Beauty is Like a Giant Squid and Words are Beautiful

We had another great night of reading and a promise to hear some Civil War stories next time. Possible theme? Civility? War? Death? Love? Ghosts? The usual stuff.

All I can say for those of you who haven't made it is: too bad for you. Not only is it nice to hear people's voices reading but it's great to hear for the first, second, third, etc. time a piece written by another person.

Here's what you missed on Monday:
Drew Davis: "And Anorgasmia," a very funny piece written specifically for The WC--thanks Drew--if you listen carefully, you can still hear us laughing.
John King: "Journal from a Cobra Recruit," an essay by Kieth Pille first published on mcsweeneys.net (see sidebar for link); here in America, we still haven't escaped the 80s which means we are still entrenched in the 50s; good grief and hallelujah!
Emily Boshkoff: three poems by Sharmila Voorakkara from her book Fire Wheel, including "Ditch Music," "For the Tattooed Man," and "Poem to My Father, Once a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, Now an Ascetic." Great image: antwork unravelling the lattice of possum."
Christopher Newgent: Rainer Maria Rilke's first elegy from Duino Elegies, an essential book of poetry, no matter your asthetic, demographic, or political affilation.
Laura Relyea: "Giant Squid," from her blog, and a very interesting rough draft as of that reading untitled. She said she did a lot of tangenting in the piece, and she did, but it seemed appropriate and I think we enjoyed the journey.
Emily Boshkoff: a poem of her own entitled "Spill."
Derek Clawson: read from A Glass Half Full, by Felix Dennis, who seems to be a very rich version of Bukowski. Great to hear a rich man believing in the process of poetry. Anyway, the titles of the poems: "Sex with Your Ex," "Mighty the Ant to the Aphid," "Green-eyed Monsters," and "Johnson," a poem in tribute to the the King of the Delta Blues.

Antler reads on April 4 at 7 p.m. in Bracken 225. Go Antler, rock the house!

Here's hoping you will join us this Monday, and the Monday after that, and the Monday after that, and you should be there because you've got to be somewhere. And somehow.

Tony Hoagland & Dean Young, Like Whoa!!

Good members of the writers' community,

In case you haven't heard, Dean Young and Tony Hoagland are coming to Chicago to do a reading together. It is Wednesday, April 4th, at 6:00 p.m., and it is free.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/foundation/events.html

If you're interested, I sprongly encourage you to go!! I'm personally really excited, and hopefully will get to go. However, the other exciting thing is that the poet Antler is coming to read at Ball State the same night. (I'm not sure where or when off the top of my head.) So either way, there should be fun poetry events that night!

Emily Ann (emilyboshkoff@yahoo.com)

p.s. inPrint tonight was pretty great. If you didn't come tonight, there's still a chance to come tomorrow to the panel discussion in the art museum at 7 p.m. All the writers are wonderful and interesting people and I'm sure will have great things to say about the writing process.

3/5/07

It was a long time ago, but still it happened, and we need to acknowledge that.

Here's how it all shook down:
Christopher Newgent, like Jeter or Johnny Damon, like Ricky Henderson or Joe Morgan, read "Annex" from Amy Hempel's Tumble Home.
Luara Relyea followed with an excerpt from David Griffith's "Symphony #1" which comes from his provocative A Good War Is Hard to Find. Mr. Griffith will be in town this week, as he is one of the featured guests of the 3rd Annual In-Print Festival. You should go.
Nate Logan, picking up on the themes of war that were introduced in both the Hempel and the Griffith, read from Denise Duhamel's Queen for a Day. He read her poems, "How to Help Children Through Wartime" and "What Happened This Week." Then he read two of her poems from one of his favorite books (of hers), Kinky, which feature poems from, about, of, for Barbie and her friends. He read "Barbie is a Religious Fanatic" and "Literary Barbie."
Matt Netzley then read three of his own poems: "God is a City Bus," "The Postmodern Joke," and "The Day You Lost Faith in Humanity." Later, after changing chairs and being inspired by his new perspective on the world and by a recent edition of Bazaar, Matt read "Found Poem." It helped, for a moment, and that's what matters.
Emily Boshkoff read "Ten Years After Your Deliberate Drowning" from Robin Behn's book The Red Hour and two of her own poems, "Apologize" and "To Date You, Being Deaf."
Drew Davis then read a very short piece that he had written during the meeting, tentatively titled "Hero." It was about his brother who serves for one of the armed forces branches. It wasn't about what NBC would want it to be about. We all wanted to hear more. Again, the theme of war surfaced, and none of this was premeditated.
I read three poems by the tremendous Apollinaire, who is like a cardinal living in Antarctica. You may not think it could happen, but it can. I read "The Pretty Redhead," "The Little Car," and "A Phantom of Clouds."

And that was it. We went our separate ways and the night fizzled and popped like a can of soda just opened. And someone drank it. Because what's worse than finding a full can of warm soda.

I would call it The WC, but that seems wrong, so, The Writers' Community is up and going, and very well I might add. If you haven't been yet, too bad for you. But you are always welcome to stop by, even if on occasion. We are meeting every Monday night at 7pm, in the Writing Center, which is in RB291. I know, I know, you know.

Anyway.

Here's who read and what (in case you are interested):
Christopher Newgent: two poems by Tom Hundley ("How to Make Orange Juice" and "Elegy for Robert Creeley and Pope John Paul I, Dead Three Days Apart," both of which appeared in the recent issue of POETRY EAST.) Christopher followed this up with a story of his own, "There's a Man on the Island."
Laura Relyea was going to read something by David Eggers; maybe she will read it next time.
Todd McKinney: a poem by Kenneth Koch, "One Train May Hide Another."
Matthew Trisler read four poems, including "Times New Roman," "Five Universal Truths," Tony Hoagland's "When Dean Young Talks About Wine" (from memory), and "Grapheme."
Derek Clawson read "Star Red," "The Kids Called You America," "Haiku," "Andy and I," and a prose poem entitled "Under My Skin."
And Emily Boshkoff read some killer poems from Julia Copus's book In Defense of Adultery: "In Defense of Adultery," "Essence," and "Kim's Clothes," which is in a wicked inverted or mirror-like form.

Don't forget to tell your friends, if you really want to share the joy with them.