I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

Six pages of Republicans holding the government hostage, war, death, invasions of privacy, fear fear fear. I had literally just put my head in my hands and then I glanced at the Chopard ad and the thought raced through my tired mind: "I just want that right now." No. But then the eye roams; "stop dreaming and start cooking."

I worked in marketing; am I reading too much into this, or do you also wonder about advertisement and placement?

Stuttered-over-again world
where I shall have been
a Guest, a Name,
sweated down from the Wall,
that a Wound licks up.

~ Paul Celan

Some shameless, sort-of self promotion...

Spooky Actions Books (which I co-edit) will be releasing our second chapbook, yolotl by Lourdes Figueroa, on September 13th! Lourdes will be reading from yolotl, along with Wendy Trevino and Nicole Trigg, at Small Press Traffic on September 15th. If you're in the Bay, we can finally meet!

(gorgeous original artwork for yolotl by Hanae Rivera captures the essence of this body of work beautifully)

Please come by, say hello, and hear Lourdes read her wonderful work. Books will be available at the reading and at our website.

Trevino, Triggs, Figueroa at SPT

P&P and we

2013: 200 years of Pride and Prejudice.

That peacock cover, and the 1880s P&P/Northanger Abbey? WANT.

This P&P retrospective is a classic example of how the intersection of art, design, and literature critically influence (and are influenced by) our rapidly moving culture. I really don't think this is something we often think about whilst picking up a Penguin Classics version of Austen, or Bronte, or Nabokov (or, before you know it: Barbery, or Carlotto, or Meek) at the bookstore. We know we often choose books by their covers (even if, as the author of the slideshow posits, it is embarrassing to admit) but we remain somewhat oblivious to the ideas that went into the why of the approximate size of our beach read, or what is on the cover, or the why of that font as we toss it into our messenger bag. We also don't often entertain how such a critical intersection can be so misunderstood -- even reviled.

Consider that nerdly pursuit, the comic book. Equally a literary and visual art genre, often produced monthly and serially, which positions it perfectly on the pulse of society; a genre that has not only birthed the biggest film blockbusters of every summer season in significant memory, but of late has become a medium that is primarily consumed by adults -- a fact that has revolutionized the industry. All but gone are the crudely drawn, sometimes barely coherent storylines of some major comics of the 70s and 80s that catered to 12 year old boys (and those 12 year olds masquerading as men). If you are going to make it in the comics industry today, the rule of the day is richness: in artistry, design, plotline.

I was sitting in a cafe with Trevor a few months ago, and a friend happened to stop by our table with one of her friends, a man about our age. We had just picked up some weekly comics and were in the process of catching up on our favorite storylines. Our friend's friend saw what we were reading and said, "wow, you're not ashamed to read these in public?"

No.

Stigma prevails; yet, while I lament the ignorance of the brilliant cultural shifts one can see manifest in part through the appreciation of these flimsy paper books, I'm also pretty sure the nerdly reputation of consuming these major tastemakers is something most aficionados wear with pride. I know I do.

Some folks are aware that I am one half of a team publishing chapbooks by California poets with art by California artists. I am really blessed to have a coterie of friends and acquaintances who are vastly talented, challenging, and driven (and community-minded!) in their pursuits, both literary and visual. I also feel blessed to be involving myself in something that not only expresses my love of contemporary American poetry and visual art, but also what those things can say about a moment in time and space.

Happy PRIDE!

Happy Pride!

P.S: That adorables gif choice is no random googling accident; I just now started watching Sherlock because it was recommended to me and it is AMAZEBALLS.

P.P.S: And ugh, file this under nerdgirls are easy -- predictably, irrevocably (and as per usual, totally late to the party): Benedict Cumberbatch's brilliant turn on the BBC as Sherlock (okay, for real, it's also those thick. black. curls.), mind-blowing performance as bizarro reboot Khan in Star Trek, Into Darkness (okay, for real, it's also that. body.), and (just in case you're insane and didn't click on that Khan link) good lord sweet jesus his baritone, sex-oozing voice (gurl, for real, that. voice.). And so here we are, hook line sinker: one more for the man harem. If he stays away from man harem lifetime member James McAvoy's odd career choices he has a shot at a Paul Newman or Laurence Olivier caliber career.

The internets also pinky swear that Cumberbatch is, essentially, perfect: not merely satisfied with being talented, and handsome in that alabaster alien meets sexy ginger Keebler elf way, he is rumored to also be highly intellectual, modest, witty, polite, charming, and kind. He claims to love both his mother and reading books. He supposedly rides a motorbike, is OK firing up the occasional smoke, and speaks Latin. Holy hot hell. He's also remarked that he desperately wants to breed, so OK, baby daddy dealbreaker aside, he's almost my perfect man harem piece. But, since I will never really know any of those more intimate details for sure, better to stick with the basics, non? Can't go wrong with possessing documented talent AND teh sex (unless you're a rumored jerkface *cough*Fassy*cough*); most signs though point to his likability and general good guy-ness as fact. Cumberbatch is first string, lifetime member material all the way.

Seriously, click on that voice link. Do it.

Okay nerds, this is awesome.

Bibliomancy Oracle

Check this out! In celebration of National Poetry Month, the head of school at Marin Academy posted a lovely blog post that featured my husband, Trevor Calvert, as both an MA librarian and poet.

I love not only Trevor's contribution to this post as a poet -- his new work featured is wonderful -- but as a YA librarian. The way he thinks about accessibility and intersects that with a broad range of work, and his encouragement of students to not be intimidated by the written word is terrific.

On MA Library's poetry display:

I wanted to represent both collections of poetry as well as books on writing. When I was younger, I would read these great poems, and think, ‘Oh I wish I could do that’ without realizing that I needed no permission. So the books on writing act as a sort of permission to people that yes, they can write poetry, and also affirm that poetry is not an arcane set of symbols and allegory that must be deciphered if you are going to ‘get’ a poem. For the poets themselves I tried to choose books that would interest readers in multiple ways: Verse & Universe blends science and poetry for those lyrical scientists among us; Fat Girl is interesting as it directly and honestly addresses the body, femininity, and body-image; The Angel Hair Anthology is really interesting as it collects a 1960s Berkeley zine created by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh—which really helped shape a lot American poetry. I think this really echoes a lot of MA’s creative and independent spirit—I can imagine some of our students going on to do the same. Gary Snyder could not be neglected as he spoke here during LitFest! And because I like locals, I wanted to add another local poet who teaches as CCA, Donna de la Perriere. Her book, Saint Erasure, is lyric, haunting, and vulnerable.

So proud to be married to this amazing man.

I often feel I am well-versed in poetry, given the predilections of my partner and many of my friends, and my own personal pleasure and interest in the medium. But what I need to remember is that I am not well-versed at all -- what I am is possibly better read in poetics than the average person.

This would certainly be an untrue statement in the early twentieth century, which was a golden age for poetry as a medium read by many, regardless of education, station, or what-have-you.

So, yeah, at any rate, I think I can definitely fake it really well at a cocktail party.

I am meditating on this as of late because I have just recently began reading the work of the late poet (and librarian!) Robin Blaser, one of the key figures in the San Francisco Renaissance. I had heard his name plenty of times, but I only recently have really taken a look at his poetry.

I know!

Will have to delve further into his work to make any deep declarative assessments, but as of now I can say I am feeling his earlier work enormously, and this one in particular speaks to me in a profoundly personal way. Enjoy.

Herons

I saw cold thunder in the grass,
the wet black trees of my humanity, my skin.

How much love lost hanging there
out of honesty.
I catch at those men who chose
to hang in the wind
out of honesty.
It is the body lies with its skin --

Robed in my words I say that the snake
changes its skin out of honesty.

And they
hanged there with some symmetry
died young
like herons proud in their landscape.

Now it is age crept in, nobody younger knows
the quick-darting breath is
our portion of honesty.

(1956)

Good friend and all-around superb human being, the poet Eric Baus, has a new book out.



















It is called Scared Text, and not only does it promise some awesome poetic jams, it won the 2011 Colorado Prize for Poetry.



















Cole Swensen, the judge for the 2011 prize, says:

Baus has opened a new literary field: the linguistic bestiary, a new zoo where words pace like fauves behind ever-thinning bars.

I do love the new worlds that Eric creates (or brings forth from just outside our periphery) in his poetry. This is also true of his last two books, Tuned Droves and my favorite, The To Sound.

Come and get it!

Wow, what a fantastic piece in the New York Times on Haruki Murakami, his new tome, 1Q84, and the odd and oddly intoxicating organism that is Japanese culture.

I read an excerpt from the 1Q84, "Town of Cats" in the New Yorker last month, and it was terrific. But this piece by Sam Anderson is so great because instead of focusing strongly on this single book, he so deftly zeroes in on the beating heart of Murakami's work -- that terrible and beautiful Murakami muse: the darkness and light, the "ennui and eroticism" that is Japan, and his self-described outsider status.

Anderson implies that Murakami is bemused by his unofficial Japanese literary ambassadorship to the world, as he thinks of himself as a sort of reject from Japanese society. But this is what I find so tragic and beautiful about Japanese culture: their wa (which means both "Japan" and "harmony") -- and thus their perceived homogeneity -- while working well on the surface, lends itself to an individual and private feeling of otherness, of outsider status. This paradox of rejection and complete Japanese-ness, and Murakami's ability to heave this sort of unrequited love out of himself and into the novels that he writes, is what makes him the perfect ambassador for this country in perpetual identity crisis. I don't think Murakami is alone, and I think both he and Anderson know that.

After a few minutes, a strange creature fluttered into my view of the garden. At first it seemed like some kind of bird — a strange hairy hummingbird, maybe, based on the way it was hovering. But then it started to look more like two birds stuck together: it wobbled more than it flew, and it had all kinds of flaps and extra parts hanging off it. I decided, in the end, that it was a big, black butterfly, the strangest butterfly I had ever seen...[m]oments after the butterfly left, Murakami came down the stairs and sat, quietly, at his dining-room table. I told him I had just seen the weirdest butterfly I had ever seen in my entire life. He took a drink from his plastic water bottle, then looked up at me. “There are many butterflies in Japan,” he said. “It is not strange to see a butterfly.”

Ooooh, a mashup of two of my favorite things!

Books That Inspired Fashion Designers

Some favorites from this series:

1) I need this sweater from Jaggy Nettle. For real. Gorgeous. A beautiful tribute to this cover of The Bell Jar (a fave of mine), which evokes the psychological state of Esther, the protagonist from the novel. Most impressive because it is not just singular inspiration, but a collaboration with an independent publishing house specializing in poetry in the UK, Faber and Faber. More of these types of collaborations please!














2) Love the simplicity and clean lines of Shipley and Halmos. Ayn Rand, not so much, but the pieces they've featured here, and the quote, are apt.














3) I'm also a fan of Margeurite Duras. Gaby Basora's Tucker does well in evoking The Lover for me.













This kind of stuff makes my day.

Just found out that my honey-pie Trevor Calvert's book of poetry, Rarer and More Wonderful, was not only nominated, but was a finalist for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association 2009 Book Award in the poetry category, alongside such poetic luminaries as John Isles, Andrew Joron, the late Barbara Guest, and the late Jack Spicer.

From the NCIBA:

Northern California Independent Booksellers 2009 Book of Year Awards: Honoring books published in 2008 and written or illustrated by Northern California authors and artists

The second annual Book of the Year awards, presented by members of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), have been announced. The 2009 awards honor local authors and a children’s book illustrator whose books were published for the first time in 2008.

Independent booksellers representing 200 stores in the region voted for their favorite titles from a Finalists ballot created by bookseller committees.

Woo-hoo!

You can still get this hot number from Scrambler Books. Try before you buy here.

Check out one of my favorite poets, Ryan Bartlett, at Back Room Live, which was curated this month by poet (and my honey), Trevor Calvert.

One of my favorite lines in one of Trevor's poems is, "she becomes a gorgeous disaster." When I read Ryan's work I always get a sense of just that: the beauty in tragedy. Like fragile and stunning butterflies pinned to a piece of corkboard, his poems build a structure around those parts of the human experience which are fleeting and that we cannot -- or perhaps should not -- hold on to. His poems are redolent with saudade, and they are nothing short of brilliant. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

This month Back Room Live also features the epic work of both Bhanu Kapil and Steffi Drewes.

Trevor also has new work up on his blog, The Casual Tee. The poem is "Letter to electricity." Like Ryan, Trevor has a knack for constructing architecture around a flickering moment in time, gathering all of the disparate pieces and bringing about a sense of beauty and form to melancholy and tumult. Wonderful!

It's a good week for poetry.

Trevor's book, Rarer and More Wonderful, was reviewed by Michael Roberson on CutBank Reviews -- the blog for the literary journal of the University of Montana.

The craft of reviews is something I never really appreciated until Trevor started doing them himself. Michael's review of Trevor's book is a really terrific piece in its own right, seamlessly transitioning from one set of unique poems to another and capturing the book's many themes, then tying this fecund, wild world together by laying each component bare so we can all have a good look at what it contributes to the landscape. Fantastic.

Incidentally, Michael also has another claim to fame: he's from our backwoods 'hood. Tuompton, holla!

I recently got a hit on my blog for the Googled phrase, "open mouth, o wisp." The hit came from a link to my January 2007 archives where I discuss Trevor's poetry, as well as a 2003 poem containing this phrase by friend and ex-Oaklander Michael Cross (who has just had this poem published in a chapbook, In Felt Treeling: A Libretto, by Chax).

