This is really an IOU for a fuller report on 2 back-to-back events: Rachel Zolf reading at Evergreen for PRESS on October 15, and my reading with Rachel and Portland poet B.T. Shaw for Tangent in Portland the following evening.
An IOU, as, due to the sudden death of my mother, I was unable to attend the reading we'd set up for Rachel in Olympia. Elizabeth and I were in Detroit. So THAT particular reading's report will be written out in full on our PRESS blog, along with the audio file of the reading and discussion. I know several were interested in our books that evening, so due to our not having them as promised, feel free to go to SPD and support our small presses by getting your hands on either Occultations, Neighbour Procedure, or both. For now, there's a brief summary of the feedback we got so far up at the PRESS blog.
--------------------TANGENT REPORT-----------------
One day after Zolf's PRESS reading/discussion, we headed down to Portland to give a reading for the Tangent Reading Series, co-curated by Kaia Sand, Jules Boykoff, and Rodney Koeneke. Joining us was Portland poet and The Oregonian editor B.T Shaw. I debated whether to participate in the reading given how terribly out of it I am, but we decided it'd be good for me, a respite of sorts, to go ahead with it, spend some time with some of the most beautiful souls we know. Kaia, Jules, Rodney, and all who came out, including David Abel, Maryrose Larkin, and other Spare Room Collective folks, Allison Cobb, Jen Coleman, Lionel Lints--the close-knit Portland poetry scene, basically--were so kind and generous.
Having difficulty knowing whether my reading went well or not, things a strange blur at moment, but I did manage to wrangle fantastic poet James Yeary into doing an interactive piece of it, a distraction zone staging in which he's given earphones and a recording of me reading a re-mix of the Bybee torture memorandum, listens and writes what comes to him, while Elizabeth and I are reading the polyvocal section of Occultations that makes use of this document. James is asked to stop writing when the recording ends, stand, and interrupt our reading with his own. He was an excellent sport about it and did some excellent spot writing. When I ask participants to write in similar fashion, i.e., via distraction and in concert with live reading, the work that results then, by author's choice, either becomes part of the ongoing series / cycle "Your Nerve Center Taxonomy" - or it doesn't. James graciously said that I could do whatever I wanted with his writing, which means I get to share it with you here, and later in print form. Note that he was writing this in real-time while having to listen to not two, but three audio inputs. Not that I think the results are bad writing, not at all. But figured I should let you know that James' work is often quite different, often quite precise and sparser. Anyway, here's what he came up with and read aloud last night:
give as an inattention Scotland
the inatten wash sweet dash
harom figures individual why keekee
inatten service to shock stereo
complicit stereo varies flame the
subject as a form of down the muscle
is indecent our form as a down
inatten using four distortions
two stresses on the plinth debt
debt throu excerpted inactivity
pharmacalogical debt cooperative
repeat space as a pronounced form
an distress an you would like to
less cooperate predisposed to debt plinth
which is a proximate of sewn [seven]
[-dance]
So, many thanks to James for this. I felt good and cared for all night, got to laugh a bit and, of course, to hear Rachel and Shaw's amazing readings. Rachel's work I know well of course, having heard her read in New York years ago, that reading in fact one of those that helped decide for me to seriously write (by "seriously" I mean semi-consistently). So, I got what I wanted: to hear her read again, as though Neighbour Procedure is perhaps my favorite book out this year (one of a handful anyhow), it's a different experience hearing her perform the work. Zolf read "Acknowledgment," which I would have requested had she closed out without it. Was just a real kick in the ass hearing the work. And B.T. Shaw's work, which I didn't know very well, having only read individual poems in journals, really drew itself into a complicated conversation with Zolf's work, with Occultations too--each new work responding in some way to the paradoxes and contradictions of art and the "docile body" taken up, used, spent, and otherwise weaponized by neo-liberalism/militarism. Shaw's manuscript in progress, investigating a military officer's murder of his wife, base life, military culture, all of it woven both lyrically and via the found, appropriated, and remixed, the performativity hence situating itself as related to the performativity of Occultations and Neighbour Procedure. For me a really happy discovery of a work! (Not to mention a lovely human being.)
Most importantly for me it was a night that allowed me to feel "in my body" for a moment, and so I thank Jules, Kaia, Rodney, B.T., Rachel, those who came out, and the Open Space Cafe, for a truly necessary (for me) evening. As does Elizabeth who'd been nearly single-handedly taking care of me for the past few days.
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