consumption...

yesterday i worked a half day because i'm sick...

went home and got in bed and read a lot...

here's what i read:

Double Impact- Michael Price and Kevin Opstedal

i have a couple Kevin chapbooks, i think they both have palm trees on the cover, i think i bought these at Moe's in Berkeley when i was 19...Moe's used to be a great place to find copies of Mike & Dale's and Gas and Skanky Possum...i remember i bought the "movie ticket stub" issue of Mike & Dale's the same day i found a 1st (only?) edition copy of Kenneth Koch and Alex Katz's Interlocking Lives...i remember bringing Interlocking Lives to the counter and the guy saying "where the hell did you find this?"...i remember that guy at the counter was wearing black rimmed glasses and a San Francisco Demons t-shirt (XFL League)...i remember thinking "he's wearing that ironically"...i was a kid and i wanted to be as cool as that guy...i remember my friend Elli bought a Kandinsky coffee table book...Michael Price gave me my copy of Double Impact when me and Steve D. visited his Pearl Street Mall furniture store Weird Horse (?)...i have a photo (update: found the photo) of Michael Price and Steve Dickison standing outside the Boulderado Hotel...Michael has on a cool cowboy shirt, Steve D. looks warm...Kevin Opstedal read at Books & Bookshelves a couple weeks ago...

Interdiction- Michael Slosek

Michael just left SF for Chicago...he does House Press...Noah Eli Gordon recently mentioned House Press as one of his favorite chapbook presses in Rain Taxi...i read once with NEG in Boulder, CO...NEG said my work was very early Michael Palmer...Joseph Lease called me yesterday and said (in a scary voice) "you're the only person in the world that thinks i look like NEG..." we laughed...Michael used to work for UC Press...Logan Ryan Smith has Michael's old job...Logan Ryan Smith publishes Transmission chapbooks...Interdiction is a Transmission chapbook...NEG and Logan Ryan Smith once drank vodka tonics together at The Catacombs...The Catacombs was where i wrote my thesis on Michael Palmer and The Analytic Lyric...

The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978- Bob Kaufman

i bought this book at City Lights when i was 22 years old with my girlfriend on our 2 year anniversary...my friend Adam Venter said that Kaufman was his favorite Beat poet...i hadn't heard of him before...Adam let me borrow Cranial Guitar which i never read...at City Lights i saw The Ancient Rain and thought of Adam...i bought the book and my girlfriend bought Jimmy Corrigan...we stayed at The Argent that night and ate at what we thought was a rustic Italian restaurant called Buca Di Beppo's...

Japan- Maxine Chernoff

this was one of the first "experimental" books of poetry i ever bought...i got this when i was 18...my mom used to take me to SPD once a year where she would give me around 100 bucks to buy whatever i wanted...i remember her saying once "are you SUUURE you want this Ward Churchill book?"...the nice, incredibly intimidating people at SPD invited me to walk around the warehouse...i found the damaged shelf...i found Japan on the damaged shelf with a bright orange sticker...i opened it up and and read a few lines and put it in my Green Apple tote bag...Japan is an alphabet poem but that wouldn't have meant much to me at the time...i remember the first time i met Maxine at SFSU i saw a few copies of Japan in her office...i thought "so...that's you...weird"...a few years later i wouldn't have graduated SFSU without Maxine hooking me up with credits...when i think of Japan i think of almost not graduating...

Any Time Now- Frances Jaffer

i won SFSU's Frances Jaffer award in 2002...Mark Linenthal came to the awards reading and gave me a few of Frances's books...Rob Halpern is working on a big Frances Jaffer book to be published by i forget...in 2008 Rob invited me to read at a series he curates in the Mission...he told me that i would be reading with Mark Linenthal...Frances Jaffer was Mark's wife...i told Rob all about the Frances Jaffer award and how Mark had come to my reading and given me some of Frances's books...Rob was like "whoa...i didn't know that..."...and then at the reading when i was introduced to Mark again, 6 years later, Mark said to me "you won the Frances Jaffer award!!!...Frances is watching over our reading..."...Rob is reading tonight at Books & Bookshelves...

after i read all these books i started Samuel Johnson's Lives Of The Poets (Congreve to Grey)...and then i ate a bowl of chili and some garlic bread and a packet of Oreo's...and then later some tuna-salad and peanut butter and banana and trail mix...

and then i watched An Inconvenient Truth and went to bed at 9:15pm...