Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Silver Wonder Titles reviewed in Arthur Mag by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley
It's encouraging to see some of the better small presses keep it happening in these dreary days of virtual desire. Chicago's Pitchfork Press has wisely changed its moniker to The Silver Wonder Press but not before allowing one more Pitchfork rag to be constructed. It belongs to Gerald Locklin who has been writing strong and steady since the early '60's with over 3000 poems in print within 125 books and rising, including this fine stapled edition titled The San Antonio, Savannah, & Daytona Beach Poems. His is an eagle's eye on the American landscape of humanity and all its frenzied lassitudes and is worth reading for the sake of connecting to honest rumination in the face of TV death. Dig? Two issues under the new Silver Wonder imprint are one each by Guy R. Beining and Robert O'Neal. Beining has a long history of writing supersonic slices of minimalist poetry. Outside The End has some of his most choice new jams alongside some drawings and collages to help crack the sweet code. A few lines from "almost complete, 5/7/01-monday": "those golden notes/ are from a cave/ & the black acid drops/ come from the t.v./ where its widening/ white circle is lost/ in protraction of the skull./ why not bang another/ bone on the floor..." Robert O'Neal works somewhere in southern Indiana as a sweeper in a car repair joint. Perfect poet environment and he rips wicked lines left and right in both anger and solace in search of righteous juice. One poem rolls off into a litany of fuck declarations:"Fuck high fructose corn syrup/ Fuck computers dumped in the 3rd world/ Fuck dirty bombs & sanitized word bombs..." Fuck yes. (Newsbreak: Silver Wonder Press has just issued Hello From the American Desert, a 40-page collection of Lee Ranaldo's spam-inspired poetry, accompanied by artwork by the Meat Puppets' Curt Kirkwood)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Lee Ranaldo interviewed about "Hello From the American Desert" in Exclaim! Magazine
by Vish Khanna
In his new poetry book, Hello From the American Desert,Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo tweaks the phenomenon of email spam-based poetry. Instead of copy-and-paste word puzzles, Ranaldo draws ideas and imagery from internet spam he's compiled since 2004 to write wholly original poems.
Vish: Lee, I've come across a couple of other examples of poetry inspired by or drawn from internet spam. What exactly drew you to formulate, what is presumably an entire volume of such poems derived from spam?
Lee: Well you know, it's funny because it's only since the book came out that I had any notion that anybody else was treading in this area. I had no idea that there was a group of people working on this out there. There's even a book called The Anthology of Spam Poetry or something. I don't know if you've come across that?
Vish: Yeah, among other things.
Lee: You know, I stared these things back in 2004. At that time, I started getting all these weird emails that just started to intrigue me, partly because they had these really weird subject headings, but also because more than that even, after the body of the message there's just this profusion of random words at the bottom of the email> It looks like a dictionary exploded or something. I was kind of fascinated by that and I immediately started looking at it with some kind of poetic eye or ear, thinking that a lot of these words go together and beautiful sounding poetry, even the scrambled subject headings. So I started collecting the stuff. At this point, I have a couple of huge files of this stuff- one of just subject headings and one of all these different things in the body of the text. The ones that I love the most are just the crazy lists of words but there would also be emails that had what looked like like little excerpts of stories. It was hard to figure out where they were from but I got the impression that some of them were like economic reports, and others were short, fictional stories. If you got ten emails in a row, you'd actually find different bits of the same story with the same characters.I just started collecting all that stuff with the idea of using it as a jumping off point for poetry. Mostly what I do is, I'll find a good block of text that I'm intrigued by a lot of the words in, and then I'll just start free associating, combining words- there'll be three or four in a row that I like and then a couple I won't so I'll cross them out and add a word or two of my own- and they just start to shape into stories. Some of them are more narrative, some more abstract, and some of these actually have little fictions with characters in them and I'll work them from there, using them as a jumping off point.
Vish: Out of context, the book's connection to the internet and junk messages seems kind of loose. Like the choice of words and their order seem entirely abstract. You've explained this a bit already but can you discuss your process here, like what prompts you to piece these messages together to form these poems?
Lee: Well, like I said, I have these huge Word files with all these things copies and pasted in them. Usually, if I'm in the mood to start a new poem, I'll just go through my files and find a few blocks in a row- the equivalent of a few paragraphs- that intrigue me and then just start bouncing off ideas. I think I start by crossing out words I don't like to get weird combinations to come up. From there, general poetry principles take over, trying to get some kind of abstract, imagistic thing going and I free associate until I find something I like.
Vish: I see, so it's not just spam, it's your voice in these poems?
