.: .. . :. . =.: .: . := : .. .: . . . . . . . .
.=.. = : . :.: .:. … = = : =.:.=.= … .. .. . =. … .
.=.##:.:..:..#:=##:..:##.#.:##=:=#==.#.##=#==:.=…##.::.::.##=.:..#:.#
#..#=:..:##=.:.#.:#..:#:#=. ###..=#:#:.==…#.=:=…:=:
:=…==..:=..::#..===:=.#. AU7OST^RT ::.:.#.:..=#:==#=##:…#:=
:.#==.=#:.=##…=.:=#:…:: =.##.:..:=.=:=#..=#===#….
.=.#.:.=.=#:.=.#=…:#..#=.#:#:.#:==…=.=…#.:=.:=:….#…=#.:..:…:
.=.. = : . :.: .:. … = = : =.:.=.= … .. .. . =. … .
:= : : =.=.. == . . = : = . . … . : . :
:.. = .= ..: d1scuss1on – open house – workshop – read1ng – tour – jam
:
.
: AUTOSTART – A Festival of Digital Literature
:
. Kelly Writers House, October 26 & 27
: Celebrating the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1
: MACHINE series # Electronic Literature Organization
: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/autostart.html
:
:=:#=:.#=::==.=….:…> Charles Bernstein
.#.=..=:#.=::===…:.:.> Jim Carpenter
::.=.==…::==:.=#:…#> Mary Flanagan
:#.:…:.:=#..=.=.=:==:> N. Katherine Hayles
:.=#:.===.:.:::.=..#..=> Daniel C. Howe
:=#:::=:.#:=.=.=….=..> Aya Karpinska
..:.==#==::#==:……:.> Aaron Levy
:#=.=..:..=.::=::#..==.> Marjorie Luesebrink
::=:=:…:=..#.==#.=.:.> Nick Montfort
…..:==::.=.#:.=.==#.:> Stuart Moulthrop
:=…=#:…:::=#===..:.> Jason Nelson
:#..=.==..:=.=..:#.=:::> Jena Osman
:..=.=.=.=#:=:#.:…=::> Bob Perelman
:….:.:.===#=.:=:#=..:> Scott Rettberg
.==:.=…:..#.::=:.=.=#> Ron Silliman
.=…:=#.=:..=:..#.==::> Brian Kim Stefans
:#.::…=:.:.==.==:..#=> Stephanie Strickland
…=..=#=::=.=..:.:=:.#> Noah Wardrip-Fruin
:
: All events except the tour of Slought take place at the
: Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania,
. Philadelphia, PA
:
: THURSDAY Oct 26
:
: 1:00-2:30 pm Discussion (Arts Cafe)
. A conversation about writing and literature in the digital
. age, featuring four prominent poets:
: > Charles Bernstein – University of Pennsylvania
: > Jena Osman – Temple University
: > Bob Perelman – University of Pennsylvania
: > Ron Silliman – Silliman’s Blog
:
: 2:30-5:30 pm The Open Machine Open House
: Electronic literature available for reading and discussion
: throughout the downstairs area, with guided tours at
. 3:30 pm & 4:30 pm by two Electronic Literature Collection,
: volume 1 edtitors:
: > Stephanie Strickland – New York City
: > Nick Montfort – University of Pennsylvania
:
: 4:00-5:30 pm Wet Digits Workshop
: An introductory workshop for those new to HTML and digital
: writing, led by the editors of The New Media Reader:
. > Noah Wardrip-Fruin – University of California, San Diego
: > Nick Montfort – University of Pennsylvania
: [[[ RSVP REQUIRED: contact wh@writing.upenn.edu ]]]
:
: 5:30-7:30 pm Reading (Arts Cafe)
: Presentations of electronic literature by Electronic
: Literature Collection, volume 1 contributors:
: > Mary Flanagan – Hunter College
: > Aya Karpinska – Brown University
: > Stuart Moulthrop – University of Baltimore
. > Noah Wardrip-Fruin – University of California, San Diego
.
: FRIDAY Oct 27
:
: 10:30-11:30 am Tour of Slought Foundation (4017 Walnut St)
. Slought Foundation broadly encourages new futures for
: contemporary life through public programs featuring
: international artists and theorists.
: > Aaron Levy – Slought Foundation Executive Director
:
. 1:00-4:00 pm Electronic Writing Jam (Room 202)
: A time to write collaboratively and to discuss forms,
: techniques, and technologies, hosted by:
: > Jim Carpenter – University of Pennsylvania
: Participants include readers and editors from AUTOSTART’s
: Thursday program as well as:
: > Daniel C. Howe – Brown University
: > Brian Kim Stefans – Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
: Participants by videoconference include two editors of
: the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1:
. > N. Katherine Hayles – University of California, Los Angeles
: > Scott Rettberg – University of Bergen, Norway
: An editor of volume 2 and volume 1 contributor:
: > Marjorie Luesebrink – Irvine Valley College
: And volume 1 contributor:
. > Jason Nelson – Griffith University, Australia
: [[[ RSVP REQUIRED: contact wh@writing.upenn.edu ]]]
:
:::::::.:::::.::::…::::::::.:::::.::::.:::::::.:::::::.:.::::::::::::
:
: The Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1 is edited by
: N. Katherine Hayes # Nick Montfort
: Scott Rettberg # Stephanie Strickland
: This volume features 60 digital selections by
: Jim Andrews # Ingrid Ankerson # babel # Giselle Beiguelman
: Philippe Bootz # Patrick-Henri Burgaud # J.R. Carpenter
: John Cayley # M.D. Coverley (Marjorie Luesebrink) # Martha Deed
. David Durand # escha # Damien Everett # Sharif Ezzat
: Edward Falco # Mary Flanagan # Marcel Fr’emiot
: Elaine Froehlich # geniwate # Loss Peque~no Glazier
: Kenneth Goldmith # Tim Guthrie # Richard Holeton
: Daniel C. Howe # Jon Ingold # Shelley Jackson # Michael Joyce
: Aya Karpinska # Robert Kendall # Deena Larsen
: Kerry Lawrynovicz # Donna Leishman # Bill Marsh # Talan Memmott
: Maria Mencia # Judd Morrissey # Brion Moss # Stuart Moulthrop
. Jason Nelson # Marko Niemi # Millie Niss # Lance Olsen
: Jason Pimble # William Poundstone # Kate Pullinger
: Melinda Rackham # Aaron A. Reed # Shawn Rider # Jim Rosenberg
: Megan Sapnar # Dan Shiovitz # Emily Short # Alan Sondheim
: Brian Kim Stefans # Reiner Strasser # Dan Waber
: Noah Wardrip-Fruin # Rob Wittig # Nanette Wylde
: The Collection will be available on the web and on CD-ROM under a
: Creative Commons license – see http://eliterature.org
:
:.=.=##.##=:.#.##:#=.##:.#.:..=.::.##.:=:.=#=:.#…..#=#.:.#…:##….=:

