Back from the Woods

Hello again. Back (or nearly back, using spotty upstate internet connection at moment) from a fantastic, generative time with students, faculty & staff at Bard College - Workshop in Language & Thinking. My workshop was wonderful: such kind, creative, mutually supportive, & risk-taking co-learners. Many thanks to Chavez, Ellie, Jeff, Adriana, Carmen, Beth, Henry, Percival, Justin, Jake, Tori, and Jean. All have such unique, and sometimes (helpfully) overlapping talents. We became, as several noted in the last few days, a living, breathing organism--achieving an interdependence, a kind of intimacy that I think all of us feel lucky to have been a part of. I go home missing everyone and yet keeping in touch, of course, thru Facebook. On my page, in fact, Chavez (Jon) posted a video of all of us committing an act of poetic terrorism on Stephen Cope's class, who days earlier had infected our group with haiku fragments--linguistic confetti thrown at us during a discussion on Butler, gender, and performativity. Needless to say, instead of "getting back" at Cope and Co., we decided--riffing on work we had done around alternative ways of conceiving of "community"--to accept the (Derridean) "gift of death," take those haiku fragments and using them as titles, standpoints from which to write and become, attempting to form not immunity from but community with Cope and Co. We insurrected at eleven-hundred hours two days later, reciprocating and yet invading, a moment of dissensus, all captured on film and posted to my Facebook profile. I'd link to it here, but don't have the connection speed to get to that post. Check it out, tho.

I also leave not just with fond memories, but with deep insights into our readings, our writings, each other--what it might be to be human, or post-human, or... And of course, the pirate I am, these will become tendrils of poems and other thought experiments, keeping me well fed on ideas to work from for a good long while.

So, unfortunately for you my dear readers, I am back. Things of note, to be posted pseudo-chronologically:

--An alert about the new Wheelhouse, to go live this Wednesday, featuring Rachel Zolf, Ben Friedlander, Sara Larsen, David Brazil, Tina Darragh, C.J. Martin, Barbara Jane Reyes, Brenda Iijima, Mark Lemaroueux (whose Spectre, an amazing book, is now out from Black Radish Books!), and many others. Also in the issue: a re-issue of the PRESS Literary Conference Anthology, featuring Rodrigo Toscano, Kristin Prevallet, Laura Elrick, Jules Boykoff, Kaia Sand, Mark Wallace, K. Lorraine Graham, Roger Farr, and many others! So, it'll be nice (for us) to get back at it with Wheelhouse, which had to take a hiatus, unfortunately, for personal medical reasons. On behalf of the other editors/designers and the Wheelhouse Arts Collective, my apologies to contributors and to those who have submitted work and are waiting to hear back (reading through those now). We promise we'll get there, and that next time, if any necessary interruption occurs, we'll be prepared with announcements and a good back up plan to keep the mag, at least, rolling.

--Some info on Occultations, including:

a new inter-review conducted by poet Emily Carr and myself (interview plus reviews of one another's books--hers is the wonderful Directions for Flying) over at Dialogue's End.

a Tarpaulin Sky review, by Nicky Tiso, of Occultations.

a brief reflection on my reading for the 20th Annual Subterranean Poetry Festival at the famous Cave (photo in post below). Wonderful performances/readings by some beautiful folks, so thanks Anne Gorrick for putting it all together!

a link to the radio interview and reading I did for the insatiable Joe Milford over at The Joe Milford Poetry Show. Live last nite, now available on the website as download. That was fun.

And of course getting back on track with my reflections/journal notes taken during my Bay Area trip, Nonsite Collective talk/discussion, readings I went to, etc. Soon. Oh, so soon.

Nice to see all of you again. In my mind's eye.