"A riot is the language of the unheard" at Cooper Union (Video)

Homage to Etel Adnan (Anthology)

at SPD

Does the Document Promise? (@ Academy of American Poets)

I would like the tense of the promise to be the tense of the poem I am dedicating to you, just as soon as I've written it

“Talking about my generation” (@ The New Museum)

“Talking about my generation”: Jill Johnston and the Critic as Subject

Movement Research in Residence

Cover Image: 

Elaine Summers, Ouverture, 2012. Photo: Sarah Holcman

Part of RE:NEW RE:PLAY, in Discussions

Presented in conjunction with Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later: Movement Research in Residence.

Critical Correspondence is an online publication by Movement Research. For this program, Critical Correspondence coeditors Aaron Mattocks and Marissa Perel honor the celebrated writer and critic Jill Johnston, whose experimental and personal voice communicated the culture of the interdisciplinary 1960s art scene. In light of Johnston’s innovative contributions to the form, this conversation considers contemporary criticism and the writer as subject. Speakers include David Velasco (editor of artforum.com) and Claudia La Rocco (founder of theperformanceclub.org). The event culminates as Movement Research artists perform readings of reviews on dance and performance.

Readers:
Thom Donovan
Ariel Goldberg
Cassie Petersen
Christine Shan Shan Hou

"A Riot is the Language of the Unheard" (at Cooper Union)

I will participating in this event with many other fine folks next weekend. It is part of a larger exhibit currently up at Cooper Union, Ruptures: Forms of Public Address.

Occupy/Poetry

"When Zuccotti Park was still occupied something that impressed me were the various tents that provided medical and emotional aid to occupiers. This is something that we too often disassociate from struggle: mutual aid. And it is also the reason for struggle, maybe its primary reason: to become a society of mutual aid. Poetry provides not just a Kantian critical distance from events and subjects, as I notice certain poets arguing for; but it binds and is immediate to intersubjective formations that undergird collective social action."

The latest Boog City features talks from a panel I was on with Tyrone Williams this past August, regarding poetry, activism, and Occupy Wall Street, edited by Brenda Iijima and David A. Kirschenbaum

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Doug Ashford

"The forms in my working process these days are chosen for both their factual reportage and their imagistic drift. I want to know what motivates the figures depicted, if they imagine in unknown relations; figures that are beautiful because they respond to emergency, moving as if empathy has taken them into a momentum that overcomes catastrophe. Although sometimes hard to see, political disaster creates events of extraordinary love because it makes the enduring of life imaginable beyond dark practical economies of getting and selling."

--Doug Ashford

The Hegemon Say (Chapbook)

Check out this chapbook, hot-off Michael Cross's COMPLINE press in Oakland, CA.

Designed after Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Pomegranate Offering (1975), it features a single poem dedicated to Cha.

Literal Blood in Colorado Review

The latest Colorado Review contains some poems I wrote after Paul Thek. Thanks to my friend Sasha Steensen and the other editors at CR for inviting me to contribute.

Poetry During OWS

The following feature contains original writing by 19 participants: Anne Boyer, Dana Ward, Anelise Chen, Brian Ang, Marie Buck, Stephanie Young, Lauren Levin, Brandon Brown, Kristin Prevallet, Josef Kaplan, Brian Whitener, Rob Halpern, Alli Warren, Jackqueline Frost, Michael Cross, Frank Sherlock, Thom Donovan, Susan Bernofsky, and David Brazil. The feature was edited and composed between September 2011 and April 2012, dates which correspond roughly to the first seven months of the Occupy movement. It was originally published in the Summer 2012 issue of the journal Rethinking Marxism.

Dog Day Poetry Marathon Schedule

See you all there!

August 17th - 19th at Outpost 186.
186 ½ Hampshire St.
Inman Sq., Cambridge

Friday: 7:00 - 10:00pm
Saturday: 1:00 - 5:00pm & 7:00 - 10:00pm
Sunday: 1:00 - 4:00pm

FRIDAY    
7:00    John Mulrooney
7:08    Emily Spiegelman
7:16    Kythe Heller
7:24    Chuck Stebelton
7:32    Brenda Iijima
7:40    January O'Neil
7:48    Jordan Davis
break    
8:06    Maria Damon
8:14    Anna Deeny
8:22    Ruth Lepson: Talk on Alberto de Lacerda
8:37    Guillermo Parra: Talk on Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre
break    
9:02    Lori Lubeski
9:10    Dayana Fraile
9:18    Michael Carr
9:26    Rachel Sachs Steele
9:34    Janaka Stucky
9:42    Bridget Madden
9:50    Gilmore Tamny

