5. Bug House- Logan Ryan Smith
Mission Cleaners Books

from Logan's blog

"Yesterday while doing my taxes I received this text from John Sakkis, poet/translator/SPD backbone/friend. There may have been a tear shed upon reading it, but since there's no evidence of it, I'll never actually cop to it. Here's the text:

'Just read your Bug House in one sitting on my porch drinking beers on a warm winter Oakland day. I really love it, Log. A totally 'world building' poetry experience. I think you accomplished everything you set out to do--a sort of monologue, epistolary BOOK/ serial confession. I loved it and am moved deeply by it. You've written a book I'll be thinking about for a long time. Congratulations, Bug House is a beautiful, elegiac book of poems. I can't wait to read it again...A very very very good book. I didn't want it to end, but it ended perfectly when it did...devastating, perfect.'"


I think Logan may have excerpted from my text, that last bit there doesn't really seem to follow what preceded it. Or I could have been drinking beers on my balcony (not porch) and therefore not realized I was repeating myself. Bug House is quintessentially Logan, it's a grumpy goth morality play that manages to be weirdly fatalistic (apocalyptic) and optimistic (survival) at the same time. There is a Waiting For Godot quality to the book, I don't know, that kind of not knowing where we are, fumbling in the dark (literally in Bug House) for meaning, validation, and communication, it's a deeply erotic poem in that the characters all seem to be speaking around each other, not quite landing the point, surviving, punning, grasping toward each other (I'm reminded of Carla Harryman's Memory Play in that way, and not just because both utilize anthropomorphism), and yes, my sense of eroticism is a bit idiosyncratic in this case, but I can't think of a better term for it. Reading it made me uneasy, like that feeling you get when you have to pee (not the beers), but hold it just to see how much longer you can stand it. Yes, Logan's book turned me on, there is an anxiety that he gets just right, that felt honest. I would love to see Bug House made into an animated feature in the style of Charlotte's Web. 

4. Echo 681- ed. Jessica Pompei, Holaday Mason, Sarah Maclay
Beyone Baroque Books

After reading at the PRB, when it was still at The Smell in Downtown LA, J.M. told me that when F.D. found out I was reading in LA, he got a little pissed off, in his mind, I should have been reading at BB in Venice. This was all very confusing, I had only corresponded with F.D. briefly before and after B.H.'s book Vigilance was published, mostly about mine and B.H.'s "a discussion with" that was to be published in Vigilance. I was flattered by F.D.'s unexpected sense of propriety, I didn't understand it, but it made me feel wanted, like I was finally a part of a broader literary geography, one that extend outside the Bay Area.

3. The New Yipes Reader- # Suzanne Stein, Haleh Hatami

In 2008, Suzanne included this fantastic, dirty, homicidal love poem by Rene Ricard in her section of the reader. In 2012, Kevin Killian, a friend of mine and Suzanne's, wrote a blog post for SFMOMA's Open Space about the Rene Ricard show at the Highlight Gallery in SF. In the comments section to the post Rene Ricard corrects Kevin, "misquote corrected: “Then Love Takes Us to Faraway Places” but thanks a lot Kevin. Rene Ricard." Knowing Suzanne's association with SFMOMA/ Open Space, and knowing her affinity for the poetry of Rene Ricard (via The New Yipes Reader) I wondered how she felt about Rene Ricard leaving a comment on Open Space blog. Judging by her followup comment to Rene Ricard in the same comments section, I would say she felt excited, humbled, and regionally hospitable, "Rene Ricard, I’m your sweetest San Francisco fan, after Kevin, by far. Come out and see us and I’ll take you both on a Gondola trip around Lake Merritt, the jewel of Oakland."

2. SAGINAW #4- Edited David Harrison Horton, featuring Cassandra Smith, Eileen Myles, Courtnie Wolfgang, Spencer Selby, Rodney Koeneke

I remember standing out side the Canessa Gallery in North Beach one night chatting with DHH. This was back when Erica Lewis was curating, I think Suzanne Stein (SS read her transcript from her Poetry Project reading) and Ariel Goldberg (AG, read some of her photo project stuff) were reading. DHH and I were talking about skateboarding, The Pack's song "Vans" had just dropped, so we were chopping it up about the then nascent (and now dead) skate-rap movement. I have a line in RAVE ON! "skateboarding is not the 6th element of Hip Hop," and it's not, and as a skater, and former hip hopper I would get frustrated with the overeager conflation of the two, though I was into what The Pack were doing, and told DHH so.

