Stain Bar - Williamsburg, Brooklyn
*Bill Berkson, Cindy Cruz, Aaron Fagan, Jennifer Fortin, Jean-Paul Pecqueur and Bill Rasmovicz*

I'm going to this on Saturday & I'm excited about it. And I'm not only going because one of the organizers is named Matias. I'm going for other reasons as well. I love events on the R-line in Brooklyn!

Untitled New York: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing
FREE. No RSVP necessary.
Organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim

"Untitled New York" is a day-long conversation about writing which in some manner exceeds the printed page. It assembles a notable group of experimental writers to discuss the currently expanded and still-expanding field of writing that challenges assumptions about the nature of writing and the potentials of text. While we are familiar with visual artworks constituted as a set of instructions, secrets written by visitors in a book, or one artist erasing of another artist's work, what would be their equivalents in the literary world? "Untitled New York" is composed of 2 day-time panels and an evening reading where participants perform their work. The program is as follows:

1:30 Introduction

2:00 “Appropriation and Citation” – This panel looks at the many practices of appropriation so popular in the literary world in the last several years, asking questions about whose work and what material gets appropriated, cited or resurrected, who owns texts, and if there is a difference between appropriation and citation. Panel participants include Vanessa Place, Steven McCaffrey, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Julie Patton.

4:00 “Litterality” examines how writers use what we normally consider non-linguistic elements, such as symbols, diagrams, maps, or scores placed in the context of writing. We will also look at invented writing systems, and what it might mean to think about the book as an object rather than as a collection of words or sentences. Panel participants include Christine Wertheim, Latasha Diggs, Rob Fitterman, and Shanxing Wang.

8:30 Reading with all participants.

“Untitled New York” is a reprise of “Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing,” held in October 2008 at REDCAT in Los Angeles, organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim of the Writing Program at CalArts, and funded by the Annenberg Foundation.

On Sunday Katie Fowley is reading at Stain. I think I'll be at a hockey game at Columbia during the new afternoon time, so I won't be there, but you should check it out.

In celebration of football and the lunisolar ox year, I will be reading poetry this Sunday, February 1st at The Stain Bar in Williamsburg.
I will be reading with the people in my writing group--lovely people all.
Also, the Stain Bar has good microbrews, comfy seating, and allows small dogs.

The Stain Bar is at 766 Grand street near the Grand stop on the L train. The reading is at 3:30.

Matthew Zapruder has two readings in the next week. I think I'm going to go to the one on Tuesday.

He will read at the Polestar Reading Series with Rebecca Keith and Idra Novey
Sunday, February 1st, 5 pm Polestar Reading Series Cakeshop Downstairs, 152 Ludlow (between Stanton & Rivington), L.E.S.
http://polestarpoetry.blogspot.com

He will also read at Poems and Pints with Dana Goodyear
Tuesday, February 3rd, 6:30 pm
Fraunces Tavern, 54 Pearl Street (at Broad Street)
http://www.lmcc.net/art/programs/2008/poemsandpints/index.html

*************************************************






Did you know that Mark Yakich's book The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine is amazing?

Now you do.


This is the first poem in the book:

Tourists Beware

In our free speech they say
There is protest. They say this.
They are wrong. Poetry in America is a hobby

Horse or an earnest earache. Unless it breaks
The rules of syntax and grammar;
Then it simply breaks the rules

Of syntax and grammar. I say this.
I, too, am wrong.
Humorous poetry is published exclusively

One month of the year when everybody is
On summer vacation. More than poetry,
Vacation is protest.

The book provides a way of using poetry as an entry into explorations of what we talk about when we talk about politics. It's unlike anything else I've ever read without wearing an armor of theoretical difference or novelty. It's marvelous.

You can read a longer poem from it here & other work on his website. He is very good.





**********************************************






Did you see Silent Light?

It's still playing at Film Forum. You'll like it. Unless you dislike what is good about the world. Or if you like your light real loud & non-Mennonite.

Octopus Magazine #11

Octopus Magazine #11

We are proud to announce that the new issue of Octopus Magazine is now available.

http://www.octopusmagazine.com

Featuring

Julia Story
Kristin Naca
Cole Swensen
Michael Earl Craig
Andrea Rexilius
Emily Pettit
Dan Beachy-Quick
Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Dobby Gibson
Tina Celona
Lara Glenum
Brandon Downing
Eric Baus
Rebecca Guyon
Cecily Iddings
Jon Woodward

Barbara Maloutas
Noah Eli Gordon
Bob Hicok
Rob MacDonald
Elise Ficarra
Natalie Knight
Matthew Cooperman
Brooklyn Copeland

Including Reviews of

19 Names for Our Band by Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Lyric Postmodernisms edited by Reginald Shepherd
Sleigh Ride by Joe Fletcher
Parcel by Sarah Anne Cox
Pilot: Johann the Carousel Horse by Johannes Goransson
Hit Wave by Jon Leon
That Gorgeous Feeling by Sueyeun Juliette Lee
Habeas Corpus by Jill McDonough
Menage a Trois with the 21st Century by Eileen Tabios
Interpretive Work: Poems byElizabeth Bradfield
Afterpastures by Claire Hero

by
Brett Price
Cara Benson
Micah Mattix
Anna Eyre
Tyler Dorholt
Dan Hoy
Steven Karl
Heather Green
Katie Trostel
James Engelhardt
Chelsea Dappen

And an interview with Abraham Smith
by Joshua Marie Wilkinson


Octopus at AWP

Tuned Droves, Eric Baus's second book & Octopus' latest full-length book,
& One Neither One, Shane McCrae's first chapbook, will be available at AWP
& both will be widely released after the conference.

Additionally we will have Julie Doxsee's Undersleep & Matthew Rohrer's They All Seemed Asleep available at the conference.

Both Eric Baus & Shane McCrae will be reading Friday Feb 13th at the Empty Bottle.

No Thousands: A Small Press Reading
Friday, February 13th: 7pm
The Empty Bottle: 1035 N. Western Ave.

Black Ocean; Cannibal Books; Forklift, Ohio; Octopus Books; and
Rope-A-Dope Press Present:
Dean Young
Johannes Göransson
Joshua Harmon
Claire Donato
Kevin Holden
Russell Dillon
Alexis Orgera
Eric Baus
Shane McCrae
Sampson Starkweather
Chris Tonelli.

Bios:

Eric Baus was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1975. Winner of the 2002 Verse Prize, selected by Forrest Gander, his publications include The To Sound (Wave Books) and the chapbooks The Space Between Magnets, A Swarm In The Aperture, and Something Else The Music Was. His second full-length book Tuned Droves (Octopus Books) will be published in 2009. He edits Minus House chapbooks and lives in Denver.

Shane McCrae went to school at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Harvard Law. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The American Poetry Review, American Letters & Commentary, African American Review, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review and others. His chapbook, One Neither One, is forthcoming from Octopus Books. He lives in Iowa City.

Jake Gillespie Drawings & Franck Andre Jamme's New Exercises

So apparently I hadn't read Jake & Alisa's blog in a while. It's a lot of fun & they are awesome. But that means I missed the post from Dec when Jake put up a few of his recent drawings that I totally love. Check them out:










You can see more of Jake's work at Jake Gillespie. You can see more of Jake if you live in Oakland. I've seen very little Jake for about 7 months now, which is stinky.

At first i was thinking about Julie Speed's paintings with the extra eyes, but then I realized that these seem like film stills from the moment of transition between movements. The moments that the film flicker (or the digital equivalent) creates that are inhuman & unnatural. Or maybe the kind of shaking of a misfed projector. They are totally mesmerizing to me & reminded me of Franck Andre Jamme's book New Exercises from Wave Books. If you haven't seen this book, the texts are based on the formatting of small gold leaves left in the mouths or the folded hands of the dead in ancient Rome. The texts end up like blocks of text. I took a photo of the book to keep the formatting, so this looks a bit weird, but you can handle it, you're a very smart young girl or boy:



The texts are aphoristic statements in the infinitive like this one. Some of them have a purplish aura of new age cheesiness, but other ones are genuinely affecting. I'm pretty sure the ones you put in categories 1 & 2 would be different than the ones I do & that's a good thing.

But the process of reading these seems as important (if not more so) that the wisdom of the aphorisms. They play against the urge of the eye to progress, causing me to arrive at words in unexpected ways. The reading of this books works as part puzzle, part poem, part wish. It makes me wonder how I would have reacted to Stein's syntax if I'd read it first in the subway rather than in a textbook, or Williams' lines without having them poorly interpreted by a high school teacher (sorry Mr. Slaughter*). The feeling of reading through them is different from any other kind of poem I've read. I mean, I've seen people space out their words in such a way that one has to work to read them. There ain't nothing new in that, but to have that offset by the ontology of the infinitive aphorism makes for something interesting. The aphorism typically is a witty or wise statement told quickly. Having to struggle into & out of an aphorism makes is wisdom-act arrive at cross purposes. When they are on, like this one, the meaningfulness arrives because of the work of the process:






I'm not sure these can be taken out of context of reading the whole book. First off the use of an aphorism out of context makes someone sound like some crappy CSI-writer with their Bartletts iphone app open trying to make their character sound like a deep thinker. Secondly, these aphorisms don't ascribe to only wisdom, the main push of them is toward a humility not only of ego but of attempt. But beyond anything aphoristic, the mental space the book puts you into makes the process of understanding forefronted before the process of interpreting. The feeling is similar to the feeling of working on translation. It's like how in Jake's drawings above my eye keeps trying to correct the image, to choose one. That the image is one of blurred duality is constantly unsettling & beautiful











* My actual sophomore English teacher's name--his name was so metal he might be the only high school teacher whose name I remember. I remember him making Emerson & Macbeth boring as well. But then again I was a bad student, so I'm sure I would have considered any teacher to be boring.

26

While normally I think Vice magazine should be ignored (in the sense of "if you don't pay attention to them they'll stop eventually"), Sam McPheeters, of Born Against & Men's Recovery Project "fame," has a decent article about 26. He was formerly Doc Dart & singer of the 80s shockcore band the Crucifucks. Thanks to Kick to Kill to posting their first record & reminding me of a band I haven't thought about since I was like 17.

The Viral Lease, by Mathias Svalina (me)

My new chapbook, The Viral Lease is now available from Small Anchor Press.

It's the first section of a book-length poem. Each copy has a unique image from Jon Pack, my favorite photographer in the whole wide world.



Someone who would like you to buy it (Small Anchor Press) said this about it:

A breathtaking meditation on the last eight years' bitter experience, The Viral Lease is seamless and surprising, a work of sincere transmission that is one part catharsis and several parts a grotesque relay of facts that serve as a warning sign: much damage at home yet to be undone.

Some group of people on Wikipedia said this about Darryl Strawberry:

Darryl Eugene Strawberry (born March 12, 1962) is a former baseball player who is well-known both for his play on the baseball field and for his controversial behavior off of it. He was born to Monica and Michael Strawberry and lived a middle-class suburban life with his family.

Right now there are lots of police helicopters flying back & forth across my neighborhood. I can only assume that bad things are going down.

"Fire" by Nick Flynn

This poem originally appeared in Tin House & Nick posts it on his website along with a host of information regarding American thinking about torture. His new book looks like a barnburner.

I heard him read this poem at the State of the Union reading last Fall & it was unlike anything of his I'd read before, I was really blown away by it & still am.



Fire

by Nick Flynn

more the idea of the flame than the flame,
as in: the flame
of the rose petal, the flame of the thorn
the sun is a flame, the dog’s teeth
flames

::

to be clear: with the body,
captain, we can do as we wish, we can do
as we wish with the body
but we cannot leave marks—capt’n I’m
trying to get this right

::

the world’s so small, the sky’s so high
we pray for rain it rains, we pray for sun it suns
we pray on our knees, we move our lips
we pray in our minds, we clasp our hands
our hands look tied before us

::

I remember, capt’n, something, it didn’t happen, not
to me—this guy, I knew him by
face, I don’t remember his
name, one night
he’s walking home from a party, a car it
clipped him, for hours he
wandered, dazed, his family, his
neighbors, with flashlights they
searched, all night, the woods, calling out
his name

::

here’s the part, capt’n, where I try to tell a story
as if it were a confession: once,
in elementary school, I was hiding out
on damon rock, lighting
matches & letting them drop to the leaves
below—little flare-
ups, flash fires—a girl wandered
down the path, she just
stood there, watching the matches fall from my hand—

::

capt’n, I’m trying to be precise: hot
day, a cage in the sun, a room without
air, the mind-bending heat, the music
a flame—hey
metallica hey britney hey airless hey fuse, I
don’t know how it happened, I was perched far
above, I offered her a match
to pull down her pants—one match, her
hairless body, hey
little girl, I dropped it unlit.
I didn’t know what it was I was looking at.

::

hey capt’n I don’t know if I’m allowed
hey capt’n years ago I’m walking
down a road one drunk night, even now I
wonder—sometimes still I
imagine—was I hit by a bus, stumbling am I
dazed, this
dream this confession, hey
little girl is yr daddy home, hey capt’n hey
sir am I making any sense?

::

the boy stood on the burning deck, stammering
elocution, wait—
the boy stood in the burning cage, stammering
electrocution, no—the boy stood in the hot-hot room
stammering I did stammering I did stammering I
did stammering I did stammering everything you say I did
I did.

::

hey metallica hey britney hey airless hey fuse
hey phonograph hey hades hey thoughtless hey

::

capt’n this room is on fire
capt’n this body will not stop burning
capt’n oh my captain this burning has become a body
capt’n oh my captain this child is ash
capt’n oh my captain my hands pass right through her
capt’n oh my captain I don’t know what it is I’m looking at

::

it’s important to be precise, to say what
I know—
the sun is fire, the center of the earth
is fire, yr mother’s cunt is
fire, an airless flame, still, still, I don’t know why
she pushed me out, this cold-cold furnace, we all
were pushed, a rim of light around our heads, she
gave a kick, sent us crawling
out, toward the flame, toward the pit, the flaming
pit, yr lover’s
cunt, the flame her tongue, the flame
a thorn

::

every day, capt’n, sir, captain, I was
left, a child, after school, alone, I found
a match, under the sink I found a can, a spray
can, ly-sol dis-infectant, it made a
torch, I was careful the flame didn’t
enter the can, I knew it
would explode, somehow I knew, I’m
trying to be clear, sir—the flame
shot across the room, then it was gone

Thoth

OK -- nobody wants to watch a 40 min film embedded in a blog, but this is a well-made documentary about a performer for whom I have a lot of good feelings.

The Youtube blurb says "In the Oscar®-winning THOTH, director Sarah Kernochan turns to another wonderfully unique personality, a fantastic character who performs one-man operas in a strange language on the streets of New York to amused, befuddled, and awed audiences."

For a more pleasant viewing environment you can go .

Kristi Maxwell

Kristi Maxwell is one of the most consistently thrilling young poets in America right now. There's a lot of work I love out there right now that's dependent on grotesque bombast, manipulation of prosody into ideology & the more-honest-than-autobiography absurdism. Yet Kristi's work creates its own integral world of associations through the use of the enigma processed through the confident line. Her poems accumulate a new method of association while maintaining a yearning heart.

