VIDEO

Video of last months Lucifer Poets event in Chapel Hill...the other readings are by fab fab fab Lucipo friends of mine...each with their own genius and engine and hair and attire. http://www.deeperintomusic.net/nightlight.html I read third...at the 3:20 mark (3 mins 20 seconds) into the thing...I read a new sonnet...

Self-Promotion Is A Book of Animals.

So, Barnes and Noble has picked up "Whirligig" for promotion in these* cities through January. Basically, if it goes well, they may keep stocking it. So, if you were thinking of getting it, and you live in one of these places, and you happen stroll into a B&N, pick it up and I'll literally send you something...reimbursment, interesting trades, a handmade collage, a sock puppet, a bullet casing, something. The underlying point is that this hasn't happened to Spuyten Duyvil before, and we really want Barnes to look their way more often, and in the future.

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BOSTON MA, HOUSTON TX, BERKELEY CA , OAKLAND CA, NEW YORK NY, NEW YORK NY, ASHEVILLE NC, WASHINGTON DC, ALBUQUERQUE NM, HADLEY MA, LOS ANGELES CA, DULUTH MN, BOSTON MA, ITHACA NY, KINGSTON NY, EDINA MN, NEW YORK NY, AUSTIN TX, NEW YORK NY, CHARLOTTESVILLE VA, SEATTLE WA, KANSAS CITY MO, SANTA MONICA CA, PITTSBURGH PA, ROSEVILLE MN, NEW YORK NY, ST PAUL MN, NEW YORK CITY NY, DURHAM NC, VIRGINIA BEACH VA, PRINCETON NJ, LONG BEACH CA, WASHINGTON DC, NEW YORK NY, BETHESDA MD, SOUTH BURLINGTON VT, ROCHESTER NY, CHATTANOOGA TN, PHILADELPHIA PA, BROOKLYN NY, BOULDER CO, POUGHKEEPSIE NY, MOHEGAN LAKE NY, DEWITT NY, TOWSON MD , SALT LAKE CITY UT, SEATTLE WA, BROOKLYN NY, RICHMOND VA.

Lucipo Reading Tomorrow in Chapel Hill

Many Lucipoets and other folk will be reading at the Nightlight in Chapel Hill on Thursday 10/19

Starting at 9pm>>$5 cover

Where is the place? Check it: http://nightlight.dyss.net/index_LINKS.php



Who will be reading?
>>Brian Howe >>Ken Rumble >>Christopher Salerno >>Laura Jent >>Dianne Timblin>>Lori Reese >>David Need >>Tony Tost >>Patrick Herron >>Brad Land >>Rodrigo Garcia Lopes

Pics from Friday's Reading @ The Fall Cafe, Brooklyn

-justin marks in a red shirt of confidence...


-me looking up just this once...



















-dan hoy in a dazzle...














-chris tonelli eying up justin's teeth.

Back from NYC

John Ashbery, Jack Black, Wave Poetry Bus, The Burning Chair, The B.Q.E., H&M shopping with Brian Howe, BOOKS-BOOKS-BOOKS, on stage at CBGB'S (soon defunct), My great-grandfather's place in Williamsburg Brooklyn, The Bowery Poetry Club, The Ear Inn, and so much more.

Details and pics soon.

I'm Reading In NYC This Weekend:

Heading up to NYC this weekend to give a few readings. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you!
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Sept 29th, Fri, @ The Fall Café 307 Smith Street Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn 7:30pm.
(Christopher Salerno, Dan Hoy & Justin Marks)

Sept 30th, Sat, @ The Ear Inn 326 Spring Street (west of Greenwich Street) NYC 3pm.
(Christopher Salerno, Mike Reilly, Alison Stine)

Oct 1st, Sun @ The Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery, across from CBGB's 2pm.
(Sputyen Duyvil w/ Tod Thilleman, Christopher Salerno, and Julian Semilian)

RECEIVED and READING

Lyn Hejinian's Cold Of Poetry
Michael Earl Craig's Can You Relax in My House
Brenda Hillman's Loose Sugar
Laura Simms' Practice, Restraint

Every Other Day

I've been interviewed by Kate Greenstreet for her ongoing series on Poets after their first books. I've been addicted to all the other offerings there.

