Just barely with the times

I started a Tumblr for Publishing Genius.

PublishingGenius.info

Which should be fun.

I'm Teaching a Class You Can Take It

• It costs $100ish and there are four sessions.
• I'm going to give away Publishing Genius books at it.
• It's at the Creative Alliance, in Baltimore.
• Joe Young, co-teacher.
• It's about finding the story on a grocery store receipt, and telling it there, too.
• I will be providing extensive feedback on assignments and Joe too and Joe and I will probably argue several times.
• I think I will think of myself less as teacher and more as facilitator.
• Though I am fairly certain I will suggest some new things.
• "Experimental writing" is not a good term, because all writing is experimental. It should be called "fun writing."
• The class will also focus on getting your work published. 
• Register here, at the Creative Alliance website.
• Email me with your questions here: adam at publishinggenius dot com.

Here's the straight dope from the Creative Alliance.

EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: The Craft and the Market - 4 Thursdays: June 9-30

Adam Robinson and Joe Young Instructors: Isn't all writing experimental? Explore recent literary breakthroughs and consider how these techniques can be adapted to your own writing. 

We start with the belief that what is of primary importance to the craft of writing is an honest voice. Then, with readings and exercises, you’ll be exposed to new dimensions and directions for your work. Short readings include: Kathy Acker, Samuel Beckett, Rachel B. Glaser, Ernest Hemingway, and Vanessa Place. By the end you’ll have completed a manuscript and learned about places to submit it. Instructors Joe Young and Adam Robinson are both published innovators as well as publishers working in the field of genre-breaking literature. 7-9:30pm. Adv reg $100, $90 mbrs. Walk-in $110, $100 mbrs.

Jesse Tangen-Mills in Chapbook Genius

OUT NOW, this marvelous bit of mystery from Jesse Tangen-Mills
. . .

      . . .
                                      . . .

ALIENATING SPACE

A couple years ago I wrote about this piece in my "EXPLAIN YOURSELF" column at HTMLGiant. I had read one of the selections at elimae and was blown away by it.

Now you can read the entire thing.

ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE ALIENATING SPACE

Promotional Consideration

provided by this bird

Fog Gorgeous Stag by Sean Lovelace

If you must read it, I recommend real thick gloves like the furries wear, a mouthwash month, some antiviral gum with Freshening Riblet Crystals, a hundred-year moratorium, or kevlar hot pants. This is not a blurb. This is a warning label.

Quoth Ander Monson

it's nigh upon us
and getting clearer

Sean Lovelace

FOG GORGEOUS STAG

June 2011

sneak up on it

John Barth Reading at JHU 5/6/11

I don't want to be mean but John Barth's reading at Johns Hopkins on Friday was bad. Stephanie thought it was so bad that she was forced to breathe loudly. She was incensed. I just thought it was an average badness that lasted too long. Barth read for an hour, and by the end people were leaving in a steady, slow stream. Three times he said, "One more page," but he probably read 10 more pages from the first time he said that. It wasn't that he was old. He wasn't too old. He seemed to be a very healthy octogenarian. His prose was adept. But the new novel he read from was about a 77-yr-old academician writer so, uh, who cares? The protagonist was awfully proud of himself, of course. Anyway, enough editorializing. That doesn't help anyone. Here are my notes.

