May 2013
7 posts
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HATCHET JOB XVI
Hatchet Job XVI is happening on June 4 at Suburbia. It’s heating up out there in the streets. Show up at 7:30 and talk to everybody. The barn is felled, you don’t care. It’s Cynthia Cruz, it’s Alex Dimitrov, it’s Jacqueline Waters, it’s Eric Amling. It’s thirteen days away. Like you.
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THREE IDEAS IN THIRTY SECONDS
Why don’t you head on over to Suburbia and click follow, which allows you the esteemed privilege of following Suburbia, which is now home to the Hatchet Job poetry series. While you’re there, check out these shots of Hatchet Job XV at the new venue, courtesy of Emmanuel Villanueva Cruz. Doesn’t it all just make you want to put your feet up and hear some poetry in June? Stay...
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THE EARTH YOU CAN'T STOMACH
I would like to share with you my favorite newspaper correction of the past ten years. And I would like to share with you a poem I wrote called “Correction,” which is published inside the new issue of Gulf Coast. Because sometimes America’s finished and so is your brother.
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POSTCARDS: GONE TALK
Acquired: City Reliquary, Brooklyn. 2013.
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DEATH MAKE ME A PEASANT
You all remember how much you loved the first installment of the Selected Movies series over at The American Reader. So awake and sing, ye faithfuls. Here’s Selected Movies: Part Two, with poems written (and erased) via two films: Poetry (2010) and Orpheus (1950). It’s the seventh month of a little thing we like to call The American Columns.
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HATCHET NIGHT
Hatchet Job starts a beautiful new life tonight at Suburbia, with Susan Wheeler, Brian Foley, Lindsay Kathleen Turner, and special guest Mark Leidner. Because sometimes you need a special guest to come read and celebrate a new venture and Mark’s like yeah I’ll celebrate that. It all starts at 7:30PM. Let’s raise all the glasses, shall we.
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HATCHET JOB HEADS TO SUBURBIA
One day the men with the money will bang on your door and say we want to make money. You’ve given us fourteen months of good, hearty work now we want your work to make money. We want the room in which you work to make money. We want your money to make money. These are the words the men spoke to me when they banged on my door. And so ended Hatchet Job’s run of poetry readings at...
April 2013
7 posts
7 tags
SELECTED GHOST
Well we mailed the first pamphlet all over America (and even a few to Paris) and now they’re all gone, comrades, but Greying Ghost Press has saved the day once again and printed this new edition of the pamphlet, which is covered in burdocks. You want one? Scuttle your address my way and you’ll get one in the mail, along with a handwritten postcard.
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A THUNDER FOR JULY
Found out last week that Eileen Myles picked my poems as one of the winners of the Summer Literary Seminar in Lithuania this year, which means I’ll be working for two weeks with Eileen and Ariana Reines, two poets whose work has meant so much to me in the last year, and congratulations to CAConrad and Jenny Zhang who were also selected, and I’ll celebrate my birthday while I’m...
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IF SUN WON'T SHINE ON NOTHING NEW
We met in the hills and he has no way of knowing this, but yesterday was a doldrums where you pass the blossoming trees, it’s sundown, it’s sundown and you stop yourself, you can’t bring yourself to photograph the trees because the people you love who love the trees are gone, the citizens on the train are citizens of hate, they smell the slack in your skin, and Zachary Pace has...
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HATCHET JOB XV
From far and wide they come with hatchets glinting. On May 7, at Public Assembly, Lindsay Turner, Brian Foley, and Susan Wheeler are coming from Tennessee, Massachusetts, and the doomswamps of New Jersey to plunge into some poems. 7PM begins the cork-popping.
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POSTCARDS: RUIN VALUE
Pensionnat Notre-Dame. Postmarked Brooklyn, NY. 2013.
To Dot Devota, who wrote this sentence & changed my day: “There was very little energy for a kid of his age to be in a house of such degeneracy.”