check it check it out 
EAST BAY POETRY SUMMIT SCHEDULE

it's basically a week away. i can't believe it. 

please see below the final schedule of events and readings 

(also attached as a lovely green pdf)

and PLEASE PASS IT ALONG!

and write me back if you have any questions!

also, andrew's asked me to ask you 

to COME TO OUR POTLUCK on saturday 5/25

and to "implore 'em to bring brats, whole chickens, 

stuck pigs, and caterwauling shoals 

of cliffs of beets + potato salads"

for love of blood and kale 

xo pe

EAST BAY POETRY SUMMIT SCHEDULE:

Thursday, May 23rd 

8pm @ Nick's Lounge: 3218 Adeline St, Berkeley, CA
Karaoke at Nick's Lounge

Friday, May 24th 

7:00 p.m. @ 2127 Blake St, Berkeley
Uyen Hua
Douglas Rothschild
Melissa Buzzeo
Jen Hofer
David Wolach

Saturday, May 25th 

4:00 p.m. @ Long Haul: 3124 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CACassie Smith
Sue Landers
Mathew Timmons
Katy Bohinc
Frank Sherlock6:00 p.m. @ Woolsey Heights: 1628 Woolsey st apt c, Berkeley

Potluck! 8:00 p.m. @ Woolsey Heights
Bhanu Kapil
Andrew Durbin
John Coletti
Jared Stanley
Dolores Dorantes (with Jen Hofer)
Jenn McCrearySunday, May 26th 

3:00 p.m. @ The Public School: 2141 Broadway, Oakland
Anne Boyer
Anna Vitale
Laura Henriksen
Sophie Sills
Frank Montesonti
7:00 p.m. @ Tender Oracle: 531 22nd St, OaklandMaged Zaher
Matt Longabucco
Dawn Lundy Martin

Monday, May 27th 2pm
BBQ at David Buuck’s!

1. A Clash Of Kings- George R.R. Martin (A Song Of Ice And Fire, Book 2)
Bantam Books

I'd rather watch Mad Men drinking Canadian Club whiskey.
I can't watch Game Of Thrones without drinking red wine.
My enjoyment of these two shows is enhanced and altered by consuming site specific alcoholic drinks, whiskey and red wine, I'm a lemur, easily influenced by the media I consume, if Tyrion Lannister is drinking red wine, I should be too.

I kept getting the building code wrong.

A mansion, an entrance way, columns (a la House Of Leaves).

I remember L. K. calling bullshit (actually he said "spurious") on Jack Spicer's last words reportedly being "my vocabulary did this to me/ your love will let you go on." His whole thing was that Jack was catatonic in the hospital, couldn't speak, couldn't move, that there was no way he could have been lucid enough to form those two sentences.

A couple weeks ago I was invited to a poet's birthday party at Specs in North Beach, I didn't know the poet whose birthday we were celebrating, I was invited by Angelos and Jack Hirschman. Hirschman told me that L. K. had moved back from Europe, he told me he's gotten skinny, I told Hirschman that L. K. had invited me to spend some time as a writer's resident at his girlfriend's barn in Switzerland, I couldn't afford the ticket to Europe.

Was reading Ron Silliman's essay My Vocabulary Did This To Me in ACTS #6 this morning. Ron argues that Spicer's last words were antithetical to his poetics, that it was never about "vocabulary" for Spicer, VOCABULARY was a R. Duncan thing. Vocabulary is furniture, merely furniture. And then Silliman returns to Spicer's last words, ties it all up in the end, I can't remember how, I was drinking sour Colombian coffee in bed.

Benjamin Hollander (ed. ACTS #6) and George Albon are reading at Bird And Beckett this Wednesday at 7pm, not to be missed.

me and Karyn, Sarina and Josh saw The Shining documentary Room 237 last night at The New Parkway last night, it was mostly silly and a little bit terrible.

we then went The Legionnaire Saloon for Hennessey and beers, they were playing House music, it was terrible, and I love House music.

we then headed back to Karyn's place where she cooked us tuna, it was delicious, we had conversations about the Kentucky Derby.

currently listening to Joanna Newsom's Mild Eyed Mender drinking a Dark And Stormy.

I listened to baseball on the radio at Lake View park today.

"Only now in my early thirties do I realize the incomprehensible/ pain of living, the inevitability of death, and the endless need/ for total illumination, be that as it may."

from Serenade
Bill Berkson

I'm so Greek Easter hungover.

Check out these RAVE ON! poems just up at Tarpaulin Sky.

Happy birthday Willie Mays, hope you have a restful day.

Love.