THIS GIRL IS SINGING!

So, here's more for the "Thank you, Universe" file. 

Everyday, I spend time clearing through, cleaning up, re-organizing or otherwise going through Mom's stuff.  She left behind a lot of stuff and the process is weighty (as it forces me to remember various aspects of her life when I'm in mourning that she's gone).  But, this morning, I came across a book -- a book that she'd put on her shelves of Bibles and various Biblical studies, which is to say, a treasured space to Mom -- this book:

I hadn't looked at this particular book, this MARVELOUS BLESSING, in a while (it was released in 2009).  It's a book curated/edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman; that is, John focused on a poem I wrote "Girl Singing" and then put out a call for poets and artists to respond to it.  The result became a book.  And as I looked at the copy that Mom gave, I remembered that I had given it to her as a gift (was it for Christmas that year?).  I opened it, and saw this:

So, ONCE MORE and FOREVER MORE, thank you to editor John Bloomberg-Rissman and the forty-ish poets and visual artists around the world who generously responded to my poem to give a "thousand views."  You didn't just make me happy, but you gave so much pleasure to my Mom.

THANK YOU, UNIVERSE!

A DELIGHT!

Well isn't that special! Someone relished 1000 Views of Moi! That's worth interrupting our regularly scheduled programming of THOUGHTS WHILE JUDGING A POETRY CONTEST! To wit, David Hart of Stride Magazine (scroll to bottom) reviewed 1000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING and had this to say:

"When I received [the Laâbi] in the post, I saw at its endpaper an advertisement for Leafe Press's 1,000 Views of "Girl Singing", edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman, which caught my imagination strongly enough for me to send a cheque for it. It was money very well spent, it's a unique book, if in uneasily small print, of many invited responses, by way of poetry or visually, to a poem by Eileen Tabios.

It has led me to speculate about early modern, say 15th-16th centuries or earlier, whether there were, along with circulation of poems by hand, also response-poems and perhaps drawings: exchanges and additions verbally and visually. The book implements a fertile present and suggests a future for such intermingled new work. A delight."

And it's a delight to be doubly-relished, first with a book and then the review of the book! Thankee John or instigating!

And here's moi latest Relished W(h)ine List -- if the poetry publications seem to comprise a paltry list, it's because I'm also reading books for a poetry competition I'm judging, which I won't be listing here):

PUBLICATIONS
TEXTURE NOTES, poems by Sawako Nakayasu (intelligent luminosities!)

UNRELATED INDIVIDUALS FORMING A GROUP WAITING TO CROSS, poems by Mark Yakich

SO FORTH, poems by Joseph Brodsky

ASHES GIFTED, poems and painting reproductions by Joshua Abelow (a witty and funny self-awareness)

A SCRIPT, poems by Joel Chace

AGAINST THE FORGETTING: FRANCES FROST & PAUL BLACKBURN, biography by Robert Buckeye

TIE ONE ON 1 and TIE ONE ON 2, conceptual art by Alex Gildzen (very entertaining -- RECOMMENDED and AVAILABLE FOR FREE AT ungovernable press. I thought Bill Allegrezza was HOT until I saw Kevin Killian. Grin.)