She has a couple of wonderful passages from a long poem in the new issue of Saltgrass. Here are some parts of the parts that knock me out:

To script itineraries by how
houses connect
by decor. The well-shaped bone

we felt up the field to find.

When does consequence cease to mean.
The lake to full and the fish

coddled through our
swimming and the fish we could catch in our hands.

Reading her poems, I feel pulled into the work of creation. I feel like I'm stringing bits of yarn around the hedges until I've somehow made a castle.


And she'll be reading here next week, so don't miss it:

Tues. Jan. 27, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free

ACA Galleries
529 W. 20th St., 5th Flr.
NYC

Event will be hosted by
Ahsahta Press director and editor Janet Holmes

Featuring readings from

Paige Ackerson-Kiely
Susan Briante
Kate Greenstreet
Kath Jesme
Stephanie Strickland

For christmas my nieces got me a small monkey whose name is Bananas.

He's been getting around.

Julia Cohen's The History of a Lake Never Drowns, new Diode & new-ish Home Video Review of Books

Julia Cohen's new chapbook is available from Dancing Girl Press.

It's really good. You should believe me on that & then order it & read it & use your reaction to it as evidence to assess whether you agree with my argument.




In new poetry news, you should know about the new issue of Diode. It includes

Dilruba Ahmed
Aaron Anstett
Tamiko Beyer
Ash Bowen
Charlie Clark
Arpine Konyalian Grenier
Angela Hibbs
Dennis Hinrichsen
dawn lonsinger
Bobbi Lurie
Ron Mohring
George Moore
Deborah Poe
Patrick Rosal
Michael Salcman
Maureen Seaton
Floarea Ţuţuianu, trans. Adam J. Sorkin & Irma Giannetti
Jakob VanLammeren

Also, last week The Home Video Review of Books put up a new issue. The January issue.

Reviews of

What Apocalypse, by Marc McKee
Situations, Sings, By Jack Collum & Lyn Hejenian
Body Clock, by Eleni Sikelianos
[lapsed insel weary], by Susan Gardner
Policy Instrument, by Franklin Bruno
Adorno's Noise, by Carla Harryman
Holiday, by Jennifer Firestone
An Aquarium, by Jeffrey Yang
from Unincorporated Territory, by Craig Santos Perez
A Border Looks Like Making Love, by Ryan Daley
Peregrinary, by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki
Face Before Against, by Isabelle Garron

Obama Made Me Sick

Or rather I think it was a virus. My fever was starting to spike while watching the inauguration yesterday. At first I thought I was getting chills because of the event, then I realized I was shivering as well.

Now I'm full-blown sick. Fever, coughing, sea animals living in my lungs, etc.






I was watching the festivities in the Fordham College lounge while I was prepping for teaching. I was surrounded by students who were raptly watching the streams of CNN on their computers. Bu there was one extremely loud young woman who was bragging to her friend on her cellphone about how drunk she got at the club saturday night.


I know a lot of people are snarking all over Elizabeth Alexander's poem, but the phrase "repairing the things in need of repair." Well, that is beautiful. It's simple & weary & held.




Check out Alec Soth's Last Days of W collection. at first I didn't really get the concept. But now I do. It might be the fever talking.

Speaking of which I had a crazy fever dream that involved Shafer Hall in 18th Century Pantomime make-up.

Like a lot of you, I was thinking about African American history yesterday & ran across this collection of interviews with former slaves. Amazing.

Saltgrass

The third issue of Saltgrass is out, featuring these fine poets & writers:

Eric Baus, CAConrad, Jessica deCourcy Hinds, Johannes Goransson, Kate Greenstreet, Brenda Iijima, Kristi Maxwell, Sawako Nakayasu, Keith Newton, Joshua Poteat, Joy Rhoades, Ken Rumble, Matt Sumell, Chris Tonelli, and Mike Young.

$5.00 print journal.

