Aw shucks

Thanks, Katey. That's just about the best reaction EVER.

TAG: Canal Street Exit Influx*

Often we argue punctuation

but the exclamation

point's a rare mark to really mean.

A blaze of blue tarp

on a roof across the river recalls

salt water mist missed.

Bookended in bridges Brooklyn smudges

perfection, light filtered through

the undies in Chinatown windows.

Move bitches! he explains, performs

the Rizzo/Lamoureux chap

on the return commute via Q.

I offer him Chris Murray before

we hit DeKalb and choose the park.

A fuzz of German beer reinstates

a wonder cradle. Is that so silly?

The trains of Queens are poetry failed,

reader/rider risking much.





*Tag, now look who's it!

UPDATE: Chris Rizzo responds to his tag.

Then Chris Murray goes on a tagging fest!

Note to self & y'all

Gotta update the readings page soon with fall events:



September 27 with Marie Ponsot at Pete's Big Salmon

October 16 at the Ear Inn with Matthew Freedman

November 23 at Kili Lounge (Tracey McTague's new Battle Hill reading series) with TBD

November 30 atKGB Nonfiction Series for the GAMERS launch party

December somethingth at Bowery Poetry Club for GAMERS launch, pt. 2.



Whee!



Feel like I'm missing one, though. Hmm.



Also, Shafer reports that the new Frequency schedule will be ready very soon, so I'll update that page as soon as I get it!

Speaking of tagging...

Tony just tagged me too, plus Shafer Hall & Gabriella Torres!

Tag--I'm it!

Laurel tagged me. It's a fun new game. Stay tuned, because you could be next! I am heading off to a birthday party and shall return with a poem naming the next vicitim.



There is no base.

Some Adelaide Crapsey

Amaze



I know

Not these hands

And yet I think there was

A woman like me once had hands

Like these.







Languor After Pain



Pain ebbs,

And like cool balm,

An opiate weariness

Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed

Pale wrists.







Laurel in the Berkshires



Sea-foam

And coral! Oh, I'll

Climb the great pasture rocks

And dream me mermaid in the sun's

Gold flood.







Mad Song

Grey gaolers are my griefs

   That will not let me be free

The bitterness of tears

      Is warder unto me.



I may not leap or run;

   I may not laugh nor sing.

"Thy cell is small," they say,

   "Be still though captivated thing."



But in the dusk of the night,

   Too sudden-swift to see,

Closing and ivory gates

    Are refuge unto me.



My griefs, my tears must watch,

   And cold the watch they keep;

They whisper, whisper there--

   I hear them in my sleep.



They know that I must come,

   And patient watch they keep,

Whispering, shivering there,

   Till I come back from sleep.



But in the dark of a night,

   Too dark for them to see,

The refuge of black gates

   Will open unto me.



Whisper up there in the dark....

   Shiver by bleak winds stung....

My dead lips laugh to hear

   How long you wait...how long!



Grey gaolers are my griefs

   That will not let me free;

The bitterness of tears

   Is warder unto me.

The Warning



Just now,

Out of the strange

Still dusk...as strange, as still...

A white moth flew. Why am I grown

So cold?







These poems are from Verse (Knopf, 1938--a reissue of the posthumous 1915 edition from Manas Press). I found this copy in New Orleans at Kaboom Books last year? The year before? I used to write biographical sketches of authors for Gale Literary Databases/Contemporary Authors series of reference books. (I did hundreds of these on mostly minor figures.) When I was first assigned Crapsey, I was only minimally familiar with her cinquains as a form. She spent most of her energy working not on the cinquains and her poems, but on a book of poetics called Analysis of English Metrics. She never finished it, but the portion she completed was published in 1918 as A Study in English Metrics. Like Joan Murray, she's associated with Smith College, where she taught poetics until her failing health required her to give it up in 1913. Here's an entertaining, and antiquatedly beautiful passage from the 1915 introduction to Verse by Claude Bragdon:



"Although in Meredith's phrase 'a man and a woman both for brains,' she was an intensely feminine presence. Perfection was the passion of her life, and as one discerns it in her verse, one marked it also in her rainment. In the line 'And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass' I see again her drooping figure with some trail of gossamer bewitchment clinging about or drifting after her. Although her body spoke of a fastidious and sedulous care in keeping with her essentially aristocratic nature, she was merciless in the demands she made upon it, and this was the direct cause of the loss of her health. The keen and shining blade of her spirit too greatly scorned its scabbard the body, and for this she paid the uttermost penalty."