Lee: Oh, most definitely; I would say almost 100 percent. Actually this is interesting because when I finally got a hold of that spam Anthology recently, most of that stuff is pretty much taken from those emails and left alone- that Viagra and penis enlargement sort of stuff. So I didn't feel too much kinship with that Anthology, just because with mine, it's a jumping off point but, in the end, they are as much my poems as any other poems I've published and less indebted to the original emails except in the fact that, you read these subject headings- like one of my poems is called "Consumptive Detente Closeup" and it's this whole little world of crazy images right there. So, I kind of go from there and work off the subject matter inherent in those words but, by the time they're done, I've definitely put a lot of my own work in and really shaped them into poems in the traditional sense.
Vish: Okay, that explains it because it really doesn't seem like you were just copying and pasting them together.
Lee: You know it's interesting because like I said I started these in 2004, and some time later, The New York Times actually did an article about these weird spams that had this stuff in them. I guess the "stories" help them elude the anti-spam programs because it looks like a real email with the body of text. I didn't realize that at first- that that was the ploy they were using and why they existed in the first place. I just thought they were great. I loved reading them even as they were, even though I transformed mine. I've done a lot of poems in the past that I call shopping list poems that are just one or two words in a line and they free-associate with each other. So, I immediately found some kinship with what I was reading in these spams and those poems of my own for a number of years and it just seemed like a natural extension.
Vish: I'm wondering if there's a particular message you're trying to convey here. It seems to me that the notion of the book and poems really has a lot to do with language and maybe how it relates to our current cultural landscape or wasteland. Are you making any kind of comment on the content and flow of information we're now bombarded with?
Lee: Well, I think there's a little bit of comment, just in terms of lifting some of these subjects that are floating around in these emails. Whether they be financial notions or just notions of what's coming into our computers and therefore our minds via the internet in general. I'm not exactly going for any specific focused comment, as much as just presenting the subject matter of the day, as provided by the most random of sources- these internet spams.
Vish: And it seems to be coming from a place of appreciation rather than exasperation. Some of the other spam poems I've read seem to be about taking these words back. Like "We're so sick of this spam, we're gonna do something creative with it," like some kind of empowering stance. You seem to actually find it somewhat endearing.
Lee: Oh, I definitely do. When you're in the mood to read that kind of stuff< I find it a joy to open those things just because they're just so out there. I mean they're farther out than most of the so- called language poets. That's one thing that i love about them is that it gives you the liberty to play around with language and brings up words that wouldn't normally come to your head immediately to use in a poem, yet they're perfect. They're abstract to begin with so I'm just taking them out of one context and using them in another basically.
In his new poetry book, Hello From the American Desert,Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo tweaks the phenomenon of email spam-based poetry. Instead of copy-and-paste word puzzles, Ranaldo draws ideas and imagery from internet spam he's compiled since 2004 to write wholly original poems.
Vish: Lee, I've come across a couple of other examples of poetry inspired by or drawn from internet spam. What exactly drew you to formulate, what is presumably an entire volume of such poems derived from spam?
Lee: Well you know, it's funny because it's only since the book came out that I had any notion that anybody else was treading in this area. I had no idea that there was a group of people working on this out there. There's even a book called The Anthology of Spam Poetry or something. I don't know if you've come across that?
Vish: Yeah, among other things.
Lee: You know, I stared these things back in 2004. At that time, I started getting all these weird emails that just started to intrigue me, partly because they had these really weird subject headings, but also because more than that even, after the body of the message there's just this profusion of random words at the bottom of the email> It looks like a dictionary exploded or something. I was kind of fascinated by that and I immediately started looking at it with some kind of poetic eye or ear, thinking that a lot of these words go together and beautiful sounding poetry, even the scrambled subject headings. So I started collecting the stuff. At this point, I have a couple of huge files of this stuff- one of just subject headings and one of all these different things in the body of the text. The ones that I love the most are just the crazy lists of words but there would also be emails that had what looked like like little excerpts of stories. It was hard to figure out where they were from but I got the impression that some of them were like economic reports, and others were short, fictional stories. If you got ten emails in a row, you'd actually find different bits of the same story with the same characters.I just started collecting all that stuff with the idea of using it as a jumping off point for poetry. Mostly what I do is, I'll find a good block of text that I'm intrigued by a lot of the words in, and then I'll just start free associating, combining words- there'll be three or four in a row that I like and then a couple I won't so I'll cross them out and add a word or two of my own- and they just start to shape into stories. Some of them are more narrative, some more abstract, and some of these actually have little fictions with characters in them and I'll work them from there, using them as a jumping off point.
Vish: Out of context, the book's connection to the internet and junk messages seems kind of loose. Like the choice of words and their order seem entirely abstract. You've explained this a bit already but can you discuss your process here, like what prompts you to piece these messages together to form these poems?
Lee: Well, like I said, I have these huge Word files with all these things copies and pasted in them. Usually, if I'm in the mood to start a new poem, I'll just go through my files and find a few blocks in a row- the equivalent of a few paragraphs- that intrigue me and then just start bouncing off ideas. I think I start by crossing out words I don't like to get weird combinations to come up. From there, general poetry principles take over, trying to get some kind of abstract, imagistic thing going and I free associate until I find something I like.
