My Cousin is a Rock Star: a photo essay

Strix Vega rocked the Starry Plough on March 28th 2009 and the stars, my cousin Andy, were out. The iPhone blurriness captured the twinkles. My only regret: no gong-banging shots!

Effluvia

1) The Canessa Reading was great. W+S is glowing about it. You can tell when you peek into the garage at night.

2) Craig in Australia.

3) Not enough sleep.

Happening: lately & soon

This past weekend was a beast, with the excellent Marxist Working Group's excellent conference Friday/Saturday on Crisis Contradiction and Contestation in Postwar Economy and Culture (that's a mouthful!), Saturday night to Petaloo for Tami's bday bash @ Stephanie's, then Monday (is Monday the weekend?) to the CAIS meeting at Head Royce's ski-lodge of a campus, which felt rather over-steeped in dollars.

So, now back at school thinking toward the week, with much prep work looming for W+S if it's to take shape before Saturday's reading.

And speaking of! W+S goes live and direct, thanks to Erica Lewis and the Canessa Gallery.

Details here.

For the price of a single burrito, so much poetry!

Jacket 36

announces itself.

As ever, the one-stop shop for real discussions of poetry.

My review of doble-Mlinko's there, of course.

Anyway, initial response: can we just call this the Rachel Blau DuPlessis issue? She's present and accounted in articles on Oppen, Guest, Creeley, and herself. That's some serious representation. Late-mid-century, where you at?!

Meanwhile, at other blogspots...

W+S preps the red issue.

BFFs

Me & 2666. When I'm home and not sitting in a cafe procrastinating, I'll post some quotes that have caught my ear/mind. But I just had to say it: we're BFFs. This book rocks my world.

Orderly bankruptcy vs. Disorderly collapse

In this NYTimes article I was struck (as I often am) by the use of language. In this case, it's the antistasis that strikes a chord. Usually the propaganda machine is pretty good at producing distinct difference-- you know, Hope(TM) vs. McSame, or Maverick(TM) vs. Palling Around With Terrorists-- or more significantly, words like insurgent, terrorist, enemy combatant, instead of troops, soldiers, or even something simple like 'fighters' (maybe in fear of any echo of 'freedom'?). But here, the propaganda machine seems as lost as the rest of the country. But here it's just X Bankruptcy vs. Dis-X Collapse. And when you get right down to it, that's not the most inspirational choice of words, any more than it is the most inspirational choice.

O for the days when nothing was an option!