Yeah, she's a dark little romantic, drama queen.



You can get a new edition of The Complete Poems and Collected Letters here. And there's a biography too, though it's also out of print.



Until just this moment I would have sworn I once rode in a subway car with "Amaze," miraculously chosen for a Poetry in Motion poster. But I just checked. Never happened. Must have been a dream. Hmm.

Commitment issues

Yesterday, Dan asked me to name my personal top five 20th-century American female poets. I started and restarted and revised and took folks on and off, never getting past #4. Admittedly, I was taking it way too seriously for a bar game.



While Dan is away on vacation in Vermont this week, I will try to come up with a list I can stick to.



Tom Hartman's list: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, and oh I can't remember the other one.



Dan didn't finish his own list either, but contenders included Sharon Olds, Alice Notley, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, H.D.



I'm not sure if I got those in the right order.



None of my incarnations had Olds, Plath, Notley, Stevie Smith, or HD.



#1 Gertrude Stein

#2 Elizabeth Bishop

#3 Marianne Moore

#4 Laura Riding

#5



Agonizing possibilities in no particular order: Adelaide Crapsey, Joan Murray--just one book, but what a book, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, May Swenson, Anne Sexton, What to do with Susan Wheeler--can I save her for the 21st?



I invite you to confuse me further by remarking on all the grrls I have left out of this near dozen.

This just in from JKno:

"You work so hard, you blow my mind like a Brazilian sailor."

From Poems by Joan Murray (1917-1942)

Ahab the Supermonomaniac

An improvisation



Ahab, the supermonomaniac...

The finite creation leaguing it

Through the torturous underseas of un-God...

Sought all life damned.

Pain chanted imaginings.



Ahab, the strain of the inexplicable,

The man-fathomed bitterness.

We who turn slowly,

Forcing our consciousness to conceive of passivity

In land, in night, in stone...

We, who are rocked to the bottom by our own inability

To dent, to stammer, or to guide, to restrain

The slow annihilation of the coast,

The shift, the imperceptible movement of inanimate

Dissolving all along the line...







Things That Are Sinuous



Things that are sinuous are the rivers of the land--

Women stalking, with the ripple of cats

Along the leg, and movements of the body

In deep eddies, in silk transparencies.



Rivers of the tumbled slopes,

The flatlands to the west,

Tidal rivers, licking and drawing back,

The whole weight of protuberance toward the sea,

Making a salt ridge in the bright flush of the flats.



They are women with bare and subtle feet,

Of brooks, of rills, of mountain lakes,

Of turbulent cascades, of torrential moments,

Of long coiled tenuous drift, with one still cloud

Sucking from rim to rim of that insoluable thing...

Down to the river and the beat of the river.







Lullaby



Sleep, little architect. It is your mother's wish

That you should lave your eyes and hang them up in dreams.

Into the lowest sea swims the great sperm fish.

If I should rock you, the whole world would rock within my arms.



Your father is a greater architect than even you.

His structure falls between high Venus and far Mars.

He rubs the magic of the old and then peers through

The blueprint where lies the night, the plan the stars.



You will place mountains too, when you are grown.

The grass will not be so insignificant, the stone so dead.

You will spiral up the mansions we have sown.

Drop your lids, little architect. Admit the bats of wisdom into your head.







[That's my favorite. Isn't she a lovely freak?]

Looking for a copy of...

the March 2004 edition of Hollywood Reporter with the feature on Wrestlemania XX. Do you have one I can borrow? I need the ad with Brock Lesner for a quick scan. Aw yeah.



Also, if you are interested in owning a rare copy of Joan Murray's Poems, holler at me. I just heard from a book dealer who has one. Not cheap--but like I said, it's very rare. It was only printed in one small, hardcover edition. John Ashbery likes it. So does Susan Wheeler. And Marcella Durand (who scored one in Maine). And me.



I'll post some more of her poems this weekend. There's not anything online except this one & this one.



I'd pitch a revised edition (her original editor, in my opinion, snuffed the spark of some of the poems with his heavy-handed edits)--but with her limited rep, who would go for such a thing.



