Dave, thanks so much! And special thanks for those specifics. They're gold
for me right now because I'm about to have to make a set list again, for a
reading with Kevin Killian next week (announcement below).
I'm so pleased that you liked the particular poems you liked, because it
confirms my sense of where I do okay as a reader, probably because I connect
to those poems so intimately. Or because I just plain like them. They're fun
to read, or at least intense.
How interesting to imagine you with your tiny rake, listening to the audio!
Can you say more about Brits and the Hammer? It was an incredible irony for
me to realize that Armand Hammer, who built the museum with Occidental
Petroleum money, had strong
connections with both Lenin and Nixon (he was actually indicted, I think,
for an illegal contribution to the Nixon campaign). I decided to go ahead
and say so in the beginning, because it was so funny on some level -- but
that was one of the things that freaked me out later, because I'd been
advised by some friends to keep my mouth shut.
Anyway, thanks again, and here's what's happening next week:
Please come check us out if you're in the area and say hello!
Thursday, October 8
Kevin Killian and Rachel Loden
Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA
7:30 p.m.
Free
http://www.keplers.com/event/poetry-kevin-killian-rachel-loden
Info: (650) 324-4321
Kevin Killian has written two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a
book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1990), two books of stories, Little
Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001) and two books of poetry, Argento
Series (2001), and Action Kylie (2008). With Lew Ellingham, Killian has
written often on the life and work of the American poet Jack Spicer
[1925-65] and with Peter Gizzi has edited My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The
Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008) for Wesleyan University Press. For
the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including
Stone Marmalade (1996, with Leslie Scalapino), The American Objectivists
(2001, with Brian Kim Stefans), and Often (also 2001, with Barbara Guest).
New projects include Screen Tests, an edition of Killian's film writing, and
Impossible Princess, a new fiction collection forthcoming from City Lights
Books in November. A new novel Spreadeagle will appear in the spring.
Rachel Loden is the author of Dick of the Dead, which came out in May and
has already been called "oddly sublime" and "intoxicating" by the Poetry
Project Newsletter and "expansive and whimsical" by the Brooklyn Rail. Her
first book, Hotel Imperium, was selected as one of the ten best poetry books
of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, which called it "quirky and
beguiling." It was also shortlisted for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.
Loden has published four chapbooks, including The Last Campaign and The
Richard Nixon Snow Globe. Her work has appeared in New American Writing, The
Paris Review, Jacket, two editions of the Best American Poetry series, and
many other magazines and anthologies. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a
Fellowship in Poetry from the California Arts Council, and a grant from the
Fund for Poetry, and her work is forthcoming in the &NOW Awards: The Best
Innovative Writing.
http://keplers.com/bookstore-location-map-driving-directions-contact-and-par
king
Kepler's is located on El Camino Real between Santa Cruz Avenue and
Ravenswood, one mile north of Stanford University in Menlo Park. An
underground parking garage off Santa Cruz Avenue provides free parking. The
Menlo Park Cal Train station is located behind the bookstore, making for
convenient, green travel.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf
> Of David Bircumshaw
> Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 11:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Rachel Loden aloud!
>
> Well read, Rachel. For all the propaganda of performance much of poetry is
> an intimate art and it's a vulnerable and exposed place to read it, the
> stage. I particularly liked the Verse from Vallejo, Autumn Daze, Belial,
> Dick of the Dead and , well, who else could dream of George Costanza?
> ( i raked a new pattern in my minature Zen garden - only 8 inches square,
I
> have a very small home - while listening, a good sign)
>
> British listeners might feel that Dick of the Dead is very aptly evoked in
a
> reading series named Hammer.
>
> best
>
>
> dave
>
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