DFW

Word is that Little, Brown is to publish posthumously David Foster Wallace's novel The Pale King next year. Illinois is getting even more attention of late: The setting for the book is an IRS office in Illinois in the 1980s. Thanks to The New Yorker for the excerpt.

New Sound Files at FoggedClarity.com

Two of my new poems are up at Fogged Clarity with corresponding sound files, too.

Vanitas

Tom Clark is now blogging at Vincent Katz's new Vanitas blog. It's good to see Vanitas running strong and Clark's running commentary.

Extra

Are we on the verge of witnessing the death of the newspaper?

Colophon

Milk magazine is included in the Colophon International Magazine Symposium in Luxembourg.

Sayonara, Rod.

I once thought I caught a glimpse of ex-Illinois governor Blagojevich sprinting the sidestreets of Lincoln Square in his black running gear and wanted to say thanks for the helicopters. There's nothing like being awakened by the sound of a swarm of helicopters, because you happen to live too close to a disgraced politician on the morning when the story breaks. Sayonara, Rod.

The good news is that Chicago is really heating up in the next few weeks. Thermometers aside, the city will be a hotspot thanks to the upcoming AWP Conference in the coming weeks. These are only some of the events in store. Hope to see you.



February 2, Andrew Terhune, David Trinidad, & Jan Beatty @ ELBOWING OFF THE STAGE reading space, 1278 N. Milwaukee 4W.

February 4, A.D. Jameson & Philip Jenks @ Series A. 7:00-8:00 p.m. At the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue

February 11, Rebecca Wolff, Simone Muench, Philip Jenks, Ish Klien & Lewis Warsh @ Danny’s Tavern, 1951 W. Dickens, Bucktown, Chicago.

February 13, Red Rover Series presents Experiment #26: Friday Night in Chicago: A Small Press Showcase with Switchback Books, Action Books, Flood Editions, Futurepoem Books, Les Figues Press, Ugly Duckling Press and more @ Link’s Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, #207.

February 13, Kevin Coval, Simone Muench, Larry Sawyer, Ray Bianchi, Chris Glomski, Jennifer Scappettone, William Allegrezza, Melissa Severin & Jackie White read @ School of the Art Institute Ballroom, 6:30pm, 112 S. Michigan Avenue (sponsored by the Poetry Center of Chicago).

February 14, Denise Duhamel, Jenny Boully, Susan Wheeler, Daniel Nester, Prageeta Sharma, Gene Tanta, Jen Tynes, Lea Graham, Reb Livingston, Mirela Ramona Ciupag, Gina Myers, Natalie Lyalin, Emily Kendal Frey, Zach Schomburg, Larry Sawyer & Bruce Covey @ Myopic Books, 8:00 pm, 1564 N. Milwaukee, Wicker Park, Chicago.

A Writers' Congress

California sounds nice about now, because we're getting a lot of snow. I'm glad I'm in Chicago, though. There's a lot going on. Look out for the new anthology edited by Chris Green titled A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration with contributors including:

Christian Wiman, Josh Corey, Jan Bottiglieri, Brandi Homan, Larry Janowski, Tony Trigilio, David Trinidad, Arielle Greenberg, Richard Jones, James Shea, Elise Paschen, Rachel Webster, Francesco Levato, Alice George, Mary Hawley, Mike Puican, Cecilia Pinto, Eileen Favorite, cin salach, Anna Marie Craighead-Kintis, Liam Heneghan, Ralph Hamilton, Virginia Bell, Jackie White, Simone Muench, Haki Madhubut, Deborah Rosen, Helen Degan-Cohen, Charlie Newman, Allan Johnston, Garrett Brown, Maureen Flannery, Chicu Reddy, Suzanne Buffman, Susan Hahn, Reginald Gibbons, Calvin Forbes, Mary Kinzie, Judith Valente, Kevin Coval, Li-Young Lee, Julie Parsons Nesbitt, Dina Elenbogen, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Vicky Anderson, Ray Bianch, Bill Allegrezza, Ed Roberson, Kathleen Kirk, Maureen Seaton, Barry Silesky, Jeff Schiff, Susen James, Brenda Cardenas, Christina Pugh, Max Barry, Patty McMillen, Michael Watson, Stuart Dybek, John Keene, Marc Smith, Lauren Levato, Luis Alberto Urrea & Larry Sawyer.