THAT BOOK WOMAN, children's book by Heather Henson with pictures by David Small

INVISIBLE, novel by Paul Auster

SILENT KILLER, novel by Beverly Barton

HOW SWEET IT IS, novel by Alice J. Wisler

HEROIC MEASURES, novel by Jill Ciment

NOT MY DAUGHTER, novel by Barbara Delinsky

NO SECOND CHANCE, novel by Harlan Coben

TARGET, novel by Catherine Coulter

A CREED COUNTRY CHRISTMAS, novel by Linda Lael Miller


WINES
2002 Dominique Laurent Nuits-Saint-Georges les Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes
2002 Eitelsbacher karthauserhofberg Riesling Eiswein Mosel Saar Ruwer
1997 Clarendon Hills Shiraz Piggot Range Vineyard
2005 Ovid "Experiment"
2001 Clerico Ginestra
2005 Araujo Estate Viognier
1996 Jones Family Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
2003 Jones Family Estate "The Sisters"
2003 Rieussec
2006 Trefethen pinot noir
2006 Culler syrah
2006 Dr. Loosen Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett Stablay parcel
2006 Napa Cellars Zinfandel NV
1994 Vega Sicilia
2004 Dancing Hares
2002 Blankiet Cabernet
2000 Colgin cabernet
Schramsberg sparkling wine
2008 Vineyard 29 29 Estate cabernet (barrel sampling)
2007 Vineyard 29 29 Estate Blanc
2006 Vineyard 29 29 Estate cabernet
2007 Vineyard 29 Aida Estate Late Harvest zinfandel
2005 Bressler Vineyards cabernet
2007 Bressler Vineyards pinot noir

FROM A LINE-PLUCKER'S LIFE

Because Moi is crazy enough to want to read every poem ever written, she responded strangely to a request while in the crazed midst of trying to release GR #13. She was asked to judge a poetry contest. If she hadn't been distracted by GR #13, she would have automatically replied, "No thank you" while diplomatically hiding a grimace. But, embroiled in poems, she paused ... and had a thought.

So she said she'd judge this contest if she saw every book submitted for it -- i.e., as she told the contest coordinator, "no winnowing". See, Moi thought it might be interesting to see what happens if she was forced to sit down and read through hundreds (will be it thousands...?) of books and ....

The contest coordinator said, Okay...though he knew Moi well enough to say, "As long as you don't pluck lines from the books to string up a cento..."

Cackle. Well, as is often my modus operandi for poem-making, Let's see what happens...
*****

One of the reasons putting out GR #13 was so crazed was because the chill of the last couple of weeks apparently adversely impacted my internet infrastructure -- not to mention that Sprint (Google me, you Sprint) has got to IMPROVE its cell-phone towers in my area (St. Helena/Calistoga border--google me, Sprint!). Said infrastructure is in a cold storage space somewhere in the mountain. After failing to find cashmere blankets to swaddle the various electronic components, I had to find a heater, hire an electrician to install a plug, and then run the dang heater to warm up said components and get me internet. All this made me forget until this morning about the Galatea Resurrects Publishers' Prize! So, official proclamation:

Hail to the recipient of GR #13's Galatea Resurrects Publishers' Prize!

Moria Books, Ed. William Allegrezza and based in Chicago

May this honor get you at least one book ordered!

*****

Now, speaking of line-pluckers, John Bloomberg-Rissman alerts Moi that 1000 VIEWS OF 'GIRL SINGING' made an Editor's Pick over at the U.K.'s Stride Magazine. Moreover, he has a discounted RELEASE OFFER available per below. So, go hear Moi's Avatar sing...a thousand times, why dontcha!

From JBR:

First, our anthology made Stride Magazine's The Editor's Picks 2009 list:

Poetry
1000 Views of 'Girl Singing', ed. John Bloomberg-Rissman (Leafe)
Nowhere's Far, Phil Bowen (Salt)
The Hunt in the Forest, John Burnside (Cape)
Songbook, Ken Edwards (Shearsman)
The Migraine Hotel, Luke Kennard (Salt)
Ascension Notes, Sarah Law (Shearsman)
Catalyctic Exteriorisation Phenomenon, Mel Nichols (Edge)
London: Ghost Autopsy, Nick Scammell (Kitchen Door)
American Hybrid, eds. Cole Swensen & David St. John (Norton)

Second, Richard Lopez writes, "my copy arrived a few days ago and it is most probably the liveliest and original anthols i've read in some time. this is a book that makes me happy in mind and body."

Thanks, Richard, and thanks, Rupert Loydell, ed. of Stride. Thanks most of all to the contributors, who made this happen.