Here's the part where I offer a photocopy to anybody who can't afford to shell out for the original.



Yes, I'm still planning to revise the article. It's about #1298 on the to-do list. Right before translating some contemporary German poets with my friend Susanne.

This just in: Bikes Against Bush

From Shannon Holman:



Want to send a message to the RNC next week? How about sending it

wirelessly and having it distributed in chalk by bicycle?

I'm crazy about this project and hope you will be too.



Shannon



Bike Writer Pedals for Protest



"New Yorker Joshua Kinberg is a bike messenger of a different stripe.

Instead of ferrying legal papers between lawyers, he uses a homemade,

wireless, bicycle-mounted dot-matrix printer to spray protest messages

in the street.



Kinberg will be taking his road-spraying bicycle to the Republican

National Convention in New York this fall, where he'll ride around

spraying [chalk] slogans submitted over the Web and beamed wirelessly

to the bike."



Wired article here.



Joshua's web site here.

Oh my.

My CV/resume hasn't been updated in about two years. Maybe three. Ugh.

Native soil: The Texas Trip

Just booked two tickets to Texas, y'all. Here we come, arriving September 17.







Stops:



Arlington/DFW (Mom's. Convince Temple bunch to come up.)

Weatherford (Father figure's party at the ranch!)

Silsbee/Kountze (In-laws)

Fredericksburg (Side trips to Enchanted Rock & Luckenbach.)

Marfa (Marfa Lights & Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation.)

Midland/Odessa (top-secret anti-Bush research.)

Arlington/DFW



Dang, Texas is big. That's at least 30 hours of highway driving. But Texas has the best roads in the world. And I love to drive.

The rest by popular demand!

Mr. & Mrs. Maisie Weisman make the same face, imitating some guy on the Fung Wah.





Aaron Kiely laughs at Brendan Lorber, if I recall correctly.





Sean Cole was rumored to be recording everything. This grainy shot just might prove it.





Erica Kaufman threatens Dan with her kickboxing moves.





Douglas Rothschild, Alli Warren & Stephanie Young are sick of me taking photos.





Aaron briefly thought I was married to Dan.





Miss Meghan & family with Jordan "The Robot" Davis.

Ada Limon reads tonight in the Bronx!

Ada sez:



"There's an open mic beforehand, but then I'll read for about a half an hour. I think I'm going on around 8:30 or 9. I will read some new poems. It sounds like a great venue..I'll be there from about 8:00 PM on, so come buy me a drink and say hello! Details below."



Feature: Ada Limon

Feature Date: Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Start Time: 7:30-OPEN MIC

Feature Reader: 9:00

Admission: Free with a $5 suggested donation



Acentos Series

@ Blue Ox Bar

East 139th Street & Third Avenue

Bronx, NYC

718.402.1045



Directions: The Blue Ox Bar is a short one block walk from the 6 train's 138th Street/Third Ave station. If coming from Manhattan, please use the exit closest to the last car on the 6.

Whoops. Hit the bookstore.

Went in to get the new BAP, natch and ended up with that, plus:



The Promises of Glass & Codes Appearing by Michael Palmer

Word Group by Marjorie Welish



And I looked but no Staples née Peppermint yet--but I'm guessing I can gallop over there and get it real soon.

Search term

"poems of a normal texan"



How'd that get them here, ya think?

Chapbook Roundup, part 1

I was offline this weekend--whadid I miss?



Been reading the wealth of chapbooks I picked up at the Massacre (or received in the mail just prior), and though I am not feeling up to full reviews (which is certainly my lacking, not the poems'), I would like to list and mention these delightful li'l things here with a hearty recommendation to you to procure them for yourselves. Click the links for details or contact info.



