Monday, October 31, 2005

Zoo Project

Fish Surgery

Fish surgeon:
this sturgeon
needs a bypass

STAT!

The nurse glug glugs
and gives up
on sterilizing anything

in this mess of weedy
fishtank -- why
did she become a nurse
anyway. Days like these
she'd rather be
someone's lunch.

But then beep...beep...
and the sturgeon's
back again. The surgeon's
fins snap, snap as he removes
his plastic gloves, and he says
"that's why we're in this business.
Saving fishes' lives."

Thursday, October 27, 2005

October is National Poetry Month!

Keeping It Together

While researching words
for our friends' wedding
I discovered something interesting:

the Irish, while being
romantic about a lot of things
are not so about love;
and like a talking dog

the best years of our lives
are creating themselves.

We are an envoy
written to tell itself:
the next word is this;
the next word is this.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Zoo Project

Tuna and Hurricane

Two hurricanes
are turning
every New Yorker
into a tuna.

Time will tell
if tunas
can hang.
If they are hard.

I'll tell my fellow tunas:
our time is NOW!
Time to swim, time to
shed our raincoats.

Friday, October 07, 2005

My Two Favorite Poets

Shanna Compton and Jen Knox are on tour together supporting their books Down Spooky and Gringo Like Me respectively.

I am worried about them out there on the road without me in the back seat, drinking Silver Bullets and amusing myself.

Please take a close look at this schedule, and if you know anyone in these locations please tell them not to miss any of these parties. They will regret it, but in the good way.

First leg: Atlanta, Athens, Davidson, Nashville, DC

DECATUR, GA: Sunday, October 2nd at 8:00 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Java Monkey
205 Ponce de Leon Ave. #5
Decatur, GA 30030
404-378-5002
FREE

ATLANTA, GA: Monday, October 3rd at 7:30 PM
A triplet with Danielle Pafunda & Jennifer L. Knox!
Emory University
Joseph W. Jones Room
Woodruff Library
540 Asbury Circle
Atlanta, GA 303022
FREE

ATHENS, GA: Tuesday, October 4th at 7:00 PM
A triplet with Danielle Pafunda & Jennifer L. Knox!
VOX Reading Series
Little Kings Club
223 Hancock Avenue
Athens, GA
FREE

DAVIDSON, NC: Wednesday, October 5th at 1:30 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Davidson College
Class visit
Davidson, NC 28035

DAVIDSON, NC: Thursday, October 6th at 7:30 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Davidson College
C. Shaw Smith Room
Alvarez College Union
Davidson, NC 28035
FREE
More info: 704-894-2202
(Also a workshop and some other stuff. Details to come!)

NASHVILLE, TN: Saturday, October 8th
With Jennifer L. Knox
Southern Festival of Books
We will just be wandering around the festival this day.

NASHVILLE, TN: Sunday, October 9th at 3:30 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Southern Festival of Books
Tennessee Performing Arts Center
Poetry & Drama Stage
505 Deaderick Street
Nashville, TN 37243
FREE

NASHVILLE, TN: Monday, October 10 at 5:15 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Watkins College of Art & Design
Brownlee O. Currey Gallery
2298 Metrocenter Blvd.
Nashville, TN 37228
FREE
More info/directions: 615.383.4848

WASHINGTON, DC: Tuesday, October 11 at 7:00 PM
With Jennifer L. Knox
Chapters Bookstore
445 11th St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20004
202-737-5553
FREE

Back in NYC briefly

NEW YORK, NY: Saturday, October 15 at 3:00 PM
with Danielle Pafunda & Steve Roberts
The Ear Inn
326 Spring Street
(west of Greenwich Street)
New York City
FREE
(This will be the first local event with books available.
Stay tuned for PARTY details for afterward. More soon!)

NEW YORK, NY: Monday, October 17 at 6:30 PM
with David Lehman & Philip Cioffari
Cornelia Street Cafe
New York Quarterly Series
29 Cornelia Street
New York, NY
$6 admission also buys a drink
212-989-9319

Second leg: Ann Arbor, Muncie, Milwaukee, Chicago
(Details to come for all below...)

ANN ARBOR, MI: Wednesday, October 19
With Jennifer L. Knox
Shaman Drum Bookstore

MUNCIE, IN: Thursday, October 20
With Jennifer L. Knox
Ball State University
MT Cup

MILWAUKEE, WI: Saturday, October 22
With Jennifer L. Knox
Broad Vocabulary & later that night at Cafe Lulu

CHICAGO, IL: Sunday, October 23
With Jennifer L. Knox
Green Mill

CHICAGO, IL: Monday, October 24
With Jennifer L. Knox
Columbia College
Class visit

Third leg: Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Ashland

SANTA CRUZ, CA: Saturday, November 5
With Jennifer L. Knox
New Cadence series

BERKELEY, CA: Sunday, November 6
With Jennifer L. Knox
Pegasus Books

ASHLAND, OR: Monday-Tuesday, November 7-8
With Jennifer L. Knox
Emergent Forms Series
Southern Oregon University
Saturday, November 12 at Frequency
With Corinne Lee & Jennifer L. Knox
The Frequency Series
Hosted by Shafer Hall & Samuel Amadon
The Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th Street
New York, NY
2:30 p.m.
Wednesday, November 16 at the Bowery Poetry Club
With others TBD
Hosted by Christine Hamm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (btw. Houston & Bleecker)
8:00 PM
Sunday, December 4 at the Atomic Reading Series
With CAConrad, author of Deviant Propulsion
Atomic Reading Series
Curated and hosted by Cheryl B.
The First Sunday of Every Month @ 7.pm.
Lucky 13 Saloon
273 13th St. (5th Ave.)
Park Slope, Brooklyn
AWP 2006 in Austin, Texas
Associated Writing Programs Conference Panel
DIY Publishing: Chapbooks, Zines, Webzines, Blogs, Collectives & Etc.
March DATE AND TIME TBD
LOCATION TBD
Registration info

Ladies and Germs,

Please join us for another Freqy Tarpaulin Sky reading tomorrow at 2PM at 165 W. 4th. Lineup below.

Yours,
Shafer

8 OCTOBER
Jenny Boully, Jan Clausen, Sasha Watson, & TBA

Jenny Boully is the author of The Body (Slope Editions). Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, and The Next American Essay. She has recently finished a new manuscript, The Book of Beginnings and Endings. She is a Ph.D. student in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Jan Clausen's writing has spanned numerous genres. In the 1980’s, she focused heavily on fiction, publishing a story collection and two novels with the Crossing Press (U.S.) and The Women’s Press Ltd. (U.K.). Her memoir Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity was issued by Houghton Mifflin in 1999. Since then she has become a “born again poet,” publishing widely in periodicals and receiving a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 2003. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Calyx, Feminist Studies, Fence, For a Living: The Poetry of Work, Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, Hanging Loose, Ikon, The Kenyon Review, Luna, Margie, North American Review, Ploughshares, XConnect and The Village Voice. Her essays, book reviews, and literary journalism may be found in Ms., The Nation, Poets and Writers, and The Women’s Review of Books, among others.

Sasha Watson is a writer, translator, and teacher based in New York. Her poetry, translations, and reviews have appeared in Bird Dog, Common Knowledge, Triquarterly, Bookslut, Nerve, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. She is currently working on a Ph.D. in French literature at NYU.