• Brad Lighthouse (?) of the Writing Seminars does the introduction, corny reference to Wikipedia being unreliable
• Barth got his BA and MA at Hopkins in 51 and 52
• Writes about sailing in his nearly 20 books
• Brad is from Michigan but doesn't feel comfortable around water unless it's frozen into a parking lot
• Experimental fiction is a term that's gone away. Are the experiments over?
• "Every literary classic becomes something of a castaway," says Brad
• Barth takes over the podium
• Barth says that in his job at JHU he had to introduce plenty of people. He learned that the three main purposes of introductions are: Test the PA, Give latecomers a chance to settle, Allow others to look around and adjust their programs of necessary
• "Three new perpetrations of mine are" [coming out soon]
• Reads "Preamble" from one of these
• Starts with a reference to Huck Finn, then notes the story is about a tornado on Maryland's eastern shore
• George Irving Nuitt is the hero's name
• GIN
• Gee I knew it
• He's a prof in Maryland, married to a poet
• Barth's reading started fast, and it seemed like he had written out his introduction to the piece on the same manuscript paper. He didn't make eye contact. There was very little lead-in
• Strange omniscient narrator, very informal
• First section of the novel: "First Fall"
• About traveling on a cruise line to the Balkans, then to Stratford Upon Avon
• Had "a brace of spits" of champagne
• "Reckon y'all don't have the minority problems we have" (laughter in the audience) says Handly (?) a Pennsylvanian who sounds more like a Southerner -- this is good bit featuring one of their fellow American travelers
• "failing to fetch his fictive folk" re Chaucer

I have 76 seconds of audio but I didn't bother to upload it. I will if anyone cares but it's not really that good. These notes are not that good either, but after reading for so long, Barth decided not to take questions since no one seemed interested.

Small wonder.

Billy Collins at McDaniel College (Westminster, MD) 05/04/2011

• Prelude by Eric Burd, int'l jazz ambassador, really nice
• 25th annual Christopher Bothe Lecture
• Chris was an English major in the 70s
• Host of reading, Kathy Mangan, thought the president of McDaniel delusional when he suggested Collins for the series, but he said Collins owed him a favor
• Introduction by Roger Casey, references Marianne Moore's poem, "Poetry"
• Acknowledging the (modestly large audience), Collins tells anecdote about being at a Texas college last month when the host said he was amazed at the great turnout, "and he was the chair of the English department!" Collins though is not amazed when people show up for poetry readings. He's amazed that 25M people watch American Idol
• How do you know when a poem is done? "I'm the first reader of the poem, I read it like a reader would"
• Someone said a writer's favorite word is "forthcoming" -- before the book release is "the calm before the calm"
• Makes fun of Fulbright and mainstream poetry (Fulbright poems need to have a fountain in them)
• Where the title "Horoscopes for the Dead" came from: reading friend's horoscope a couple months after his death (2nd person address poem with lines like "you're not actually going to increase your fortune today")
• "pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac" (applause)
• References Howard Nemerov w/r/t a poem about being 6 months behind a natural phenomenon (like fall leaves) -- Nemerov came up with the word "azaleate," which means to commiserate with someone who missed the phenomenon
• Then reads his version of Li Po's "Drinking Alone" (kinda, actually poem is about prepositional ambiguity of "after")
• Discouraging teachers who told him to stop writing did a lot for him because he has a stronger drive for revenge than approval
• "Put a dog in your poem, it will get you past your self absorption for a couple of lines"
• "Monday" is a nice poem
• Valery said a poem is never completed, only abandoned
• "I spend a lot of time finishing my poems"
• Poem indicative of things I don't like about Collins: "The Lanyard"
•  "Many of these poems have a wandering capacity. I don't really know where I'm going when I start out."
• His ability is to write about poetry while referencing the quadratic equation or a famous battle, so he's making poetry about poetry about something else
• False immodesty disguises actual arrogance
• Doesn't cry when writing his poems. "I get a little moist when I read them" 
• Writes funny poems because you can't fake funny. You can fake serious, but if you fail at funny people will say well that's not funny.
• "People who don't read poetry don't read poetry because they don't read poetry. ... I'm a non hockey watcher." It's not like if hockey stopped being violent, he would start watching it. He just doesn't like to watch it.
• "What's your favorite thing about being a Guggenheim?" "27 thousand dollars." "Awesome."
• "I got into poetry because I associated with solitude."
• "How much of your success is due to your public persona?" "That's such an embarrassing question to answer. I dunno, 40%" Then goes on to attribute success to NPR and being on Fresh Air
• Here is audio of Collins's "I was like" poem, so sardonic

Making non-writer friends as a writer -- Guest post by Caleb Ross

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. He will be guest-posting beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn't Mean to Be Kevin, in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

Don't talk about your writing unless you are asked about your writing. Even then, don't talk about your writing. 

