literature defined at last!

literature might be defined as any text that functions sequentially and makes meaning beyond the use value or transparency of its constituent parts as they are accrued. the movement of these texts is from the particular to the general or overarching.

that this might include alphanumeric texts, cinema, music, dance, gesture, performance, and speech acts.

that a difference might be called simultaneous texts which make meaning beyond the use value or transparency of its constituent parts all at once but may be deconstructed. the movement of these texts is from the general or overarching to the parsing of the particular.

that this might include visual pieces, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, design pieces.

that reading and writing are sibling acts engaging with texts through assemblage and deconstruction, construction and demolition. that the reader and writer might be interchangeable, narcissus and his doppelganger. that reading is re-writing. that writing is re-reading.

Danny's 8th Anniversary Reading, 8/26

The Danny’s Reading Series (8th Anniversary Reading with Chicago Indie Presses!)
Wednesday, August 26th
7:30 PM

The writers: Adam Clay, Kathleen Rooney, Steve Halle, Mary Hamilton, Kristen Orser, and Patrick Durgin with Hannah Weiner

The presses: Cinematheque Press, Switchback Books, Cracked Slab Books, Featherproof Books, Dancing Girl Press, and Kenning Editions

Eight years in. It’s hard to believe. While we spend a lot of our time hosting poets and writers from elsewhere, as we venture into our ninth season, we thought it appropriate to turn our eye on our hometown. We’d like to celebrate the work of a selection (there are so many more!) of Chicago indie presses and their authors. Diverse in publishing vision, ideals, and execution—all committed to defining quality for themselves, the imagination, to the vast work on the part of the author to bring it to life, and to the vastly detailed work of bringing it to our hands and eyes—we salute and celebrate the necessary parts all of them play in bringing Chicago to life and the world to light. And, as always, celebrating the audience that gives us life and is our light.

Joel Craig & Chris Glomski


Adam Clay is the author of The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006) and A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, forthcoming). A new chapbook, In a World of Ideas, I Feel No Particular Loyalty, is now available from Cinematheque Press. He co-edits Typo Magazine and lives in Michigan. Recent poems appear in Ploughshares, The Laurel Review, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere. (cinemathequepress.com)

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, and the author, most recently, of the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and the poetry collection Oneiromance (an epithalamion), winner of the Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books. Founded in 2006, Switchback is a nonprofit feminist press publishing poetry by women. (switchbackbooks.com)

Steve Halle's first collection of poems, Map of the Hydrogen World was published by Cracked Slab Books in 2008. Halle edits the online journal Seven Corners, which publishes Chicago and Midwestern poets, and he is a staff poetry reviewer for Oranges & Sardines (O&S). He holds an MFA from New England College and is currently a PhD candidate at Illinois State University. (crackedslabbooks.com)

Mary Hamilton has had stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Storyglossia, Thieves Jargon and others, and is the author of Flash Flicker Fire, available from Featherproof Books. She lives in Chicago where she's the co-founder and co-host of the QUICKIES! reading series. Featherproof Books is a young indie publisher based in Chicago, dedicated to the small-press ideals of finding fresh, urban voices. (featherproof.com)

Kristen Orser is the author of Squint, published by Dancing Girl Press. Kristen Orser is anxious. She is probably behind on work and her students are probably wondering what their grades are. She is hoping all clocks will bend backwards and take her somewhere less fast. The Dancing Girl Press Chapbook Series was founded in 2004 to publish and promote the work of women poets and artists through chapbooks, journals, book arts projects, and anthologies. (dancinggirlpress.com)

Patrick Durgin is a poet, critic, editor, publisher, and educator. His latest book is a collaboration with poet and translator Jen Hofer, The Route (Atelos, 2008). He edited the selected works of Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner's Open House, for Kenning Editions, of which he is the founder and publisher. Weiner (1928-1997) was an influential poet whose work bridged conceptual, intermedia, New York School, and Language school poetics. Her books include The Fast, We Speak Silent, and PAGE. (kenningeditions.com)

Danny’s Tavern is located at 1951 W. Dickens (near the intersection of Armitage and Damen). 21+ (please have ID) 773-489-6457

I'm so excited to be a part of this. See you there!

Rashied Ali

Rashied Ali has died.

The album Interstellar Space, a duet suite with Coltrane, has meant a great deal to me, helping me to embrace the practice of freedom in improvisational spaces in my own work.