Here's Yusef Komunyakaa's blurb for the book...

"This anthology of varied voices feels like a single praise song, in the spirit of a larger democratic project, with varying pitch and tone, and this nuance is accomplished without sacrificing the uniqueness of each poet. The reader actually encounters an element of the Barack Obama phenomenon; the philosophy of a shared experience at this poignant juncture in the life of America seems to focus the collection. At times, candid and truth-seeking, personal and public, entertaining and meditative, urban and suburban, imagistic and indebted to orality, these wonderful poems not only convey the complexity of Chitown, but they also unmask the nation's soul, without being nostalgic or overly whimsical. We all can embrace this Obama-inspired anthology of timely praise."

I'll read some new poems at the Poetry Center of Chicago, AWP Off-site Reading. Hope to see you there.

What: Chicago Poetics Reading, sponsored by the Poetry Center of Chicago
When: Friday, February 13, 2009 - 6:30pm
Where: SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Avenue

I Got Silver by Your Hives

Pero los ramos son alegres,
los ramos son como nosotros.

-Lorca



So, we left the artillery
Blooming in the fields of blight
And crept along that music
As flower architects.
My fried rabbi, gloating,
Combs the night’s hair?
Father, you are my triple tomb and
No cherry blossoms in the
Graffiti ward, as the metaphors
Lounge upon that bricked
Naiveté. I have only one life and
Wear a sweater of shadows,
But my mouth seeds forever
Autumn’s hopeful decrees.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Thanks to Katy Lederer for the great reading at Myopic and the blog mention.

Poets have to self-publicize. Marilyn looks shocked, but here's another milkmag mention.

Also, I made the "Sexy" issue of MiPoesias . Issuu is such an incredible publishing tool and the magazine looks really cool. Check it out.

If you're in the neighborhood of Evanston, Illinois this Friday, I'll be reading some of my new poetry at Brothers K. coffeehouse, 500 Main St, 6:30 pm.

My chapbook Disharmonium was mentioned in the new issue of Arthur . Now it's official thanks to Byron Coley and Thurston Moore.

"...got a very nice new book of poems from longtime milk magazine editor Larry Sawyer. It's called Disharmonium ( Silver Wonder Press), and is a funny, surreal collection that combines mundane imagist language into a rich new mofungo."

Woof woof woof

Look, fried chicken, a lonely moon
With fey eyes, electric women
Wearing windows and nothing else
A crazed prisoner, perhaps flying,
With a mouth like a cavity, these
Jaws of Nebraska, faux natives,
Slander and oceans, tourists jiggly in the
Distance. Who texts such punks with
Shibboleth diction? What divine blackboard
Triple dunks boldly whose fairy?
Were there ghosts, dismal and grinning?
At the mall were no clichés or surgeries
But a sick levity and ticking quicksand.
Dogs selling bags of imaginary gravity.

It was great to bring On the Road out of the display case and read a section from the scroll edition at Columbia last night as the el rolled by outside the big window on Wabash downtown. Kerouac’s large-hearted open letter to America still has the power to inspire and it was interesting to hear the inflections given the words by the readers as they stood in front of the large triple-screen flashing scenes from classic road movies. Thanks to Columbia College for sponsoring such a well-orchestrated event.

Of Tchaikovsky

Laughing, my sense
Of humor came to visit me in
The middle of the night. War
And famine jumped out the
Window. I pulled out a chair
For my sense of humor and
Then yanked it away at the last
Second, allowing my sense
Of humor to fall on its ass.
My sense of humor thought
This wasn’t very funny, so I
Attempted to make amends.
I cooked the most elaborate dinner.
There was a lit candelabra. The sounds
Of Tchaikovsky, D Major, Op. 35,
Like a sloppy kiss, laid its sticky notes upon
The air. Later I discovered that
Nothing would ever make the
Seasons change any faster and no
One would ever explain to me how those cars
Could slide past the window outside
Filled with such private
Catastrophes.