A friend forwarded to me all these links re: stuff to do in Philly. Just putting them up for my benefit, but if you happen to live in Philly, might be of interest to you.

Art Venues

Kelly Writers House (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/)
Institute of Contemporary Art (http://www.icaphila.org/)
Slought Foundation (http://www.slought.org/)
Philadelphia Museum of Art (http://www.philamuseum.org/)
Fabric Workshop and Museum (http://www.fabricworkshop.org/)
Vox Populi (http://www.voxpopuligallery.org/)
Painted Bride Art Center (http://www.paintedbride.org)
BaseKamp (www.basekamp.com)
inLiquid (http://www.inliquid.com/)

Music Venues

Pollstar (http://www.pollstar.com/ — search city schedule)
RVNG (http://www.igetrvng.com/)
R5 Productions (http://www.r5productions.com/)
Black Mountain Collective (http://blackmountainmusic.com/)
Plain Parade (http://www.plainparade.org/)
Khyber (http://www.thekhyber.com/)
Northstar Bar (http://www.northstarbar.com/)
Tritone (http://www.tritonebar.com/)
700 Club (http://philadelphia.citysearch.com/profile/8970063/philadelphia_pa/700_club.html)
Silk City (http://www.silkcitylounge.com/)
Manhattan Room (http://www.themanhattanroom.com/)
Starlight Ballroom (can’t find website)

Foodstuffz

Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/dining/)
Citysearch (http://philadelphia.citysearch.com/)
CityPaper (citypaper.net)

News

Philly Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/)
Citypaper (citypaper.net)
Philadelphia Weekly (http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/)
Blog (http://www.philebrity.com/)
Blog (http://www.phillyist.com/)

NEXUS GALLERY
137 North 2nd St. (between Arch and Race)
Philadelphia, PA
Monday, September 25, 7:30 pm.