Ali's percussion performance on this recording as well as Sunny Murray's on Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity are two of my favorites in experimental jazz.

New and Exciting

New Moria...exciting.

Holms Troelstrup in the new Moria...too exciting!

***

Po/NotPo...exciting.

McLean County Arts Center Reading

Last night I read at the McLean County Arts Center in Bloomington, IL with Mike Theune, Chip Corwin and Matt Guenette. All four of us reading together meshed really well. It seems like all the poets had a similar kind of wit and humor.

I opened with couple poems from Map of the Hydrogen World and also four or five new or newish poems. Chip followed with some brilliant post-apocalyptic love poems, which I hope to be posting sometime soon on Seven Corners.

Then Mike and Chip read some collaborations, two-line poems where they traded off and then a form they created called a donut with lines that loop back over onto themselves.

A highlight of the evening for me was the collaborative reading by Matt and Mike. Matt had written two poems based on Snapple and Vitamin Water's Dragonfruit beverages, and Mike followed those with prose interpretations of what Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia might have said about the Dragonfruit poems.

Matt, batting cleanup, then closed the night with several of his "American Busboy" poems, followed by his killer "Sestina Aguilera" from his collection Sudden Anthem. You should buy sudden anthem right now, especially if you like funny, quirky, Americana Surrealism.

I saw Matt read once upon a time with Jason Bredle at Myopic Books, where I first met Mike Theune. Jason and Matt's poems both really capture the wit and humor I love in poetry. I'm really attracted to the work of humorous poets because my own work tends to be serious, and my humor arrives more spoken in one-on-one conversations.

This was really a fun reading to be a part of, and it was in a great space. The McLean County Arts Center is beautiful and has great acoustics that can even accommodate my quiet speaking voice. Alison Hatcher did a great job setting up the space, and she truly made the other poets and me feel welcome. I've had a lot of success writing in galleries and museums, so I'm sure I'll be back to the Arts Center soon to work on a project.

The Wrestler: Mickey Rourke as Blunt Instrument

**Warning: Spoilers Follow**

Mickey Rourke does give a fine, gritty performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in "The Wrestler." Yet, the film offers two messages that I find disturbing. First of all, "The Ram" rejects anything authentic that happens to him over the course of the film. He rejects his own name Robin Ramzinski; he rejects his own body, manipulating it with drugs and the planned torture that is pro wrestling; he rejects (and is rejected by) people he wants to get close to (his daughter Stephanie as played by Evan Rachel Wood and Cassidy, the stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold played by Marisa Tomei); he rejects the present moment, living in a fantastical past of glory.

In the end, we are left with a slightly open-ended conclusion. The Ram, recently the victim of a heart attack, chooses to wrestle in a rematch against the Ayotollah, an old nemesis. Prior to the match, The Ram embraces the fans as his family by way of a kind of farewell speech, offering allegiance only to them. Then, during the bout, The Ram experiences physical discomfort, leading up to the final "Ram Jam" move that may spell the death blow for both the Ayotollah and The Ram himself. The ending, however, is not revealed, and we are left with an ending reminiscent of the short story "The Lady Or the Tiger" by Frank Stockton. Does The Ram live or die? Does Randy?

My main problem with Randy The Ram as a character is that people will inevitably consider him a hero, conflating the triumph of Rourke's great performance (is he playing himself?) with the triumph of Randy The Ram, who is pathetic as I will explain.

Part of Randy "The Ram" Robinson's failure derives from his inability to authentically love or feel anything, or to have an authentic feeling that pushes him to change his real self. His moving gestures involve only objects and places, not real actions backed by feelings. He gives his daughter a coat and takes her out to the Jersey Shore boardwalk, where in an apparently better past they had good times. Looking into the ruins of a once-beautiful ballroom, Randy realizes his shortcomings and, in a melodramatic speech sure to inspire viewers' tears, tells Stephanie his daughter that he deserves to be alone but wants one more chance.

In another of the Ram's gestures of object-cum-affection, he offers an action figure from his 80s heyday for stripper Cassidy's (aka Pam's) son. The action figure is a fantastic metonymic device for Randy himself. We later see Pam's son smashing The Ram action figure into another toy, feeling nothing, which is what people expect out of The Ram. And what others expect, we want to give to them. Having to perpetually please others is one of the burdens of fame and also one of its addictions.

