These and many things are strange

Ok. I really did not write that poem.

And I wouldn't point it out except for the fact.

That someone commented on it.

And they called me Scott.

So, things are looking up.

Well...I got that going for me.

If I were scott, I would probably use the word "untrammeled."

If I were a dot, I would apply myself in various and numinous ways.

Vampires as it were. And other spookies. Cold a bit here in New Orleans.

Anselm Hollo was here last week. And I could not keep my Italian dinner down.
Not that the two are related. But Ed Sanders is here now. And so we have 1968 and poems for New Orleans to look forward and not back to.

We are very sad that Brendan, Tracey and Aurora are not coming. Damn you economy.

But very Happy that Phil and Bernadette will be here Wed. and Hannah will be here Thursday.

If you are looking for your poets and think you have misplaced them, don't be alarmed.
They are safe here in the New Or-leans!

New Poem

I wrote this great new piece that's already been published here (it's on page 3035) if you want to see the original.

http://www.forgodot.com/2008/10/issue-1-release-announcement.html

Refraining Solitude

Vegetation and mischief
Lusty and untrammeled
Prudence and glory
Shaking

Taking

More inborn than a
durability
Taking above a
man
Your inbred mankind
Refraining on a strength
At a congenital piece




I'm thinking about changing the word untrammelled though...it just doesn't sound like me....maybe just trampy.... wow, i sound really tense too. I need some valium.

The Vulva Song of Innana

I love this so much.

Nicole, you are my hero!

Maureen Owen and Mina

The wonderful Maureen Owen was here last week. She led a wonderful discussion here at the house with about 11 other poets. We talked about her own career in publishing Telephone books and then spent quite some time talking about the current state of reading and writing in schools and among children, especially why poetry gets such a bad rap in education as either hard to teach or confined to boring, overanthologized versions of the same-old poems. I was amazed to hear college professors reveal they had students who have never read a book or who are unfamiliar with the parts of speech.


As a result, all of the middle schoolers will be wading through an expansive lesson on these grammar "details." Sixth graders today will be collecting words for their 3-d project on bagging language into the 8 parts of speech.

Maureen gave a fabulous reading on Thursday night; also featured was the poet Gabe Gomez.


People often think we named Mina after Mina Harker, not Mina Loy. Isn't it interesting how the fictional character has more presence than the very real poet? No, not really. But maybe, yes.

I've been reading Bellamy's Mina Harker Letters, a wonderful juxtaposition to a flurry of Young Adults novels that I've been reading at the same time. And to complement Bellamy, I've been listening to Vintage Horror Radio podcasts before falling asleep.

New Poetry Books

I'm reading this book by Skip Fox, from BlazeVox [books] to review for YAWP Journal. It's amazing. At almost 300 pages, it's a huge poetry chunk to sink your teeth into. That's not in the review.

I also just got in the mail Mark Cunningham's new book from Tarpaulin Sky called Body Language. It's a flip book that meets in the middle. It's strange because we (Dave and I) were just talking about publishing flip books. I just started reading it last night, and I am enjoying it as well. I will probably write a review for it next week.

Graffiti Artist Visits New Orleans

3rd Anniversary/ 1st Evacuation Since...

More Than Halfway

infected season
if time won’t hold still
this life too is a dreary anger
let it come
take us what water that will
grasp at our designs
a life that falters as best can be described
it’s a short ride in darkening light
to a part of the city still trembling
and tethered
most of the block stays the same
looking further into the enveloping night
see how the homes have been beaten
a memory from childhood
taken out to lay down in disgrace
folded edges as witness palimpsest
danger overlapping disaster
shimmering gaze—all cities reject silence
desolate as is the world wrapped round us
the repetition of “towards recovery”
place holders these empty hulls
beached on the shore of this sunken city
exposed as a vacuum filling with anxiety
each time a breeze picks up in the Atlantic
each time a butterfly wing opens and closes
half way around the earth





Megan Burns
8.29.08

Ed Sanders and New Orleans

It seems that Gov. Jindal has secured enough MRE's to feed 350,000 people in the event of a hurricane heading straight for New Orleans this weekend. Since that end is covered, may I suggest grabbing your copy of the new Poems for New Orleans by Ed Sanders (North Atlantic Books), previously released in CD format and now available for your reading pleasure. It's a known fact the intonation of these poems aloud before your hurricane altar has the power to cool the gulf waters and turn the winds in our favor. Be prepared! Water, batteries, Sanders!