SATURDAY    
1:00    Jim Behrle
1:08    Ben McFall
1:16    Susanna Gardner
1:24    Jenny Zhang
1:32    Cheryl Clark Vermeulen
1:40    Ish Klein
1:48    Hassen Saker
break    
2:06    Aaron Tieger
2:14    Jess Mynes
2:22    Marcella Durand: Talk on translating Baudelaire & Proust poems
2:37    Zachary Bos: Talk on L.E. Sissman
break    
3:02    Tracey McTague
3:10    G.L. Ford
3:18    Allen Bramhall
3:26    Patrick Doud
3:34    Mairead Byrne
3:42    Mark Lamoureux
3:50    Erica Kaufman
break    
4:16    Brendan Lorber: Talk on Ruin & Desire
4:31    Nathaniel Otting: Talk on editing minutes BOOKS
4:46    Filip Marinovich: Talk on the Poetics of Initiation At Brooks School in North Andover
break 
7:00    Susan Landers
7:08    Jen Benka
7:16    Carol Mirakove
7:24    Leopoldine Core
7:32    John Coletti
7:40    Dorothea Lasky
7:48    Eileen Myles
break    
8:06    Jack Kimball: Talk on Don Quatrale, Rene Ricard & Billy Barnum
8:21    Ethan Fugate: Talk on Bike-Commute Photography Poetics 
8:36    Douglas Rothschild: Talk on how great he is
break    
9:02    Karen Weiser
9:10    Simone White
9:18    Jessica Fiorini
9:26    Jacqueline Waters
9:34    Edmund Berrigan
9:42    Betsy Wheeler
9:50    Thom Donovan

SUNDAY    
1:00    Anthony Cuellar
1:08    Suzanne Mercury
1:16    Joel Sloman
1:24    James Cook
1:32    Farrah Field
1:40    Kimberly Lyons
1:48    Anna Moschovakis
break    
2:06    Rachel Levitsky: Talk on the Office of Recuperative Strategies 
2:21    Jim Dunn: Talk on Harry Crosby
2:36    Carol Weston: Talk on Stephen Jonas
break    
3:01    Aaron Kiely
3:09    Ryan Gallagher
3:17    David Rich
3:25    Amanda Cook
3:33    Sean Cole
3:41    Michael Franco
3:49    Gerrit Lansing

The 90s

I awake to this apocalypse too
And Black Earth like the earth
Was dying into the 90s
Where I was born

So the dead awaken
I am this grave of empathy
Left over from wanting to live
So dying becomes a property of life again

*

Put the munis back in community
Wanting it is a sign of our alienation
Hurt today that I appeared (hurt)

These personal apocalypses and these collective apocalypses
Render an affect of high school
This inner light and that outer light
Of the 90s in high school

The sky went dark
The world went dark
And only then was there hope

In my 90s where cafe culture reached its peak
The 90s begins and ends inside the mouth
Indie rock begins in your mouth

*

It is a poem of friendship
I am dreaming the 90s before
I could remember anything
There were spaces we shared
The bodies we were eventually
To share not invented yet
There were certain reminders
We were still human forms
That we were not undead
Which sex do you identify with
When you see a vampire?

Sonnet 64

When I have seen the upper

Echelons of America

The rich proud cost unlikely to respond 

When sometime lofty towers

The recent war with

And brass of what Benjamin when

I have seen the reflection

Is an undertaking and the firm 

Soil almost heroically cleaved

And the Internet of debris

Ruin hath taught me so interestingly 

Circulating with telling intensity to win

The major companies

Their deeper allegorical significance.

American Books' Solicitations Launch

• • Thursday, August 9, 2012
  • 8:00pm
• 
  
  
  

  SOLICITATIONS: Limited Edition Release + Reading Come celebrate the release of Solicitations, the first project from American Books. Featuring both visual and textual work by a wide array of writers and artists, Solicitations was conceived of as a means to gather community around this new press and the kind of work it will make visible in the future. An evening with readings by: CORRINE FITZPATRICK DOUGLAS PICCINNINI JARED WHITE JOHN COLETTI KAREN WEISER NICOLE WALLACE THOM DONOVAN WILL EDMISTON And a screening of "17 NEW DAM ROAD", new video by: DANI LEVENTHAL

Boog City 6th Annual Poetry and Music Festival

Among the many events at Boog City's 6th annual poetry and music festival, I will be reading and presenting on a panel about OWS and poetry Sunday, August 5th at Unnameable Books in Bklyn.