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From Pittsburgh

Made it to the Andy Warhol Museum...one of the spaces on the museum's many floors and rooms was currently exhibiting, "The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984." This exhibit presented a range of artists with that 70's-80's distinctive “downtown attitude” toward life and art taking hold in lower Manhattan at the time--Artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers (many of whom blurred and ignored distinctions of genre and medium). A super extensive retrospective, all told. Here are some photos I took before I was asked to stop taking photos (who knew? I was only allowed to photograph the Warhol stuff, apparently).

From The District

Well, I've just returned from my Burlesque Poetry Hour reading at the Bar Rouge in D.C., and it couldn't have been more fun. Before the reading, I managed to buzz over to the National Gallery, where unfortunately I had missed the DADA exhibit (off to NY by now) but did manage to see some interesting work nonetheless. It was nice to see some of the Hudson Valley paintings I've long admired (Cole, Durand et al--I love their embellishments!) and of course some A-side Picasso and Matisse work, which one rarely sees in the provincial galleries. So little time. All that was left of the DADA exhibit were a few remaining books in the gift shop, one of which (Duchamp's Letters) I picked up for only 7 bucks!

The reading was intimate and warm. Thanks so much to Reb, Carly, Sandra, and Karl who were such super people it made it hard to leave. Sandra and Karl read such wonderful work, and I left feeling bouyed and inspired to get back to my new manuscript. And I managed to sell a few books, and meet some sweet people.

In other news, I most definitely lamed out on the big strip tease, but my shirt did fetch 30 bucks in the post-reading strip-auction. It was so hot, I was glad to see it go. Funny pictures forthcoming!!

Suggestive suggestions?

This weekend I'm heading up to D.C. to read at the Burlesque Poetry Hour reading series. The protocol at these readings dictates that the reader remove some article or accessory from his/her body following their reading (article is then auctioned to the highest bidder). And so, it's time to consider. Generally, I have little experience stripping for money. Thus far, BPH "stripped" articles have consisted of: earings, a thong, various t-shirts and other shirts Hawiian or otherwise, red silk pants (Ken, you devil), sock puppet, a belt, and an invisible cloak of poetry potential. So...?

Podcasts of two new poems to be featured at MiPOsias

"What If Marvelous Marvin Hagler" and "Foot" will be featured in the forthcoming MiPOesias...and so I've been asked to make Mp3's.

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Here are the podcasts I just made. It was not easy, as my mic is effing budget and my P's were overpronounced, but it's probably a better recording than when I did the over-the-phone recording for the New Hampshire Review. I think I got a call waiting beep in the middle of recording.

http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/salerno_christopher.html


Enjoy. They are from the new manuscript (in prog).

EXTRA, EXTRA

Chris Tonelli of REDIVIDER reviews "Whirligig" in the new issue. Redivider poems by Bob Hicock and Molly Bendall appear in today's Verse Daily! Check it.

This Seems Worthwile...

HATE is totally the new LOVE

Paul
~W.S. Merwin

Up the sea-dark avenue
at two in the morning a shadow
comes shouting oh
you mother-fucker I hate you Paul
echoes of feet and then
I hate you I hate you Paul

the old moon is sinking through
clouds beyond high wires and cornices
the buildings creak
drifting on the tunnelled hour the call
bounces ahead along
the street like a fleeing ball

there after each of the few
cars has passed over its words Paul you
can't get away
I hate you with my feet in the Paul
street like a bell I know
you are there you nowhere Paul