As posted previously, reiterated here, now that your mouth is watering:

1,000 Views of ³Girl Singing²
John Bloomberg-Rissman (ed.)
ISBN: 978-0-9561919-1-5
Since there's lots of color. the book¹s kinda expensive. It will list for £23.00/$45.00. BUT: if you buy it from us, instead of Amazon or wherever else it's listed, we'll sell it for cost plus a little to help cover postage:

£16.00/$27.00

Just contact me at j at johnbr dot com and we'll get the ball rolling.

*****

Just as I was finishing this post, another query came through wanting to know if I'd judge a poetry contest. I replied, "No thank you...."

CALLING OUT FOR SONGS!

Jemma Green, a creative writing student currently living in Cornwall, is the first to take up our invitation for songs extending the Original Girl’s global chorus. But as curator John Bloomberg-Rissman notes, the invitation is OPEN TO ALL!

Y tambien, mas interesante informacion AQUI.

GIRL SINGING...AGAIN AND AGAIN!

Am quite tickled indeed to learn that 1000 Views of Girl Singing is already in use in a university, this inaugural one being University College Falmouth in England where poet-artist-publisher-teacher Rupert Loydell is lecturing on Creative Writing.

Mr. Loydell apparently has his students looking at the online version -- WHICH IS A UNIQUE OFFERING in poetry; do check it out! -- and creating their own versions.

Yeah. Poetry lives -- it's not something that lies static against the page or is passively received. Poetry breathes and engenders, among other things, new acts of creation. Poetry lives dynamically!

USING ART TO INCORPORATE THE FUTURE INTO THE PRESENT

I create abstract personal systems to investigate my own perception of time through the world around me. In my drawings, repetitive lines or marks create a visual build-up of time that has passed. "Memories of the Past at the Present" is an interpretation of the idea that the present is made up of both the past and the incipient future.
--Rebekah May

I enjoy including "About The Cover" sections in my books (e.g. The Secret Lives of Punctuations and Nota Bene Eiswein) -- it's another way to discuss poetry and/or its effects. So I was delighted to see that 1000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING includes such a section, and I loved it so much that I got permission to post the entire thing for your reading pleasure! The artist Rebekah May (whose website is worth checking out!) did a wonderfully inventive collaboration with ten other artists -- mirroring the collaborative approach of the book's poetry. Here is what Rebekah first presented to the participating artists -- I love the idea of riffing off of the Fibonacci sequence:

Having a selection of artists follow the directions allowed me to create a collaborative cover with unique variations on a theme, just like the interpretations of the poem “Girl Singing” in this anthology. These are the directions:

1) Draw a square that’s about a quarter of an inch

2) Draw another square the same size next to the 1st square

3) Draw a square the size of the first 2 squares combined on top of the first two squares

4) Draw a square the size of the first 3 squares combined to the right of the other squares

5) Draw a square the size of the first 4 squares combined below the first 4 squares

6) Draw a square the size of the first 5 squares combined to the left of the first 5 squares

7) Draw a square the size of the first 6 squares combined on top of the first 6 squares

8) Draw a square the same size as the first 7 squares combined to the right of the first 7 squares

9) Draw a line that connects the squares in the order that you drew them

Below is a drawing of the Fibonacci sequence.

Participating Artists were Zina Al-Shukri, Claire Belby, Pablo Cristi, Joshua Ferris, Patrick Hillman, Justin Hurty, Cameron Kelly, Hilary Pecis, Maya Ruznic, and Ashley Lauren Saks.

What I adore about the artists' approach was how they created something new based on poetry, rather than the more common book cover method of finding an "illustration" to use as a cover image. I thank these artists for their openness and their work which resulted in this book cover:



There is a further & helpful discussion of the background to (and larger-size book cover image at) 1000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING over at Zeitgeist Spam. Editor John Bloomberg-Rissman is soon to be off to Europe to release the book at the London Small Publishers Fair. Do check out the Leafe Press table for this release!

GARCIA VILLA, MOI & TOI!