Smokers Die Younger, edited by Stephanie Young (Comment Box Press, 2004). [expurgated], Del Ray Cross, Nada Gordon, David Larsen, Cassie Lewis, James Meetze, Catherine Meng, K. Silem Mohammad, Christina Strong, & Alli Warren. Woowee. Stephanie sent flattened cigarette boxes to each contributor, who then sent them back with a poem written on them. The originals are reproduced for a most, and photos of poets' faces included in the back, and the theme of addiction is treated in energetic ways throughout. Nada Gordon's "Rage Glom Pink Sun" is formed of curlicues of anagrams, little puffs of verbal smoke, variations on the phrase "smoking = lung rape." "spurn gingko, spurn!." Del Ray Cross admits the sexy appeal of smokers, even when they're bad for you: "oh I tried to date him to / listen to what he can hear / (clasps ears) / if only he were still here / (ah here he is smoking / an imaginary cigarette)." James Meetze's "Giving it Up" takes a look at need and the escape from responsibility inherent in smoking (and poem-making): "The release need one must find reason not to return. / There is no motto worth its while when just to breathe is enough / to carry one up a flight of stairs in a hurry." And "It's these times that are worst. The motions incessantly / a reminder that one hand or the other could be multitasking." Recovering smokers and the unrepentant alike, inhale this half-a-pack today.



Postcard Poems by Stephanie Young & Cassie Lewis (Poetry Espresso, 2002). With a photocopy of a postcard from Stephanie to Cassie as the cover, this chap, like Smokers Die Younger, provides a glimpse of handwriting to deepen the intimacies of these Personist missive-poems. This faux privacy is something I find attractive about collaborations and collections of correspondence between poets, and combined with the sense of process provided by dates and daily details, what makes poems like these feel lived-in, beyond the page. "Dear Cassie, what day is it? Your poems have been / arriving slightly bent, as if / they have a private life between the time they're sent / & then received." And in "Untitled" from Cassie to Stephanie: "[...]how will I get to where I am going? / Where's that? A big place in the Sunday / frost where magazines fall from the boughs / of trees? Where's that? / Oh, I just want to write / some essays but my mind won't cooperate. / It thinks that we have to be somewhere."



Art in America by Jack Kimball (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2004). Jack has a knack for making a simply stated psuedofact seem factual, even if it's counterintuitive and he sets up interesting relationships between events-- "Manufacturing is showing some strength / I can't sleep[.]" Manufacturing has never kept me up, except when I lived near an ironworks shop in Williamsburg, but I'll buy it here. "Here are the new rules about snoots: / a gingko worksheet: / palliative spire:" or "either //I'm two sadnesses: or / these beyond plants are / not language: / let's go shopping:" And I'm in love with the titles, so daily they're odd: "Obtaining Soy Milk," "My Bitch," "To Ashton Kutcher," and especially "Source Material's Playback," with its ars poetical ring.



Grim Little by Christopher Rizzo & Mark Lamoureux (Anchorite Press, 2004). Firstly, Chris Rizzo's Anchorite press makes absolutely gorgeous books. This one is no exception: illuminated letters on the cover, cream laid paper and translucent tissue--the incarnation of this poem is one most poems should dream of. Mark & Chris read this poem at the Massacre--and I noticed when I sat down with it that I misquoted them in my reports! The poem begins "Xylophone networks / for bruised cacophany, digits, / pickups--say Humbuckers cannot / sate the hunchback now peerless / I's for dignities, mercies, violas / in gravel diaphragms, sickly blues / in this city of Dis, disasters Cambridge-styled / can drag a corpse to water but / can't make it Wallace Stevens's[.]" Since the book contains a single three-part poem, I won't spoil it for you by quoting too much, but Learishly named Grim Little in his cubicle with his cuticles chewed might remind you of someone you know as "the irksome police [skirt] the perimeter of meter swiftly, shouting Breaker of Iambs!" A dark little tale of Grim against the suits.



Coming next (at some point!): The Kickboxer Suite by Erica Kaufman, What Ever Belongs in the Circle & Jaywalking the Is by Noah Eli Gordon, Meme Me Up, Scotty by Chris Murray, Self-Portrait in Fire by Chad Parenteau, March 18, 2003 by Michael Lally, Calamity & Calamity Annex by Maureen Thorson, New Years by David Perry, (Purple) [expurgated], and I think a few more I still have in a bag somewhere!

Bowlmor Writemore update...

Hello pinheads!



Deadline for your Bowlmor Writemore submissions is September 1.

I will try to find out about available dates at Bowlmor Lanes this weekend.

It's looking like September will work best for most folks.



We'll read between turns and make a companion chap!

Don't ya wanna play?

Poetic prowess in action

Jennifer L. Knox reads tonight for the HOWL Festival

For Open City

at KGB

85 E. 4th Street (@ 2nd Ave)



JKno is awesome live. Ya gotta come see.



