Some Things I Want You To

1. Check out new work of Anthony Hawley's on his fancy website.

Here's three of the images that I like:





2.

Thanks to Cindy & Sommer for coming to Denver. They gave a great reading along with Richard Froude (whose new pieces were amazing) & the music of Jason Horodyski.

I got some great pics from the reading:






3. Last night I dreamed that I worked two three-hours shifts a week at a Hot Topic, where I was their "Book Curator." I've never been to a Hot Topic before & strangely my subconscious made Hot Topic look like the Pier One Imports where my friend Nancy worked with I was in high school. The one difference was there was a dark cavernous area in back that had metal cages & where I kept having to go back into to find my shirt. Throughout the dream I did not see any books in the Hot Topic.

4.

My buddy Sam Anderson opened a new bar in the Village. There's a write-up of it here. It's called The Black Market. I wish I could go, but I do not live in New York City. If you live in New York City you should go there. Sam makes some otherworldly cocktails.

5. Listen to Sommer Browring tell this hilarious tale:




5. Check out new poems from Emily Kendell Frey, Sarah Louise Green, Lindsey Bagette, & Kyle Crawford in The Back Room.



6.

Check out this awesome new piece by Brian Kim Stefens'.

A Morality Tale

I went to an Asian Market with Andrea, Jules, Seth & Eric.

I bought this lump of vegetarian food matter.



It is called Vegetarian Beancurd Pouch Chicken

"Pouch Chicken" is very funny.



And then when you flip it over, there's this.









They are everywhere.

"Cemetary Blues" by Edna Hicks

"Cemetary Blues"

Folks, I know a gal named Cemetery Lize,
Down in Tennessee;
She has got a pair of mean old graveyard eyes,
Full of misery.
Every night and day,
You can hear her sing her blues away:

I'm goin' down to the cemetery,
'Cause the world is all wrong,
I'm goin' down to the cemetery,
'Cause the world is all wrong,
And there ain't a fool to hear me sing my sorrow song.

I got a date to see a ghost
By the name of Jones,
I got a date to see a ghost
By the name of Jones,
Make me feel happy to hear him rattle his bones.

He ain't no fine dresser,
He don't wear nothing but a sack;
Everytime he kiss me, that funny feeling creeps up my back.


More on Red Hot Jazz

Wave Books State of the Union Discount

ONE DAY ONLY: In conjunction with Obama's State of the Union Address tonight (9 pm EST), Wave Books is offering a supreme discount on the REAL address: STATE OF THE UNION: 50 POLITICAL POEMS, featuring poems by 50 contemporary poets. $5 for a softcover edition, available only through the Wave website here: http://www.wavepoetry.com/catalog/66

This Might Be Just an Excuse to Post Photos of Immortal

So last week I had this dream in which I was hosting a big party at a huge house. All sorts of people from all different points in my life were there & it was going pretty well. No one was being annoying. No one was too drunk & breaking things.

Also the house was much larger than any house I will ever live in. It was a kind of mahogany-toned space.


Then the members of cheeseball black metal band Immortal crashed the party.

They began to catch all my friends, hang them up from the ceiling & disembowel them.

Soon there was blood & bowels everywhere.




All the while they would stop & make their evil metal poses, which are very similar to the poses the cartoon Cobra characters would make when they yelled out "Cobra!" in the GI Joe cartoon.




What I remember most distinctly from the dream is the image of Seth Landman hanging from the ceiling by chains & disemboweled, yet still alive. He was clearly about to die, but made eye contact with me in a pathetic sort of plea for help. But I could not help him.




I don't remember if the band members of Immortal got their comeuppance in the dream. probably not. Dreams are not like action movies.

You can see a comprehensive set of photos of current & former bandmembers here.

Octopus Presents J'Lyn Chapman, Julie Doxsee & Bin Ramke Reading at The Dikeou Collection: Friday Jan 22nd, 6:30 pm

Tomorrow night! I'm very excited for this. If you're in the Denver area & you're not here then I will cut you out of my will.


Friday, January 22, 2010
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Dikeou Collection
1615 California Street (at 16th Street), Suite 515, Denver, CO

A reading to celebrate Bin Ramke's newest book & Julie Doxsee's return to Denver!







J'Lyn Chapman holds a PhD from the University of Denver, where she studied text and image in the work of W.G. Sebald. She is the Graduate Academic Advisor and a lecturer at Naropa. As a writer, J'Lyn is working on a series of lyrical essays about sorrow and memory as well as a critical essay on images and text. Her work can be found in Sleepingfish, Fence, Thuggery & Grace and Conjunctions. Her chapbook, Bear Stories, was published by Calamari Press.





Julie Doxsee holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver. Recent publications include Undersleep from Octopus Books 2008 and Objects for a Fog Death forthcoming in 2010 from Black Ocean 2010. She currently lives in Istanbul on the European shores of the Bosphorus, in a village once known as a summer retreat for Ottomans on holiday. She teaches creative writing, academic writing, and literature courses at Koc University, a private university near the Black Sea.





Bin Ramke's most recent book is Theory of Mind: New and Selected Poems from Omnidawn. He edits the Denver Quarterly and is on the English Department faculty at the University of Denver, and also at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nine Things For You Because I Love You

1.



This is, officially, the best book cover ever. Congress made a law about it. They called the law The PATRIOT ACT.

One thing I love about it is that the book is entitled Out of the Tiger's Mouth & he is literally stepping out of the mouth of a tiger.




2.


Bill Orcutt is a sick, sick guitarist.





3.

Check out these poems by Mihail Gălățanu in the new issue of Diode (& also read the rest of it, of course)





4.



These people are doing everything right.






5.



The new Sigh album is not quite the best thing ever, but it's better than whatever you're listening to right now because it is orchestra black metal -- not orchestral black metal. And because the album cover rules.





6.



You can "turn the page" on these





7.


Eric La Casa makes beautiful sounds.





8.

Quiet American makes beautiful sounds come to you. I recommend the field recordings of plumbing & water sounds.





9.

If you want to see don't go here: "You are not the world just because you have an eccentric haircut with red hair. The hair color for a staff member working at a hospital was totally inappropriate."

Thanks to Jay Robinson for the kind words about Destruction Myth.

Some Things that Happened at the Rodeo

JC & I went to the rodeo on Tuesday.

1.



There was professional bullriding. Men riding bulls. One of the bulls was so big & so intense looking that even though I was up in the cheap seats I got kind of scared of him.

One rider got stomped in the head, but he was wearing a helmet. I hope he's ok.

2.



I saw more cowboy hats in one place than I ever had before in my life.

3.



We were pretty clearly the only people who'd biked to the rodeo. There weren't even bike racks around the coliseum. I thought perhaps we would be harassed or yelled at when we rode out, but we were not.

4.



There was a laser light show with pyrotechnics. All to Dragonforce.

5.



I like this Kría Brekkan record. And I'm heading out to see/hear laird Hunt & Matthew Cooperman read at a coffeehouse that I've been to once. When I was there it smelled intensely like Febreeze. I hope it does not smell like Febreeze tonight.

Here is where you can donate quake relief $ to Partners in Health, a reputable NGO working in Haiti: https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/haiti_earthquake?source=earthquake&subsource=homepage

Some Slightly Past-Date Tourism Photos