Although 1,000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING won't be released until November 13, 2009 at the London Small Publishers Fair, it is now available through Amazon for ordering (and early sales figures are already strong -- why don'tcha see what's up with these melodic palabras?!).

To remind (from an earlier post):

...GIRL SINGING is global music produced, in many cases, among strangers from nearly 50 poets worldwide....based on a song, that is poem (inspired by a Jose Garcia Villa poem), I wrote when I was exploring poem-as-song back in the day. I certainly didn't know back then that the poem's desire for audience inherently means the poem-song is really a chorus (or, at a minimum, a duet).

There are poems who just talk the talk. Then there are poems who are lucky enough to find a reader who paused and paid attention for as long as that poem required to release its full blossoming, in this case, on the universal e-stage -- THANK YOU to editor John Bloomberg-Rissman for making this project sing on a world stage!

WAY BETTER THAN A THOUSAND VIEWS OF MOI

is this about-to-be-released 1,000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING!

...GIRL SINGING is global music produced, in many cases, among strangers from nearly 50 poets worldwide....based on a song, that is poem (inspired by a Jose Garcia Villa poem), I wrote when I was exploring poem-as-song back in the day. I certainly didn't know back then that the poem's desire for audience inherently means the poem-song is really a chorus (or, at a minimum, a duet).

There are poems who just talk the talk. Then there are poems who are lucky enough to find a reader who paused and paid attention for as long as that poem required to release its full blossoming, in this case, on the universal e-stage -- THANK YOU John Bloomberg-Rissman (if you click on John's blog-link, btw, you can see an encyclopediac -- gorgeously ambitious! -- hay(na)ku sequence in blossom-progress...)

Relatedly, much gratitude to Ernesto for his post about both 1,000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING and FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRA. Ernesto's view is arguably the healthiest writing I've seen among the texts addressing the role of blogging in poetry. Do nota bene in particular his eloquence on the joy of sharing and collaboration!

I was also glad to see Ernesto's post because I was among that group of bloggers who began blogging before hordes of poets got into blogworld. Back then, it was a different zeitgeist...even as it's been fascinating to see what happens to the mix when more capitalist concerns (from selling books to selves) enter into the fray (tho, not to worry: Poetry not only survives everything, but it can blossom from anything).

WINTRY, BUT NOT WINTER-Y

John Bloomberg-Rissman initiated the project "1,000 VIEWS OF GIRL SINGING" rooted in one of my poems "The Secret Life of An Angel". I was honored to see so many participants re-do or re-work or take some impetus from that poem -- in part because I moiself was never satisfied with it. So I also tried to work the original, and came up with "ANTI-WINTER: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF AN ANGEL", now part of Fiera Lingue's in-progress WINTER issue (it's in progress but has some fine contributors and contributions -- check out the link now, why not?)!

Thanks to editor Anny Ballardini for always being open to my work.

The poem on Fiera Lingue is not going to be my last take on my original poem -- part of the problem is time: I'm so past that time when I wrote the original poem and so I have to find a doorway to it now that keeps me alive to it....meanwhile, the contributions of so many others are so much more effective than mine, e.g. THIS.

One thing that this whole exercise proves is that looking at a poem in another way than "bad" vs "good" is as valid a path to creating a larger poetry experience than what may be limited by authorial intention.

Anyway, the poem on Fiera Lingue is what it is (and I do like my Jamaican accent coming up in its punchline), but also will serve as a means for taking me closer to what likely will be my last Word on this poem -- which will appear in the anthology that John is editing, and which I think will be published by U.K.'s Leafe Press (that's a teaser for the anthology!). THANKS again, John...and to all the participants. Cheers.

I'VE JUST TOPPED THE BILLBOARD CHARTS

without, as my producer John Bloomberg-Rissman notes, "one single dime of payola"!



Gracias to the real artist, poet-scholar-D.J.! Ernesto Priego for the instigation. Naturally, moi poker-playing Angels are pleased-with-themselves preeeeeening!