Terry Folz at Uptown Writers Group June 15, 2013

______________________

Terry is a regular contributor to this blog, and has appeared in AlteredScale.com 1, AlteredScale.com 2, and will appear in AlteredScale.com 3. His chapbook Dead Parrots appeared from TheAlteredScalePress in 2013.

Mary Kasimor at Uptown Writers Group June 15, 2013

__________________

Mary Kasimor is a regular contributor to this blog. She also appears in AlteredScale.com issues 2 and 3, and she guest edited a poetry gallery in issue 3. She is the author of a number of books of poetry, including Duplex (TheAlteredScalePress).

Jen Coleman—Special Guest Reader at Uptown Writers Group

_________________

Jen Coleman visited Minneapolis' Uptown Writers Group on June 15, 2013 and shared with us this wonderful reading.

Jen lives in Portland and is the author "of the chapbook Propinquity and coauthor with Allison Cobb and C. E. Putnam of the chapbook Communal Bebop Canto. Her work has appeared in Chain, Tangent, Ixnay, EOAGH, and other literary magazines. She works in outreach for Oregon Environmental Council." (Bio is lifted from her feature at Jacket 2.)

Others who read at party:

Mary Kasimor's film to show on 6/16
Terrence Folz's to show on 6/17
Jonathan Brannen's to show on 6/18
Jefferson Hansen on 6/19



On 6/22, ANN BOGLE reads at Common Roots Cafe (2558 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, Minnesota)

Lenora Drowns, George J. Farrah, and Jefferson Hansen open. See Facebook event page.

Ascenseur pour l’échafaud/Elevator to the Gallows

by Jack Foley

                         for Robin A. Nicholas

who writes
who writes
of the sadness of lovers
of the sadness of lovers
of their
of their
loneliness when apart
loneliness when apart
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
in this magnificent film
in this magnificent film
wanders the night
wanders the night
streets of Paris
streets of Paris
finding
finding
nothing
nothing
her love is sincere
her love is sincere
but her punishment
but her punishment
later
later
is worse than her
is worse than her
lover’s
lover’s
Miles Davis
Miles Davis
watched the film
watched the film
with those deep deep eyes
with those deep deep eyes
and named
and named
the nothing
the nothing
she felt
she felt
as he leapt
as he leapt
beyond
beyond

the frenzy of bebop

to the pure
to the pure
sound
sound

of the heart of the world
of the heart of the world

in a woman’s
in a woman’s

longing
(longing)

__________________________

Jack Foley’s radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine Alsop Review. He has published 11 books of poetry, 5 books of criticism, and Visions and Affiliations, a chronoencyclopedia of California poetry. In 2010 Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. A webfestschrift celebrating his life and work can be found in the current Tower Journal: www.towerjournal.com.

Website: www.jack-adellefoley.com/ 

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Foley_(poet)#Biography.

Jack Foley contributes regularly to this blog.

Pierre Joris in Philadelphia

Month of Moderns I: Pre-concert Event Pierre Joris Reading His Poetry Pierre Joris Reading His Poetry Saturday, June 15 @ 6:30pm-7:15pm Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral 3701 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 Complete MoM Season Information ADMISSION: FREE  As part of our Gulf (between you and me) project, The Crossing commissioned famed poet Pierre Joris to write three poems. These poems have inspired the amazing and varied compostions by Gene Coleman, Chris Jonas, andGabriel Jackson, that you will hear throughout the Month of Moderns. Before we present MoM I at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, come hear Pierre read his poems Rigwreck, Love at First Sight, and Dis/aster. We will provide a printed copy of these poems to all MoM2013 attendees. Pierre Joris has moved between the US, Europe & North Africa for 50 years, publishing over 40 books of poetry, essays and translations. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley & teaches poetry & poetics at the State University of New York, Albany. He lives with his wife, the performance artist and singer Nicole Peyrafitte, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn since 2008. Just out isCartographies of the In-between: The Poetry & Poetics of Pierre Joris, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays by, among others, Mohamed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Regina Keil-Sagawe, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (Literaria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, 2011). Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader edited, introduced and translated by Joris came out in early 2012 from Black Widow Press. Pierre Joris translates Habib Tengour in AlteredScale.com 1.

The Seventh Take

by Jefferson Hansen

                            (for the jazzers)

sound

          older than the skin

     I bare this

                 week

   improvised once

           20 years ago

                    and etched into acetate

skitters & traces

          coring me like

        marrow

    (I assume)

                        does bone

I know every note too well

for improvisation

having played this freezing time

                                                   & time

            I found myself old

last week

       more sudden than expected

     body dripping & falling into

           itself the way I suppose

        a specific record of this song

              could but not the recording

   itself

saved in vaults, servers, discs and so on

            all musicians dead

     save one

       the least famous

I heard him interviewed once, seemed

      a nice guy

      but I don’t want to be nice, not

now

            to curse my failings

        my body

     to yell about not going quiet into that good…

not being nice is fine

    but

            the cursing death part,

         the point,

    exactly—

              the pianist

          moves fingers /

        ghosts

to the right high notes

     now in my apartment

   & 20 years ago

             at the same time

         what was given us on

   the seventh take

of the seventh day

    when the doctor said, “

everyday on Facebook another picture pops up

     of the leader of these alive

            dead men

          popping their living

       dead fingers

                   & sticks

             across the oxygen in my apartment

         provided by my green

                greens doing

              so well so

    well I think

then again, I was never known for my thumb

    the present never was

but never not

           like now

       when the past

  ghosts us more than what we need

                   for response

              across the alley a boy

           hits a metal can in a strange

new beat

       I can’t hear for my stereo

   blaring a frozen improvisation

skittering away the new

           obscuring the now

      teaching me what I already know more

than even the makers of the original acetate

      , if the interview is to be believed,

   who moved on

      moved away

              creating unto death

it was

     on one level

              just the seventh take

          on a session that

    paid poorly

became so very well

  known but everyone

        needs sustenance

                 somehow

                  & how many pathways

               through my nerves

                             flesh

                     furrowed

                         by this very beat

                            momentum

             more alive than I

                will soon be

                       or maybe am

Untitled, by Kerri Pullo

_____________________

Kerri is originally from the Chicagoland area and currently resides in Tucson, AZ. Her art is primarily asemic and references abstract expressionism as well as street art, graffiti, and Arabic influences.  Kerri utilizes pigmented India Inks and acrylics on substrates of recycled photo paper, marketing mailers, and various foodstuff packaging.

“If you gaze upon her densely layered work for a time, we are confident you will start to see the shapes of letters, words and even phrases that never quite coalesce into a coherence one experiences when reading. This is one defining quality of asemic writing that is magical when done well: the suggestion of language, the ghost of language, an apparition of language that appears and disappears without ever bestowing meaning yet very possibly expresses something ineffable in the mind of the viewer.” - De Villo Sloan, International Union of Mail Artists.

See  http://annetrixiemona.blogspot.com/ for more.