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DEATH IS NO STOPPING YOU
They Will Sew the Blue Sail published my poem “Thunderhead” this past week. Thanks, blue sailors. The poem is a collaboration with Federico Garcia Lorca, who was shot in the Fuente Grande in 1936.
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SEVEN HUNDRED & FORTY-FOUR HOURS
I wrote down my life and what happened inside it during a period of 744 hours. There were cities, and readings, and people, and poetry. I took as many photographs as America would let me along the way.
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744
This hole as big as a quarter in my shoe and it’s raining. Spend the afternoon in Dumont with J. drinking coffee, talking about...
March 2013
7 posts
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POSTCARDS: PINK SLEEP
Madison Square. (Acquired: Manhattan, NY. 2013)
Years ago I ate a bag of carrots with a girl and her sister once in this park.
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POSTCARDS: CLEFT
Joszef Diveky, Vase with bouquet of flowers, 1911-1912. Boston, MA. 2013.
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HATCHET JOB XIV - APRIL 2, 7PM
Hatchet Job can’t be certain, but Hatchet Job has heard April is a month where people try to turn poetry into a dog and pony show. You know what will always demolish that? Poetry.
April 2nd, 7-9pm at Public Assembly, come see Joe DeLuca, Amy Lawless, Sampson Starkweather, and Dara Wier.
And if you think this flier is about you, it is.
POSTCARDS: NEVERENDER
To the unconquerable Stacey Tran. Postmarked Brooklyn, NY 2013.
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THE ROOM IS NOT LAWLESS
My sixth month of columns for The American Reader is all about poetry readings, pitch meetings, laws, genitalia, punk, and going hoarse. What’s it like for you? Here’s what it’s like for me. Tomorrow on the train to Boston I’m gonna read to myself in the quiet car.
SHEARS IS SHEARS
There’s a new issue of Loaded Bicycle out and it’s got three poems from Torch Songs stuffed all up in its guts like $3,000 taxidermy.
One of them is 50% this:
“Nothing she says I want to / know why I’m scrubbing tar / off my dress (in the next life / I light the stove & blow it / back out) instead of nothing.
Read them and reap.
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3 POETS, 3 QUESTIONS
The PEN Poetry Series is returning next week. I’m occupying a poetry editor slot on behalf of PEN America, where I work, and we’ve also enlisted Shane McCrae, Maggie Nelson, and C.D. Wright as guest editors.
Throughout February, I asked each of these poets three questions. Here’s some words I love from those interviews.
C.D. Wright: “Clearly authoritarian states are...
February 2013
8 posts
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POSTCARDS: STRAFE
Person of Interest. Brooklyn, NY. 2013.
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POSTCARDS: ONAGER
Vladimir Mayakovsky “Russia Suffers as Famine Stalks the Land,” 1921. Brooklyn, NY. 2013.
CECI N’EST UNE CHANSON
They asked me and Allyson Paty questions about these poems we write that are called Torch Songs. We said things like this:
I never want to be comfortable in my head or my body or know where the writing will happen. I write at my job on Madison Avenue instead of working. I write in the shower, in my head on the train. I wrote a poem in the dark on an airplane this year. And then shivering in a...
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POSTCARDS: FUGUE
To Joseph Fasano, who wrote this book.
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NO YOUR ADVICE, SAYS THE SUMMONER
I’m sick to death of lists. So I wrote 100 pieces of advice for American poets as part of my monthly column for The American Reader. Bring it on, Reagan Estate. I will neither cease nor desist.
January 2013
7 posts
PINK ANGELS COME BACK
Two new poems from Torch Songs, my collaboration with Allyson Paty, appear in the latest issue of Denver Quarterly. Those five lines above also say this if you stare hard enough: Goodnight my name / is the rain / and I’m dying / one American / at a time.
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POSTCARDS: SILT RIOT
At Night. Postmarked Portland, OR. 2012.