The general public will always think Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Stephenie Meyer are better writers than you. Just agree with them (or at least, just stay quiet). 

To continue point 2 above, read Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Stephenie Meyer. You may not like it, but sometimes you have to close your eyes and give in if you want to fit in. If it helps, tell yourself that doing it is good for your complexion, and that if you don't all the other girls will make fun of you. 

If you have to cancel plans with friends because of writing-related engagements, lie. It is true that you may have a dirty bathrobe and a brand new Moleskine notebook to attend to, but no self-respecting civilian is going to appreciate being stood up because of an inanimate object. Say that your grandmother died. If your friends get suspicious because you've had fourteen grandmothers die in a six month period, then your friends are probably just your “friends.” (Quotation humor, you like that?) 

No matter how rock-solid you think your argument may be, writing will never be analogous to sports. And no matter how boring you think the “big game” may be, commercial breaks are not windows of opportunity to enlighten living-room spectators.

For anyone reading this blog who thinks negatively of me for these tips, let me say, writing is a dumb hobby, James Patterson rules (he cleared up my acne), I don't even own any paper, and GO CHIEFS! See, we're friends now, aren't we?

Birthday, Transmodern, Sweatpants tonight, New song

1. My birthday on Wednesday was cool. So many people sent Facebook wishes and who would have thought that feels nice? I spent the day with Xav, a filmmaker from Milwaukee, driving around to get supplies for his video performance piece. Then Chris Toll and I went to Frasiers and watched the O's beat the Red Sox 5-4 and I ate meatloaf. Chris gave me Palo Alto by James Franco. Then back at home Joe made me a chocolate cake, which was an unexpected surprise. I ate it standing up because I had a bad headache by that point. Then I went to bed and read the first story by James Franco and was amazed by how many mistakes there were in the book. Not mistakes really, but bad sentences. For instance, "We were all sitting in the backyard on a little picnic table that you might find at the park." Actually, to be honest, that sentence doesn't seem too bad to me and when I just reread the story trying to find some good bad ones they all seemed okay. So, sorry Franco, all is forgiven.
2. The 8th annual Transmodern Festival started on Thursday and ends today. Thursday night is always my favorite; it's the night that is focused on art more than hanging out and being youthful and creative and drunk. This year's Thursday show was called "Mediations." Stephanie Barber curated it. There were five performance installations. Kirsten Stoltmann's video "Post-Nothing" was first, and it was a room delineated by crappy folding chairs and a coffee machine with cookies, so that it looked like an AA meeting in a church basement. The video was three minutes long. It was Kirsten out for a jog, and then she gets shot four times and hit by two arrows. The special effects were funny. Then in the video Kirsten's neighbor says, "Hey Kirsten, what are you doing?" and Kirsten looks up and says, "Um, making an art video?" She looks dejected. Then the neighbor walks away. The neighbor was in the gallery, too (though it was a different actor) telling everyone how proud she was of Kirsten for being in the art show. That was funny. Next was Smelling Salts Amusements, who are Peter Redgrave and Heather Romney. They built a train cabin, complete with a video monitor installed in the wall which showed footage recorded from a moving train. That was a neat effect. Their performance, which lasted over two hours, just featured them riding in their cabin, interacting and being bored by the journey. They didn't speak, just sat across from each other on their benches and looked at each other lovingly, or staring into the middle distance, or doodling, or playing that game where you draw lines and close off boxes, or stretching, or taking something down from the overhead compartment. They wore European-looking clothes and wigs and looked really good in them. The piece was simple but compelling, and I think they had the most people watching them. Then there was a tent constructed by Jesse Stiles and Olivia Robinson. It was a really amazing thing, probably 10' in diameter, built from several quilts which had words sewn into it and cut out of it. The words weren't readable until a light would shine from the inside of the tent and light it up. Then you could walk around it and try to pick up a story as the lights went on and off in random patterns set by a chord organ. I'm not sure how it worked, but it was an impressive thing. Michael Kimball pointed out that the words were written in part by Jesse Ball. The artists were sitting with fabric masks on their heads right outside the door to the tent. Michael asked them questions but I felt queasy talking to people in masks. KimSu Theiler's installation was next, and featured an actor playing KimSu in a very small room with a fireplace. The girl was waiting for a pot to boil so she could cook her ramen. She wore a black dress and a towel on her head. On the mantle to the fireplace was a video monitor showing KimSu doing the same thing. Sometimes in the video she would be eating the ramen, I think. On the wall facing the actor was a projection that switched from a camera recording the audience standing