Primitive Information

Under Attack…

Posted on October 7th, 2008 by dhadbawnik

My blog is under attack by a hacker — nothing personal, I’m assured, just something endemic to Wordpress. I’ve got to upgrade and try to stamp out these suckers, but for now it takes the form of attacking and inserting spam code into the most recent post. Stay tuned, hopefully I will get this fixed.

By the way, it’s not contagious.

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

Translations From Creeley

Posted on October 5th, 2008 by dhadbawnik

This is a little chap book of mine that Roger Snell recently published through his Sardines Press. It’s got a few short poems in it that came out of a “translation” project that was assigned to us way back in the early days of workshop at Texas State. Though some of the poems share titles with Creeley’s, they are not “translations” in the sense of sitting down with the actual poems and chiseling out new versions, or interpreting them somehow — I guess I have to clarify that, since people have asked me. I was just reading a lot of Creeley at the time — still am, actually — and writing poems that I thought responded to some of the principles and ideas about sound, break, and attention that I discovered in them.

Here’s one:

THE TURN

Let’s build it out of
Mr. Gibson’s guts, cut out
summer to make room for
cancer, a house
half-finished
awaits in the sun.

I only recently discovered there is a poem by Creeley called “The Turn” (though given his concerns, it’s not terribly surprising). It’s in his book Words, which I recently found a copy of at the wonderful local bookstore Rustbelt. Also, this essay on Creeley by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, to which Roger alerted me during my visit to SF in August, brought some of these issues to light and life in a new way…

All this to say there is no particular claim for originality here, but these poems at that time were an important step for me. My thanks to Roger for showing an interest in the work and bringing it out in this lovely form. The books are small, hand-sewn, with covers using a gocco (”go-co”) press and a design hand-drawn by Roger. (That’s Asha’s paw flashing across the top of the image.)

There are a limited number of these babies left, and I’m offering them for sale to those who might also have an interest. All proceeds will go to support upcoming issues of kadar koli and habenicht press.

Tags: Literary // Add Comment »

Visit to New York

Posted on September 21st, 2008 by dhadbawnik

Above are some pics of the trip to New York I just returned from to read in the 2nd Annual Boog City Festival. I’m grateful to David Kirschenbaum for organizing this gargantuan event and inviting me to take part.

There’s not a whole lot to say about it. The trip was necessarily brief because Sean, Robbie and I — who drove down together in Sean’s trusty Ford, and I’m sorry I didn’t get any pics of us — all had to zip back to catch up on reading and whatnot for school. Probably the most fun I had was swapping bullshit on the way down with those two, hanging out with Kyle Schlesinger and his son Alistair Sat. morning in Brooklyn, and walking around Manhattan on this gorgeous day.

Then too I met some interesting new poets in the controlled chaos of the marathon reading and strolled with them to a bar on St. Marks where we downed Brooklyn lager and told each other the most embarrassing poet we’ll admit to liking. (Among the answers: Anne Sexton, Robinson Jeffers, Charles Simic, Bukowski.) While I speed-walked back to the venue with a nice buzz on, this unfortunately made me miss Kyle and Robbie as the reading by this point was running 30-45 minutes ahead of schedule. Essentially I missed my own reading, as I was scheduled to go right after them.

Buy me a beer sometime and you can ask me about it.

Tags: Travel, Literary // 5 Comments »

RIP Reginald Shepherd, 1963-2008

Posted on September 11th, 2008 by dhadbawnik

Just got this sad news from the poetics group list at UB. I’d been following Reginald’s blog and its excruciatingly honest accounts of his illness for some time, ever since coming across an interesting article about him in Poets and Writers. Apparently, he applied for the job here at UB. Didn’t get it, but it would have been interesting to meet and possibly work with him if he had.

Here’s a tribute at the Poetry Foundation.

Tags: Literary // Add Comment »

i’m always the same

Posted on September 11th, 2008 by dhadbawnik

Here’s a song I just received from my friend Oleg in Russia (that’s him in the middle, playing guitar).

It captures my current state of mind pretty well. More soon.

Tags: Video // 5 Comments »

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will Texas State”

Posted on August 23rd, 2008 by dhadbawnik

These guys are my heroes. Here’s the link to their web site, though it’s been stripped pretty bare for now — not surprising, since it’s apparently what helped get them caught.

Who hasn’t wanted to take out a sharpie and correct egregious errors on signs? Anyone who was forced to stroll by the mangled syntax of the one quoted above can sympathize. A question for you San Marcos folks — is that sign still there?

Tags: Uncategorized // 7 Comments »

Visit to San Francisco

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by dhadbawnik

Here are some images from my visit to San Francisco last week. I was honored to perform the wedding ceremony for my friends Jason and Kerry at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and to read with Mary Burger on the occasion of her new Interbirth book, A Partial Handbook for Navigators, as well as my Ovid in Exile and Translations From Creeley, just out from Roger Snell’s Sardines Press. Audio of the reading is available here.

Tags: Travel, Literary // 5 Comments »

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Sep
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Primitive Information

the knowledge of contrast, feeling for light and shade, all that information (primitive sense) necessary for a poem

Under Attack…

Translations From Creeley

Visit to New York

RIP Reginald Shepherd, 1963-2008

i’m always the same

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will Texas State”

Visit to San Francisco

Search This Site

Calendar

Books

Blogroll

Poetry Sites

Web Stuff

WWW

Categories

Archives

Subscribe

Meta