Autumn Equinox Poetry Stuff

In this E-Fishwrapper, Poetry Postcard Party tomorrow night (September 22) at Cafe Vega, New Books by Sam Hamill, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nico Vassilakis, and Jerome Rotherberg, Lit Fuse in Tieton, November 3-4,WCW Symposium & more than you'll actually read.

1) There will be an event tomorrow night at 7P at Cafe Vega to discuss the August Poetry Postcard project and share some of the best work. Postcarders and non-participants are welcome to attend. The cafe is at 1918 E. Yesler Way and is donating the space and will document the evening. This cafe is a small, locally-owned neighborhood business and you are encouraged to support it by attending our event, or just stopping there for coffee or soup.

2) Sam Hamill's new Book of Poems, Measured By Stone:

"Written from the point of view of a cranky, wandering poet of the old kind - part sage, part soul of the Buddha, and part rascal...Sam Hamill is one of the essential poetics and political voices of our time..." - Bruce Weigl

Curbstone Press has released Measured By Stone, Sam's latest work. A Pacific Northwest icon, now free to write, is back with poems inspired by some of his literary heroes like Tu Fu, Li Po, Denise Levertov and others, visits to Buenos Aires, at least one love poem and some Lessons From Thieves. A beautiful book

What is friendship in poetry, after all,
but it sweetens the soul and
thickens one's skin? I don't know the answer
to the questions that go unasked.
But I've seen the face behind the mask.

http://www.curbstone.org/bookdetail.cfm?BookID=199

3. UNTITLED [INTERSECTION], 2007

Poetry & Performance Art 7pm Friday 28 September 2007

your humble E-Fishwrapperer performs poetry w/ sax player extraordinaire Dan Blunck
there will be bread and cheese and fruit both before and after the event
there will be Angel Laterrell performing poetry
everyone who comes gets a manifesto
hand-printed and signed
suggested donation $5
it is untitled and run by the ever-inventive postcard poet ak allin.

Here are directions to Phinney Neighborhood Center: http://www.phinneycenter.org/directions.shtml

4) New Lawrence Ferlinghetti book Poetry as Insurgent Art

The former poet laureate of San Francisco and founder of City Lights Bookstore, Ferlinghetti starts the new edition of this ongoing project with three quotes, one of which is from Subcomandante Marcos: "We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution." His first line is I am signaling you through the flames. A collection mostly made of epigraphs, some pithy, some funny, some corny, some you'll disagree with, this small book also contains two 1978 essays, one of which "Modern Poetry is Prose" points out that modern poetry is prose because it "doesn't have much duende." Indeed. This book is his ars poetica and well worth your time. http://www.ndpublishing.com/books/ferlinghettipoetryasinsurgentart.html


5) Voices in Wartime, Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 7pm, South Puget Sound Community College at 2011 Mottman Rd SW Minnaert Center for the Performing Arts Olympia.

Dunya Mikhail, Bill Ransom and Sarah Zane read poetry in a fundraiser that launches the Voices in Wartime program in South Sound colleges, universities and high schools. Funds will support faculty workshops, which have been well received by schools at Bellevue Community College, Aviation High and other locations. Voices in Wartime Executive Director, Andy Himes, will introduce a clip from the powerful film of the same title. Paul Nelson emcees and facilitates the panel. Tickets: http://brownpapertickets.com/event/18376

6) ANNOUNCING NICO VASSILAKIS’ TEXT LOSES TIME

ManyPenny Press is pleased to announce the release of TEXT LOSES TIME by Nico Vassilakis. This necessary work spans roughly 15 years of the author’s efforts in both textual and visual writing. It is Vassilakis’ first full-length book.

TEXT LOSES TIME

Afterword by Nick Piombino

188 pp.

AUTHOR’S STATEMENT:

This book intends to present both verbal and visual poetries as equal. Though notions of poetics have shifted and swerved, what has stayed solid throughout is that the alphabet, the word – however arranged – contains, within it, dual significance. First, the proto-historic role of the visual conveyance of represented fact. Second, the overriding desire of human utterance to substantiate existence. In conjoining these two models this book hopes to form a third, blurred value. Thought and experience are factors that accrue, while staring and writing help resolve and conclude. Text itself is an amalgam of units of meaning. As you stare at text you notice the visual aspects of letters. As one stares further, meaning loses its hierarchy and words discorporate and the alphabet itself begins to surface. Shapes, spatial relations and visual associations emerge as one delves further. Alphabetic bits or parts or snippets of letters can create an added visual vocabulary amidst the very text one is reading. One aim, to this end, is to merge and hinge visual and textual writing into workable forms. This book collects some of these experiments.