Readers include:
Emily Abendroth
Andrea Lawlor
Carolina Maugeri
Stan McDonald (aka Stan Mir)
Kate Schatz
Brian Kim Stefans

info: molesnotmolar@excite.com

GROOVY POSTER:
Nexus_event.pdf

 

When Bush reigns, I pour (bore?)… My review of seven books of poetry for Boston Review is now online. The following books are covered:

Bird & Forest
Brent Cunningham
Ugly Duckling Presse, $10 (paper)

The Best of My Love
Aaron Kiely
Ugly Duckling Presse, $10 (paper)

Occupied
Carol Mirakove
Kelsey St. Press, $10 (paper)

Iterature
Eugene Ostashevsky
Ugly Duckling Presse, $12 (paper)

Haze
Mark Wallace
Edge, $12.50 (paper)

Mad Science in Imperial City
Shanxing Wang
Futurepoem, $14 (paper)

Telling the Future Off
Stephanie Young
Tougher Disguises, $14.95 (paper)

A bunch of people seem to come to this coffee shop specifically to practice sounding pretentious in European languages. I’ve been hearing the phrase “einzige Tag” from this woman waving her arms wildly in the corner across the room. “Einzige Tag… einzige tag…” Geez Louise.

Now some girl who looks like she’s twelve years old has sat down in the table next to me — she’s plugging in her laptop now. I just hope she doesn’t go on about the “fin de siecle” or “cafe au lait” or some such rubbish!

My book of reviews, essays and interviews is out:

Before Starting Over
Selected Writings and Interviews 1994-2005

http://saltpublishing.com/
http://saltpublishing.com/books/rec/1844710882.htm

Here’s the Amazon link.

Contents

Notes and Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii

Before Starting Over 1
“Poet-Critic” 3

I. Six Reviews 5
Tan Lin ‘BlipSoak01’ 7
Christian Bök ‘Eunoia’ 14
Kevin Davies ‘Comp.’ 20
Bruce Andrews ‘Paradise & Method: Poetics & Praxis,’
Lyn Hejinian ‘The Language of Inquiry’ 26
Alice Notley ‘Disobedience’ 34
W. S. Graham ‘New Collected Poems’ 41

II. Asian American Poetry 53
On The Introduction to ‘The Open Boat’ 55
A Search for Lost Time: A Review of Walter K. Lew’s
‘Excerpts from Δikth/DIKTE for DICTEE (1982)’ 61
Remote Parsee: A Grammar of Alternative Asian
North American Poetry 71

III. A Poetics of Virtuosit y 109
A Poetics of Virtuosity 111

IV. Life and Contacts 143
“After Language Poetry” 145
Veronica Forrest-Thomson 148
Fence Letter 154
Ezra Pound 159
Open Letter to Brendan Lorber 164
Frank O’Hara 169
Bruce Andrews 172
When Lilacs Last In The Door: Notes On New Poetry 175
Jeff Derksen ‘Dwell’ 184
Tim Davis ‘Dailies’ 190
Jennifer Moxley ‘Wrong Life’ 195
Suzanne Dathe, Grenoble, France — Can We Win?
Notes On Carol Mirakove’s Poetry 201
Steve McCaffery 205
Blogs 212
Silliman Commentaries 214

V. Digital Poetics 239
Interview 241
Statement for University of Orono, Maine 245
Hacktivism? I didn’t know the term existed before I did it . . . 248
Statement for Slought: “Digital Fever: Archiving Art and Poetry Online” 260
Interview with Brian Kim Stefans re /UBU EDITIONS 263
Toward a Poetics for Circulars 269
Interview for Albanian Paper 289
Privileging Language: The Text in Electronic Writing 296