You can order the issue online & read sample poems at www.saltgrassjournal.blogspot.com.

Vanessa Winship: "Sweet Nothings: Rural Schoolgirls from the Borderlans of Easter Antolia:

Blog
Website

This is one of my favorite photography projects. As with most photo things I learn about, Jon told me about it. Upon first view there is an othering exoticism & antiqueness to the work, but beyond that an individual personality for each of the girls comes out so strongly in these pieces. They keep pulling me back to the actual girls, rather than a categorized idea I might have about rural schoolkids from Turkey.

You can see a wide selection of the project here.

Things That You Can Do This Weekend If You Want To Win

1. Friday Night Go See/Hear Statehood

They are awesome. Listen to them here.

They used to be members of Vehicle Birth, Dismemberment Plan, Motorcycles Wars & The Newmans, among other bands.

Now they are members of Statehood. That means you like them.

Look how cute they are! Two of them have the beards you like. One of them is smooth as sea glass. The other one has glasses made of seas. The other one is a tiny mouse with the ability to fly bi-planes & shoot down the nazis. They made a movie about him. It was called Chariots of Fire.






2. Or Friday Night Go See/Hear/Believe Sampson Starkweather Read

I won't be at this (see #1) but Sam is awesome & a scintillating reader. So if you're too delicate for good music then go see Sam. He's a delicacy. Or something.

Buy his chapbook, City of Moths, from Rope-A-Dope.

Earshot at Rose Live Music, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn!
Friday, January 9th at 8 PM
Admission: $5

Featuring:
Ciaran Berry (The Sphere of Birds)
Sampson Starkweather (City of Moths)
Ann Podracky (Queens College)
Bianca Stone (New York University)
Carter Edwards (The New School)

ROSE LIVE MUSIC is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://liveatrose.com.
EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area. Visit http://www.earshotnyc.com for more information or e-mail at earshotnyc@gmail.com.





3. Saturday is Tony Conrad at BPC Day!

Bowery Poetry Club: 4:00pm
Segue Series: TONY CONRAD & CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN

I'm not sure what he's doing, reading? making music? Who knows! It's Tony Conrad, so it'll probably be better than whatever you were going to be doing at 4pm on a Saturday. Unless you were going to do something better than that, in which case I respect you & your ridiculous decisions.

If you like bios, read on:

Tony Conrad was a participant in the founding of minimal music and structural film. Recently his Yellow Movies (1972-73) have been exhibited at the Greene-Naftali and Daniel Buchholz galleries. His installation Beholden to Victory (1980-2007) opened in May at Overduin and Kite in L.A.

Carolee Schneemann's video, film, painting, photography, performance art and installation works have been shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC, and Europe. Correspondence Course, edited by Kristine Stiles, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Previous published books include Imaging Her Erotics-Essays, Interviews, Projects and More Than Meat Joy: Complete Performance Work and Selected Writings.

4. Sunday Finish Working On A Syllabus With Me For A Lit Course!

Actually, I think I'll do this on my own, however the above Annie Liebovitz photo has been judged to be the worst photo ever.

An I-Did-This I-Looked-At-That Blog Entry

I got an airport express that allows me to play music from my computer over my stereo via wifi. It might be nothing new to you, but I love it. Like the kind of love that makes minor characters in noir films shoot people who turn out later to be innocent. That kind of love. It think that's known as the good kind.

I'm listening to music on my stereo. It's coming from my computer! There's no wires!

I love the 90s.

I went to the MoMA today. The Rist installation is kind of cool. I like the pig.

The Miro show was a bit underwhelming. I liked being in his world, surrounded by the amoebic blobs & the silly humor. I love his use of battered & found materials that speak to a world beyond the use of these pieces for his art. I love his dedication to the aestheticized & humorous form. But I realized that part of why I've always been drawn to Miro is that his works would be the one spark of delight in a rooms filled with tedious Modernists. In rooms of all his stuff, i began to notice that his eye for color is sometimes inexcusably bad & that it was often hard to care about one painting more than another.

