St. Louis Borders

On my way home yesterday from Illinois I stopped at my favorite corporate bookstore- Borders on Brentwood in St. Louis. (I think perhaps the whole area is referred to as Brentwood. It seems to be their version of the Plaza). The store is two storeys & although the space allotted for poetry is rather small, no surprise, it is well stocked with titles from independent presses. The vast majority of books are displayed with the spine facing out, as opposed to other stores where they simply face covers, taking up more space, in categories that they think no one will ever buy. Interesting enough the worst corporate owned bookstore in Kansas City is a Borders location. Their stock of poetry is so small that it's comparable to what one would find in an airport. I have more volumes of poetry laying around my livingroom than their entire poetry stock. The Brentwood branch already had a copy of the new Eshleman anthology "Grindstone of Rapport" pub. by the wonderful Black Widow. I also came across several books I wasn't even aware of- a hardback volume of poetry by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an anthology of contemporary Hebrew poetry edited by Tsipi Keller, Rosemary Lloyd's biography/study of Baudelaire. I noticed that they'd even restocked the books I'd bought the last time I was there- Nathaniel Tarn's "Embattled Lyric" & Castior's biography of Paz. I am fortunate enough that my second favorite corporate owned bookstore is actually within walking distance of where I live-a three storey Barnes & Noble. Neither of these two stores is on par with a store such as St. Mark's in NY, but they are both nice exceptions to the treatment one usually sees poetry books given in most corporate owned bookstores. Visiting Borders last night actually added an extra forty-five minutes on to an already long drive but it was well worth it. I left with Jose Garcia Villa's "Doveglion" & "The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense" (another book I was unaware of).

Fernando Pessoa

Stencil on a building in Lisbon.

Two new links

Cover of Alexei Kruchenykh & Roman Jakobson's "Transrational Boog"

Covver art by Olga Rozanova

While reading Silliman's blog this afternoon I was quite ecstatic over the links to Getty's digitized Russian poetry books/artworks available as downloadable PDF files http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/russian_avant-garde/pdfs.html

as well as archives (mp3s) of Joe Milford's show featuring poets:

http://www.janecrown.com/show_download_page.htm

The only complaint I have about the Milford page is that I wish they had fragmented the mp3s (even if it was in two parts) so that they could be burned onto cd, as most of them are longer than the standard 80 minutes avilable on blank cds. Just a small complaint.

I do this I do that

Yesterday:

- Wake up at 2 in the afternoon.

-Smoke

-Drink coffee

- Watch a David Shapiro reading (thank you U of Chicago Poem Present)

-Smoke

- Eat spaghetti for late lunch/early dinner

- Watch a lecture by Robert Kehew on his anthology of Troubador poetry "Lark in the Morning" (thank you Library of Congress)

- Drink coffee

-Read more of the anthology "Iraqi Poetry Today"

- Stop to rent "Batman Begins" & "Transsiberian" on the way to my awake overnight shift

-Watch "Batman Begins"

-Drink coffee

-Smoke

Midnight/ Today:

- Eat "dinner" about 1 a.m.

- Watch "Transsiberian" (fantastic)

- Read more of "Iraqi Poetry Today"

- Smoke

-Once my shift is over I consider staying up until I finish the anthology

-Fall asleep around 7:30

- Wake up at 3:30 this afternoon

- Make a list of things that need to be returned to the library

- Get an iced mocha (english toffee)

- Check out quite a few things at the library...Yau's "Borrowed Love Poems" (thank you ILL), the Jodorowsky dvd set, season 1 of Henry Rollins talk show (highlights will be interviews with Werner Herzog, Eddie Izzard...performance highlights will be Thom Yorke, Sleater-Kinney, Daniel Johnston), the 2 disc special edition of Joy Division's "Closer" (second disc is a live performance), "Epic of Gilgamesh", critical study on Jarry, Sam Truitt's "Vertical Elegies" (Ugly Duckling) & more