outside the room to a camera placed directly over the cooking pot, to a camera facing the actor. At one point I stood outside the room and asked questions to a guy named Mick who was standing there too. Once I started asking questions -- like whether or not the fireplace was supposed to be real, and what the timer was for, and whether all the wires ought to have been hidden -- I couldn't stop thinking about the mechanisms of the piece. I found it very compelling that way. Finally, in the last spot of the room, Xav Leplae showed his 3D video Rasmalai Dreams. He didn't just turn on the projector, though. He constructed a frame which held the projector, so as he moved, so did the video. Sometimes he would turn completely and the entire projection would move to a different wall. The frame that he constructed basically made it impossible for him to stand still, so there was constant wobble. He said he was interested in this because when holding a camera there is always some of that motion, and he wanted to reverse it a little and introduce that sort of personality to the showing of video, rather than just the making of it. Xav also mounted a microphone onto his frame, and he used it to create another narrative onto the documentary he was showing. Rasmalai Dreams is footage of Indian actors in Bombay showing off their chops, sometimes with dramatic monologues (really, really dramatic one, over the top), sometimes dancing and sometimes just mugging for the camera. They were sensitive, beautiful shots at times, and funny. The soundtrack was incredible local music. So while the movie was playing Xav would point out things in the video and pretend he was trying to sell them to you on the stock market. He also had a fog machine that he would spray sometimes, and he hung two boxes of flower petals that he could shake with a string and they would pour down. It was immersive. 
3. On Friday Joe and I went to see Xav and Kirsten talk at Johns Hopkins. Xav showed Rasmalai Dreams again from his frame, but this time he didn't talk. It was a completely different experience. I had to run out to pick up John Dermot Woods at the bus stop so I missed Kirsten's talk. But then John and a his old friends, Ben and Dan, and some people from my team played softball. I was good but I got sore really fast. Then John and Ben and Dan and I went to Swallow at the Hollow to eat and watch the O's beat the White Sox 10-4. Then we went to Transmodern and saw Mucca Pazza, who are a very exciting marching band from Chicago and I really recommend them. Then John, Ben and I got really drunk, which meant that --
4. -- I was no good all day yesterday. I didn't go to bed until 5:30am and then had a hangover so I spent much of Saturday moaning through it. I rallied in time for Transmodern last night, where I watched an incredible play by the Missoula Oblongata. The play was called The Daughter of the Father of Time Motion Study and featured three women playing several different roles, including Lillian (the daughter), her mother, her boyfriend Beebee (sp?), a robot, a walrus, a bridge and a hole in the ice. I might be forgetting some. The performers operated their set with numerous ropes. The set was a large wooden box that included several doors, silhouettes, puppets, lights and music. Each performer played a song on the guitar. Scene changes were delineated effectively by romantic keyboard music played by one of the actors who had the keyboard attached to her costume. Interestingly, the play was about efficiency and every single action that took place was a perfect example of efficiency in practice, like when someone moved a light it wasn't just to shine it on a portion of the play, but also to make room for a door that was about to swing open. These quick changes moved the story, too, like when a long strip of fabric with a series of paintings on it was pulled slowly over the set like a film projection. You had to be there, I guess. It was a miracle. Then I went to Rooms Play, which should have been more miraculous but there were too many freakish characters crossing my boundaries and exposing ones I didn't know I had. Rooms Play is a series of rooms (22 in total, I think), exquisitely designed (one favorite was the sideways room, where the floor was the wall and the wall was the floor) with a couple actors in each room. They usher your small group of 4 people through and then send you on to the next room. In Theresa Columbus's room she had us wait in front of a curtain and told us to start talking about each of our first kiss. Then she opened the curtain and revealed that we were on a stage in front of an audience of her drawings. In another room we were rafter through a waterscape that was projected on the wall. In a brothel-themed room five or six girls in their underwear surrounded me, led me into a private area which was actually back into the same room, where they literally spun the floor and spat us out into a radioactive room that was humming. The rooms were amazing, but I didn't like how much I had to participate and how little the actors had scripted and how one guy took my M&Ms.
5. Sweatpants! Tonight! At Golden West. I'm excited for this show because it's our last time, I think, as a loud rock band. After tonight I have goals to make us more performance-oriented and more adventurous musically.
6. That said, I just wrote a new verse-chorus-verse type song that has the chorus "Life, it's my favorite thing, it's all I have, I need it -- that's what Camus said but he was dead when the book he said it in saw the light." Which is a reference to The First Man.

