Bob Moricz | pulling up steaks

Captiol Public Radio will feature a segment on their Insight program tommorrow on filmmaker Bob Moricz titled "Filmmaker splits -- You'll learn why local independent filmmaker Bob Moricz is pulling up stakes and moving to Portland, Oregon."

August 29, 2006, between 2 and 3pm on KXJZ 88.9

262 | Rollita, Variants

I am delighted to have Becca Costello's poem Rollita in the Poems-For-All Series. It entered the series as #262 and debuted at the PFA Second Saturday Reading that featured Becca, Rachel Leibrock and Gene Bloom (who filled in for an ailing frank andrick.) I had little under a week to develop its cover.

Below is a cover variant that wasn't used. I first heard Becca read Rollita one year ago on frank's radio program Pomo Literati. I was deeply moved by it; struck by how she could effectively fold humor into sadness. And while I wanted a cover that could reveal the poems undercurrent -- an older man's lecherous designs on an eight year old girl -- this cover seemed to take that too far. The eyes are too desperate; the cover too serious. It was hard to let this cover go, but it didn't seem to strike the balance of fun(ny) and fate that Becca achieved with the poem.




The published cover (below) has been lightened a bit. Both the color -- blue was selected to correspond with the roller rink floor -- and the mood of the man involved. I'm loathe to say it's more "playful." But it is a more humorous presentation and more in balance then the first variant with the content it was designed to cover.

641, 642, 643 | Frank Andrick, Becca Costello, Rachel Leibrock

For their reading at the bookstore on Aug. 12th, new chaplets were issued for Frank Andrick, Becca Costello, Rachel Leibrock

635, 636, 637 | Mackey, Garcia, Dodge

The Sacramento State Summer Writers' Conference kicks off this weekend (Aug. 18-20) and Poems-For-All is pleased to have published three of the writers who will be present: Mary Mackey, Albert Garcia, and Jim Dodge. Around 200 copies of each booklet will be dispensed during the conference.

sputter

The evening shifted off its foundation at the news. Even the Eskimo wouldn't enter the building. Andrick wouldn't be coming. Sick. (Or broken by the marathon.) Kudos to both Rachel and Becca who waded through the murky disappointment and gave us a fine reading. Gene filled in for frank, reading his 99 Flowers and others. For Bloom's own poems, Avery blew sax from the other side of the bookshelves. Still, not quite a birthday celebration without the Birthday Boy. Get better, frank.