VI. Little Reviews 317
Jeff Derksen ‘Transnational Muscle Cars’ 319
Bill Luoma ‘Works & Days’ 321
Stacy Doris ‘Conference’ 324
Dan Farrell ‘Last Instance’ 326
Renee Gladman ‘Juice’ 328
Kenneth Goldsmith ‘Day’ 330
Jessica Grim ‘Fray’ 332
Pamela Lu ‘Pamela: A Novel’ 335
Christophe Tarkos ‘Ma Langue est Poétique — Selected Work’ 339
Rodrigo Toscano ‘Partisans’ 341
Jose Garcia Villa ‘The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings’ 343
Caroline Bergvall ‘Goan Atom’ 346
Darren Wershler-Henry ‘The Tapeworm Foundry’ 350
Susan Wheeler ‘Source Codes’ 355
Joel Kuszai (editor) ‘poetics@’ 357

Bibliography 361

I’ve always wanted to share a stage with Harmony Korine… anyway, check them out, or check them out from my blog, same thing.

 

Without much delay & with no apology, more from Brian Kim Stefans. This is ‘early’ work from 2004 & Barney quite clearly has an experimental stamp to it -Stefans describes it as at least in part an homage to Alvin Lucier’s great sound piece “I am Sitting in a Room”. Popahna in my view is something altogether more substantial – there’s so much of interest happening here, both performance wise & in directorial terms. OK, it walks the occasional fine line but in sum it’s haunting & utterly compelling. Stefans contrives to give it an immensely powerful narrative forward drive whilst still remaining nuanced, dreamlike & deeply odd. Feels like a feature film that has been shrunk to 11 minutes by a wicked fairy. Great stuff.

“I’m sick of these motherfucking books on my motherfucking truck!”

But I’m here, for the few of you who care, in a rather strange neighborhood on 16th and Girard, in a spacious 3-bedroom apartment (I have one roommate at the moment, looking for another) at the same price I was paying for my largish but warped place in Billysburg (and that, way under market value). But fear not: there are hipsters galore in this town–I spotted a few members of the shaggy set just yesterday–but a whole lot more!

Here are four designs I’ve come up with for a new book of mine. Just FYI, I don’t have much else to report except my move to Philadelphia, hopefully to be completed by late August. I’m going with the last one… click to enlarge.

A repost of the Kluge videos, with additional information. I’m working on exporting them with lower file sizes, but for now… enjoy.

Vex 1. 2005. 2:08 mins. 29.1 mb. With Christian Nagler. Sound by Christof Migone and Gregory Whitehead from their series “Cris-cris.” Short vignette in which our hero is plunged into a dream world of homoerotic doubles and hellish fish.

Vex 4. 2005. 3:14 mins. 73.5 mb. With Christian Nagler, Michael Gizzi. Sound by Christof Migone and Gregory Whitehead from their series “Cris-cris.” More conceptual than “Vex 1,” utilizing found footage from the web. The poet Michael Gizzi free associates while destroying a piece of toast as the revolution marches on.

Vex 5. 2005. 1:09 mins. 25.9 mb. With Christian Nagler. Sound by Christof Migone and Gregory Whitehead from their series “Cris-cris.” This is the crowd favorite.  Air balloons, hellish fish, lobsters.

Postscript. 2005. 1:56 mins. 26.7 mb. A sort of postscript to the “Vex” series but not part of it. A fish has dreams also, in this case of the hell of industrialization (via the synechdoche of tricycles). Well, probably not worth reading into.

Manchurian Rainman. 2005. 6:19 mins. 86.5 mb. With Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey. Two Japanese teenagers, one inflicted with a mild case of autism, discuss their addictions.

Ferrari Dogs. 2005. 45 secs. 29.5 mb. With Angelina Jolie. Music by Morrissey. This one would make a good Skittles commercial. Our heroine makes her escape through a dreamlike mountainscape pursued by the pet dog she just can’t do without. Love everywhere. 

Following are six videos I made in 2004. Trying everything, really just my first efforts. You should right click and download the file before viewing.

