John Cotter

has signed on for Maureen's NaPoWriMo challenge. He hasn't said whether he will be participating in the traditional fashion or if he will be using Jamison's new, slightly more scatological rules.

My man Jamison,

with whom I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by LIT, has agreed to join the NaPoWriMo, but he will not be writing daily poems. His schedule will be determined by his guts as they manifest themselves chronologically in bodily movements. He eats a lot of Mexican food, so I am guessing that his production (poetically speaking) for the month of April will at least double that of we mere daily poets.

The Durge Report

The Durge spent a weekend in New Jersey without getting pregnant. It would be useful for all of us to know how she accomplished such an astounding feat, but she's not giving up her secret.

Mercy's sakes, looks like we've got ourselves a

posting that isn't promoting something! Hibernation's over, time to cut our beards down to dapper Magnum PI moustaches and participate in Maureen's NaPoWriMo! Check back here every day in the month of April for a brand new poem! Also look for updated Durge Reports, favorite TV themes rendered in cat's speak, and new/other ways in which I will show you mine.

And if you don't have a blog of your own, but you'd like to participate in NaPoWriMo, you can feel free to send them along, and I will post them here.

Whew!

Now that THAT'S over with, why not come relax with Jim Behrle, Jeff Paris, and Justin LaCour at the Four Faced Liar? Just some quiet poetry. No pinchin' the greenies, no beating people up in the bathroom of Galapagos, no dirty limericks...well, maybe some dirty limericks.

SUNDAY, March 20 at 2:30 PM: Jim Behrle, Jeff Paris & Justin LaCour
165 W. 4th St. & 6th Ave.

Love,
Shafer

Come with me on a magical journey.

Come out to Frequency on Sunday at 2:30 PM for Brian Henry, Tara Rebele, and Sina Queyras. They are all very good and attractive. Then we can parade like a mad herd of nerdles down to the old Zinc Bar.

Love,

There are several ways to rock.

Hey guys,

I am reading with (get this) Shanna Compton, John Cotter, Erica Kaufman, Jennifer L. Knox, Ada Limon, Dan Nester, and the mighty Maureen Thorson this Sunday at 7PM at the Zinc Bar.

We will be reading such classic collaborations as "Shafer Is a Pussy, Who Don't Think So?" "Chickee Lala," "Honey I Crunk the Kids,""Brazilians Turn to Ethanol," and "I Remembered It Like It Was Tomorrow," and "What the Back of the Eyepatch Looks Like" and "Sonnet for Satan." And others.

This will be sort of like Thoroughly Modern Millie (the classic film, not the silly stage production) only a poetry reading. We will all be fanned out in front of you for your heckling pleasure, and I think that there will be some time for you to ask snide questions about who we've fucked to get where we are. Which we will answer succinctly and erroneously.

So do not miss it. It is Sunday the 13th at 7PM at Zinc Bar (90 WestHouston at LaGuardia Place). More at http://www.lungfull.org/zinc/.

xo,
Shafer

Everybody get excited...

...about a non-Frequency posting!

Maureen and I just wrote this poem:

Honey I Crunk The Kids

This soundmixer is just heavy enough to
Make a wall of rhyme around the Dirty South,
To crowd the hallways and the roads
With staccato sentences about love and prison.

Handclaps ringing the analog beat
For the children inventing new steps
Along the sidewalks. Let them take it
Logically into sexy sunny puberty

Where words rearrange their meaning
Meaning words are both strong and skinny
Like the children, like their riddims
Like the clicking of trees in the verdant South.

Huge Frequency Party

Hey Folks,

A huge Frequency party, in the tradition of the old Frequency parties, like the one last week, will be found this SATURDAY at 2:30 PM.

The good writers of Habenicht Press have been called to order from around the nation to drink blue vodka and entertain you. You can find more information about them below.

That'll be this Saturday, March 5th at 2:30 PM, Four Faced Liar, 165 W. 4th and 6th Ave.

Also, Jen Knox and I will be reading on Sunday. For more information:

www.emdashes.blogspot.com

Yours,
Shafer

Mytili Jagannathan lives in Philadelphia, where she has been actively involved in the community arts work of the Asian Arts Initiative over the past five years. Her poems have appeared in Combo, Interlope, XConnect, Salt, Mirage#4/Period[ical], Rattapallax, and Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics. She is the recipient of an Emerging Artist grant from the Leeway Foundation (2001), and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2002).

Sarah Peters was born in Detroit during the summer of the violent social uprising, often referred to as the Race Riots of '67. She is a freelance writer and musician. Published in Abandon Automobile: Anthology of Detroit Poetry and in So You're a Poet Anthology: 1990-2002; plays piano for The Foxgloves, recently featured in Ben Hernandez's Detroit Rock Movie. First poem published was in The International Worker, the Wobblie paper: "The poem was about gowing up an upper-middle class communist, while my grandfather crossed strike lines, grateful to finally have work." Recent work appears in the Poets at Penny Lane Anthology, 2004.

David Hadbawnik is a poet and performer whose poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Skanky Possum, -Vert, Jacket, Boog City, First Intensity, Combo, Commonweal, The Paterson Literary Review, The Chicago Review, 26, and Bombay Gin, among others. His play, a baseball musical entitled The Seventh Game of the World Series, won an award for Sold-Out Show in the 2003 San Francisco International Fringe Festival. Another play, The Last Experimental Poet in Captivity, co-written with Stephanie Young, was performed in the 2005 San Francisco Poets Festival Jamboree. He is also the publisher of Habenicht Press, and hosts a reading series at his home in San Francisco.

Growing up in Athens County, Ohio, Sxip Shirey listened to old-time and Appalachian gospel music with his grandmother on Sundays, and dreamed of becoming a folk musician. Then one day he stuck paper clips on his guitar-strings and they bonged like gamelan bells. That was the beginning of Sxip's journey into his own unique music, evoked on a variety of traditional and re-imagined instruments, such as Mutant Harmonicas, the Industrial Flute, and the Obnoxiophone. He has appeared as a solo artist in NYC at Joe's Pub, the Knitting Factory, Washington Square Church, HERE Theaters, and numerous underground parties, as well as at the Odeon in San Francisco.

Habenicht Press is a small, independent, chapbook-series press that presents new work by emerging poets and previously unpublished gems by established poets. Its first two chapbooks are Curses and Other Love Poems by Sarah Peters and The Ones I Used To Laugh With – A Haibun Journal by Diane di Prima. Mytili Jagannathan's Acts was published in 2003, and Dale Smith's Notes No Answer is upcoming in 2005. The press is edited and published by David Hadbawnik, a poet living in San Francisco.