Benevolent as Gold

derelict page an in
vitation to grace, thus we ga
ther innocence almo
st tangential, a high minde
d echo, like a silo or dyna
mite. the eye must be
a salesperson to marry
these hours, their signifiers

Ti Jean

Jack Kerouac's On the Road works best when read aloud ... quickly, slowly, with a careful mind paid to the sounds and rhythms of the words as they loiter and rush across the page. The [. . . scroll of paper three inches thick made up of one single-spaced, unbroken 120-foot-long paragraph . . .] was written by Kerouac in three weeks in a marathon series of day and night writing as Kerouac transformed himself into the American Balzac. Because On the Road rolls outward in a torrent rather than _____ in stasis like a carefully crafted sculpture, the writing style and method of composition is American in the sense that the emphasis is on timing and production.

Kerouac churned out the novel like he laid it on an assembly line and the speech patterns of the sentences when read aloud have an obvious connection to jazz ... America’s only indigenous art form. When reading this mountain for the first few times, it’s nearly impossible for the reader not to feel swept away by the exuberance expressed by the book and the obvious reverence that Kerouac endearingly held for his subjects. The author, as Sal Paradise, casts out doubt and ventures in the Wilderness to find the elusive truth that he feels bubbling inside him. Certain aspects of On the Road give it a spiritual quality; as heroes Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty race back and forth across the country searching for what it means to be alive in various cars that are nearly like ships slicing the waves of farmland that crisscross middle-America. Kerouac’s bookish alter-ego Sal Paradise, even in name, jumpstarts a journey of discovery that leads none know where. Submerged in the book one also experiences catalogs of details of a 1950s America that Kerouac so lovingly documented. Kerouac also framed the downbeat characters in the novel unabashedly. His polyphonic portraits were nothing more than thinly veiled representations of his own inner-circle, which sometimes gives the book a feeling of inspired gossip. It was enjoyable for me to discover who each subject was and to eventually read their work. This has led many to claim that On the Road is the novel that set them on a path toward an active interest in many other artistic and cultural rivulets and streams. The characters, Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac), Rollo Greb (Alan Ansen), Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs), Jane (Joan Vollmer), Damien (Lucian Carr), Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), Chad King (Hal Chase), Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg), Ian MacArthur (John Clellon Holmes), and Elmer Hassel (Herbert Huncke) all seem on the edge of something: But what that something is doesn’t resonate completely. It’s a feeling being expressed in these pages, not a dismal or defeatist existential problem. The book celebrates life and emphasizes the journey (versus the destination) in a wholly unique way. Kerouac’s oratorio hums in the imagination and lingers in the mind. There’s something singular and elemental about this book like the smell of a winter fireplace, or sighting a planet in the night sky, or watching a dog catch a Frisbee in the park, or the sound of a lonely ship’s horn enveloped in mist, or gazing down on a panoramic view after hiking a woodsy hillside. Kerouac’s deft timing and sincerity reaches out through the page and grabs you by the arm, pulling you along for the windswept cinematic ride. [Pictured: Neal Cassady, circa 1955]

Columbia: On the Road Reading

Come hear me read a portion of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, Wednesday, November 5, at 8pm in the Conaway Center, 1104 South Wabash, on the Columbia College Chicago campus. Here's how I answered the introductory question of what On the Road means to me.

"On the Road was one of the first books I read that really ignited a sense of the passion that I hold for words. The musicality of the language was such an inspiration at a critical time in my life. Seeing the world through Kerouac's eyes in this book gave me hope for my own journey down life's proverbial 'road.'"

Get Your Yeats On

A rare, first edition of a poem by William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916" , is sold at auction for $9,600.


Here's the poem in its entirety.

___________





Image: William Butler Yeats, by Louis le Brocquy, 1994




(This has always been my favorite WBY poem.)



The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.