Vish: I see, so it's not just spam, it's your voice in these poems?
Lee: Oh, most definitely; I would say almost 100 percent. Actually this is interesting because when I finally got a hold of that spam Anthology recently, most of that stuff is pretty much taken from those emails and left alone- that Viagra and penis enlargement sort of stuff. So I didn't feel too much kinship with that Anthology, just because with mine, it's a jumping off point but, in the end, they are as much my poems as any other poems I've published and less indebted to the original emails except in the fact that, you read these subject headings- like one of my poems is called "Consumptive Detente Closeup" and it's this whole little world of crazy images right there. So, I kind of go from there and work off the subject matter inherent in those words but, by the time they're done, I've definitely put a lot of my own work in and really shaped them into poems in the traditional sense.
Vish: Okay, that explains it because it really doesn't seem like you were just copying and pasting them together.
Lee: You know it's interesting because like I said I started these in 2004, and some time later, The New York Times actually did an article about these weird spams that had this stuff in them. I guess the "stories" help them elude the anti-spam programs because it looks like a real email with the body of text. I didn't realize that at first- that that was the ploy they were using and why they existed in the first place. I just thought they were great. I loved reading them even as they were, even though I transformed mine. I've done a lot of poems in the past that I call shopping list poems that are just one or two words in a line and they free-associate with each other. So, I immediately found some kinship with what I was reading in these spams and those poems of my own for a number of years and it just seemed like a natural extension.
Vish: I'm wondering if there's a particular message you're trying to convey here. It seems to me that the notion of the book and poems really has a lot to do with language and maybe how it relates to our current cultural landscape or wasteland. Are you making any kind of comment on the content and flow of information we're now bombarded with?
Lee: Well, I think there's a little bit of comment, just in terms of lifting some of these subjects that are floating around in these emails. Whether they be financial notions or just notions of what's coming into our computers and therefore our minds via the internet in general. I'm not exactly going for any specific focused comment, as much as just presenting the subject matter of the day, as provided by the most random of sources- these internet spams.
Vish: And it seems to be coming from a place of appreciation rather than exasperation. Some of the other spam poems I've read seem to be about taking these words back. Like "We're so sick of this spam, we're gonna do something creative with it," like some kind of empowering stance. You seem to actually find it somewhat endearing.
Lee: Oh, I definitely do. When you're in the mood to read that kind of stuff< I find it a joy to open those things just because they're just so out there. I mean they're farther out than most of the so- called language poets. That's one thing that i love about them is that it gives you the liberty to play around with language and brings up words that wouldn't normally come to your head immediately to use in a poem, yet they're perfect. They're abstract to begin with so I'm just taking them out of one context and using them in another basically.
Beining's "Outside The End" Review from XYZ #45
OUTSIDE THE END Guy R. Beining, The Silver Wonder Press, PO BOX 146399, Chicago, IL 60614, 20PP, Saddle Stapled, $4.00
Spare, bleak in its consummate bleakness, harrowing in its sadness, an excellent palliative for congenital optimism. Some very good lines too. One among many:
I told this poet that he had fallen through earth
and that I would gather the pieces...
when you could fall from the earth
you finally begin to realize that
there is nothing there
and for that you have spent a lifetime waiting.
In combination with the artwork, done as usual by Beining, you feel like being in a downward trajectory of despair that yet somehow emboldens, invigorates and strengthens the mind. The downward descent into the ether of nothingness weighs upon the reader yet the predicament becomes funny in the knowledge of the desperate state of existence.
Amputate green, amputate red
Amputate dreams of the dead.
Spare, bleak in its consummate bleakness, harrowing in its sadness, an excellent palliative for congenital optimism. Some very good lines too. One among many:
I told this poet that he had fallen through earth
and that I would gather the pieces...
when you could fall from the earth
you finally begin to realize that
there is nothing there
and for that you have spent a lifetime waiting.
In combination with the artwork, done as usual by Beining, you feel like being in a downward trajectory of despair that yet somehow emboldens, invigorates and strengthens the mind. The downward descent into the ether of nothingness weighs upon the reader yet the predicament becomes funny in the knowledge of the desperate state of existence.
Amputate green, amputate red
Amputate dreams of the dead.
Walking Backwards To Santa Fe Article from El Paso Times
EPCC Professor Publishes 5th Book of Southwest Poetry
Lawrence Welsh has released his fifth poetry book, "Walking Backwards to Santa Fe."
Welsh, an English professor who teaches writing and literature at El Paso Community College, has been featured in many national and regional journals. The Los Angeles Daily Journal once described him as "one of the leading writers on life in the border towns."
His work deals mostly with the aspects of desert life along the border, the object of his writings since he first visited Texas 20 years ago.
A first generation Irish-American, Welsh moved to El Paso from California in 1994. His writing career began at California State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism. He worked as a reporter for several years before he started teaching English at the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College.