Solid Quarter Release Party

Solid Quarter (Issue II) Release Party and Reading at the 17 Poets! Reading Series. Pictured (l to r) Contributors David Rowe, Thaddeus Conti, Dave Brinks and Editor Megan Burns

The Solid Quarter release party was a huge success. Thank you to the readers and everyone who came out and picked up a copy of the second issue.

There will be another reading for Solid Quarter at Fuel Coffeehouse, 4807 Magazine St. on Sept 5th at 7:00 Pm.

Talkng to Amy Lynn Hess, Editor of Brown Bagazine

This photo shows my collection of Brown Bagazines. On the left is issue 5, the Borders issue, laid out and folded like a map with cross points for easy poet/ poem referencing. Issue 2 is the blue essay test booklet, no exam anxiety here just this issue's manifesto theme. There is the back-to-school issue (4) that comes in the handy trapper-keeper see thru folder for better poesy viewing. At top is the namesake of this magazine, the brown bag distribution center of issue 1. Leaning on the brown bag is the CD that came with the songwriting issue (3). Not only do the presentations of each theme centered issue continue to amuse, but Brown Bagazine has managed to create a strong presence in its first five issues by continually presenting charged and innovative work.

In issue 4, Rowland Sufi's A Drama breaks down the structure used in writing a dramatic play and inserts it into the narrative so that the text begins to resemble a complicated mathmatical formula. The solution may be attainable by confronting ideas of organization and narrative structure; it's possible that all of the bard's great plays were created using this formula.
Of particular note are Tim Armentrout's prose poems in issue 5. From stagnant ice, "it's a question of how empty space insulates itself. conversations above too chilled to hold anything in. cold shoulder isn't even the tip of the iceberg. presumption like a fork in the socket of your simple life." All three of Armentrout's pieces build on these turns in the language as they layer subtle images with a dynamic rhythm producing a momentum that pulls the reader along for the ride.
In Solid Quarter fashion (four questions), we interviewed the editor of the innovative and wonderfully packaged Brown Bagazine: Amy Lynn Hess.

Solid Quarter: What made you want to start a literary magazine?

Amy Lynn Hess: I was casually flipping through Poet's Market at the end of Naropa University's Summer Writing Program in 2006, and I realized there was a distinct lack of grassroots, easy-does-it, tactile, visceral, labor-of-love-type journals that were promoting the poetic conversation. It made me want to start a literary magazine to challenge the very corporate idea of what a literary magazine or journal really is. It is a place for current writers to share their own current ideas - glossy papers and perfect-bindings not required - just thoughtful and sparky writing that begets more thoughtful and sparky writing.

SQ: Where did the idea for a magazine in a brown bag originate from?

ALH: At its best, my work is blue collar and unpretentious. There's nothing more blue collar and unpretentious than a brown bag. The link between brown bags being symbolic of the type of work I appreciate and being a marvelously inexpensive way to mail the kind of work I wanted to collect came to me one night in Boulder as I was tossing around on a pull-out loveseat under a borrowed sheet and stolen quilt. I just couldn't calm my monkey-mind after that, and from there the mission statement emerged.

SQ: Why do you work with themes in your issues?

ALH: Various writers asked for themes last year as they were planning submissions, and I responded by adding specific subtitles to each issue this year. I think it has helped move the literary conversation forward. When all of the submitting writers are thinking along the same lines, I can edit a journal that moves as though a type of conversation. Writers also have the chance to respond to one another later in the season, in the "literary conversations" issue. It's very important to me to offer a space where writers can converse and respond to one another through fiction and nonfiction poetry and prose. I also think it has been a helpful way to guide my own writing as the year progresses.