So what if Captain Copyright was actually looking for a download of the album, Open Mouth, o Wisp, by the Oakland band Gorge Trio? More interesting to me is that I discovered this band (noisy fun) and that this album, released in 2004 after a three-year process, begs the question -- chicken or egg?

Also more interesting, yet unsurprising, to me is that the chapbook is fucking brilliant. Can't say it enough. Get it here.

Moving on, this isn't meant to be a post to wonder at the myriad ways someone gets to one's blog. Or to merely pimp Michael's achingly amazing work. It is, ultimately, about me!

I took the opportunity to re-read some of my earlier blog posts from almost exactly one year ago, and further back than that. Holy smokes, did I blog (and rant) a lot more, and IMHO about a lot of interesting stuff!

Since I've been so ho-hum in the blogging department lately, this was a somewhat depressing revelation.

What could it be? I have been pondering this over the last couple of days. Am I not inspired? Drinking too much (or too little)? Devoid of drama?

Aha.

When I started this blog, I had just stepped hesitantly into my thirties. I worked in a soul-numbing job at the wholly irritating and taxpayer-dollar-hemorrhaging State of California, and my place of employment had just moved from an easy bike ride from my apartment to a 45 minute car commute to an industrial wasteland. I was beginning my second Master's degree widowship, with three years to go obstructing my view of any light at the end of the tunnel. My best friend was readying herself to leave for Asia, with no plans to return.

In other words, I had the luxury of a lot of Western annoyances to bitch about.

Now, I am fully immersed in the mid-thirties and I feel I'm at my very best physically and mentally. I have a soul-affirming job that uses its donor-based funding reasonably well, can be only slightly irritating, and is a bike ride away from my place. The hubby has finished his degree (anyone looking for a librarian/archivist/information wrangler?), and my bestie is readying for her USA comeback.

The verdict? I have been at my most prolific, thoughtful, and interesting as a blogger when I have been miserable. I have been lazy and negligent in my blogging when I have been a happy camper. A generalization for sure, but oi, how terrible!

I'm not one for resolutions, but let's just say I'm going to try to be a more thoughtful blogger. Well-composed dissections of art and music don't have to come to life only whilst going through the motions of a boring job, right? Rants don't necessarily have to be born from anger and misery, non? And machinations to rule the world don't need to be wrought from aspirations to kill everyone around you (I hope).

So friends, I do resolve to once again earn your readership, quite possibly without being a hater.

And hopefully that means I will post more than once a month! :)

I will soon (Thursday!) be on holiday in Japan (can't wait can't wait can't wait), away from work and bills and all of those things that can sometimes make life suck. But for all you folks who will still have your noses to the grindstone, here's some fun stuff to help counteract work boredom, just a bit...

Palin as President

You'll laugh, and then you'll cry. Happy hunting!

Also, I read today about Midori-san, the blogging houseplant.

BTW, sometimes I love dry, passive-aggessive British wit. "The world's highest profile blogging houseplant." LOL!

Apparently, you can interact with Midori-san in real time, by giving the plant a dose of fluorescent light. Go to this page, scroll down and click on the widget with the date and time ticker, enter your name, and then click "OK." You will be shown a real time video clip of Midori-san in the cafe, getting a dose of the light you granted. You will also get mention in Midori-san's blog.

I linked to the English translation of the blog, because it reads like a poetry reading I was imprisoned and tortured by attended years ago in San Francisco. Read it in your "poetry voice" -- hours of fun!

San Jose School of Library and Information Science has an sweet article about my honey-pie, Trevor Calvert, and his book, Rarer and More Wonderful, here.

Sexy author photo by moi. :*

BTW, if you still haven't picked up this little gem, you can do so at Scrambler Books.

So, Denver.














I think Trevor sums it up nicely.

Big love to Eric, Noah, Sara, and Lucas.

And while we were gone -- here is a review of Rarer and More Wonderful.

Colorado beckons. We're on our way tomorrow! And Trevor shall be reading in Denver in support of his book, Rarer and More Wonderful, this Saturday.

Via Noah Eli Gordon...

Please join us for a house reading and party on Saturday, June 14th.

Things will begin at 7 pm.

Feel free to bring snacks, beverages, and friends.

Readings by Barbara Barg, Bhanu Kapil, Bin Ramke,
Danielle Pafunda, and Trevor Calvert

1014 E 10th Ave
Denver, CO 80218