Popahna. 2004. 11:25 mins. 20.7 mb. With Tyler Carter, Popahna Brandes, Natalia Stefans. Music by Leos Janacek, Public Image Ltd., L Voag. A short drama shot in Providence in a low-tech “Alphaville” style charting the adventures of a protagonist, “The Flaneur,” as he seeks to take down the Ice Queen, “Popahna,” who weaves her magic from a hideaway known as “The Arcade.” In the meantime, other secrets of their relationship are revealed. In German with subtitles.

Self Portrait as the Shroud of Turin. 2004. 3:42 mins. 2.7 mb. Depending on your mood, this is either four minutes of me noodling around in my room or a profound exploration of what it must be like shooting mini-DV video after death by crucifixion. For the martyr in all of us.

Sirius Returned. 2004. 2:58 mins. 3.7 mb. Starring Durango. Inspired by Stan Brakhage’s short film, Sirius Remembered, which centered around the remains of his dog that he discovered in the woods around his home (shot in extremely short bursts of a few frames as was his technique), this short experimental video is completely unedited, but has been reshot in reverse through the viewfinder of another camera. I think it’s cool.

How Are Them Raviolis? 2004. 5:26 mins. 4.9 mb. With Kelli Auerbach, Brian Kim Stefans. I class this as a “performance piece” but I’m not going to tell you what the rules were, you just have to find out. Partly inspired by some Vito Acconci videos I was looking at, or maybe William Wegman. The sound is not so good, but it’s worth listening to as I recreate the voices of my New Jersey youth.

Mouths. 2004. 3:13 mins. 9.3 mb. With Brian Kim Stefans and brief appearances by Rodrigo Toscano, Kim Rosenfield and others. Soundtrack includes reading by Ed Sanders and a sound piece by Marcel Duchamp. This was actually taped by Tim Davis, poet and photographer, in something like 2000 or so in a small bookstore in Williamsburg, but I reshot it in reverse through another camera. Only very slightly edited toward the end. The soundtrack is really funny if offensive.

There’s Something About Barney. 2004. 3:35 mins. 3.7 mb. With Brian Kim Stefans. Inspired by Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting In A Room,” I recorded the same monologe nine-times and progressively increased certain video and audio filters. The monologue is really a scandalous attack on Barney the Dinosaur that I had discovered on the web and re-edited. I created a Flash telepromter to keep it all synched, but it got pretty sloppy anyway.

Here’s a funny photograph I took about 3 years ago of myself, my two brothers, and my three sisters. I’m the one in the middle. (Click to enlarge.)

Just got a copy of this in the mail… I have an essay about my website Circulars in there, and a few of the other pieces deal with my work. I haven’t finished it yet but it’s a pretty cool collection of writers, and the first substantial book to deal with digital literature from the perspective of poetry and poetics. And it’s got a pretty cover…

 

New Media Poetics
Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories
Edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss

New media poetry–poetry composed, disseminated, and read on computers–exists in various configurations, from electronic documents that can be navigated and/or rearranged by their “users” to kinetic, visual, and sound materials through online journals and archives like UbuWeb, PennSound, and the Electronic Poetry Center. Unlike mainstream print poetry, which assumes a bounded, coherent, and self-conscious speaker, new media poetry assumes a synergy between human beings and intelligent machines. The essays and artist statements in this volume explore this synergy’s continuities and breaks with past poetic practices, and its profound implications for the future.

By adding new media poetry to the study of hypertext narrative, interactive fiction, computer games, and other digital art forms, New Media Poetics extends our understanding of the computer as an expressive medium, showcases works that are visually arresting, aurally charged, and dynamic, and traces the lineage of new media poetry through print and sound poetics, procedural writing, gestural abstraction and conceptual art, and activist communities formed by emergent poetics.

Contributors:
Giselle Beiguelman, John Cayley, Alan Filreis, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Alan Golding, Kenneth Goldsmith, N. Katherine Hayles, Cynthia Lawson, Jennifer Ley, Talan Memmott, Adalaide Morris, Carrie Noland, Marjorie Perloff, William Poundstone, Martin Spinelli, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, Barrett Watten, Darren Wershler-Henry

Adalaide Morris is John C. Gerber Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where Thomas Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry.