SQ: Describe brown bag's eclectic mix of contributors and contents in four words.

ALH: Black dirt; rolling sweat-stains.


For more info. on Brown Bagazine and Amy Lynn Hess' press Gypsy Daughter, visit:
http://www.gypsydaughter.com/

Brown Bagazine Subscriptions, only $15.00 for 4 issues! Buy through PayPal on the Gypsy Daughter website.

Small Press Focus: Bedouin Books

A short note from editor Michael D'alassandro about all the great things happening over at Bedouin Books.

"greetings booklovers----
bedouin books, independent publishers of handmade works of literature and poetry, fiction and non-fiction is now open for business. browse the various features this website has to offer:

http://www.bedouinbooks.com/

the in-print and online features include:

- a semiannual literary journal swap/concessions
- online literary journal agora (edited by kaen joyler)
- annual poetry chapbook- the pamphlet poets series
- an editor's log of news, progress and updates

some future features will include:
- a reviews and literary criticism page
- online quarterly poetry magazine
- excerpts of all published works

as editor, i began this 25-year publishing project in 2003 with the promotion of my own writing. now, with the expansion of the website and a growing list of titles and authors, i hope to grow bedouin books into a fully functioning independent publisher. thank you in advance for taking a look at the website. bedouin books is taking orders, see website for details.
sincerely,
michael-----

m.d'alessandro, editor"

Guitars, Pies and Moving Type

The fabulous Willy Gantrim on guitar singing for us on Thursday evening.

Hannah has left us. She made many pies while she was here and broke many hearts, I hear, in the Bywater. Word is she will be back this way in October and using her secret key to enter the kingdom of babylon. Here is a photo from her reading Thursday night.

And I have been learning to set type and run the printing press (below) with the owner of Verna Press, Peter Anderson. Here is a photo of him cleaning the rollers as we prepare to change ink colors. We finished making a small broadside of one of my poems last week. Next, we move on to making a larger broadside with an image using a color we are still trying to create. Everyone says printing presses are addicting, and they are right.

Solid Quarter's Second Issue release party is this Thursday night. Readings by Thaddeus Conti, David Rowe, Dave Brinks and Megan Burns. Copies of Solid Quarter are only $4.00.

Photo and Book Review

Here's an old photo of a collection of oddities. Painters and poets: (L to R, photo by poet Lenny Emmanuel) Painter William Warren, Poet Danny Kerwick, Painters Tasha Robbins and Herbert Kearney, Poet Dave Brinks, Painter Romano Zamprioli and Poet Jimmy Nolan. As the small date indicates, one year before Dave and I even met. And now nearly half of the artists in this photo gone from New Orleans and sorely missed. I'm posting it to show the wonderful host of this evening's art opening Danny Kerwick who opened up his studio, Simpatico Studios on Magazine to showcase some beautiful artwork by Pat Kaschalk and handmade books by himself. Dave and I made a nice purchase, an image I will share soon.

My review of Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife: Essays in Mourning Time is up at Tarpaulin Sky.

They are also reading chapbook manuscripts now, so check it out and submit to an awesome press.

Tuesday's Dinner and More

Tuesday's dinner with our guests Hannah and Willy as well as lovely painter Daniel Finnigan consisted of salmon and softshell crab on a bed of crayfish pasta. Also included were grilled squash and other chef Brinks' secrets. If this poetry should not pan out and New Orleans becomes a dry town putting the Gold Mine out of business; we will be able to fall back on Dave's unrealized dream of opening a restaurant. In fact, we'll just use the same building and call it the Golden Mustard.


Solid Quarter Release Party will be August 14th at the Gold Mine Saloon 17 Poets! Reading Series. Readers include Dave Brinks, Thaddeus Conti, David Rowe and Megan Burns.

I've been reading C.D. Wright's new book: Rising, Hovering, Falling. It's a pleasant break from the Leprosy in America and imperialism and leprosy books that I am also engrossed in at the moment. We're deep in house construction again as we build some bookshelves to hold our obsessions in place.

