Spring 2008 Exam Study Group?

so...i don't know if anybody is still checking this or not, but here goes:

Sally suggested that study groups for the exam would be a good idea. i tend to work independently because i did not have friends as a child. however, i do think that talking to people about what i am thinking and hearing what they are thinking is productive usually. it creates an occurrence i can remember more easily than the occurrence that is me taking notes to myself. if i am talking with someone and they say, "man, Gertrude Stein was really just creating like landscapes with words." i can remember, "blank had this crazy idea about Gertrude Stein and landscapes. that's so messed up/amazing. it made me think about so-and-so." i have thought about having similar conversations with myself about my notes (such as: "remember when you took that note about how much Lyn Hejinian likes sentences? that was awesome.") but somehow i don't know that it would have the same effect.

point: does anyone want to have (a) study group(s)? maybe some of you already did similar junk in the Poetry Planet class and have ideas. i was thinking of picking a day and maybe meeting bi-weekly. we could form a list of say 4 poets or something to discuss in an evening and people can just come when they care about a poet that's getting talked about. friendship house could be one possible location. if people don't like friendship house, there are all kinds of places people can go to talk about poems.

Julianna Baggott

Poet/Novelist/Children's Book Writer Julianna Baggott is reading at Mary Wash in Fredericksburg on Tuesday Oct. 30. I'm only familiar with her book Lizzie Borden in Love. Interesting stuff. I'll probably go.

Ruthless Grip Poetry Series Kicks Off This Weekend

The wonderful reading series at Pyramid Atlantic
kicks off this weekend.
Sadly I can't make it, but wanted to put the
word out. Mark McMorris will also be at
GMU for Fall for the Book soon and
Cathy Eisenhower's work is worth checking out...


RUTHLESS GRIP POETRY SERIES
@ Pyramid Atlantic Art Center
Saturday, September 8, 2007, 8:00PM
Mark McMorris and Cathy Eisenhower

Please join the Ruthless Grip Poetry Series for a reading by Mark McMorris and
Cathy Eisenhower on Saturday, September 8 at 8:00PM.

Mark McMorris is a poet and critic who was born in Jamaica. He has been writer
in residence at Brown University, and Roberta C. Holloway Visiting Professor in
Poetry at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include The Blaze of
the Poui, a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize; and The Black Reeds, winner
of the Contemporary Poetry Series prize from the University of Georgia Press.
The Café at Light, a text of lyric dialogue, appeared in 2004 from Roof Books.
His essays on poetry have appeared in such venues as Poetry and Pedagogy: The
Challenge of the Contemporary, Xcp: Crosscultural Poetics,Tripwire, and The
Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. He is currently an associate
professor of English at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC.

Cathy Eisenhower lives and works as a librarian in Washington, DC. She "runs"
the interrupting cow, a chapbook press, and her first collection, clearing
without reversal,  is coming out with Edge Books some time soon. Her first
chapbook, Language of the Dog-Heads, was selected for inclusion in the 2002
Bookmobile Project touring exhibition. She is also editing and translating the
selected poems of Argentine poet Diana Bellessi.

Pyramid Atlantic Art Center is located at 8230 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring,
MD, three blocks from the Metro red line.

Directions: http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/about/contact.htm

Poetry broadsides of Mark McMorris and Cathy Eisenhower, by letterpress artist
Val Lucas, will be on sale at the reading for the readers to sign.

The Cheryl's Gone Reading Series at Big Bear Cafe

Hey Everyone. I've been drafted into running a reading series It's foundational principle: variety = good. There will be 3 or 4 artists reading/performing each night.

For our inaugural reading Thursday, September 20 we've got

Mike Maggio (new book out)
Carolyn Joiner (Cave Canem Poet)
Rocky Jones (singer/songwriter with tough first and last names)
Mike Scalise (essayist and person we know)

Big Bear is located on the corner of 1st & R North West. It is quite easy to get to from 395. Reasons to come
1. There will be booze & coffee (French Press!) & it will not be as cripplingly expensive or slowly served as in Busboys and Poets. & hell, no one is going to make you buy anything.
2. The atmosphere will be laid back & the audience diverse.
3. We can all head over to 117 Adams afterwards to smoke hash and plan the revolution. Or maybe to hangout.
4. The owner of Big Bear will give a tremendously long and incoherent explanation of why the reading series is named Cheryl's gone.

Check it out if you feel like it. I'll send an update closer to the date.

More Weekend Poetry!

But wait... Even more poetry this weekend, this one immediately following the chapbook reading, which I don't think I'm going to be able to make. I guess too much is better than none, as there's often very few interesting readings in DC over the summer. Will definitely be at this one though, as Sarah's a friend and someone I've worked with on a few occasions.

Release Party/Reading
Whiskey in the Garden of Eden by Sarah Browning
Sunday, July 15, 6-8 pm
Langston Room, Busboys & Poets
14th & V Streets, NW
Washington, DC
U Street/Cardozo on the Metro green line
http://www.busboysandpoets.com/, 202-387-POET

More Poetry Fun this Weekend

I can't be there for this reading, but I really really really really really really really really really think I'd want to be, so I hope someone goes and tells me how it went.

Saturday the 14th (3:00pm),
at Olsson's Books in Alexandria (106 S. Union St., Alexandria, VA 22314; see Google Map),
two rad poets will be reading.

Semezdin Mehmedinovic (see work) and Kyle Dargan (see work). It sounds like a nightmare, for sure--the chapbook reading and this all in one weekend. I just will repeat my above hope that at least one person from GMU makes it and can report back.

Fuck It

I'm not going to post a bibliography because taking the exam has left me feeling like my brain is hemorrhaging information at an arterial rate and no amount of bibliographying is going to stop this. But here is my list--if it overlaps with yours let me know and I will gladly loan you photocopies of criticism or point you to books that might be helpful to you.

Major Minor

Tu Fu (712-770) John Berryman (1914-1972)

John Donne (1572-1631) Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)

Edward Taylor (1642?-1729) Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

William Blake (1757-1827) Paul Blackburn (1926-1971)

John Keats (1795-1821) Phil Levine (1928)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) Russell Edson (1935)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Susan Howe (1937)

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) Michael Ondaatje (1943)

Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) Li-Young Lee (1957)

Haphazard or eclectic? I dunno.

Anyway--I'm more than happy to share resources

Jimmy.Hubris@gmail.com