Welsh tells audiences that his writing took off when he hitchhiked across the United States in 1989." I found myself really soaking up the Southwest and enjoying it," he said.
In a previous work, "Believing in Bonfires," Welsh continued to display his affinity for the desert Southwest while staying close to his California roots. His other book titles include "Flying Burrito #1," "Downed Texaco" "South Central Serenade,""El Paso's Saddle Blanket Company,"and "Rusted Steel and Bordertown Starts."
Welsh also is a spoken-word artist, who has presented more than 50 readings across the Southwest.
At El Paso Community College, Welsh is one of the founders of the Poetry Jam, an annual event that highlights prominent poets during the college's annual art festival.
Welsh has won many journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Investigative Reporting Award.
Lawrence Welsh has released his fifth poetry book, "Walking Backwards to Santa Fe."
Welsh, an English professor who teaches writing and literature at El Paso Community College, has been featured in many national and regional journals. The Los Angeles Daily Journal once described him as "one of the leading writers on life in the border towns."
His work deals mostly with the aspects of desert life along the border, the object of his writings since he first visited Texas 20 years ago.
A first generation Irish-American, Welsh moved to El Paso from California in 1994. His writing career began at California State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism. He worked as a reporter for several years before he started teaching English at the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College.
Welsh tells audiences that his writing took off when he hitchhiked across the United States in 1989." I found myself really soaking up the Southwest and enjoying it," he said.
In a previous work, "Believing in Bonfires," Welsh continued to display his affinity for the desert Southwest while staying close to his California roots. His other book titles include "Flying Burrito #1," "Downed Texaco" "South Central Serenade,""El Paso's Saddle Blanket Company,"and "Rusted Steel and Bordertown Starts."
Welsh also is a spoken-word artist, who has presented more than 50 readings across the Southwest.
At El Paso Community College, Welsh is one of the founders of the Poetry Jam, an annual event that highlights prominent poets during the college's annual art festival.
Welsh has won many journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Investigative Reporting Award.
Friday, January 04, 2008
2 titles reviewed in Iconoclast #97
A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion
Robert O'Neal
The Ginger Man runneth amongst us, splashing burning wit and satiric acid at our brains with much wordplay and jousting at religion and philosophy. In this brief poetry chapbook, we encounter someone well able to articulate our rage at the stupidity of 21st Century American life. Catch him if you can- and hope he returns for another round.
The San Antonio, Savannah, and Daytona Beach Poems
by Gerald Locklin
...'San Antonio' too has a picture of the poet: a photo on the back cover bathed in red. But the poems are more down-to-earth; how we deal with others (colleagues, lovers); our own habits and foibles. A little 'town and gown' here: academic conferences at expensive hotels (with poverty a few blocks away). Finally, Mr. Locklin recalls moments of his personal life and history.
Reviewed by Phil Wagner
Iconoclast
1675 Amazon Road
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547-1804
Robert O'Neal
The Ginger Man runneth amongst us, splashing burning wit and satiric acid at our brains with much wordplay and jousting at religion and philosophy. In this brief poetry chapbook, we encounter someone well able to articulate our rage at the stupidity of 21st Century American life. Catch him if you can- and hope he returns for another round.
The San Antonio, Savannah, and Daytona Beach Poems
by Gerald Locklin
...'San Antonio' too has a picture of the poet: a photo on the back cover bathed in red. But the poems are more down-to-earth; how we deal with others (colleagues, lovers); our own habits and foibles. A little 'town and gown' here: academic conferences at expensive hotels (with poverty a few blocks away). Finally, Mr. Locklin recalls moments of his personal life and history.
Reviewed by Phil Wagner
Iconoclast
1675 Amazon Road
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547-1804
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
O'Neal reviewed in The 13th Warrior Review
from The 13th Warrior Review:
A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion
By Robert O'Neal (The Silver Wonder Press)
Why do middle class, middling, middle-of-the-road poets like Billy Collins get to be Poet Laureates while Robert O'Neal is all but unknown? Perhaps it's because, as the author himself says, "he'd rather be understood than accepted." Rebel to the core, O'Neal has the temerity to shake his fist at the existential dilemma and tell "the dictator" to go fuck himself. And no one does it with the same sardonic charm and masterful vocabulary -- he who ploughshares philosophical discourse into brain-piercing poetic bullets, an almost mystical defense against the duplicity of authority:
"I was there, tethered unaware,
the dictator's amniotic brainwash
percolating around me,
a cauled euteronaut traumatized
by the contradiction ushering him
from one darkness to a greater darkness..."
His anger and confusion resonates off the page and echoes the anger and confusion that many of us feel on our best days when we dare remove our heads from our hind parts and take a look around:
"God
is brushing slime on tapeworms.
Satan
has a name commensurate
with his monomaniacal ambitions.
They
feud over the span of years between placenta & crypt.
