CruelestMonth.com

NY Reading

Eve Grubin, Marie Howe, and Yusef Komunyakaa will read Monday, 12/18 @ 7pm, at KGB Bar.  From Flavorpill:

In reams of verse through history, the poet is made to howl after the losses of life and loves; three more tonight have called on grief for a muse. Pulitzer winner Yusef Komunyakaa's tensely muscular writings have taken on Vietnam and jazz at full volume. His latest is a verse play that trails Gilgamesh, tearing through the underworld in search of his lost friend. He reads tonight, alongside KGB Bar mainstay Marie Howe, whose second collection, What the Living Do, also riffs on the urge to sift through loss. Eve Grubin rounds out an evening of solid Downtown lit — and the syncopated, stumbling pain of her poem "After" is a meditation on living meant to be heard aloud. (DO)

- MS

Pic / Updike / 118 Poets

Sweet pic, huh (see post below). Yeah, it casts me in that Messianic light I always enjoy. It was taken in the garnet mine near Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. The whole hill top was gouged by mining, leaving 270 degrees of a stone ampitheater. Garnet being red and the sun dropping, we experienced a surreal ten minutes. About that time, I peaked that tasty wedge of rock with six friends. Luckily, one of them had a camera.

After driving the four hours backs to my parents' house (whose car I borrowed. yeah. don't have one of those), we hopped on Metro-North. When we stood to exit, I noticed an issue of The New York Review of Books lying on the edge of a seat. Curious as to who actually reads NYRB openly and in public, I looked closer to see that sitting a few seats away was John Updike. (I relayed this anecdote lamely on the Olive Reader, but here you get the fully skinny.) I wasn't completely sure at first, but then a few strangers shook his hand; he nodded politley, smiled, and walked away. Definite spotting.

As for a link, I should direct you to a review of Poetry on Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work -- an audio box-set containing the spoken works of 118 poets, ranging in dates from 1888-2006. It could be the perfect gift for the poetry lover in your family.

- MS

I would have kept climbing, but there was no more rock.

War and Peace - "Zero-Variant"

Ecco will publish the "original" version of "War and Peace" next year.  Yes.  As you suspect, the origins of a serialized and repeatedly revised novel are less than clear.  But fifty years of research and scholarship by Evelina Zaidenshnur, beginning in the first half of the 20th c., produced a defendable "early" version.  Zacharov, the publisher of the Russian version (2000), stated: "I will never say that this is the only book [War and Peace] one should read...It is, if you wish, like one's first and second husband.  Of course, the second husband is better, but that first one -- he is also part of one's life."

"Taking poetry to heart"

Here's something that will warm you right up.  Nick Seddon set out to memorize 100 poems within a year: "I am half way through, but I'm no longer doing this simply because I want to reach the end point.  It's been all about falling in love with poetry again, and discovering it as if for the first time."  That's enough to melt even the coldest hearts. 

The ToolBox Takes on Verse

MediaBistro's ToolBox, which tops only your mother as the greatest repository of reasons WHY you are a failure (cf. any of the numerous articles on WHY your resume stinks, WHY your pitch was rejected, WHY they hate your fiction, etc.), turns its take-no-prisoners critical eye to poetry, with the help of Soft Skull Press.  In "On How to Make a Living as a Poet," a two-part post, MB ToolBox introduces SSP's How to Make a Living as a Poet and How to Make a Life as a Poet, both edited by Gary Mex Glazner, and reprints a section we all know many, many poets could take a lesson from: "The Barbaric Yawp: Giving a Good Reading."  (Part two here.) Take notes, or buy the books.

Lunch at the Gulag

The Ugly Duckling Presse makes beautiful, intelligently designed books and chapbooks of poetry.  I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of their periodical "6x6 #11: The line about the ants isn't mine," at an event this weekend (they were nice enough to give it away...the book).  I hadn't heard of many of the poets -- Christina Clark, C.S. Carrier, Aaron James McNally, Friedrich Kerksieck, Sue Carnahan, James Wagner, and Rick Snyder -- but I'm glad I've heard of them now.  And their prices are as fair as they come.  Go UDP!

On a completely unrelated note, last night our neighbours (who we have never met) asked if we would film them for a "reality tv" show they were in the running for.  One of many stipulations required that the camera run straight through, no edits, so we recorded until the batteries ran out.  Riveting stuff, as you might expect (though, they were very nice and they'll most likely be the most famous people ever in the near future).  This all got me to thinking how silly we are when the world is first put before us, when the idea of taking a wild chance holds actual promise, when we think we're cute and we don't wear underwear -- I never completed this line of thought.  Instead I started thinking about college and professors, and if we actually learned anything, which got me to reading the alumni review that so happened to arrive this weekend.  In it, I found an article about Professor Steven Yao.  He taught my senior seminar on Ezra Pound and Modernism and today I'm feeling especially appreciative.  If you have the occasional scholarly fancy, why not read his book Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language.

Thank you for your patience.

December 1st

First of the month, Friday, 3pm: two and a half more hours.  I've been browsing the Gagosian Gallery's website.  It's pretty amazing.  Peter Schjeldahl in his Critic's Notebook mentioned John Currin's current exhibit at the Madison Avenue location.  "John Currin's paintings are the signal American art works of today.  What this says about us isn't flattering, but there are wisps of hope in it."  It ends Dec. 22nd.