- Now I am going to watch an eighty minute reading of Linh Dinh! (thank you Holloway Series)

SFSU Poetry Center

Tonight I watched two poetry videos. The first a reading by Nathaniel Mackey, courtesy of the superb University of Chicago Poem Present site & second a symposium on Octavio Paz courtesy of the Library of Congress. Naropa Univesity has generously archived many of their lectures & readings and allowed free access to them. Now it is SFSU Poetry Center's turn. I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now. In the past I have ordered four videos from the Center: two Berrigan readings, a Lamantia reading & a Paz reading costing over one hundred dollars total. My suggestion is for the Center to archive all of their video recordings online & if free access is out of the question due to costs, then allow subscriptions! I would happily pay forty dollars per month for access to their treasures, even if it meant the only affordable format was streaming video (Real Player, etc.) I'm fairly confident that most people interested would not only be willing to pay twenty-forty dollars per month but also in the end the Center would actually make more money from it.

Poetry t-shirts

Eleven years ago I walked into a custom made t-shirt store, like most of these stores the sample shirts on the walls was the strange mix of the proudly religious (a picture of Jesus crucified looking like an extra in a horror film...premonitions of the Mel Gibson snuff film), the proudly masculine (Harley Davidson references, etc.) & sometimes a mixture of the two ("Real Men Pray"). I brought with me a postcard of the young Rimbaud & ecstatically left several minutes later with my first poetry t-shirt. Approximately three years ago while browsing e-bay (now that indoor shopping malls are for the most part declining, it seems that most of the former owners of the t-shirt stores have retreated online to do their business) I came across a Mayakovsky t-shirt & immediately bought it. A few months later I discovered Zazzle. Since then I have ordered t-shirts featuring the following poets: Shelley, Lamantia, Alejandra Pizarnik, Odysseus Elytis & Forrugh Farrokhzad. I once attempted to order a Jose Lezama Lima shirt only to receive a vague order cancellation e-mail, no doubt due to our trade embargo.


I am beginning to compile a gift list for X-mas, consisting mostly of books, (who dares claim I don't know the true meaning of the holidays?) as well as a new poetry t-shirt. The last one I bought was the Farrokhzad & that was around seven or eight months ago. It will be a really difficult decision. I currently have eight t-shirts saved on zazzle as in progress designs. After thinking about it I have narrowed it down to the following four choices: Henri Michaux, Cesar Vallejo, Jaime Saenz & Vasko Popa. It will probably be at least another week before I make my final decision (I am currently leaning most towards a Vallejo shirt).

PoetryPolitic favorites

I stumbled upon the PoetryPolitic: A Blog in 50 Days site around eleven or twelve days through the project. Thereafter I visited the site daily, anticipating the latest addition. After day 50 I did not return to the site until Friday (I was trying to free space on my computer by organiziing and burning all of the mp3 spoken word files onto blank discs) and was pleased with their election special treat: Noelle Kocot's "Poem for the End of Time" available in its entirety both as a downloadable PDF file and as a mp3 reading. Quite a perfect ending to an outstanding project.


Here are just a few of the highlights for me of the site:

-Valzhyna Mort (Day 50)

-Elizabeth Willis (Day 46)

- Chen Li (Day 44)

- Imagining Language supplement from Fascicle. I was already acquainted with not only Fascicle, but also said supplement. It was striking to see it in this context though. (Day 40)

- Kim Hyesoon (Day 35)

- Mariana Marin (Day 30)

- Eugen Jebeleanu (Day 29)

- Garrett Caples (Day 23)

- Lara Glenum (Day 13)

- Andrew Joron's "Emergency of Poetry" essay available as downloadable PDF file. I have the book the piece is taken from but it is fantastic to see this important essay available (Day 4)

I noticed PennSound has removed the link for PoetryPolitic. Here is the link:
http://poetrypolitic.com/


I have also added a link to my Links List.


Thank you Wave Books for the outstanding job with PoetryPolitic:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/