From the Poetry Project Files, Scrilla, Chris Toll, Blake Butler, Submissions,, Lyn Hejinian

• NEW RELEASE AUDIO

Here is audio of me reading "From What I Understand About Liberation Theology." This poem was published not too long ago in The Shattered Wig Review #28. I sound like a white preacher. I mean to, always, no doubt. I'm very happy with this audio, except for when I messed up. How could I have messed up, I read so slow.

• FINANCIAL NEWS

In other news, I rolled my 401k into an IRA today, so you know, I'm not exactly sweatin' it (is what Bill Murray says in Caddy Shack).

• IN BOOKS

Chris Toll's book, The Disinformation Phase (original video trailer here), went to the printer today. Next week I get the proof. You know what that means? Pre-orders will open next week. We'll have a special deal this time, no doubt. Heather Christle (recently New Yorkered) said this:   Chris Toll has looked within words and entities to discover almost everything is weeping. Emily Dickinson’s breaking code in the Pentagon, Toll’s heart is aching and full, and meanwhile these poems are tenderly repossessing the ineffable and the commonplace. It is a grand and lovely thing to read this book.

• SLEEPING NEWS

I've been doing that thing where I wake up at 4am to watch DVDs of The Wire. Most recently I did that early rising so I could cruise through Veronica Mars. Anyway, it's Omar who makes me say "no doubt," doubtless.

• WHAT AM I READING?

Justin Sirois's novel, Falcons on the Floor. I bet you wish you were reading this book instead of me. I've also been dabbling in my lit crit book from when I took a great class in theory in 1997. The book is Critical Theory Since Plato, Hazard Adams, editor. I read Valéry two nights ago. Matthew Arnold then Northrop Frye last night. I'm also reading Kitchen Confidential.

• ITEM! BLAKE BUTLER'S NOVEL

And There Is No Year by Blake Butler. It is really good. It is better even than I expected. Note 1) it's often said "I can't wait to touch that book" or "hold that book" -- in this case, it really is something to look forward to. The cover stock is akin to the papery soft Black Sparrow covers, but the book's dimensions are bigger, so not only is there a softness but also a floppiness. When Blake said about ARAOP, "This is one to drink milk in bed with," I think he should have been talking more about his own book; it's a cuddly bear. Note 2) When I bought the book at the Johns Hopkins B&N, the clerk said, "Oh, this book." It was on display at the register. The other clerk said, "I was looking at that. It reminded me of House of Leaves, I guess with the ." I said "I think Danielewski said something about it somewhere," but she seemed to think I was wrong. I could have been -- I just know I saw official press material about the book mentioning Danielewski and I was surprised by that. Anyway, so, I bought the book and they seemed surprised by that. I showed it to Stephanie and she seemed surprised too. Note 3) It is even better than I expected. I read a bit of it at the NYC release week thing and what I read didn't make sense to me at the time (which of course is okay by me), and I thought it was perhaps more abstract than it actually is (which of course isn't what makes it better). I read it like it was abstract, but that was because I started at the third section without having looked at the beginning. When I started reading the book on p1, duh, I found that the characters -- the family and their copies -- were introduced in a more straightforward way than I thought at first, and that the story that surrounds them ties together and rolls around like a knot. I freaking love untying knots. The things that happen are sensible. Note 4) The prose, I have found, is closer to Virginia Woolf than to Danielewski. As in this sentence, "The grain in the glass in the windows in the halls in the rooms in the houses on the yards along the streets aligned for miles." Though I guess that's hallmark Butler to bury the predicate. I don't know why she swallowed the fly. Note 5) I expect I'll make more notes after I get past page 25.