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HATCHET JOB XIII - FEBRUARY 5
Year of the snake is upon us, Hatchet Job is upon us. Join us on February 5th at Public Assembly to hear poems and poems and poems by Deborah Landau, Lynn Melnick, D.J. Dolack, and Simone Kearney.
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Stood here two years ago after escaping a squall / a man selling whirligigs / tried to buy one for J. / wrote down instead & shivering late in her studio: / I gutted the night I sewed your name through to stay its insides from falling
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POSTCARDS: SCHISM
Adam Bartos Ocean Drive, Manhattan Beach, 1979 New York, NY. 2012.
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STONE SOUP
Praise be: it’s my December 2012 column on poetry for The American Reader. It’s called “Stone Soup.” It’s a conversation about my poetic heritage. That is, a conversation between me and another person who is also me.
Topics include: poverty, Mayakovsky, rhubarb bitters, nonsense, my old lady, empires, drumsticks, blindness, The Clash, bread, tattoos, New Orleans,...
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POSTCARDS: LAST DITCH
Weegee. Simply Add Boiling Water, 1937. Postmarked Brooklyn, NY. 2012.
December 2012
12 posts
1 tag
2:23 A.M.
“They don’t give a damn about freedom. They want everything.”
—my friend Hunter, on visiting Greece
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POSTCARDS: THAT TROUGH
There is No Home, No Back. From Edward Dorn’s “Dark Ceiling” Gift from The Poetry Foundation.
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LEAVING SONG
From Inger Christensen’s Grass, Light, and Letter in April, translation Susanna Nied.
Yes this is a good song for a five-hour bus ride to the Catskills.
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HATCHET JOB - YEAR ONE READING
For Hatchet Job’s one-year anniversary, eleven poets who read during the first year are coming back. They’re going to read poems they love by other poets. It’s gonna be a real old fashioned runaway freight train kind of party. It all happens on January 8th, 7PM, at Public Assembly.
And who’s reading, you ask? Why, just these mercenaries:
Mark Bibbins, Ana Bozicevic,...
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A YEAR OF HATCHETS
Here’s a list, in order, of every poet who read at Hatchet Job during its first year. I get a sharp pulse when I read all these names. This week I’ll make a special announcement about the one-year anniversary reading in January. So don’t turn off your ham radios.
Year One:
Lily Ladewig Angelo Nikolopoulous Craig Teicher Tim Donnelly Monica McClure Ben Fama Brenda Shaughnessy...
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POSTCARDS: MALATHION
Rags. Delhi, NY. 2012.
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POSTCARDS: NO OTHER
Ebb (2009). Nikki McClure. Brooklyn, NY. 2012.
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POSTCARDS: MOULDER
Postmarked 1906. Gift from Emily DiRienzo.
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THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE
“Torch Song: Quit Song”
Thanks to Saeed Jones for asking me and Allyson Paty to publish one of the poems from our Torch Songs as he guest edits The The Poetry Blog this month. It’s one of the first poems we started drafting about three years ago. And did you know that snow is what it feels like when you quit your job? Well, it’s...
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POSTCARDS: THIN DIME
Artist unknown. New York, NY. 2012.
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MORGEN MORGEN MORGEN
Hatchet Job puts a candle on the birthday cake tomorrow night, 7PM at Public Assembly, with Corinna Copp, Peter Gizzi, and Charles Bernstein. Won’t you come say cheers?
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POSTCARDS: DON'T DON'T
Postmarked Brooklyn, NY. 2012. Sent to the man in New Orleans, mister Ben Kopel
November 2012
6 posts
7 tags
WHO IS THE BOOTLICKER, ME OR YOU
The title of this post is one of the hundreds of discarded lines from Selected Movies: Part I, which is the third in my series of monthly columns on poetry for The American Reader.
What I did was free-write my way through Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet and one of the most awkward American movies ever made, Dead Poets Society.
From these pages and pages of writing, I built two poems....
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POSTCARDS: CHAINLINK
Gentleman’s Card. Delhi, New York. 2012.