I'm
not sure which one continues to bless us
with Kalashnikov culture & pernicious viruses."
Or:
"Slipping
sliding,
Slobbering
out of a shaved vagina --
(The brow is always inaccessible!
Pelvic bones are the ignoble crowning
all of us receive in compensation.)
who
put us there
in the first place?
& why can't we refuse
to expose ourselves to uncompromising light?
& you wonder why
all newborns have clenched fists."
What else can be said about O'Neal's poetry? Whether one shares his world view or not, one must stand in awe of his ability to stroke the neurons and asshole at the same time. He certainly stands head and shoulders above many of the so-called poets out there slopping their ink to the white page. Certainly, he's worth the two bucks for this chapbook.
--reviewed by JCE
A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion
By Robert O'Neal (The Silver Wonder Press)
Why do middle class, middling, middle-of-the-road poets like Billy Collins get to be Poet Laureates while Robert O'Neal is all but unknown? Perhaps it's because, as the author himself says, "he'd rather be understood than accepted." Rebel to the core, O'Neal has the temerity to shake his fist at the existential dilemma and tell "the dictator" to go fuck himself. And no one does it with the same sardonic charm and masterful vocabulary -- he who ploughshares philosophical discourse into brain-piercing poetic bullets, an almost mystical defense against the duplicity of authority:
"I was there, tethered unaware,
the dictator's amniotic brainwash
percolating around me,
a cauled euteronaut traumatized
by the contradiction ushering him
from one darkness to a greater darkness..."
His anger and confusion resonates off the page and echoes the anger and confusion that many of us feel on our best days when we dare remove our heads from our hind parts and take a look around:
"God
is brushing slime on tapeworms.
Satan
has a name commensurate
with his monomaniacal ambitions.
They
feud over the span of years between placenta & crypt.
I'm
not sure which one continues to bless us
with Kalashnikov culture & pernicious viruses."
Or:
"Slipping
sliding,
Slobbering
out of a shaved vagina --
(The brow is always inaccessible!
Pelvic bones are the ignoble crowning
all of us receive in compensation.)
who
put us there
in the first place?
& why can't we refuse
to expose ourselves to uncompromising light?
& you wonder why
all newborns have clenched fists."
What else can be said about O'Neal's poetry? Whether one shares his world view or not, one must stand in awe of his ability to stroke the neurons and asshole at the same time. He certainly stands head and shoulders above many of the so-called poets out there slopping their ink to the white page. Certainly, he's worth the two bucks for this chapbook.
--reviewed by JCE
abe gibson/mayjabeen/brian klein at myopic jan 7th
A rare music performance coming up next monday. come out to myopic and check out the show. I'll be playing w/Brian Klein and Mayjabeen from Names.
Monday Jan 7th
7:30 pm
Myopic Bookstore
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave
Upstairs
Free Show
Monday Jan 7th
7:30 pm
Myopic Bookstore
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave
Upstairs
Free Show
poem in the new Barbaric Yawp
my poem 'inching...' appears in the new issue of Barbaric Yawp (Volume 11, Number 3- September 2007)
you can get a copy for $4 at:
Bone World Publishing
John and Nancy Berbrich
3700 County Route 24
Russell, New York 13684
you can get a copy for $4 at:
Bone World Publishing
John and Nancy Berbrich
3700 County Route 24
Russell, New York 13684
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Silver Wonder Press written about on Pitchfork website
I'm a bit slow to post news here but here's some pretty exciting stuff. The good folks over at Pitchfork did a really nice little article about Lee Ranaldo's "Hello From the American Desert" that we recently published. Here in the link to the article:
www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/47047-lee-ranaldo-pens-poetry-book
-based-on-e-mail-spam
We were also mentioned on the radio in Ontario recently when Lee did an interview in Guelph, and he also recently did a interview with Broken Pencil magazine about spam poetry that mentions the silver wonder-I'll post links to this stuff when it appears online....
www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/47047-lee-ranaldo-pens-poetry-book
-based-on-e-mail-spam
We were also mentioned on the radio in Ontario recently when Lee did an interview in Guelph, and he also recently did a interview with Broken Pencil magazine about spam poetry that mentions the silver wonder-I'll post links to this stuff when it appears online....
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Hello From The American Desert by Lee Ranaldo
It's been in the works since 1999 and has finally seen the light of day! I am so freakin happy to announce the publication of Lee Ranaldo's 'Hello From The American Desert'
This beautiful little chapbook features about 40 pages of poetry written between 2004-2007 which enlist spam received over the internet as a springboard for poetry.
The cover art and illustrations are from Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets and there is an introduction written by Todd Colby.
These are limited to an edition of 1000. There is also a lettered edition (a-z) of 26 copies signed by both Lee & Curt that will soon be available.
They are available now for purchase online at:
www.silver-wonder.com
This beautiful little chapbook features about 40 pages of poetry written between 2004-2007 which enlist spam received over the internet as a springboard for poetry.