Thomas Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

1. New Media Poetics: As We May Think/How To Write
Adalaide Morris

I. Contexts
 
2. The Bride Stripped Bare: Nude Media and the Dematerialization of Tony Curtis
Kenneth Goldsmith
 
3. Toward a Poetics for Circulars
Brian Kim Stefans
Exchange on Circulars (2003)
Brian Kim Stefans and Darren Wershler-Henry
 
4. Riding the Meridian
Jennifer Ley
 
5. Electric Line: The Poetics of Digital Audio Editing
Martin Spinelli
 
6. Kinetic Is As Kinetic Does: On the Institutionalization of Digital Poetry
Alan Filreis

II. Technotexts
 
7. Screening the Page/Paging the Screen: Digital Poetics and the Differential Text
Marjorie Perloff
 
8. Vniverse
Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson
 
9. The Time of Digital Poetry: From Object to Event
N. Katherine Hayles
 
10. 10 Sono at Swoons
Loss Pequeño Glazier
 
11. Digital Gestures
Carrie Noland
 
12. 3 Proposals for Bottle Imps
William Poundstone
 
13. Language Writing, Digital Poetics, and Transitional Materialities
Alan Golding and Giselle Beiguelman
 
14. Nomadic Poetry

III. Theories
 
15. Beyond Taxonomy: Digital Poetics and the Problem of Reading
Talan Menmott
 
16. Time Code Language: New Media Poetics and Programmed Signification
John Cayley
 
17. Poetics in the Expanded Field: Textual, Visual, Digital . . .
Barrett Watten

I’ve just returned from California where I went to attend my sister Lindsay’s wedding at Green Gulch Zen Center. Click on the image below to see the Flickr photo album I made. (I’m keeping their full names and any other details off this blog to avoid Google over-exposure.)

Below that is the poem that I wrote the night before while staying at the center. Perhaps a little too Stevie Smith for your tastes but I wanted to keep it simple. The bit about the shower is a little in-joke — we could only take 2 minute showers at Green Gulch because of the water heaters, but, alas, I do do a lot of good thinking in the shower! I read it at the ceremony, so it has a bit of that Eliotic thing going also.

 

IT’S SOME REAL THING
comes down upon us
thinking us through taking a shower
where thinking is often done, and

plants us
square in the middle of the road, on a coast
which yesterday seemed barbaric
– now, of course, it’s simply scenic.

There is no speech, but silence talks,
of course, of course, it says
of course, of course, it’s frankly obvious
there are tomorrows like todays.

– Plants us
square in the middle of a waiting game
that is life, so love
which is not like waking life

cannot make a sentence that is strictly obvious
except in the half-light of our making sense.

I am just about to slip off the homepage of DVBlog, which is not to say my videos won’t be accessible there, just that time flies. Two sections of “Vex” and “Ferrari Dogs” have been featured there for the past couple of weeks.

There’s a rather curious assessment of my work, too. Something along the lines of “I thought it sucked, but now I think it’s great,” which in some ways I find more reassuring than a straight “I think this is great.” Why?

Anyway, check it out. This is a really great site, I check it everyday (I’m downloading three new videos now.)

http://dvblog.org/

I posted a notice on FSC about these videos below.

Dudes, this is like… tomorrow. I write this from the airport even as we speak.

Performance Writing Series

If you are in San Francisco, please come! I’m flying in on the previous Wednesday and leaving the following Monday (I save something like $120 by staying the extra day, which I don’t mind.) Anyway, so that means lots of time to hang out…

I’ll be showing videos, doing a reading of recent poetry, and also do a presentation of the new Kluge, a screen cap of which is below. I’m also supposed to do a short reading of “In Pines,” my short Mac Wellmanish play, but I’m not sure that will happen given the number of goodies I already have lined up.

My new book is out! Can be ordered from the publisher, Factory School, or from Small Press Distribution. Beautiful cover photograph by poet/everyman Tim Davis.

(Click to enlarge.)