UPDATE:Sorry--at 8:30.



Here's a link to the Open City events page.

And more on the HOWL Festival here.

I forgot to remind you

If you missed T. Cole Rachel's & Hal Sirowitz's poems on Writer's Almanac yesterday and today, you can now listen online.



Here and here.



UPDATE: And we just this minute heard that we'll have more poems on the air next week! Hooray!



Aug 24: another poem from Bend Don't Shatter (by Christopher Murray)

Aug 29: two poems from Hal's other recent book, Before During and After, "Believing in Fate" and "The Wind Throws Back"

Dan's back!

Scare quotes: If you see something, say something

New Yorkers know this slogan from subway and bus posters that have gone up since the WTC attacks. The posters (like the one above) usually feature an unattended bag or suitcase under a bench, etc. But as Chiba details over at SubText, unattended property is so common in the subways and streets here (often the belongings of a transient or homeless person) that it's almost odd not to see such things. And if you do "say something" you may just be dismissed.

Anyway, Shawn works in midtown Manhattan in the very cool Daily News Building, 1930. (The lobby detail below has folks calling it the Daily Planet Building, after Superman.) It's near the Pfizer pharmaceuticals building, the UN, and several consulates, including the Israelis, and Grand Central Terminal. Police presence in the area is always pretty high, and stronger when the UN is in session or a diplomat is in one of the nearby hotels, etc.




Yesterday, the Daily News Building (and the Pfizer building and a few others) were evacuted because of a "threat" on the street out front. Somebody had left an empty suitcase unattended on the sidewalk. Too bad Shawn didn't have an Emergency Fanny.

This isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, the clients Shawn was meeting with yesterday (who were present for the evacuation) were laughing that the same thing had happened to them Monday at the Saatchi building downtown. And once, Shawn was the one to "say something." He saw a "suspicious" unattended suitcase under a mailbox and told the nearest police officer. That officer was unable to leave his post on the corner, but he flagged down a passing patrol car and shared the news with a second officer, who presumably went to check it out. But Shawn wouldn't know.

While standing there talking to the officer, he realized he had several anti-Bush books in his bag, so he skeedaddled.

Oh, and I found out Monday that freelancers don't get Emergeny Fannies. So in case of disaster or attack, our standard-issue asses will have to be enough.

Attempt beautiful crafting, dude.

Everyone finds good humor

in just kicking little mouthfuls.



Nice! Our poems're quick,

refreshing, so tasty!



Upscale verbs will xerox youthful zeal.



[In other words, are you up to Maggie's abecedarian challenge? There are several oldies but goodies up from her last challenge, a while back, up now too.]

Previously uploaded, but not yet displayed here.

Okay, should I stop with the photos? There's one more batch after this.

Compatibility quiz

1) Ashton Kusher or Ensign Crusher?

Oh my goodness, it's...

fallmost!

Emergency Fannies

"This week we will be distributing fanny packs to each of you to keep at your desk. These packs contain water, an energy bar, flashlight and batteries. In addition we have just added a dust mask, goggles and a space blanket. In case of an emergency (such as last year's blackout) take the pack with you. It will be of some assistance in your travel home."

Hot biker alert!

Soft Skull poet Todd Colby just survived Ironman 2004. What's next--the freaking Olympics?



Check out his muscles and his muscular "I remember" piece over at Surgery of Modern Warfare.

SHHHHHHHH! No Tell Motel!

"With great fanfare and the cutting of ribbons we announce the opening of No Tell Motel (www.notellmotel.org), an online poetry journal. Edited by Reb Livingston and Molly Arden, No Tell Motel features a new poet each week, a new poem every weekday. Each year will see the publication of 52 poets and 260 poems. Featured poets in August and September will be Jennifer Michael Hecht, Anthony Robinson, Karl Parker, Heidi Lynn Staples, Shanna Compton, and others."



See No Tell Motel for the first poetry feature and call for submissions.



Super swanky. Is it too early for a highball?

Cool! Audio from the Massacre

John Mulroony's poem from Friday night. Now I don't have to regret missing it!



Recorded (as everything else) by Sean Cole. ROCKING.

Picked a peck of peppers

I meant to order 4 jalapenos, but ordered 4 POUNDS of jalapenos by mistake from Fresh Direct this week.