• PGP BUSINESS NEWS

Submissions for books opens May 1. Octopus is reading now, though: http://www.octopusbooks.net/submit.html -- get on that. I'm thinking of a reading fee this year, or maybe to have people show proof of purchase of a PGP book. If you have ever bought a PGP book, you can submit for free. Otherwise, it's $5. Something like that, is what I'm thinking. Is that crazy?

• TECH NEWS

I got to see Lyn Hejinian read on Tuesday. I took notes, a picture, and recorded sound all on my phone with an app called Evernote. The app then syncs up with my computer at home and my iPad.

• IN EVENTS

I got to see Lyn Hejinian read on Tuesday. Here are my notes: 

1. Adverbial, how, in Hejinian poetics
2. Chris Nealon's intro is great
3. Lyn's two thousand volume work
4. Poetry can make better rulers, at least she wishes
5. Sets watch
6. "exceptionally languid snail"
7. "forever incomplete, as a holiday"
8. Drinks water, says "air travel is a killer...on voices"
9. "obsidian"
10. "now that was an excellent astronomer"
11. Straightforward poem of "tales" with 3 morals
12. Poem including a phone number
13. Chris Mason-type click poem
14. Longish poem about clowns
15. "I'm writing this, pretending to be a filmmaker"
16. Laughter at mention of a Nigerian spam email
17. Two rhyming quatrains, Chicago w/ virago
18. Saga Circus, a book that started with the question, Why is literature not supposed to be strictly entertaining (which explains why clowns keep coming up)
19. Introduces a poem saying, "Last time I tried to read this I laughed so hard I had to stop" then reads a not terribly funny poem about naming things like motels, bands and streets
20. "now I'm glad to withdraw from sound/now is that withdrawal"

"Sweet Potatoes" and some stuff

(Cross-posted from HTMLGiant)

My desk is really messy but on Wednesday Joe and I did a lot of work around HQ. We took down the old artish and put up some new pictures and my favorite thing was finally figuring out a way to display my chapbooks. I kept putting in chapbooks that I had in boxes and getting excited and showing them to Joe. Like, JOE! LOOK AT THIS TITLE "FALLING STARS TO SMASH MOTHERFUCKERS IN THEIR FACE"! AH HAHA AND LOOK AT THIS ONE! "CONGRATULATIONS! THERE'S NO LAST PLACE IF EVERYONE IS DEAD" - okay so maybe those titles are kind of pessimistic but there are a lot of other ones that I liked. I kept also being like JOE! THERE'S A LOT OF CHAPBOOKS IN HERE A PERSON WOULD ACTUALLY WANT TO READ!

Life is moving too fast. I can't keep up with things like the Internet. HTMLGiant is moving beyond me. I don't know what's going on anywhere. I don't like the feeling. I feel like I'm withdrawing into my own small world of rush. I can't talk crap about people anymore because I don't know what anyone is doing.

How's everybody doing? I thought about taking a picture of my new chapbook library but I decided that is like trying to take a picture of a hill -- you can never really show how steep it is and you will always be sad then poof.

This morning I reread "Sweet Potatoes" in Timothy Willis Sanders's book ORANGE JUICE which EVERYONE LOVES. I mean for real. If you were wondering if TW is well loved, then go to Houston and they will be like yeah he is awesome.