Nico Vassilakis was born in New York City in 1963. He has co-written and performed a one-man play about experimental composer Morton Feldman. Vassilakis is co-founder and curator for the Subtext Reading Series and editor of Clear-Cut: Anthology (A Collection of Seattle Writers).

7) LitFuse 2007: A Poet's Workshop

* Mighty Tieton, WA Nov. 3-4, 2007
* Featuring: Susan Rich
* http://www.mightytieton.com/tieton_arts-humanities

LitFuse 2007 combines teaching, writing exercises, and meditation to challenge your muse to do a headstand. We'll explore the role of the poet in the American empire, through teaching, panel discussion, and a guided showing by the filmmaker of the documentary, Voices in Wartime.

There will also be an opportunity for up to one dozen pre-registered participants to experience a hands-on letterpress workshop. Susan Rich, MFA, is this year's featured speaker. She is the author of The Cartographer's Tongue: Poems of the World (White Pine Press 2000), and Cures Include Travel. Kathleen Flenniken, MFA, winner of the 2005 Prairie Schooner Book Award, co-editor at Floating Bridge Press.

Doug Johnson, editor of Cave Moon Press. Paul Nelson, MA in Organic Poetry, co-founder of Northwest Spokenword Lab. Dan Peters, author of The Reservoir, co-editor of Weathered Pages. Jonathan King, journalist, writer, and producer of the feature-length documentary film, Voices in Wartime and others.

8) Raven Chronicles says g'bye to Hugo House. From Phoebe Bosche:

Dear Raven contributors, subscribers, supporters:

Please join us on Tuesday, September 25th, for a special reading/gathering.
Raven Chronicles, along with Floating Bridge Press, will lose its office space
at Hugo House in the next few months. We've been here 10 years, since the
birth of HH, and it has been an adventure; every year different. Since this will
probably be the last reading we do at HH this year, we're inviting all past
contributors to join us, read a poem published in Raven, or read a short excerpt
from a prose piece published. We'll have a huge selection of books to sell ($1 each!):
books, local and national writers, we've received over the year. Bring a bag!

When: September 25, Tuesday, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Richard Hugo House, 1634-llth Avenue, Seattle
Contact: Phoebe Bosche 206-323-4316; cell: 941-2955 editors@ravenchronicles.org

9) Kevin Miller reads in Tacoma.

Kevin Miller reads November 2nd, at 7:00 pm at King’s Books, 218 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402. Miller will read from his manuscript The Old Town Poems in fulfillment of a grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission. Free Admission.

10) Jerome Rothenberg's new Book.

The following is new and not in general circulation, but it can be had through Small Press Distribution, as follows:
THREE POEMS AFTER IMAGES BY NANCY TOBIN
Publisher: Hawk's Well Press
Price: $15.00

The latest of Jerome Rothenberg's many collaborations with artists, Three Poems takes off from Nancy Tobin's brilliantly colored and constructed paintings, to create a mutual celebration of the familiar and familial. The initiatory act here follows from Tobin's quasi-abstract images and her assessment of the mysteries and revelations that her art provides her.

11) WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS POETRY SYMPOSIUM

The William Carlos Williams Poetry Symposium (WCWPS) proudly announces
a special poetry reading to commemorate its annual celebration of WCW's
birthday in September and to acknowledge the 25th anniversary of the
renaming of the Williams Center.

The WCWPS reading will take place Sunday September 16, 2007 on the
Terrace of Rutherford's Williams Center from 1 PM to 4:30 PM. A
champagne reception will follow and the poets will be available to
sign books.

Four of WCW's family members will be attending and sharing
reminiscences.

OK, the postcard party tomorrow night at Cafe Vega and my 46th. Damn! My daughter Rebecca will be joining us and we'll be signing up a few more people for the Perennial Postcard List which starts next week.

I was elected President of the Washington Poets Association Sunday and we need some good Board Members to help continue the evolution of WPA and increase membership. Please call or email if you'd like to get involved. It is a working Board, so come only if you have time to oversee, or assist, one of the WPA's many fine projects, such as Burning Word or the Cascade Journal. Soon we'll announce the headliners for next year's Burning Word.

xoxo President Postcard.

Paul E. Nelson, M.A.

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