I'm considering roasting and stuffing them and taking them to the Liar this afternoon.

They are organic. And half will be vegetarian or vegan.

Takers?

UPDATE: I just made...

Roasted Jalapenos with Brown Sugar Ancho Glaze (Vegan)
Cream Cheese, Bacon & Red Pepper Stuffed Jalapenos with Ancho Powder
Cream Cheese, Red Pepper & Parsley Stuffed Peppers (Vegetarian)
Shrimp Veracruz Stuffed Jalapenos (with Vegan Mayo)

...YUM! The stuffed raw peppers were seeded and rinsed in vinegar water to tame them for you Yankees. The roasted peppers will make ya sweat, tho.

*[This post has not been modified, but I have since gone vegan.]

Grrr...

I just uploaded a bunch of candid shots and then Safari quit on me, so I lost the post.



I'll redo it later, damn it.

Sunday at the Boston Poetry Massacre

For Friday, go here.

For Saturday, go here and here.







MITCH HIGHFILL



"Epithalamion for Gary & Nada"



It's all about the way something hits you



I often scorned those who watered me.

Even the greatest oceans do.



Sex poems are trophy poems.



as if the cosmos was sitting off-center



[passed his poem for Bill Bissett so we cld see odd spellings]



"just a little flarfy"



I am the freespeech zone.





JACK KIMBALL



Laura Bush likes to clean.



Men have become substantially feminized.



I was born when minimalism was all the rage.



Bite mich! ("Sorry Mitch. That's German.")





MATVEI YANKELEVICH



Babies don't deserve money.



I haven't been writing much

and that's been true all my life. I don't like writing.



If poets write poems, then readers write readings.



Inventions got the better of us, so we decided to throw ourselves away.



You lingerie angels: good, bad, indifferent.





MEGHAN CLEARY



I am not diplomatic



I'm no prize

but I can cook well.

You should taste my apple pie.

I make it with a buckwheat crust.



It was all I could do to lay stripped on my bed.



Now we are talking kneeling down

at the base of my grief.





AARON KIELY



What are you majoring in?

How to prove I've read books.



She knows my passion

and she feels abundant.

My passion makes her feel abundant.



Lord help me see people

so I don't bomb them

and cut their heads off.





NOAH ELI GORDON



"I'm going to read some paragraphs."



Rain on the sidewalk is

rain on the ceiling.

And my suit is just right for the job.



Magical realism, mute narration, or just jack-in-the-box psychosis?





MICHAEL CARR (right?)



Unlike most cowards

it means sit and watch for the subtitles.



I still like art deco

with respect to a format.



They call these ranchers jolly.





DAVID PERRY



Steal the wheels right off my locked bike...(sigh)...fucking hell!



Double lives: don't lead 'em.



My country don't want me

don't exist

don't leave me



The danger out here is shameless.



I'm guilty as a hall monitor

sucking up to porn [?]



All I want is to get up early and surprise a few clams.



If you're anything like me, you're not velour.





CHRIS JACKSON



Pulchritude doesn't sound much like what it means.



You should see the golf course.

She in plaid.

He in Coco Chanel.



Since I've quit R.J. Reynolds I've learned exactly what control is.



I'm Jack, the bad pirate!



Foxy, but not beautiful.



My teeth: these cute little white squares and triangles. [Big smile]





MATTHEW CELONA



It looked at you provokingly,

the Book of Ancient American Proverbs.



In the flip fuck book the fuckers were flipping through the flip fuck books while fucking.



What pleasure is there in seeming to whip an empty balloon?





LORI LUBESKI



There is a plateau flat

across ivory layers of skin.



The liability of a wide road



My one bold indestructible force strikes a match.



Rain comes indecently.





MIKE COUNTY



You can rip a new asshole for anyone these days.



Michael County, please hold for an important message.



When the form came, there was nothing to place in its container.


Applause and cheers for [expurgated]!

Happy birthday to me

Whoops. I missed my blog's one-year anniversary. My first bloggish post was on August 4, 2003.



I was nervous at first. But y'all were so nice!

"It's a shame to be caught up in something that doesn't absolutely make you tremble with joy!"

Julia Child, you will be missed.