Then again he also painted pieces like this that make me want to laugh & cry at the same indescribable time:

The simpler his compositions the more I adore him.


The artist whose work most impressed me was Mikhael Subotzky, a 27-year-old South African photographer. The MoMA website says this about his work they had:

It is the artist’s first inquiry into the prison system that is a critical subject of South African history. scroll to photos Subotzky’s most recent project, Beaufort West (2006–08), premiering in North America in this exhibition, is named after a small town in the Karoo Desert along the busy route between Cape Town and Johannesburg. The Beaufort West Prison, established in 1873, is blatantly visible in the community, oddly situated in a traffic circle in the center of town. Subotzky’s images portray life inside and outside the prison, focusing on the disparity between the city’s affluent neighborhoods and its fringes that are plagued by endemic poverty. The town’s social problems include petty theft, youth prostitution, and a very high rate of unemployment. Taken with a medium‑format camera in existing light, the pictures articulate multiple narratives: a preacher leads a prayer session in the Beaufort West Prison; a well‑dressed man attends the Agricultural Show, an annual social event for the wealthy; the residents of Vaalkoppies, Beaufort West’s garbage dump, scavenge for food; a nineteen‑year‑old sex worker is fondled by a client in his truck; members of the Ai 26s gang smoke Tik (meth‑ amphetamine); a police officer interrogates a suspect who has just been arrested. Subotzky records white domination and black dispossession without relying on politicized reportage. His scenes are at once introspective and direct, reflecting both the individual and the systemic aspects of South Africa’s colonialist legacy in the postapartheid age.

He has wonderful composition & sympathetic timing, which are both crucial to a street or documentarian photographer, but what additionally struck me was the detail of his prints. His color & precision is amazing & was a reminder that a political image is still an object in addition to being an image. He's taking cues from the Gursky & Wall school of detailed precision while presenting revelatory images of contemporary South Africa. See more of his work here. And the dude is young!




Speaking of other relatively young artists at the MoMA, Jessica Mein's video piece, Deleveled, which you can watch here, was beautiful & Mircea Cantor's Deeparture was pretty wonderful. I film of a wolf & a deer in an all white room together.


Also, I went to one of the coolest bookstores I've ever been in, Dashwood Books, which is all photography books. Totally amazing selection & the most affable & helpful saleswoman I think I've ever met.

Also, I bought some frames! And I ate at my favorite restaurant! And I got hot chocolate from City Bakery! What a day!

NN (also Limp Wrist / Los Crudos)

NN has a 7" out. It's pretty great. It came out in October, I think, but I just found it. NN is fronted by Martin from Los Crudos & Limp Wrist.

This is NN.


This was Limp Wrist.


This was Los Crudos, maybe the best punk band of the 90s.


More Los Crudos.


Here's how to order the NN 7" & the other latest release from Lengua Armada Records, which does not seem to have a website.

N.N. 7"
4 trax of furious punk sung in Spanish with tons of hooks. These San Francisco punks have been playing out for the last two years and have finally released some tunes. 600 black vinyl 100 clear

Leuzemia LP
Leuzemia were Peru's first Punk band and their out-of-print LP from 1985 has finally been reissued. Totally sought after 12" by this legendary band that will have punks across the globe flipping out on this incredibly catchy classic. This is South America's Clash and Ramones combined. A total killer. 900 on black vinyl and one hundred on clear.

Paypal orders are made out to martincrudo at yahoo.com
LP in the U.S. send $12.00
7" = $6 ppd
this includes postage and paypal.


For both to the same address in the U.S. you get a
price break in shipping.
Total will be $16
This includes paypal fee and shipping

U.S
1 x LP $12.00
1 x 7" $6

If you are doing snail mail my address is
Martin / Lengua Armada
1302 Hayes St.
S.F. CA 94117
USA

New Year's Resolutions

For my New Year's resolutions I'm going to use trenchantly insightful anagrams of Adam's New Year's resolutions, which he recycled from his resolutions last year.