And here is the piece I read at the open mic last night. I am trying to come to terms with the amount of damage this oil spill has done to our already traumatized ecosystem here along the river. I'm not sure what these terms resemble though.



How Trauma is like a Boat


What if there was a place where unwanted people could go to be put away in total anonymity united by their diagnosis. Think of the bodies in their lingering daydreams crowded skin to skin and all the end lines delivering to their own peculiar disasters: slavery, work camps, exile. Removal of any large group of people is problematic; the goal is the hasty evacuation of a city hours after the call is made. This is the loveliness of fiction. For some, removal is another form of torture and death. So, the young doctor administers a sleep aid and is called a murderer. Several will be blamed for the murder of a few while the murder of many is protected by the legal status of immunity. Committees designed to protect enact their right to be faultless for faulty designs, faulty responses; there is no fault it turns out that can be premeditated. Leprosy is like a storm; something still feared even in the face of knowing that you may survive it. But this depends on the ability to construct a cohesive narrative. One both navigable and lightweight as you will have to carry it downriver. And then, here too, turn away from the oil spill’s gleam on the water as it coats the exotic nature of your phrasing: what you would garnish for explanation. Gather in the hull this delicate ecosystem for safe travel to a foreign land. It was never about oil for these small beasts; all water safe from the threat of spills and their antecedents. Imagine trauma like a boat passing by unnoticed on the clipped wing of the horizon.

New House Guest and Painting with Food

This is the rock lobster feast of Monday night to welcome our new house guest Hannah who arrived Friday night around midnight with her friend Willy by car from Brooklyn, NY. She'll be staying with us a few weeks as our live-in help forced to partake in our New Orleans delicacies and traditions as well the manual labor of electronically transcribing Bernadette Mayer's Ethics of Sleep manuscript. The rock lobster feast consists of rock lobster claws, (which are not nearly as juicy and plumb as regular lobster claws, very crab like in fact) along with scallops, roasted cauliflower with a Bearnaise sauce, roasted beets on a bed of grape leaves. Chef Brinks really showing his best for the help.

Poet Hannah Zeavin will be featured in the 17 Poets! Reading Series August 7th along with musical guest Willy Gantrim. She has a book forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press entitled Circa. I have been reading the manuscript today, and it is very impressive. She will be going to Yale in the fall, but mostly by force when I kick her out of the house as she has decided to sell her soul to stay permanently in New Orleans. This is her on our porch talking to poet Akilah Oliver and trying to enlist her in setting down roots in New Orleans.

I continue to research the leprosarium at Carville, LA as well as the history of the village. Word is that the Exquisite Corpse is being resurrected to print in an Anthology to be released by City Lights in Spring of '09. Sections from the poem Carville, LA: Village of Forgotten Names may be found there if they garner official approval by the head poppa Codrescu.

Solid Quarters are being printed and prepared for their big release party and reading on August 14th. And school is starting up again and there is no clear reason why the kindergarten class needs tropical colored markers as I'm sure 5 and 6 year olds for many hundreds of years have illustrated just fine with the basic primary colors.

New Solid Quarters Are Rolling Out

Solid Quarter Issue 2
Edited by Megan Burns
Published by Trembling Pillow Press
Only $4.00 (2.oo s&h)

Release Date: August 2008

Front and Back Cover Art by Thaddeus Conti

Contents:
5 poems by Gia Opris (Denver, CO)

5 Poems by David Rowe (New Orleans, LA)

Art by Thaddeus Conti (New Orleans, LA)

2 Poems by Robin Gunkel (Baltimore, MD)

Selections from The Geometry of Sound by Dave Brinks (New Orleans, LA)


Issue Three Submissions:
Solid Quarter features four writers in every issue with a preference for long poems or serial poems. If you would like to submit to Solid Quarter, please send 5-6 poems/pages and a short bio. to meganaburns@aol.com or by mail to:

Megan Burns, editor
907 St. Peter St.
New Orleans, LA 70116

Call for Submissions

This just in... preview of the beautiful new cover of The Pulchritudinous Review and a word from the editor. Prepare to buy these hot off the press before they sell out as well!