Here is a link to a PDF of the complete calendar:
http://www.boogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc72.pdf

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Zoe Beloff

"How was I to put on this play with a cast of fifty speaking parts? I didn’t have access to a theater. The answer was obvious–perform at Zuccotti Park and other public spaces around the city. I decided to bring together a band of performers, not only professional actors but everyone who had a desire to participate. We all have day jobs so we would work on weekends. The project was not simply about creating a spectacle, but would take the form of work over time. Like building any kind of movement it would incorporate the process of learning. I would make all the props and scenery out of corrugated cardboard because cardboard is the medium of protest. We would not get permits. We would just do it. And we did. Our performances lasted from March through May. In this way we layered our contemporary project over the three months that the Paris Commune existed before it was destroyed by the French army. We handed out broadsheets to spectators. We documented the performances and posted them online."
--Zoe Beloff

That Sinking Sense of Wonder (reading)

I will be reading "The Thunder :: Perfect Mind" and other poems of a gnostical import here on July 22nd, 4:30 PM

SOUTHFIRST: PRESENTS

THAT SINKING SENSE OF WONDER

JUNE 15 – JULY 22, 2012

Opening Friday, June 15, 6-8 PM

SOUTHFIRST is proud to present "That Sinking Sense of Wonder," a group exhibition curated by Jesse Bransford. Participating artists are Afruz Amighi, Carl Baratta, Jennifer Cohen, Juliet Jacobson, Corinne Jones, Paul Laffoley, Gean Moreno, Adam Putnam, Max Razdow, Dan Torop; the exhibition also includes anonymous tantra drawings. The show will be on view from June 15 – July 22. There will be an opening reception for the artists from 6-8 pm on Friday, June 15, 2012.

Bruised Music (II)

Music has the unique

Value to be objectless

And sparkling as bling

Splay it that this is
The sound of value
Talking who hears it

Like music in an age
Of control who controls it
Like sampling was not a map

Divested of some soundless
Territory I am playing it
Or rather how it plays me

Until I am an ether called
Control to the sampling

Rate of Reagan I wrote this

Anthem now it is codified so
Even country looks liberal 

All fucked-up and deriving sense

From this no other set of sounds
Modeling no one’s death

Least of all some Caesar

Testifying to this seizure
Called control deprived of every-
thing except wild consent

I realized this voice was wrong
What the music did

Intuitive like all sovereigns

All the wrong notes turn right

The police they make music too

Inside sampled ears.

2012 Poets House Showcase (Reading)

2012 Poets House Showcase Opening Reading

DATE AND TIME: June 30, 2012 - 1:00PM
EVENT LOCATION: Kray Hall
ADMISSION: Free and open to the public

A score of leading poets, representing the breadth and diversity of contemporary poetry, kick off the 20th Annual Poets House Showcase, which gathers more than 2,000 poetry titles. Readings by Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Eduardo C. Corral, Thom Donovan, Aracelis Girmay, Scott Hightower, Cathy Park Hong, Eileen Myles, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Idra Novey, Michael O’Brien, Rowan Ricardo Philips, Martha Rhodes, Frances Richard, Leonard Schwartz, Leigh Stein, Mónica de la Torre, M. A. Vizsolyi and John Yau.

Others Letters: Chris Martin and Jared Stanley

"But now, blowing all that back into the recesses is the picture of Bushwick Bill. Oaughhhw. That picture is just so magnetic. The looks on the faces of Scarface and Willie D. That fucking CELL PHONE. The damaged soldier whose only recourse is publicity. Here's the wikipedia description:

The album cover is a graphic picture of member Bushwick Bill in the hospital. Bill had shot himself in the eye after his girlfriend refused to shoot him during an altercation. [3] The other two Geto Boys members and the group's management team yanked Bill out of the hospital room in order to take the picture, removing Bill's eyepatch and IV in the process. Bill has expressed regret over the album cover, saying "Its still hurts me to look at that cover because that was a personal thing I went through... I still feel the pain from the fact I've got a bullet in my brain... I think it was pretty wrong to do it, even though I went along with the program at first."[1]

I still feel pain from the fact
I've got a bullet in my brain.

And what about Pac, then? He's still got a bullet "I" on hologram? There's this essay Charles Bernstein wrote years ago, relating Creeley's one functional eye to his notion of selfhood, of I-ness. Bushwick shoots his eye out and Pac turns his I into a bullet. Not to mention that the I in THUGLIFE stands for infant. This man whose revolutionary mother decayed into a crack addict while he was a boy. Wounded soldiers with no recourse but publicity."
--Chris Martin and Jared Stanley, from "Soldier's Recourse"