I am coming after you
whatever you do whatever you
think I hate you
across the street into the doors all
the way through the frozen
windows up against the wall

listen to me I hate who
you are nobody else will ever
hate you the way
I do I always hated you Paul
the whole time thinking you
could hold out on me that small

invisible you but to
me listen there was nothing to you
I was onto
you fooling with me your slick tricks all
the while and I hate you
where you are everywhere Paul

I go on hating you through
the roar of the Paul subway the red
lights at the Paul
cross streets out of sight into the Paul
night that cannot be touched
nor brought back by hate at all.
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Timing. A friend sent me this Merwin poem she found. And just this morning I was thinking about Hate. I know, it sounds strange...but I was thinking of a lesson, or of creating an exercise for my Intro Poetry class surrounding the idea of Love and Hate and the mining out of the emotional complexities in between. It occured to me, probably via some poem or someone smart giving a talk, about the opposite of Love, and what Love's opposite might be. Most people would say that the opposite of Love is Hate. However, it seems that the opposite of love is actually Indifference. Hate, really, is only for effect. When we say that we Hate, we are exposing a kind of connection to the object of that hatred, right? We are, in some sense, putting that connection on display, much like in this poem. Our hate has a history, usually a personal history...and it often can show us our own Shadow, especially in the Jungian sense. “At two in the morning a shadow / comes screaming oh / you mother-fucker I hate you Paul…” And we also read the lines, "The old moon is sinking through / clouds behind high wires..." There's a specific, almost literal sense of history in the situation of the speaker and his/her relationship to Paul, a past exposed there (in the Paul subway...into the Paul cross streets...into the Paul night...") but so too in the simple act of characterizing the moon as "old." Even that simple image conjures the personal history. And of course there is the ultimate example of the Love/Hate connection, "nobody else will ever hate you / the way I do."

I like it.

I also love the way the word Hate is deployed as an unconventional verb (I hate you / across the street / into the doors..." And I like the way Paul becomes an adjective, mostly through the blurred syntax and absent punctuation and fused phrases—together with all of this a strong voice tumbles out down the page...and a great sense of the organic nature of rage speak emerges.

Indifference, then, implies no connection at all, I guess. It's so much colder than Hate. Hate is always connected to Love. This poem could never be written out of Indifference. Probably no Lyric poems could be.

Mail

PERSONAL

It's my birthday today. I keep forgetting. And not too many folks want a piece of me, so that's good. I looked at some postcards of the Whirligig cover, read a few 70's comic books I found recently, and bought myself a few CD's: the newest Wolfparade, Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan," Bonnie Prince Billy's "Master and Everyone" (wore out a burned copy), and Tom Waits' "Real Gone.

Anyway, I want to say that while I was serious about being a C-section baby, I was not serious about the Anthology. Sorry for any confusion.

Projective Verse

Who was it defined poetry as "Deep Gossip"?

English 289

So I’ve been tweaking my syllabus for the upcoming Poetry Workshop I teach at NC STATE University. Since I haven’t yet found a comprehensive enough text (outside of the Introductory handbook we use--which contains several poems) I supplement quite extensively by creating a kind of 20-poet mini-anthology of photocopied poems. These poems I often use as examples of one sort of turn, tool, convention, mode, etc. The poets included are: Charles Bernstein, T.S. Eliot, Adam Zagajewski, Dean Young, Gertrude Stein, W. C. Williams, Charles Bukowski, Yusef Kamanyakaa, Franz Wright, John Berryman, Billy Collins, Theodore Roethke, Lisa Jarnot, Sharon Olds, Wallace Stevens, Robert Bly, Rosemarie Waldrop, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Wright, Jeffrey McDaniel, and A. R. Ammons.

Village Voice Gives Props

To Brooklyn's top Indie Publishers, including Spuyten Duyvil, with whom my first book will appear in June. Also featured are Akashic, Archipelago, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Soft Skull Press. Read the Village Voice article here.