I reread "Sweet Potatoes" maybe for the fourth time and something clicked in me a lot extra. Not just about that story -- though a couple things I wondered about w/r/t the story specifically is why does the narrator choose white wine at the grandparent's house and then insist on it. He says "White" after being insecure about the grandparents being racists, and I also wondered about the relationship btw the speaker's mother and her bf (?) Bill -- so are they the same ppl as in the first story, "Orange Juice," but perhaps in a different stage of their relationship, as in not so turmoiled out?

And how is that story "Orange Juice" so effed up. I've read that story probably a dozen times and just reread it and I only think I really know what's happening. Dang, when I was in Houston with him I should have talked about this with Tim he would have explained it to me. In the order of great writers who excel at ambiguity Sanders and Hemingway are abut.

The other night Joe and I went to a bar and at one point I think I thought okay instead of a round of beer this time I'll buy a game for my phone so I got one called Wave Runner -- it's boat racing -- it's gyroscopic or whatever -- you turn your hands and the boat turns. The thing is I am still terrible at video games. When I was a kid I walloped my whole body to make Sonic try to do a loop and I kept pulling the Genesis off the TV till I didn't even want to play anymore. I admit I use to sneak into my neighbor's basement to play Mario on their NES cuz we were Christians and didn't have one yet. (Later when we got the Genesis these Christian rappers came to stay at my house and they played football with my brothers and said things like "that's madd _____." I think at the time the word mad had two "D"s to signify "extra." The Christian rappers explained that to my mom.) Anyway I was just playing Wave Runner and crashing into things and jamming my whole body and I guess video games are just not my thing, I should have had the beer.

So how about them Orioles am I right? John Dermot Woods invented this thing called Fantasy Baseball 2011 and I am pretty into that. I probably check my stats pretty often. I'm going up against like the toughest guy in the league who has three starting pitchers going today. When I was in sixth grade I started to stop being cool/having friends and I didn't know it yet but thankfully we got into a discussion about it one day at the lunch table. Dan said "I'm cooler than you," and I was like all "What" and Brian R goes, "He is you know." That was pretty much when I stopped following sports.

But I've never read a book by Barry Hannah or that lady whose name I can't remember but I really want to read a book by her, I think it's kind of French sounding. I'm working on a novel though, about a white guy and a black guy who come up hard but strike it big with a website but then the white guy goes missing (is he dead?) and people think it's the black guy did it because no one really liked him since he was a jerk. Anyway it's pretty good there's no narrative it's all told in like receipts and emails and invoices and travel vouchers and spreadsheets. It comes in a box. It will be out in 2013. It's called "Baby Takes a Nap."

Last night I told Patrick King about this when he was here at the HQ, King is aces, he just finished his own book, and he was like, "Oh like Dracula," and I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT ABOUT DRACULA!!!! I know that Frankenstein is epistolary but I never read DRACULA! I never read DRACULA and yet I don't know anything about SPORTS. I feel like this is a major problem. If you're going to be a botard that doesn't even know Adam Wainwright is on the DL ALL YEAH then you better have at least read a book by Barry Hannah or whatever -- DRACULA.

To Adam Robinson Regarding Adam Robison

For National Poetry Month, Meagan Nyland wrote a poem imitating me. It's about teaching my poems to college students. It can be read here, and here is an excerpt:

He said you got it
you got it cause you got the world
got it
ugly and beautiful
got it?
I liked that

April 21 Reading in Pittsburgh Flyer

Chris Toll reading from his book, a photograph

Chris reads from The Disinformation Phase

Buffalo Small Press Fest weekend

I have been in bed now for 24 hours straight. If you watch The A-Team all the way to the end of the credits there is some bonus footage featuring the original Face and Murdock actors. I actually thought The A-Team was a pretty fun movie to watch. Never Let Me Go never held me in the first place. I kept waiting for it to start. By the time I got to watching Veronica Guerin I was too distracted by trying to get my Google Reader feed down below 1000+ unread posts. Sorry Matt, I didn't view all 412 of your new shared items. I just marked them all as read.

