plink a plink a plink

Going to local readings often involve mad-dash moments before it, trying to print, cut, fold, staple PFAs for any of the poets featured that night. This isn't some obligation foisted upon me by those poets, mind you, but rather a driven need to do so by some manic-internal-thingy within that makes it impossible for me to just go out and enjoy a reading. So, sunday night, the PoemSpirits reading at the Unitarian and it's Rebecca Morrison and an hour before I'm frantic, screaming at my machine because it won't print the guts to Upon Eating a Manzanita Berry (PFA #303) at the same time I'm trying to finish the design of the cover of Why He Died (PFA #340), one of the best tribute poems to Bob Kaufman. The printer wins, and I leave with just copies of #340 that will have to be folded and stapled during the reading.

PoemSpirits readings have an intimate workshop feeling. Tables formed into a large "U" shape make it feel like your interviewing the featured poet for a position at your university. (And at "my" university I like to imagine I am also the advisor to the I-TAPPA-KEGGA Fraternity...) I like the table space, spreading open my notebook, the stapler, the small piles of unfinished booklet elements. Unique to this venue is an opening examination of a poet and her/his work and background -- often done by one of the series hosts Nora Staklis (PFA #206), Tom Goff (PFAs #179, 180, 215) and JoAnn Anglin) This month a presentation by Nora on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Event Notes:
12.05.04 | PoemSpirits | Rebecca Morrison | Talked with Kathy Kieth about last night's "scandal" at the Rent Girl event -- the Julie Reyes poem | Zen peace flags in vibrant colors hang above us in this Unitarian room as Nora read the bio; poet-turned-priest Manley destroyed his poems written before the priesthood; too of the self, too egotistical. | Welsh aliteration shared. | Settee in the city. | K. Kieth | Friths | Morrison | Selinskys | JoAnn | Me | 2 unknown 1.)_______ and 2.)_______ | Morrison: I write a lot of poetry with "surreal nature images." | plink a plink a plink | From the Cache Creek workshop, a general disagreement with others on the moods of Louise Gluck; the exercise: write a poem, sitting in the woods, blindfolded. | T]: Written while Blind | I watch as Rebecca reads, the poem placed on the table, head bowed to place eyes towards the page, but eyes closed, as if reading through the eyelids. | Louise dreams of summers that never came | As each poem is finished, a soft movement of the hand puts the page into a pile at the corner of the table. | Poems written to an Oak Tree, planted a decade ago, now forty feet tall (on property just sold). | T]: Quercus ilex | A Holly Oak | Will your roots push through where my iron shovel failed? | T]: The Desert | !!! | A powerful poem about remembrance, personal, building quietly, then overwhelming. | poems-as-autobiography | T]: Serengeti Dream | on travel to Africa by a girl who's never been | T]: Sea of Bones |("My body as one...") | T]: The Rapture (or why I write) | T]: Venus Over the Rockies | written in-flight, mountains in view | T]: Poem for the Future | Post-apocolyptic squirrel gloves | T]: You are the Ham and I am the Wry | poetry climbers and social gropers | a trophy filled with someone's rancor and jealousy | T]: Child of Mine | an obsessed reply to having read Toni Morrison's Beloved | My Mother's Hands |Furious folds to build 340s; a few open mic readers; akward hand off of poems to the poet --always so much easier to make then they are to present | It's back to midtown for a coffee refill (.75) | James Lee Jobe adds his postscript to the event, as dj, on the radio, relasing the iron butterflies --Inagatadavita | Through the window of Rick's, large slabs of half-eaten, picked over, frosting-slathered cake; enthusiastic forkfulls surrendered to a bodily limit on butter-grease. | Next door, a sad menagerie huddled into the sparse, nameless bar, the exterior painted throbbing phosphorus.

Production Notes:
The faint image of Bob Kaufman on the cover of #340 is from a photograph on display at my bookstore that was taken by North Beach Photographer Jean Dierkes-Carlisle and on loan from the collection of Mariana Williamson (PFA #45). This particular booklet has gone through several design revisions, including several representations of Kaufman. In fact, this may be the most problematic cover in the entire series, which is kind of ironic since all that is really called for is a fucking picture of Bob Kaufman. So I've tinkered with it over the last year, delaying its release. Until now.