"Hello Everyone!

Now is the time to send in your poetry, prose, songs, cross-genre writing, photography, or other digital art to The Pulchritudinous Review. Send up to 2 pages of whatever you want. You may draw some inspiration from the image above, a version of which will appear on the cover of the second issue. Send your submissions to ReneeZepeda@gmail.com as attached Word documents and/or jpegs. Feel free to email me with any questions. I look forward to reading your work!

Cheers,

Renee Zepeda

Editor

PS. The next issue will go on sale as soon as it's finished. Send me an email at the address above with your address and I will send you a copy for $10. Unfortunately, the first issue is sold out, but if I get enough requests I may print more. "

Back from the beach

We had a lobster bake at the house last night.

The one on the left is Jasmine and the one on the right is McQueen.

The kids like to name lobsters but they don't eat them. Although Blaise did ask Dave if we could eat their faces, how barbaric!

Here they are in a parting shot next to a bed of whole wheat pasta and roasted portabellos.

It is a beautiful thing to behold.

In other news, Laura Mullen's book Murmur is the perfect beach book I discovered as the plot or lack of narrative plot circles around bodies that may or may not have been discovered at a beach that may or may not be part of the story or stories being read or digested or encased in langauge about beaches and bodies, etc. You get the picture...

And to accompany that one must also simultaneously read William Burroughs Letters in which he waxes like the gibbous moon about such topics as piles in the nether regions, his merry-go-round flights to sobriety and back and, of course, mind control and brains that call out for bullets.

And so, do we believe in the "tremendous power of sanity" as George Oppen writes in his Daybooks?

Off to Florida...

Here's some writing exercises with a New Orleans influence perfect for this hurricane season:

1) Go to FEMA’s webpage (www.fema.gov) and explore disasters in your state. Or if not in the US explore the usefulness of their tips on how to avoid and prepare for disasters. Examine issues of safety in your writing.

2) Plan an escape route. What or who will you take, how will you get there, and what will you feel if you can never return home.

3) Research a specific species of plant native to your region or if not native, how it arrived there. Write about its history, present and future.

4) Construct a city with language. What is your infrastructure?

5) Explore how first responders work. Who will come for you if you are in need? What are your expectations of police, firemen, National Guard, etc.? How are they valued in society?

6) Explore geography in your region: where your home lies, when it was built, when the neighborhood was erected, what is the history of your physical place.

7) Wherever you live, write the story of your house, room by room, wall by wall, and ceiling and floor. Explore what is hidden and why versus what can be seen.

8) Make a new alphabet.

9) What are the property laws in your area? How is property allocated? How much is truly public space? Where are the homeless? What is kept safe and what areas are more valued?

10) Imagine the place most poignant to your childhood memories, a house, location or city. If they ceased to exist in physical space, what would you miss and what are your ideas about impermanence?


and a poem for naming wind:


2008 Hurricane Names

Approach
Betray
Complex
Differ
Ever
Fingertips
Heart
Insoluble
Just
Kill
Language
Moral
Not
Outlook
Particular
Ringmaker
Success
Towards
Wasp


-Megan Burns

More Feasts

In keeping with our theme of feasts today, here is a recipe and photo shoot of our dinner tonight cooked by poet and culinary genius Dave Brinks.

For the pasta: sautee garlic, leeks, and pine nuts in olive oil along with red, orange and yellow bell peppers. Cook up some portabello mushrooms and asparagus tips in red vinegar and oil. Throw on some Mexican Orange slices.
Easy-peasy.

You need wild caught snapping turtle soaked in Dave's secret marinade. Brown in a skillet in olive oil.

Combine in a roasting pan and cook at 350 for 40 minutes. Toss over whole wheat pasta with tarragon.

I'm calling this little piece "Turtle Pasta Flower Feasteroon."