The Buffalo Small Press Fest was fun. Here is a write up from the newspaper. I met a lot of great people there, like my host Aaron Lowinger who introduced me to all his bros from way back. I never felt so easygoing around an old gang that was not my old gang. And they were all savvy about poetry in unexpected ways, and all doing things like running presses and playing music. After the bookfair and after this utterly amazing dinner party held in the back of Rust Belt Books there was a music show and lots of people came out and it was warm and friendly and good. Buffalo stays open late and I'm grateful to Aaron for showing it to me.

Thanks too to Mike Kelleher for bringing me out. Check out Mike's blog, Pearlblossom Highway, where he is annotatively listing all the books on his shelf. Thanks to Chris Fritton for putting on such an amazing program. It was also really great to see all those people and spend a little time with Matvei from UDP and Rebecca from Fence and Geoffrey from Blazevox and Ted from Starcherone and David from Sunnyoutside.

Tomorrow: Providence. I'm excited to see my friend and Buffalonian Ric Royer. And Irisher Mairead Byrne.

Adam Robinson reading at the Poetry Project 2011

Thanks to Andrew James Weatherhead for posting the video.

1/2 Adam Robinson @ The Poetry Project 2/28/11 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

A Couple Places I'm Going to Be Reading etc

This Friday and Saturday:

Buffalo Small Press Book Fair

Friday March 18, 2011

I'm reading with Rebecca Wolff and Matvei Yankelevich

8pm-11pm at WNYBAC –

468 Washington St.

Buffalo, NY

Saturday March 19, 2011

1:00pm – Roundtable Discussion on Editorial Models and the Future of the Small Press

with Fence and Ugly Duckling

---

Tuesday March 22

Providence, RI

at Couscous

---

Two Saturdays from now

So what's this Chatroulette thing all about?

Oh. Uh, geez.

Events through April

On Monday I'm driving up with Stephanie Barber to read at the Poetry Project, 8pm. I'm a good reader but a little too canned. My friend Russ said I was really good in Chicago until my pausing schtick wore off about two minutes in (I pause a lot). Stephanie though is the best. She seems so comfortable in front of an audience that the poems kind of blossom as she reads them. These poems find their entelechy in their utterance.

Then the next week from March 2-5 I will be in NYC again for the Chapbook Festival. With Mary Gannon from Poets & Writers, Cara Benson from Dusie Kollektiv and Nate Pritts from H_NGM_N, I'll be presenting on pushing the boundaries of chapbooks. And I'm thrilled to have a new chapbook from Emily Kendall Frey and Sarah Bartlett to present, called Baby on the Safe Side. A sample poem from that:

You know what -- actually this book doesn't bear excerpting. It lives in its context. Like babies. (To be clear, this is NOT an excerpt from the book.)

Moving along, I'm heading back to NYC to participate in Blake Butler's release extravaganza, which goes for several days-within-days in March. Like, I believe that HarperCollins set up a week of Thursdays to take place all in one Thursday. Like Russian dolls or a Mairéad Byrne poem. Basically the readings only use one minute IRL but they seem like a crossing the Mt. Moria. Anyway, I'll be there on March 10 at the Center for Fiction at weird o'clock (7pm).

On March 18, if you're still taking notes, I'm reading and presenting at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. More info on that is here.

I'm driving to Providence, RI on March 22 to read at Couscous at Tazza. With films by Stephanie Barber and readings by Murphy Chang, Samantha Gorman and Ric Royer.

Then I'm going to Phoenix for Spring Training and to hang out with my folks.

Then on April 2 I will be at the Houston Indie Book Festival.

Then on April 16 I will be presenting "The M Squad" (Mike Young, Mel Nichols, Maureen Thorson and M. Magnus) in a panel on "The Sentence of Poetry." That's in DC at The Conversation and Connections thing.

Then on April 21 I am going to read at The New Yinzer series in Pittsburgh.

ADVERTISEMENT PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL BUY BOOKS 2011

Chris Toll's collection of poems, The Disinformation Phase, will be available from Publishing Genius in June. This is the first trailer.

The book has a lot of scifi in it. It's pretty much genre poetry.