New Year's Resolutions
1. Post more. Dropping under 20 a month is just bears' margins.
2. Take rat sis to office. Initially I wrote "Take a tress to office." I'll do that one, too.
3. Start reading 6 Draw. That doesn't really need an a pliant oxen.
4. Make more salads. It's not that I feel like I don't eat one ugh salad as is, it's just that I feel like I eased latent one diet related resolution.
5. Stop spending 6 hours per day thinking a billable curl spot.
6. Toad ring. I'm not sure what to art her in to do though. Possibly to eat all the extra salad I'll be ma king.
7. Idolize a famous former Atlanta Brave. I'm reissues hit omit.

How Do You Know If You're Reading a John LeCarre Novel?

Have you ever been in the situation of reading a novel & you are not sure whether it is a John LeCarre novel or not, yet you are (for whatever reason) unable or unwilling to look at the cover, spine or title pages to verify whether it is or not?

You're in luck!

Take this quick quiz by answering yes or no to the following questions & then test your scores at the bottom.

1. Is there a cuckolded older man who is publicly cheerful while privately empty inside?

2. Is there a young idealist who is unsure if her idealism is a personal performance to distance herself from her family tradition or actual belief?

3. Is there a spy or islamist who is guided by irrational personal motivations yet is seen by the upper echelons of the bureaucracy as a powerful force?

4. Are there numerous bureaucratic espionage workers jockeying adroitly for power within their systems?

5. Does the older man fall in a kind of love that is really an attempt to recapture some sense of dignity or purpose in his otherwise pathetic life?

6. Is there a socially coarse, strong-jawed CIA agent?

7. Do none of the characters ever admit to their actual psychological motivations, while the narrator's ability to skim across the meniscus between inner monologue & therapy confession makes it all clear to the reader?

8. Is everybody trapped in a social system in which no one ever actually makes true contact with another person in any way other than an attempt to exploit of romanticize the other?

9. Is there a hard-drinking cynic who sees through all the myriad self-deceptions because he's seen it all yet still maintains a romantic devotion to his country that grounds him?

10. Is the novel more psychologically realistic than any Richard Ford or Richard Ford-influenced crap you had to read in your contemporary fiction classes in undergrad?

11. Is there a squid in the book that looks like this?

Assess your answers:


If you've answered yes to questions 1-10 then you are reading a John LeCarre novel.

If you answered yes to question 11 then you must be reading some weird sci-fi stuff, because the animal in that drawing is a jellyfish, not a squid. Not a squid at all.

Dear Mr. Obama

Dear Mr. Obama,

I read this story & I thought of you.

Yours,
Mathias

The Jackals and the Elephant

The jackals had devoured all the carrion in the forest, and they now had nothing to eat. One old jackal conceived a plan for getting food. He went to the elephant and said:

“We once had a king, but he became spoiled and would order us to do impossible things. So we have decided to choose another king. Our people have sent me to ask you to be our king. You’ll have a good life with us: whatever you command will be done, and we’ll honor you in all things. Come to our kingdom.”

The elephant agreed to go with the jackal. When the jackal had led him into the swamp and the elephant was stuck in the mud, the jackal then said to him:

“Command me; whatever you order shall be done.”

“I command you to pull me out of here,” said the elephant.

The jackal laughed. “Take hold of my tail with your trunk,” he said, “and I’ll pull you out at once.”

“Do you think it is possible to pull me out with your tail?” asked the elephant.

“Why did you command me to do it if it’s impossible?” said the jackal. “That’s why we got rid of the other king, because he gave us impossible orders.”

When the elephant lay dead in the swamp, the jackals came and ate him up.



Leo Tolstoy
(Second Reader)
1872

Jill Moser & Leigh Wen-Chen

Leigh Wen







Jill Moser