PhillySound: new poetry

(posted by CAConrad)

click here

" He's a large man, with long hair and prone to wearing glitter on his nails. His presence both alarms and disarms the space of the poetry world by his reedy and generous delivery of a constantly moving poetic that dismisses no topic or approach to being human and artist both."

Eileen Myles talks CAConrad at The Huffington Post. 22 Major Poets Speak Out (click on 14 of 22).


- Frank Sherlock

Click HERE to see this year's card. Click on the image to study it closer, it's pretty wild. Obama sitting with Obama on bench in the distance. A very thin, very tall DEATH approaching from boardwalk.

CAConrad

This is a marvelous POEM TALK with Frank Sherlock, Julia Bloch, and Linh Dinh about the poem "I'd Like to See It," by Norman Fishcher. Poem Talk is hosted by Al Filreis of Kelly Writers House. Click HERE.

CAConrad

...is a stocking stuffer on page 13 of The Philadelphia City Paper.

And just reviewed in HTML GIANT

And for the Seattle newspaper THE STRANGER

I'm VERY EXCITED about all of this!
CAConrad

The feeling of winter made me pick up Kevin Varrone's g-point almanac: passyunk lost again, one of my favorite books, one that for me was a real flourish--from its green cover, even--in the middle of last year's exceptionally cold, dark winter here. The book journals (or almanacs, perhaps) through a winter, ending on 3.21, its last three lines: day keeps putting on / its cloak and darkness / keeps putting things away. Don't worry--I didn't just spoil the ending, because there's no end to this book. It's moving through it, like a season, and gathering a texture of day and place--awareness of shifting light and the "half-seen"--that's to be gained from it. I find a consolation in the texture of the poetry that makes the streets around here (South Philly, which the book is much about) more. More what? When I look up from the book, off Passyunk Avenue, I pay attention to changes in light, to birds, of course, and hear for dusk and flight in the speech of passersby. A feeling of passing. Passyunk, once a footpath. And then later, walking the sidewalk, the angles of buildings and light, the run-over pigeons make me think of the poetry, which, I want to say, is the possibility of making something. Days as syllables, syllables for days. A squab, I've learned, is an unfledged pigeon. A squab, you might say, including the sound of the word, is a building block of this city, of who it is. A squab might squabble. "Winter is quarrels." Once a footpath, always a footpath. When I say texture, I think I mean rhythm plus tone. There's a muted humor, blown through the wind, that touches the sadness and lost-ness, and I love that. I go back for more. I learn more.

Here are two days from the second section, "a fortnight for st. distaff" - click to enlarge:



- Ryan Eckes

for 2nd Ave. Poetry (many thanks to the editors!)
Click HERE for the interview.
THANKS FRANK,
CAConrad

Trisha Low s currently a student in philadelphia who appreciates the difference between restraint and restraints. And she's talking about poetry, ok? Low has work forthcoming in Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing edited by Craig Dworkin and Kenny Goldsmith.

Astrid Lorange is a PhD student. She lives in both Sydney and Philadelphia. She has a chapbook forthcoming in Spring.

Steven Zultanski is the author of Pad (Make Now, 2010) and Cop Kisser (BookThug, 2010). He edits and curates variously this and that.

Rob Fitterman is the author of 10 books of poetry including: The Sun Also Also Rises, war the musical, Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edge Books), Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House Press), Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon Press), This Window Makes Me Feel (www.ubu.com). Metropolis 1-15 was awarded the Sun & Moon “New American Poetry Award (2000)” and Metropolis 16-29 was awarded the Small Press Traffic “Book of the Year Award (2003)”. With novelist Rodrigo Rey Rosa, he co-authored the film What Sebastian Dreamt which was selected for the Sundance Film Festival (2004) and the Lincoln Center LatinBeat Festival (2004). He has been a full-time faculty member in NYU’s Liberal Studies Program since 1993. He also teaches poetry at the Milton Avery School of Graduate Studies at Bard College.


- Frank Sherlock

In the Winter 2010 issue of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, you can read a letter to the late Thomas Paine.

-- Ryan Eckes

Brickbat Books

709 S. Fourth Street

Philadelphia, PA

December 10th

7pm