What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers

Brian Kim Stefans

Poetry

Factory School. 2006. 148 pages, perfect bound, 6.5×9.

ISBN: 1-60001-048-2

$14 / $12 direct order

Description: Collecting poems from the past six years, What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers is Stefans’ most ambitious book to date. Includes the successful chapbooks “The Window Ordered to be Made,” “Jai lai For Autocrats” and “Cull.” “What Does It Matter?,” a chapbook published in England in 2005, is a long sequence that updates Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” by 100 years, several wars and with a change of neighborhood (London for Williamsburg, Brooklyn).

Here’s a screen cap of Kluge, the new deluxe version. It uses a revised text, but also has other settings and video elements, as you can see below. Still in development. In the following, the program has written a poem using the “Informe” algorithm, but then was interrupted by the “Dagon” fish, who knocked some letters around. Click to enlarge.

 

Here are some picture taken by Abigail Child of the, uh, “production” of my play (see entry below).

“Where Stones Gather”

Ontological Hysteric Theater

Play on Words: A Poets + Theater Festival, May 12 2006.

Directed by Tony Torn

Kate Valk: Kate Valk
Hanna Schygulla: Angelica Torn
Jason Robards: Charles Bernstein
Old Men/Priests: Jim Fletcher, Pete Simpson, Tony Torn, Charles Bernstein

 

Hanna and Kate discuss ideas in the time before writing.

Charles Bernstein as Jason Robards

Jason and Kate discuss cell phones

Tony Torn as the Old Priest communing with… what else? cheese, as Pete Simpson looks on

The cast (most them) and playwright: (l-r) Angelica Torn, Kate Valk, Jim Fletcher, Charles Bernstein, BKS, Tony Torn

I have some amazing news, which is that Kate Valk of the Wooster Group, probably the coolest actor to have graced a New York stage (pictured above with Frances McDormand in “You, The Birdie!”), will be performing in my short play, “Where Stones Gather,” in the Play on Words poet’s theater festival this weekend.

She will be playing the part of “Kate Valk,” a part I did actually write with her in mind. I don’t know who they are getting to play Hanna Schygulla and Jason Robards (or the cheese) but I’m not too concerned — this is a dream come true. It will be directed by Tony Torn and take place in Richard Foreman’s theater at St. Mark’s Church. What an amazing thing! Thank you Cori and Tony and Lee Ann!

Even more amazing is the sexy cat drawing they are using on their flyer (I’m sure the boys above are happy). It’s titled “Two Great Tastes That Go Great Together”:

The whole festival looks to be incredibly interesting, no doubt a high point in the New York poetry schedule this year. I wish I could make more of it but I’m not in Providence right now (though I’ll be in NY Friday night, fer shur). 

ontological hysteric incubator + the poetry project present
plays on words: a poets + theater festival
curated by lee ann brown + corina copp + tony torn

saint mark’s church may 11th-15th 2006
2nd ave + 10th street nyc
all shows 7pm @ the ontological theater
unless otherwise noted

thursday may 11th: opening night
micro-plays by poet+theater allstars
INCLUDING
charles bernstein + anselm berrigan + kelly copper + francesco canguillo + nada gordon + may josephs + dana maisel + tom raworth + anne waldman + catherine wing + many more!
+ opening night PARTY!
10:30pm @ bowery poetry club
featuring tuli kupferberg’s DRINKING SONGS FOR MARX

friday may 12th: words by
charles borkhuis + brian kim stefans + david henderson

saturday may 13th: words by
laynie browne + carla harryman + julie patton

sunday may 14th : words by
bob holman / bob rosenthal + kevin killian / dodie bellamy

monday may 15th (8PM in the PARISH HALL): words by
reed bye + corina copp + rachel levitsky + chris stroffolino +genya turovskaya + rodrigo toscano + jacqueline waters

every night: special guest directors and performers!

Tickets: $7 per performance or $20 for festival pass
Opening Night Party @ BPC (308 Bowery) free admisson
for tickets: http://www.ontological.com/ or
212.352.3101 (theatermania) no additional fee
+ (cat by michelle rollman) !

Poems produced by the “Informe” setting of Kluge (click to enlarge):