FRIDAY MISCELLANY

Sam Rasnake's reading of Jose Garcia Villa's Lyric 22 is as "lovely as a panther."

I've just discovered this blog whose energy is as beautiful as the poets who make up its community: Upset Press.

Also, I wish I could attend but suggest y'all in the area go to:

Vanitas Magazine Launch Party
Vanitas 3 : Popular Song

Readings by Elaine Equi, Cliff Fyman, Alix Lambert, Charles North, Raphael Rubinstein, and Susan Wheeler
Jack Pierson, Master of Ceremonies
Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 6 PM
FREE
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery St. (between Houston and Bleecker)

Note that the issue is themed "Popular Song". Which I nota bene for y'all because it contains my first attempt at translation (a numerical poem by kari edwards into Ilokano) and the poetics/translation theories underlying such.

Then, like others, I've been quite moved at reading Tom Beckett's recollections over The Difficulties and how Yale came to get The Difficulties archive. Two things came to mind (well, more than two things but I'll blog about two):

1) The notion that other poets/writers lost interest in keeping in touch with Tom once he ceased to be a magazine editor. This is a topic folks rarely talk about (or that I've observed) but which I'm quite aware of (forced to be aware of) because of my activities as an editor, sometime-critic and publisher. Thinking as I type, now that I've raised the topic, I find it doesn't interest me enough to discuss. Except that, today vs, uh yesterday, I think I'm more Zen about the whole thing -- we're all just lousy humans, after all, which makes those rare ones with authentic empathy more special among us lovely humans. It is best, I think, to approach this topic with ... compassion. (Huh, I guess I did do a bit of discussion...)

2) Ye matter of archives in an e-age. For years now, and because my blather generates so much blather, I've been putting together cardboard boxes in the "garage" labeled by year. Basically, without any atttempt to organize because there's so much of it, I just toss in each box until it gets filled up any detritus, souvenir, hard-copy print-out of anything related to the work I do in poetry. But I don't print-out and archive e-mails or blog posts or most of what I do in the internet (I tried doing so once but there's just too much for me to keep up with such...and I'm not, hard to believe, that fascinated with moiself). And that's fine with me. Rather than bemoan putting my files at risk to the internet's whim, I actually find that it makes more precious to me the objects that do have a physical presence--for example, that someone bothered to hand-write a letter than dash off an e-mail. Besides, it's impossible to archive Poetry.

Last but not least, I just bought Moi sum poetree: String Light by C.D. Wright (University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1991)--$4.50 (50% off) from used poetry shelves of the wonderful Main Street Bookstore, St. Helena.