The cover art and illustrations are from Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets and there is an introduction written by Todd Colby.
These are limited to an edition of 1000. There is also a lettered edition (a-z) of 26 copies signed by both Lee & Curt that will soon be available.
They are available now for purchase online at:
www.silver-wonder.com
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
new website up and running
zach hench put up a pretty beautiful website for me at:
www.silver-wonder.com
or
www.silverwonderpress.com
go check it out!!! All the cds and most of the chapbooks are available for sale online!!!
www.silver-wonder.com
or
www.silverwonderpress.com
go check it out!!! All the cds and most of the chapbooks are available for sale online!!!
cruel november
folks I've spent most of this month very sick and have been unable to post here as much as i wanted to. some exciting things did go down and i managed to drag myself out of bed to do them...
november 9th the end of the world band joined p. michael grego & travis from ONO and played a set at plastic crimewave's four million tongues festival at the av-aerie.also on the bill:alela diane, heather leigh murray, outpost, alisdair roberts, and charlambides. someone told p. michael that we sounded like a riot!
november 20th the chicago guitar ensemble played at elastic. this time around it was:
me
alex wing
jesse thomas
cliff ingram
travis
brian klein
c.ezra lange
don ramon
bill mackay
brian labycz was gonna conduct this one but his gear wouldn't function so it ended up being a free for all!
labycz played in the opening set with his group-travelers and conquerors=labycz/zarzutzki/davis. aaron zarzutzki did some pretty incredible shit with a couple of cymbals and a no output turntable!
no new gigs scheduled for a bit. taking a little break to work on my meat puppets biography...
november 9th the end of the world band joined p. michael grego & travis from ONO and played a set at plastic crimewave's four million tongues festival at the av-aerie.also on the bill:alela diane, heather leigh murray, outpost, alisdair roberts, and charlambides. someone told p. michael that we sounded like a riot!
november 20th the chicago guitar ensemble played at elastic. this time around it was:
me
alex wing
jesse thomas
cliff ingram
travis
brian klein
c.ezra lange
don ramon
bill mackay
brian labycz was gonna conduct this one but his gear wouldn't function so it ended up being a free for all!
labycz played in the opening set with his group-travelers and conquerors=labycz/zarzutzki/davis. aaron zarzutzki did some pretty incredible shit with a couple of cymbals and a no output turntable!
no new gigs scheduled for a bit. taking a little break to work on my meat puppets biography...
Friday, October 26, 2007
An Electric Prayer For Derek Bailey
Friends,
Tonight I get to make another one of my dreams become reality. When Derek Bailey passed away on X-mas day in 2005, I conceived a tribute to him called An Electric Prayer for Derek Bailey. It took almost 2 years to finally realize but tonight this show is happening.
I will be conducting a large improvisational ensemble that consists primarily of electric guitars, through written instructions and object cues, and have put together quite a talented group.
I hope to see ya tonight!
Friday October 26th
8 pm
South Union Arts
1352 South Union Avenue
Chicago Il
www.southunionarts.com
the group:
e gtars:
jesse thomas
bill mackay
dave bernabo
p. michael grego
travis
brian labycz
neil jendon
travers gauntt
don ramon
bass:
c.ezra lange
alex wing
horns/reeds:
jim ford
dean giavaras
drums:
charles rumback
ben billington
Tonight I get to make another one of my dreams become reality. When Derek Bailey passed away on X-mas day in 2005, I conceived a tribute to him called An Electric Prayer for Derek Bailey. It took almost 2 years to finally realize but tonight this show is happening.
I will be conducting a large improvisational ensemble that consists primarily of electric guitars, through written instructions and object cues, and have put together quite a talented group.
I hope to see ya tonight!
Friday October 26th
8 pm
South Union Arts
1352 South Union Avenue
Chicago Il
www.southunionarts.com
the group:
e gtars:
jesse thomas
bill mackay
dave bernabo
p. michael grego
travis
brian labycz
neil jendon
travers gauntt
don ramon
bass:
c.ezra lange
alex wing
horns/reeds:
jim ford
dean giavaras
drums:
charles rumback
ben billington
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Lawrence Welsh Article in Tejano Tribune
Here is a link to a great article by Leslie Council......She talks with Lawrence Welsh about his new chapbook-Walking Backwards To Santa Fe.......
www.epcc.edu/ftp/Homes/elcon/092707f9.htm
www.epcc.edu/ftp/Homes/elcon/092707f9.htm
love & death & teeth in the blood reviewed in Zen Baby #18
Another review of Todd Moore's bad mutha of a chapbook appears in the new issue of Zen Baby. You can get a copy for $2 from editor Christopher Robin at:
Zen Baby
PO Box 1611
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1611
Zen Baby
PO Box 1611
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1611
Monday, October 15, 2007
My review of Carducci's- Enter Naomi up at Smoke Signals Mag
This is my first published review so the excitement bubbles over here. Find out my thoughts about Joe Carducci's- Enter Naomi at:
www.smokesignalsmag.com
www.smokesignalsmag.com
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Todd Moore's Chapbook reviewed at Outsider Writers
Todd Moore's Love & Death & Teeth In The Blood was recently reviewed by Victor Schwartman on Outsider Writers. You can find it in the review section at:
www.outsiderwriters.org
Copies are still Available for $9 from
Pitchfork Poetry Press
P.O. Box 146399
Chicago Il 60614
Checks or M.O.'s payable to C.A. Gibson....
www.outsiderwriters.org
Copies are still Available for $9 from
Pitchfork Poetry Press
P.O. Box 146399
Chicago Il 60614
Checks or M.O.'s payable to C.A. Gibson....
Monday, October 08, 2007
Abe Gibson/ Rotten Milk Duo Tonight!!!
i've got this going on at myopic bookstore tonight. it's supposed to be a duo with rotten milk but according to his recent myspace bulletin he's in missouri so if not i'll be bringing some solo e gtar action perhaps with a flying cymbal or two....
myopic bookstore- upstairs
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago illinois
7:30 pm
free show!!!
myopic bookstore- upstairs
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago illinois
7:30 pm
free show!!!
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Lawrence Welsh reviewed in Saint Vitus
This is reprinted from www.saintvituspress.com:
CROWS AND RAVENS AND DREAMS: THE POETRY OF LAWRENCE WELSH
BY TODD MOORE
The bio note at the back of Lawrence Welsh's WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE informs the reader that he has already published five collections of poetry. Those readers who are currently familiar with Welsh's work know that his poetic base is the desert southwest and that he has already begun to mine much of the region from Los Angeles where he was born to El Paso where he is presently living and teaching.
Armed with those bare bone facts, one might assume that Lawrence Welsh is a poet strongly drawn to local color and the romantic Old West, but a close reading of his work only proves this assumption wrong. WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is anything but a work of local color. And, while some of the poems tap into the rich tradition of the Old West, the thrust of these poems is toward something darker, something deeper.
The best poems in this collection ping pong between the personal and the hardscrabble life of mountain and desert. The elegy which opens the book, On The 15th Anniversary Of My Father's Death, is a homage to Welsh's origins, a kind of one off Kunitzian salute to a dead father. This is what you do as a good luck gesture so as not to disturb the old gods. This is what you do before entering the primal world of poetry and power.
This poem is a good introduction to what Lawrence Welsh is up to these days. The voice is clipped, elliptical, sometimes hermetic. The poem itself is a tip of the hat to Charles Olson obviously because of the open field way that the lines are displayed. And, of course, that influence extends through Olson to Robert Duncan. In fact, later on in the collection, in a poem entitled Elegy For John Wieners, Welsh refers to Olson and Duncan as well. This poem suggests the basic tension of the entire collection of the literary East with its lingering sense of High Modernism and Post Modernism and the ghost town deserterdness and near death darkness of the Old West.
an old timer says
keep your eyes open
study the shadows
el paso is all shadows...
from-The Elbo Room/Guadalupe
Welsh employs a clipped short line where the narrator is often felt to be hooded, almost invisible, and even when visible somehow withheld. The touch here is also of New York School and maybe just a hint of Language Poetry.
Welsh's voice and style also seem to be caught in that same tension of literary East versus the open hearted West. In the East the poet reveals nothing. He relies on allusion, he relies on aesthetic stance. In the West, the poet relies on the metaphor of the story itself and usually leaves out all the literary allusion. You can see the comparison very clearly in the poetry of Kell Robertson. Robertson tells stories laconically, elegiacally. Welsh suggests stories stoically and at an aesthetic distance.
Can such a tension survive as a recognizable style in a poet who live in El Paso, bordertown, gunfighter town, exile town, narco corrido town? It's a teasingly interesting question to consider. My take is he can, if he continues to maintain that tricky tension in both subject and style. However, my instincts somehow tell me that Welsh is a poet is search of a much larger subject. Maybe something all encompassing, a novel, a long poem, a sequence of shorter poems that somewhere in the future become a long poem, a metaphor is a long poem that somehow fuses Black Mountain, the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Charles Bukowski; Hart Crane first lost in the desert and then lost at sea, and the El Paso of Cormac McCarthy, Mariano Azuela, and John Welsey Hardin. These are all speculations, but poetry is haunted by all the best speculations. I Somehow have the feeling that Lawrence Welsh is searching for the secret metaphor that will define where he lives, where he writes, and where he dreams. A long poem that will define El Paso the same way that MAXIMUS defines Gloucester. And America. The grid for the poem and the myth for the dreams await him.
WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is published by Pitchfork Poetry Press- www.pitchforkpoetryprojects.com and sells for six dollars
CROWS AND RAVENS AND DREAMS: THE POETRY OF LAWRENCE WELSH
BY TODD MOORE
The bio note at the back of Lawrence Welsh's WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE informs the reader that he has already published five collections of poetry. Those readers who are currently familiar with Welsh's work know that his poetic base is the desert southwest and that he has already begun to mine much of the region from Los Angeles where he was born to El Paso where he is presently living and teaching.
Armed with those bare bone facts, one might assume that Lawrence Welsh is a poet strongly drawn to local color and the romantic Old West, but a close reading of his work only proves this assumption wrong. WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is anything but a work of local color. And, while some of the poems tap into the rich tradition of the Old West, the thrust of these poems is toward something darker, something deeper.
The best poems in this collection ping pong between the personal and the hardscrabble life of mountain and desert. The elegy which opens the book, On The 15th Anniversary Of My Father's Death, is a homage to Welsh's origins, a kind of one off Kunitzian salute to a dead father. This is what you do as a good luck gesture so as not to disturb the old gods. This is what you do before entering the primal world of poetry and power.
This poem is a good introduction to what Lawrence Welsh is up to these days. The voice is clipped, elliptical, sometimes hermetic. The poem itself is a tip of the hat to Charles Olson obviously because of the open field way that the lines are displayed. And, of course, that influence extends through Olson to Robert Duncan. In fact, later on in the collection, in a poem entitled Elegy For John Wieners, Welsh refers to Olson and Duncan as well. This poem suggests the basic tension of the entire collection of the literary East with its lingering sense of High Modernism and Post Modernism and the ghost town deserterdness and near death darkness of the Old West.
an old timer says
keep your eyes open
study the shadows
el paso is all shadows...
from-The Elbo Room/Guadalupe
Welsh employs a clipped short line where the narrator is often felt to be hooded, almost invisible, and even when visible somehow withheld. The touch here is also of New York School and maybe just a hint of Language Poetry.
Welsh's voice and style also seem to be caught in that same tension of literary East versus the open hearted West. In the East the poet reveals nothing. He relies on allusion, he relies on aesthetic stance. In the West, the poet relies on the metaphor of the story itself and usually leaves out all the literary allusion. You can see the comparison very clearly in the poetry of Kell Robertson. Robertson tells stories laconically, elegiacally. Welsh suggests stories stoically and at an aesthetic distance.
Can such a tension survive as a recognizable style in a poet who live in El Paso, bordertown, gunfighter town, exile town, narco corrido town? It's a teasingly interesting question to consider. My take is he can, if he continues to maintain that tricky tension in both subject and style. However, my instincts somehow tell me that Welsh is a poet is search of a much larger subject. Maybe something all encompassing, a novel, a long poem, a sequence of shorter poems that somewhere in the future become a long poem, a metaphor is a long poem that somehow fuses Black Mountain, the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Charles Bukowski; Hart Crane first lost in the desert and then lost at sea, and the El Paso of Cormac McCarthy, Mariano Azuela, and John Welsey Hardin. These are all speculations, but poetry is haunted by all the best speculations. I Somehow have the feeling that Lawrence Welsh is searching for the secret metaphor that will define where he lives, where he writes, and where he dreams. A long poem that will define El Paso the same way that MAXIMUS defines Gloucester. And America. The grid for the poem and the myth for the dreams await him.
WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is published by Pitchfork Poetry Press- www.pitchforkpoetryprojects.com and sells for six dollars
Friday, October 05, 2007
I Got Shows! Sunday & Monday!!
Friends and Neighbors,
I've got 2 shows this weekend. I've been hiding out in the apartment and haven't been doing a lot of hanging out with friends so I hope to see you at my shows. Both are free...
The first one is a doozy. Along with 124 other acts, The End of the World Band will be performing as part of the 2007 John Cage Musicircus at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Details:
Sunday October 7th Noon to Four p.m.
Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street
www.musicircus.chicagocomposers.org
we play at 2:15 pm on the first floor
at the Randolph Cafe East alcove 1e
Then on Monday night at 7:30 p.m. I'll be playing a duo with Rotten Milk at Myopic Books. This show is free and BYOB
Details:
Monday October 8th 7:30 p.m.
Myopic Bookstore
1564 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago
www.myopicbookstore.com
I've got 2 shows this weekend. I've been hiding out in the apartment and haven't been doing a lot of hanging out with friends so I hope to see you at my shows. Both are free...
The first one is a doozy. Along with 124 other acts, The End of the World Band will be performing as part of the 2007 John Cage Musicircus at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Details:
Sunday October 7th Noon to Four p.m.
Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street
www.musicircus.chicagocomposers.org
we play at 2:15 pm on the first floor
at the Randolph Cafe East alcove 1e
Then on Monday night at 7:30 p.m. I'll be playing a duo with Rotten Milk at Myopic Books. This show is free and BYOB
Details:
Monday October 8th 7:30 p.m.
Myopic Bookstore
1564 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago
www.myopicbookstore.com
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