The meal would begin with foie gras, oysters and "a little caviar." For thirty-five years she was repeatedly asked for the menu of her last meal. For one who loved a simple, well-cooked piece of meat and a ripe pear for dessert, she always named the most extravagant and rarest foods for her last repast:

First, caviar with Russian vodka (Duburovna) and oysters with Pouilly-Fuissé. And some foie gras, of course. Second she wanted to eat pan-roasted duck--the duck never varied--accompanied by little onions and chanterelle mushrooms, her main dish. Sometimes she mentioned pommes Anna, "that lovely cake of sliced potatoes baked in butter to a crisp brown crust." Sometimes she wanted fresh asparagus with the duck. She would drink a 1962 Romanée-Conti, which she had had only once, for it cost $700 a bottle. When she was in a frugal mood, she chose a delicate red Bordeaux, a St.-Emilion or Chateau Palmer. Sometimes, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. Third, good French bread with Roquefort and Brie would be eaten with a great Burgundy, such as Grands-Echézeux.

Finally, dessert was a moveable feast on which she changed her mind over the years. It varied from pungent sorbet with walnut cake to a simple ripe pear and green tea. She was never strong on desserts, but as she got older she decided she could eat a gooey chocolate dessert or a charlotte Malakoff. When she dreamed big, her dessert was the creme brulée from Le Cirque with Chateau d'Yquem 1975 or 1976 at $450 a bottle.

"And I would die happy," she'd say.

From Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child by Noel Rily Fitch

*[This post has not been modified, but I have since gone vegan. Still gotta give props to Julia tho. She was awesome.]

And holy massacre, don't miss...

this groovy report by David Hess. (Who somehow manages to post to his blog though the front page doesn't reflect it.)

Massacre Saturday: More poets' faces

For Friday's report (no photos) see here.

For Saturday, part one see here.





JENNIFER L. KNOX



Motherfucker! I just found out my boyfriend's a prostitute.





GABRIELLA TORRES



A different spiral takes you

to the bathhouse of the poor.





ADA LIMON



That bird looks like a flight risk.



Hooray for the differently sane!





AUTUMN McCLINTOCK



tuna fish sandwiches cut into triangular wedges



for consumation [?] I considered becoming a juggler.





DANIEL NESTER



a lovely day for a motion picture



Asshole, O how you wait for everyone!



Let us speak of Dudley Moore now





TINA BROWN CELONA



It burned, sending up tumors of honey.



My doctor says I'm hostile

and I stink of rum--WAIT. This is the wrong version of this poem.



My doctor says I'm hostile,

and I believe him.



You can't have ego salad without personal taste.





HASSEN



I can remake you better than you can be.



What if I am you, Joseph Banks.

What if you are me?





ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS



Because the river that was not a river

felt like a river nonetheless



Dear Karen, I've failed.

And I'm the one who proposed the match.





STEPHANIE YOUNG



You wear the device on your back, as if it were full of books.



I had one long continuous dream of human violence.



Emotions expressed as diamonds.



I developed a wish to have legs as long as a horse,

for showing excitement.





AARON TIEGER



Moving through snow

with a grace too slow



The silent layer of your eyes



Now we have a name

and drop like water.





JORDAN DAVIS



[At this point my camera battery died. Man that sucked. So I didn't get to jot J's lines. I was still messing with it, futiley, during AARON KUNIN's & DAVID HESS's reading. Or I could blame my lack of note taking on David's flame-licked neon cowboy hat! Unfortunately dead battery means no photos for the following Saturday nighters.]



DAVID HESS

I'm a representative of the School of Quietude, here to disturb your gathering with my quiet.



JACKIE WATERS

Desire is a good start.



TRACEY McTAGUE (the dissident poster girl!)

They're young.

They always set the golf course on fire.



This is called "Pantyhose Face."



...and naked aerobics on videotape...



JOE TORRA

Enjoy your youth.



ALLI WARREN

It turns out I'm still thinking underpants.



MAX WINTER

So keep that thought in your jacket pocket.



Red & blue balloons, what are your names?



AND FOR THE SATURDAY FINALE...





DOUGLAS ROTHSCHILD (R)



[Douglas emceed a hilarious special edition of the Poetry Game Show, featuring Sean Cole & Mark Lamoureux (L) as contestants and Erica Kaufman & Shafer Hall as judges.]



SUNDAY & CANDIDS TO COME!