Later in the film, rejected by Cassidy, Randy The Ram goes to a local wrestling match and later out to a bar with the other wrestlers. He is recognized by a twenty-something female who recalls her brother had a poster of The Ram when she was growing up. Fulfilling each other's fantasy needs, Randy ends up drnking and snorting cocaine to excess, having sex with the twenty-something in a public bathroom. He is a blunt instrument, unfeeling. Hungover, he sleeps the next day away, missing a dinner date with his daughter, who then banishes him from her life when he tries to reconcile, as she cannot deal with the unexpected pain her father causes her.

Ultimately, Randy is a character who can see change but can't deal with it. He is perpetually living on the leftovers of his glory days. He is remarkably myopic, tellingly revealed as he blames Kurt Cobain for the demise of his beloved 80s hair metal. Like everything else Randy "The Ram" believes (he can be a better father, he can date Cassidy/Pam, he can work in a supermarket and be satisfied) this is only a half truth. The record industry and fandom's love of "the new" caused the music to change as much as Cobain. Randy's addiction to The Ram's fame and fantasy causes him to fulfill his prophecy of being alone in real life because he cannot fit his real self with the larger (and often unplanned) choreography of life's forces.

Randy "The Ram" Robinson and his experiences in "The Wrestler" show us the ruins of the American dream. While Rourke's performance is great, I question contemporary audience's ability to understand that The Ram is an antihero, an example of what not to do. His embrace of fame and fantasy over realism is borderline psychotic behavior. He is a self-hating, pitiable character who we are allowed to see on the downturn from the glory of his fifteen minutes, not a Rocky archtype who triumphs against long odds. In the film's final scene, we essentially see his complete rejection of the real, favoring instead the choreography of his past, his fantasy life.

Oranges & Sardines (O&S)

You can read my review of Takashi Hiraide's For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut translated by Sawako Nakayasu along with the finest poetry and art in the new Oranges & Sardines. I'm really proud and honored to be a part of the past two issues.

Help Salt Publishing!

As a proud reader of the Salt Publishing titles listed below, I have a marked interest in making sure the press goes on. Help them by buying one book today http://www.saltpublishing.com/.

1. Home and Variations--Robert Archambeau
2. New Selected Poems--John Matthias
3. Kedging--John Matthias
4. The Hutton Inquiry--Chris McCabe
5. Selected Poems--Geraldine Monk
6. Green 532: Selected Poems--Randolph Healy
7. The Encyclopedia of Scotland--Annie Finch
8. Ring of Fire--Lisa Jarnot

I'm planning on getting Catherine Daly's DaDaDa, a book I've wanted to read for some time.

Introducing the J DeF Trio

Since late 2000, jazz has underwritten my life. It is always there: in the background as I read or write, on my iPod at the gym, or walking around town. Jazz is even going on in my brain when I'm not listening to it outright. Certain songs just permeate my brain.

Understanding how jazz works and how its innovators have changed the music over time has profoundly affected me as an artist. I didn't come up in jazz alone, though. I had a good teacher. My friend James DeFrain was apparently searching for the same thing in music that I was back in 2000. We came to jazz together. Lucky for me, he is a multi-talented musician who has been able to teach me the theory and practice of jazz playing, far beyond simply enjoying the music. It is inspiring to see that he is now leading a jazz trio as a drummer, deftly playing the standards that first called us to jazz nearly a decade ago.

Lucky for James, he has found two emerging musicians to compliment him on the stand in his new group the J DeF Trio. Sean Grabiner is the driving force of the trio, handling the memorable heads on classic tracks like "My Funny Valentine" and "Blue Monk" with aplomb. He is also a compelling soloist, whose cleaner-than soloing reminds me of Jeff Parker or a cooled-out Wes Montgomery. His guitar work is something I will keep an ear out for.

James's drumming has grown up as well, handling the classic jazz ride cymbal on "There Will Never Be Another" as well as Latin beats on "Blue Bossa." He is a learned and well-read drummer, and combining with upright bassist Doug Bistrow, they make for a swinging rhythm section that can handle almost any circumstance behind Grabiner's soloing.

Jazz will continue to be omnipresent in my life. I'm glad to have a new group like the J DeF Trio to reinterpret my favorite songs, underwriting my life with a variety of timbres and moods.

Audio Poem @ NCTE

Hear me read "The Love Song of Homer J. Simpson," an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet parody done in the voice of T. S. Eliot inspired by Homer Simpson's donut love over at NCTE web site.