dbqp: visualizing poetics: August 2008

Three Readings at Canessa: Initial Thoughts

InterContinental Mark Hopkins, Room 625, San Francisco, California

Tonight's reading went reasonably well, and I have many thoughts on it, but I don't have the energy or the time to review it carefully myself. But I want to make a few preliminary comments on the reading:

1. Erica Lewis did a great job putting this reading together and producing a strong selection of foods, including a cupcake bar.

2. Cassie Smith replaced Lara Durback, who was sick. Cassie's poems were quite lovely and she read them in a gentle way and soft, as the poems required.

3. Truong Tran also gave a quiet reading, but with wider emotional range. He read from his newest book, Four Letter Words.

4. I did okay, but I think I wasn't good enough.

Aug

The Textual Imagination in San Francisco

InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Found on Mason Street, heading up Nob Hill, my calves pulsing.

ecr. l'inf.

Aug

joing

Aug

The Textual Imagination in Burlingame

Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Nob Hill, Room 625, One Nob Hill, 999 California Street, San Francisco, California At the corner right by my aunt's house in Burlingame, we found the poster above. What is so wonderful about it is is realness, how accurately it captures the look of a handmade sign: The slightly messy text, the stressing of certain points through the various text sizes (look at the giant "NOT"), the overlapping photographs of the opossum, the exclamation points, the sad face.

Aug

Doing Small Time

Edgehill Drive, Burlingame, California

On Saturday, I learned something that twisted my mind back into position for a minute, that reminded me of what my life’s project has been all along: the small time.

Many people, of course not all, hope for and work towards the big time. They are interested in having the greatest effect possible. They might not be particularly talented at achieving their goals, but that is what their goals are.

Aug

What a Book Brings Us

Edgehill Drive, Burlingame, California

Something like the desire for completion forced me back to Berkeley today, for what I hope is my last book-buying excursion. I have enough books to last me quite a while now, so I’ll need to spend some time reading. But I have now made it through the entire poetry section at Jeff Maser, and I have been to Serendipity. Conveniently for me, these stores are only about a mile apart from each other.

Aug

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(a revision)

Aug

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(a revision)

Aug

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Aug

Bow to the House that Bob Built

Edgehill Drive, Burlingame, California

Only, as I like to say, connect.

I try, mightily, to meet people in person whom I know only through the mail, variously imagined: as slips of papers sliding around the country or as packets of bits bursting open as email. The idea here is that people are different from the words they write and the people they present through their correspondence and that it is important to community to understand the person.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience