GIVE A FIG

Reading: Installation

2012-01-03T13:21:00.001-08:00

Les Figues Press authors read in response to Installations, an exhibition featuring work by Edith Abeyta and Meeson Pae Yang. Featuring: Danielle Adair, Sissy Boyd, Amina Cain, and Allison Carter.

Saturday | January 7, 2012
2-4 p.m.

Palos Verdes Art Center
550 Deep Valley Drive, Suite 261
Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90275

About the writers:

DANIELLE ADAIR, born in northern Michigan and based in Los Angeles, California, earned a BA with Honors from The University of Chicago, and an MFA in Visual Arts and in Writing from California Institute of the Arts. She is the recipient of the 2010 California Community Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts (Chicago). Adair’s video works have shown internationally – Manila, Cologne, Paris, Belfast – and she has performed extensively within Southern California at such venues as The Velaslavasay Panorama Theater, MOCA, Machine Project, Beyond Baroque, and most recently on Ear Meal. Adair is the author of
by From JBAD: Lessons Learned based on her time as embedded media with US Forces in Afghanistan, and other writing of hers has recently appeared in 30<30: Anthology of Innovative Fiction (Starcherone Press) and Imaginary Syllabi (Palm Press).

SISSY BOYD studied with Martha Graham and danced with many diverse and avant-garde companies in NYC. In L.A. she studied poetry with Holly Prado, and playwrighting with John Steppling. Her last play formed the text for a short film, “Liddy” by Guy Zimmerman. Padua Press will include “Liddy” in their forthcoming anthology, Fever Dreams. In 2006, Les Figues Press published her book “in the plain turn of the body make a sentence: 2 plays by Sissy Boyd.” In the last several years she has danced in a myriad of Ken Roht’s Orphean Circus theater creations. She is a member of The Evidence Room. She is featured in the photography book “Fearless Women.” Her short plays have appeared in Pharmacy and Sharon’s Farm.

AMINA CAIN is the author of the short story collection I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009) and an upcoming chapbook called Tramps Everywhere (Insert Press/PARROT Series). Recent work has appeared in Dear Navigator, summer stock, Dewclaw, The Encyclopedia Project (F-K), and as a chaplet through Belladonna*. Several of her stories have been translated into Polish on MINIMALBOOKS, and a French translation of “Black Wings” is just out in Jet d’encre. Her next book is forthcoming from Dorothy, a publishing project, in fall 2013.

ALLISON CARTER is the author of a book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement (Les Figues Press), and two chapbooks: Shadows Are Weather (Horse Less Press) and All Bodies Are The Same and They Have The Same Reactions (Insert Press). Her narrative project Sum Total was just released from Eohippus Labs: n°5. Her work has otherwise been published in Conjunctions, Joyland, P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, 3rd Bed, and other journals. Her poem ‘Razor Sharp Penny Candy’ was included in the Best of Fence: First Nine Years anthology. Her long poem, The Nests, is available from H_NGM_N. She studied at Brown University and at California Institute of the Arts.

The Empty Globe December 10: Huffman and Trudgeon

2011-12-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

Saturday, December 10 at 8 PM: Jibade-Khalil Huffman and Thomas Trudgeon

at Pieter (Lincoln Heights)
420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10 Los Angeles, CA 90031
*please park on the street, and not in the lot

$5 donation

Jibade-Khalil Huffman is the author of two books of poems, “19 Names For Our Band” (Fence, 2008) and “James Brown is Dead” (Future Plan and Program, 2011). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at MoMA/PS1, Southern Exposure, Mt. Tremper Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, among others. He was a 2010-2011 Workspace Artist-in-Residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York. Educated at Bard College and Brown University, he lives in Los Angeles.

Tom Trudgeon is a poet. Some of his publishable work has been featured in Shampoo, Out of Nothing, Horse Less Review, and others. He has a small chapbook, ‘having been spoken w.’, through Avantacular Press. He is also co-editor of Dear Memo Magazine, a small arts and poetics fanzine run out of San Francisco and Brooklyn.

Dec 4: Vanessa Place in Chicago

2011-12-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 4th
at 2pm

The Renaissance Society presents
a reading by Vanessa Place

Vanessa Place is a writer, a lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. Her dual appointment as lawyer by day and experimental writer by whenever makes her a handful and a head-full. She is author of Dies: A Sentence (2006), La Medusa (2008), Notes on Conceptualisms, co-authored with Robert Fitterman (2009), and The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality and Law (2010).

at University of Chicago
1025 East 58th Street
Swift Hall, room 106, first floor
on the Main Quadrangle, directly east of Cobb Hal
FREE

http://www.renaissancesociety.org

The Empty Globe: Mori, Novy, and Wallace

2011-11-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday, November 19th at 8 PM

at Pieter (Lincoln Heights)
420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10 Los Angeles, CA 90031
*please park on the street, and not in the lot

$5 donation

Bruna Mori is a writer, and educator, preoccupied with peripatetics. Her books include Derivé (Meritage Press), with paintings by Matthew Kinney, and Poetry for Corporations (forthcoming from Insert Press), exploring the unregulated drift of people and commodities through cities. Since moving to La Jolla, she has turned her attention to the suburbs, with photographer George Porcari, in a collaboration titled “Beige.” She also teaches in the writing program at the University of California at San Diego, and writes for a nonprofit design and media firm called Lybba founded by filmmaker Jesse Dylan, dedicated to open-source health advocacy worldwide. She is also Lucien’s mom.

Adam Novy is the author of a novel, The Avian Gospels (Hobart). He lives in Southern California.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a novel, The Quarry and The Lot (2011), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). He teaches at California State University San Marcos.

Featured Fig: Martin Glaz Serup

2011-11-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

1. Tell us a little bit about your aesthetic inclinations?

I believe art can do ... oh, so many different things, at different times and at the same time; as for writing, it's also a way of focusing, remembering, dialoguing, trying very hard to be somebody else or something else or more or less than yourself... I'm inclined towards art that offers different angles and is several things at the same time, not just one; art and writing that welcomes different ways of being at the same time and dares to investigate that. If that doesn’t sound all too cryptic.

2. Where did you come from and are you happy that you're no longer there?

The tougher suburbs of Copenhagen, which I loved, but coming back on visit recently made me wish very intensely that my own children should never grow up in a place like that. Too rough, too much concrete, too few people doing 'something else' to get inspired by. A few years ago I lived in a village with only 250 inhabitants on a tiny island in the sea of Western Denmark, which was also very rough, but in an entirely different manner; I miss that place almost daily.

3. What does your work demand? What does it offer?

First of all, that you read it, of course; and then, what comes out of reading it. I hope that there is no single answer to that, but rather, many questions should arise.

4. Where do you do what you do?

Whenever I get the chance, wherever, preferably travelling alone somewhere, to a hut, a hotel or a getaway, spending several days in succession alone, focused, just running and reading and writing. However, most of the time my life isn't like that... still I get the work done.

5. If push came to shove...

I would immediately google it and learn a new English idiom...

6. Please tell us about beauty, belief or bawdry. You may begin.

Well, all with B, has a nice sound, a nice half rhyme when spoken together, can be both good or bad, bawdry is the best. What would you rather read—a book of beauty, belief or bawdry? The last of course. It can have its own beauty. And truth.

7. As Gertrude Stein says "let us why why." Please proceed.

That means to say that more sighs last goes. Leave with it. I was just in Paris France, and in Paris France I was reading Paris France by Gertrude Stein; she's right - you can be absolutely sure, that if someone starts to run into the traffic to get out of the way of the cars, they're not French.

8. What does art do to you?

When good, it makes me happy.

9. Who (or what) do you admire?

So many people; to mention some of the writers whose work is piled on my desk right now: Gertrude Stein, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pentti Saarikoski, Peter Laugesen, Lyn Hejinian, Lars Norén (his diaries), Anton Chekov (his travel journals from Sibiria)...

10. What is a good question? What questions do you ask?

It's almost too easy to answer that: that! is a good question...

11.What do you find deeply satisfying?

To get things done, to feel there's time enough, to be anonymous, to jog, to read, to write, sex, to drink a lot of very good white wine, to eat well, to be in a powerful landscape, preferably all of it at the same time.

12. What are your favorite kinds of figs?

All kinds as long as they're open, so you can see both the outside and the inside at the same time; the joy of looking.

MARTIN GLAZ SERUP was born in 1978 and has published six children’s books, most recently an illustrated story entitled When granddad was a postman (2010), two chapbook-essays, as well as five collections of poetry; his most recent, the long poem The Traffic Is Unreal (2007), was also published in Finland (2010). Serup is the former founding editor of the Nordic web-magazine for literary criticism Litlive.dk and the literary journal Apparatur and managing editor of the poetry magazine Hvedekorn. He has been teaching creative writing at The University of Southern Denmark and at the writer’s school for children’s literature at The University of Aarhus and is now a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen. In 2006 Serup received the Michael Strunge Prize for poetry and in 2008 he received a Gold medal from The University of Copenhagen for his dissertation of Poetry and Relational Aesthetics. In 2011 Les Figues press released the English-translation of The Field.

Auction Item Highlight: Babyfucker, The Opera

2011-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction
Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

Babyfucker: Die Oper (Babyfucker: The Opera)

by Doug Nufer

This year we asked several artists and writers to "re-figue" their favorite Les Figues book. Here, Doug Nufer reinvents Urs Alleman's Babyfucker by taping lyrics (in English and German) into the original text. All lyrics appropriated from various love songs, with a special focus on librettos that include the word "baby." Sing it baby!

Can't wait to take this home? Buy this and other irresistible items right now.

Auction Item Highlight: Steven Bankhead

2011-11-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

Steven Bankhead's "Velvet Underground at the Trip"

17" x 14", acrylic and pencil on collage paper, 2011

Value: $1,100

Bids start at only $200

Only 5 more days until the Annual Give A Fig Auction. Buy tickets now & save!

Auction Item Highlight: Revolution Belt!

2011-10-28T15:39:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

The Revolution BELT by Katrin Jurati

This re-figued item takes as its inspiration Les Figues' revolutionary anthology Feminaissance. Wear it home from the auction!

Peruse more fabulous, exciting items on the official auction website!

Auction Item Highlight: 1776

2011-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

1776

by Calvin Allison

This beautiful shadow sculpture is based off of a 1776 American corset pattern.

VALUE: $1000

Peruse more fabulous, exciting items on the official auction website!

Auction Item Highlight: Drunken Fig(ue) Truffles!

2011-10-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

DRUNKEN FIG(UE) AND BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES

by Susan VanHorn

These hand crafted artisan truffles are made with imported Belgian couverture chocolate, fresh cream and English butter. Drunken Fig(ue) truffles are crafted with Calimyrna and Black Mission figs, Port wine from Australia and toasted pecan pieces. Bittersweet Truffles are crafted with couvertures chosen to enhance the flavour palate of each truffle. Each is then lovingly enrobed with imported chocolate, creating the most delectable truffles imaginable.

VALUE: Priceless ($72)

**Our biggest auction spender will also receive a box of these delicious chocolates for free!**

Please be sure to consume within 2 weeks of purchase for best flavour. Contains nuts.

Peruse other fabulous, exciting items on the official auction website!

Auction Item Highlight: Vista

2011-10-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

VISTA by Lisa Ohlweiler

Beautiful black and white print...

...as if it were an ocean view.

Peruse more fabulous, exciting items on the official auction website.

Oct 16: YAhora

2011-10-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 16th at 1pm

El Grafógrafo, Pasaje Rodríguez
between Calle 3 y 4, al lado / next to Caliente Casino
Tijuana, Baja California

YAhora invites you to traverse the border, ignore the border, contemplate the border, read poetry to the border, perform or de-perform the border, and enjoy the mixing of cultures, languages and experiences that the Tijuana-San Diego Metropolitan Zone invites.

Co-curated/uncurated by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker and co-sponsored by the bookstore and café El Grafógrafo and cog·nate binational arts collective, YAhora will take place one day after the &Now festival in San Diego ends. YAhora is an opportunity for writers who have come to &Now from all over the U.S. and beyond and fellow writers in Tijuana to connect, to converse, and to learn about each other’s works and worlds.

Scheduled Readers:

Emily Anderson

Luis Angulo

Abraham Ávila

Tantra Bensko

David Buuck

Amaranta Caballero

Elizabeth Chaney

Ching-In Chen

Jhonnatan Curiel

Vincent Dachy

Miriam Garcia

Corinne Goria

Ian Hatcher

Jen Hofer

Janice Lee

Jennifer Karmin

Courtney Kilian

Lorena Mancilla

Karen Marquez Saucedo

Bruna Mori

Lauren Norton

John Pluecker

Lin Robinson

Amy Sanchez

Isaac Sereno

Laura Vena

Judith Victoria

Frankie Voeltz

Christine Wertheim

Details:
The reading will be held in the Pasaje Rodríguez in Downtown Tijuana. The Pasaje is one of many alleyways in Tijuana's central area that were previously dedicated to the sale of tourist souvenirs and Mexican curios to visitors. However, over the last ten years, beginning after 9/11 and continuing with the violence associated with the so-called "War on Drugs," the number of tourists in Tijuana has declined dramatically. Pasaje Rodríguez is one of a number of local spaces that have been reclaimed by artists, writers and culture-makers for public art, gallery spaces, cafés, bookstores, thrift shops and more.

More info here.

Give A Fig Item Highlight: My So-Called/As If My Life

2011-10-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Give A Fig Auction: An Auction AS IF it's An Auction

Join us Sunday November 6th at 4pm at Human Resources in Chinatown

Featured Auction Item:

AS IF MY LIFE by Divya Victor and MY SO-CALLED LIFE by Joey Yearous-Algozin

A box set of two continuous registers of transcription.

AS IF MY LIFE: A continuous re-transcription of all objects in Lyn Hejinian's My Life (1989), dictated to the poet by Joshua Lam, over a discontinuous 20 hour period, typed continuously on rolls of cash-register tape using a Smith-Corona electric typewriter, recording a discontinuous labor of 20 hours by the poet who is not reading Lyn Hejinian's My Life while recording it discontinuously.

MY SO-CALLED LIFE: A continuous re-transcription of a section of Charles Bernstein's Asylums (1975), dictated to the poet by Holly Melgard, over a discontinuous 2 hour period, typed continuously on rolls of cash-register tape using a Smith-Corona electric typewriter, recording a discontinuous labor of 2 hours by the poet who is not reading Charles Bernstein's Asylums while recording it discontinuously.

Part of your duty as auction attendee will be to, sometimes somewhat absurdly, assign value to the works you bid on. The poets Divya Victor and Joey Yearous Algozin want you to know that they make a theoretical wage of $8.70/hour for teaching writing at a State University. The State does not pay the poets Divya Victor and Joey Yearous Algozin for making art.

At that rate, the retail value of their labor for making this art-object is $191.40. It takes four people to make this art-object. The dictating participants make a theoretical wage of $6.25 and $8.70/hour respectively for teaching writing at a State University. The State does not pay the dictating participants Joshua Lam and Holly Melgard for making art. At those rates, the retail value of their labor for making this art-object is $159.80. Thus, the total retail value at State wage-rates for this art object is $351.20.

Peruse other fabulous, exciting items on the official auction website!

Oct 13-15: &Now 2011

2011-10-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

&Now Festival of New Writing:
Tomorrowland Forever!

October 13-15, 2011
University of California at San Diego

Check out the full schedule here.
Free featured events here.

&NOW is a festival of fiction, poetry, and staged play readings; literary rituals, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects; and intergenre literary work of all kinds, including criti-fictional presentations and creatively critical papers. We particularly encourage pieces that promote linguistic and genre transgressions, along with literary artworks that promote interdisciplinary explorations and conversations with past, present, or future literary concerns and movements.

&NOW 2011: Tomorrowland Forever! is especially interested in literary artistic and literary critical works that circle ideas of innovation, experimentation, newness, and not-yetness; in futurisms of all kinds; in queries about progress, technology, market practices, and identity in relation to them; and in the possibilities of interrelationship between arts and other disciplines and engaged practices.

Both Sides and The Center in Jacket2

2011-09-24T01:44:00.000-07:00

From Bhanu Kapil's "Schizophrene [Remix]." Photo by Harold Abramowitz.

"This Movement Is Our Own" by Amarnath Ravva. Photo by Harold Abramowitz.

On "Both Sides and The Center"
a review of the festival, part one
by Andrea Quaid

Sept 24: Bad Date America

2011-09-17T12:06:00.001-07:00

Red Rover Series
{readings that play with reading}

Experiment #50:
Bad Date America

A special event with
100 Thousand Poets for Change

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24th
7-9pm

Featuring:
Kaveh Adel
Barbara Barg
Jen Besemer
Dan Godston
Laura Goldstein
Ruth Goring
Ezzat Goushegir
Kurt Heintz
Marcy Rae Henry
Philip Jenks
Jennifer Karmin
Francesco Levato
Toni Asante Lightfoot
Monica Long
Anthony Madrid
Mario
Ario Mashayekhi
Charlie Newman
Ladan Osman
Roger Reeves
Timothy David Rey
Kenyatta Rogers
Jacob Saenz
Larry Sawyer
Don Share
Keli Stewart
Tony Trigilio
Lina ramona Vitkauskas

at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, Illinois
suggested donation $4

logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible

BAD DATE AMERICA is the Chicago event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In the spirit of community-building, guest curators Larry Sawyer and Lina ramona Vitkauskas are asking local poets to go on a hypothetical “date” with America. Has your relationship with America started to seem like a bad date? Check out -- http://baddateamerica.wordpress.com

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is a global initiative of poetry readings, political demonstrations, community picnics, awareness events, and parades that will take place in 450 cities across the planet on September 24, 2011 to promote serious social, environmental, and political change. More at -- http://www.100tpc.org

MESS HALL is a Chicago-based experimental cultural center and collaborated with Red Rover Series on Bad Date America. Mess Hall is a place where visual art, radical politics, creative urban planning, applied ecological design and other things intersect and inform each other. They host exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, brunchlucks (brunch + potluck), workshops, concerts, campaigns, meetings (both closed and open) and more. See -- http://messhall.org

RED ROVER SERIES is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.

Erasure = 9/11 Commission Report

2011-09-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

In honor of all who lost their lives and loved ones as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks and in the two senseless wars perpetrated in response to that tragedy, Fact-Simile Editions would like to continue an annual tradition:

From this moment until September 18th, they are making The O Mission Repo by Travis Macdonald (an erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report) available for all to read free of charge.

Fact-Simile Editions hit print in 2006 and has been going strong ever since. They publish innovative works of poetry, prose, inter-genre monstrosities, and trading cards.

only 2 days left to submit!

2011-09-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

Announcing the first annual Les Figues Press NOS Book Contest— (NOS = not otherwise specified)

A prize of $1,000 and publication by Les Figues Press will be given for the winning poetry or prose manuscript. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum* will judge. Submit a manuscript of 64-250 pages with a $25.00 entry fee by September 9th, 2011. Electronic submissions only. All entrants will receive one copy of a Les Figues TrenchArt Series title of their choosing.

Eligible submissions include: poetry, novellas, prose poems, innovative novels, anti-novels, short story collections, lyric essays, hybrids, and all forms not otherwise specified.

Please note: The winning manuscript will be published in a design and format reflective of its content, i.e., it will not be part of the TrenchArt series, with its tall and slim format.

The winning manuscript will be announced in December 2011, with a fall 2012 publication date.

Manuscripts by current and past students of Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will not be considered.

For more information, please visit the Les Figues website.

Aug 27: Sophie Robinson & Nathanaël in Chicago

2011-08-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 27th
7pm at Myopic Books
1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago, Illinois

SOPHIE ROBINSON is a poet and performer living and working in London. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies, and her debut book, A, was published by Les Figues in 2009.

NATHANAËL’s books include We Press Ourselves Plainly, Carnet de délibérations, Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book) and The Sorrow and the Fast of It. Formerly published under the name Nathalie Stephens, Nathanaël has translated works by Catherine Mavrikakis, Gail Scott, John Keene, and Édouard Glissant. She lives in Chicago.

This weekend: don't miss

2011-08-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

BOTH SIDES AND THE CENTER

Join us for a weekend summer literary festival at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House on North Kings Road in West Hollywood, California. Inspired by the architecture of R.M. Schindler’s House and Studio (1922), Both Sides and The Center will feature literary readings and performances enacting various levels of proximity, intimacy, and distance.

MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House
835 North Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069-4509

Suggested donation: $7 each night (no one will be turned away)

Schedule of Events

Friday, 19 August 2011, 7-9 p.m.
Opening reading & reception.

Saturday, 20 August 2011, 5-9 p.m.
Open-house: Participating writers will perform work that considers Schindler’s architecture and the unique ways in which the house commingles inside and outside spaces. Consider: the physicality of space, house as stage, voyeurism, private as public, the strangeness in the familiar and the brutal nature of domesticity.

John Beer, Peripatetics
5:00; 6:00; 7:00; 8:00 (15-20 minutes)

Michael du Plessis, The Twitch of the Tablescape (A Comedy of Manners)
5:00–9:00 (duration)

Jen Hofer & Myriam Moscona, la casa por la ventana / past the open window
5:05 – 5:25; 6:06 – 6:26; 7:07 – 7:27; 8:08 – 8:28 (20 minutes)

Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene [Remix]
8:00-9:00 (1 hour)

Vanessa Place & Kim Rosenfield, SCUM 1976 (2011)
5:00-9:00 (duration)

Sophie Robinson, the institute of our love in disrepair
5:00-9:00 (duration)

Amarnath Ravva, This Movement is Our Own
5:00–9:00 (duration)

Anna Joy Springer, Inside Voice Oracle
5:30-7:00 (performance for 1-2, 2-10 minutes)

Both Sides and The Center takes it name from a line in Gertrude Stein’s “Rooms,” Tender Buttons. The event is curated by Amina Cain and Teresa Carmody, and is supported through a Cultural Resource Development Grant from the City of West Hollywood and by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

About the Participants:

John Beer: A Chicago resident, John Beer is the author of the poetry collection The Waste Land and Other Poems (2010). Associative and imaginative, his work has been compared to that of John Ashbery. Poet Lewis Warsh wrote that The Waste Land and Other Poems “embraces and distills ‘the bad dream’ and all ‘the muck’ of the recent past, but the momentum of this book is full speed ahead.” Beer’s criticism has appeared in Verse, the Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, and other magazines. He is a theater columnist for Time Out Chicago.

Michael du Plessis teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California, has published reviews and articles, a poetry chapbook, Songs Dead Soldiers Sing (2008, Transparent Tigers Press). His first novel, The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker, will be published by Les Figues in 2012.

Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. Her most recent books are the homemade chapbook Lead & Tether (Dusie Kollektiv, 2011); Ivory Black, a translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press, 2011); a series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2009); sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008); and lip wolf, a translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano (Action Books, 2007). Recent poems and translations have appeared in Aufgabe, Mandorla, Or, out of nothing, and TRY. She teaches at CalArts, Goddard College, and Otis College, and works nationally and locally as a social justice interpreter.

Bhanu Kapil is a British writer of Indian origin who lives now in Colorado, where she teaches at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Her most recent books of experimental writing are humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009) and Schizophrene (Nightboat Books, 2011).

Myriam Moscona is from Mexico, of Bulgarian Sephardic descent. She is the author of nine books, from Ultimo jardín (1983) to De par en par (2009). Two of her published books are outside the realm of poetry, yet remain connected to poetry: De frente y de perfil (literary portraits of 75 Mexican poets) and De par en par, which explores the phenomenon of poetry beyond its traditional construction. Moscona has received numerous awards, including the Premio de Poesía Aguascalientes and the Premio Nacional de Traducción; she is a grantee of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, and she was awarded a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Vanessa Place: Of Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman’s Notes on Conceptualisms, Mary Kelly said, “I learned more about the impact of conceptualism on artists and writers than I had from reading so-called canonical works on the subject.” Kenneth Goldsmith has called Vanessa Place’s work “arguably the most challenging, complex and controversial literature being written today.” Place writes poetry, prose and art criticism; she is also a criminal lawyer and co-director of Les Figues Press. Author of two novels, seven books of poetry, and a nonfiction book on rape, law and culture, Place’s most recent work is available in French as Exposé des Faits, in English as Statement of Facts, and in English/German as Die Dichtkunst.

Amarnath Ravva has a forthcoming chapbook Airline Music (Insert Press/Parrot Series) and was recently published in Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. He’s currently working on a book about early botanical expeditions called The Glass House.

Sophie Robinson’s work has been published in numerous anthologies including Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman, 2010), Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009) and The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008). Her first book, a, was published by Les Figues, Los Angeles, in 2009. She is currently completing a practice-based PhD in Contemporary Poetry and Sexuality, at Royal Holloway in London and is the 2011 Poet in Residence at the V&A.

Kim Rosenfield is a poet and psychotherapist. She is the author of Good Morning—Midnight— (Roof Books 2001), which was named Small Press Traffic’s Book of the Year in 2002, Tràma (Krupskaya 2004), and re: evolution (Les Figues Press 2009). Rosenfield has published and performed extensively in the U.S. and in Europe. She has collaborated with visual artists Jean Foos, Cheryl Donegan, Yedda Morrison, and with choreographer Sally Silvers. Rosenfield lives and works in New York City.

Anna Joy Springer is a prose writer and visual artist. Formerly a singer in the Bay Area bands, Blatz, The Gr’ups, and Cypher in the Snow, she has toured the United States and Europe as a wild feminist punk performer; she has also toured with the all-women spoken word extravaganza, Sister Spit. She is author of the illustrated novella The Birdwisher (Birds of Lace), The Vicious Red Relic, Love (Jaded Ibis, 2011) and a graphic narrative, In An Egg, forthcoming. She received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2002, and she is an Assistant Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego.

About the R.M. Schindler and MAK Center Schindler House: R.M. Schindler (1887-1953) was born in Vienna, where he studied under architects Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1910 Wasmuth portfolio, he came to Chicago in 1914 and began to work for Wright in 1918. Wright sent him to Los Angeles in 1920 to supervise the construction of the Hollyhock House for Aline Barnsdall. Schindler established his practice there in 1922 with his own Kings Road House — a house designed as live-work space for two couples with a shared kitchen and an apartment for guests. Schindler’s work focused on the integration of interior space and exterior space using complex interlocking volumes and strongly articulated sections. He designed over 400 projects, 150 of which were built during his career. These consisted largely of low-cost single family houses for progressive clients. Although the materials and vocabulary of Schindler’s work changed during the span of his career, his principles of design and spatial characteristics were consistent throughout his work. This is true even as his spatial ideas evolved in his late work, including the translucent houses of the mid-1940s to early-1950s. —Kathryn Smith, architecture historian and author of Schindler House

BLOGFACE WINNER: Angela Genusa!!

2011-08-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, Angela!

We'd also like to thank everyone who participated in this contest and submitted their beautiful blogfaces! We hope that you enjoyed this process and will continue to check out Belladona*, Bone Bouquet, Futurepoem, Les Figues, Tarpaulin Sky, and their blogs, as well as all of the other wonderful small presses out there!

BLOGFACE: Sandra Simonds

2011-08-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

Sandra Simonds reading GIVE A FIG (Les Figues Press), taken at 4pm, August 16th at Goodwill while trying on a dress

BLOGFACE: JSA Lowe

2011-08-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

JSA Lowe reading the Tarpaulin Sky blog, taken August 11th, 11 pm CDT

BLOGFACE: Joey Yearous-Algozin

2011-08-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Joey Yearous-Algozin as Shiv Kotecha reading GIVE A FIG (Les Figues), taken August 8th, 5:54 pm EST

BLOGFACE: Divya Victor & Murphy the Cat

2011-08-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

Divya Victor as Sigmund Freud holding Murphy the cat as Dora and Dora as the other Dora while reading GIVE A FIG (Les Figues), taken Monday, August 8th, 8:05 pm EST

BLOGFACE: Lauren Eggert-Crowe

2011-08-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

Lauren Eggert-Crowe reading GIVE A FIG (Les Figues), taken August 6th, 1:55 pm EST

BLOGFACE: Angela Genusa

2011-08-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

Angela Genusa reading GIVE A FIG (Les Figues Press), Aug. 5th, 12:19 AM

BLOGFACE: Nancy Lili

2011-08-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Nancy Lili reading GIVE A FIG (the Les Figues Press blog), taken Aug. 4th, around 8:30 AM

BLOGFACE: Ana Božičević

2011-08-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Ana Bozicevic reading the Belladonna* blog. Taken August 3rd, Amy King's birthday.

BLOGFACE: Harold Abramowitz

2011-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Harold Abramowitz reading Bone Bouquet, Tuesday, August 2nd, 9:03pm

BLOGFACE: Mary Corey & Teresa

2011-08-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Teresa Carmody reading Futurepost to Mary Corey Carmody

BLOGFACE: First Two Weeks of August 2011 CONTEST!

2011-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

SUBMISSIONS NOW CLOSED

What’s your blogface?

For TWO WEEKS ONLY (August 1st-15th), Les Figues Press’ GIVE A FIG blog is posting YOUR blogfaces! Submit a photo of YOU reading one of the blogs listed below, and be entered to win a set of specially chosen books (see below!) submitted from the following presses with blogs:

PARTICIPATING PRESSES/BLOGS

Belladonna*

Bone Bouquet

Futurepoem

Les Figues Press

Tarpaulin Sky Press

HOW TO SUBMIT

Take a photo of yourself reading one of the blogs of the presses mentioned above (click the links above to access their blogs)
Send that photo to giveafig[at]gmail[dot]com with “BLOGFACE” in the subject line
In the body of the email include your name, the time the photo was taken, and the name of the blog you’re reading

We'll feature your photos on our blog until August 16th, when one winner will be picked at random!

PRIZES

Belladonna*:

THE WIDE ROAD

Lyn Hejinian and Carla Harryman

“This book is important to me on a personal level because it was the first title I helped prepare for publication as part of the Belladonna* Collaborative. It's a wild and radical book and as I read the last draft before we sent it to the printer, I was starting a new phase of my own life. We decided to issue two covers in the spirit of collaboration, and simultaneously I was getting to know Rachel Levitsky, Belladonna*'s founder, better as well through our own collaboration.”— Krystal Languell, Collaborative Member of Belladonna* and Founding Editor of Bone Bouquet

Bone Bouquet:

ISSUE 1

“I started this magazine as I was finishing my MFA at New Mexico State University, while my tenure as an editor for Puerto del Sol was coming to a close. The magazine's mission is to promote the work of female-identified poets and writers in the face of a masculinist publishing culture.”—Krystal Languell

Futurepoem:

SHERWOOD FOREST

Camille Roy

“Each month, Futurepost features four intimately different responses to a Futurepoem book. We pick the people and they pick the form of their response. So far our responses have come in the form of sound art, graphic representations, bibliographical indices, epistolary romances, manifestos, and every variety of poem. This month we're featuring Camille Roy's Sherwood Forest, a book of poetry that our first responder Betsy Fagin calls, ‘an investigative journey through an urban landscape of menace in which the passively observed turns active, engaged and participatory.’ Each response is a different portal through which to enter Sherwood Forest. Step inside!”—Christopher Martin, Futurepoem books editor and Futrepost blog curator

Les Figues:

THE NEW POETICS

Mathew Timmons

"I'm so excited to feature
Mathew Timmons’ The New Poetics. Here's an excerpt from the description on our site: '
A cross-referenced encyclopedia of all things New, Mathew Timmons’ The New Poetics challenges the prevailing obsession with the emergent and the reinvented by remaking The New itself in the image of the banal.' A book birthed from the internet, The New Poetics bridges the gap between the worlds of pop culture, between the HTML and the physical."
—Chris Hershey-Van Horn, PR Intern at Les Figues Press and BLOGFACE Contest Curator

Tarpaulin Sky:

ENTRANCE TO A COLONIAL PAGEANT IN WHICH WE ALL BEGIN TO INTRICATE

Johannes Göransson

“I chose Johannes Göransson’s book because LSU Student James Bellard was arrested after reading Johannes's book and writing (as assigned by his professor) an "imitation" poem. Bellard accidentally left a copy of said poem in the LSU library. Also, he was dressed as a leprechaun at the time. I’m sending this book because I hope that more people will read it and imitate it and be arrested. If everyone is arrested, we’ll have enough people to take over all the prisons. When we free ourselves, we can also free the current 66% of inmates who are non-violent offenders and thus shouldn’t be in prison anyway. I’m sending this book because I am sick to fucking death of all our country’s cruel systems. The absurd and unremitting violence of Johannes’ book is comfort and companionship during these dark days.”—Christian Peet, Founder and Editor in-Chief of Tarpaulin Sky

Show us your BLOGFACE!

Featured Fig: Jennifer Calkins

2011-08-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

1. Tell us a little bit about your aesthetic inclinations?

Like the best ornithological taxonomists, of which I’m not, I’m a splitter—when I write, I find myself breaking into what I’ve already written—maybe second guessing it, maybe just throwing something next to it that sheds some different sort of light on it. My ultimate goal is some sort of dimensionality to the work in the way that setting up a decent house of cards requires undercutting and opposition.

Essentially, I do not believe language can ever be truthful on its own. It needs space and opposition for something real to emerge. “Literary” work that doesn’t recognize this seems to me problematic.

2. Where did you come from and are you happy that you're no longer there?

I came from San Diego; and I come from a line of folks on either side that headed out to California in the late 19^th/early 20^th centuries. I am both happy and not happy. I have to say, the quail, the desert and the ocean are three big reasons I am not glad I’m no longer there.

3. What does your work demand? What does it offer?

My work demands that the reader bloody well relax and let the work do what it needs to do. It offers, I hope, a space of fusion—the fantastic, perhaps, but also the biological and the historical. It also often offers quail.

4. Where do you do what you do?

Wherever I can—I don’t have much choice right now though I’d rather be doing it in the ocean or in Mexico surrounded by quail.

5. If push came to shove...

I get out my hammer

6. Please tell us about beauty, belief or bawdry. You may begin.

Isn’t beauty why we war? Or is that too simple? I suppose we war because of pettiness and power. Beauty is in the vast time of the earth and the 4.5 billion years life has been evolving on her. Beauty is also dirty dishes in a certain light and certain writings and my children, of course. Belief is everything but is an especial challenge for me. That is why I need to spend time with the quail—that is where my belief comes back. Bawdry is what is inside but is tamped down in the presence of other.

7. As Gertrude Stein says "let us why why." Please proceed.

I am wearing a green ribbon around my neck for luck. I appreciate the color green as I appreciate the fact that sleep has overtaken us and the gentle lift of the water under a boat or under my body. If I were green I might not appreciate it. But I am not. Currently.

8. What does art do to you?

Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka said it best—I cannot do any better.

9. Who (or what) do you admire?

PJ Harvey (I’m currently obsessed with her new album), quail, the movie Ghost Bird, Emily Dickinson’s work and Susan Howe’s My Emily Dickinson, my kids, people who are generous—honestly, this could go on and on…Two relatively recent non-figgy books—Julie Carr’s 100 Notes on Violence and Maggie Nelson’s Women, The New York School and Other Abstractions. And of course—all the figs.

10. What is a good question? What questions do you ask?

What the fuck? Honestly, it is a good question.

Some of my specific questions

What are the behavioral differences between Callipepla quail species?
What does it mean that the participants in WWI are pretty much dead? Were the young men who fought DOA home no matter whether they survived or not? Is it true or am I naïve—does the person who was in the battle die there and, if he/she survives, walk out of the valley or the plain a person separate from that other person?
What does California mean?
Is it possible for writing and art to embody another species? Is it useful? Is it necessary?

11.What do you find deeply satisfying?

Field work with quail, yoga and running a trail, discussions of the darkest humor with my children, writing—being completely entered into to a piece of writing, using curled up cats as pillows, lifting chickens.

12. What are your favorite kinds of figs?

Every kind (even the ones with little wasps inside)

JENNIFER CALKINS is an evolutionary biologist, poet and mother. She lives in Seattle with her family and other animals. Her book, A Story of Witchery, was published by Les Figues Press. You can visit her at her website.

The Empty Globe Aug 6: Colin Dickey, David Emanuel, and Cheryl Klein

2011-07-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

at Pieter (Lincoln Heights) 8 P.M.
420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10 Los Angeles, CA 90031
*please park on the street, and not in the lot

$5 donation

Colin Dickey is the author of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, and co-editor (with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst) of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Lapham’s Quarterly, Cabinet, and TriQuarterly. He’s a distinguished alumnus of his elementary school.

David Emanuel has collaborated with artists to make performance installations, zines, and occasional artifacts. His writing, both critical and creative, has appeared online and in print in How2, Court Green, and With + Stand. He currently lives in Providence, RI where he is a graduate student in the Literary Arts program at Brown University.

Cheryl Klein is the author of Lilac Mines (Manic D Press) and The Commuters, which won City Works Press’ Ben Reitman Award. She recently received a grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation to complete a novel about wayward circus performers. Her fiction has appeared in The Normal School, Other, and several anthologies. She directs the California office of Poets & Writers, Inc. by day and blogs about life, art and carbohydrates at breadandbread.blogspot.com.

July 29: Printers' Ball

2011-07-27T15:23:00.001-07:00


7th Annual Printers’ Ball: IT’S ALIVE! Friday, July 29th 6-11pm at The Ludington Building Columbia College Chicago 1104 S. Wabash Ave -- Chicago, IL FREE for all ages The Printers' Ball celebrates literary culture by offering thousands of magazines, books, and broadsides free of charge; showcasing live music, readings, and performances; demonstrating letterpress, offset, and silk-screen printing and paper-making; and providing other activities, entertainment, food, and drink — all free! Features include: * Poetry reading by David Berman. * “Reading Experiment in Progress”: An interactive performance and mini-reading of Jennifer Karmin’s text-sound epic Aaaaaaaaaaalice. * A short animated preview of the novel Ghosts by César Aira; animation by Susie Kirkwood and Jill Summers, original score by Daniel Knox. * Where a Blade Becomes Horizon by Simone Muench. Muench’s poem-film, or cinematic poem, uses juxtaposed footage of numerous horror films superimposed with a patchwork of various poetic texts and music. * What do you Believe?" An installation of real life monster encounters by illustrator Marika Paz and researcher Patrick Summers. * Salsa music by An Ebirac Project featuring Willie Gomez, with poet Luis Tubens. * Busted Books: The Great Soaking. Performance by Davis Schneiderman. * Next Objectivists: Transcriptions. From behind typewriters, they'll transcribe the thoughts and worst fears of Chicagoans. * Larger-than-life-size Ouija Board by Chicago Underground Library. Guests are invited to contact the spirits of larger-than-life authors using their larger-than-life Oujia Board. * The Whitechapel Club by Pocket Guide to Hell. Taking its name from Jack the Ripper's London haunt, the Whitechapel Club was a Chicago press club in the 1890s that gathered together world-weary Chicago journalists for drinking, singing, storytelling, and general carousing. * The World As Text, a summer reading room and exhibition crafted out of re-purposed furniture. * Live video collage by Judgeworks. * Knee-Jerkmagazine’s Inner Literary Monsters. * Frankenzine by Chicago Zine Fest. The Printers' Ball is presented by the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine with the Center for Book & Paper Arts, the Chicago Underground Library, Columbia College Chicago, and MAKE.

The Empty Globe/July 16: Saehee Cho, Last Nights of Paris, and Margaret Wappler

2011-07-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

at Pieter (Lincoln Heights)
420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10 Los Angeles, CA 90031
*please park on the street, and not in the lot

$5 donation

Saehee Cho holds an MFA in Writing from The California Institute of The Arts. Her work has been featured in Sidebrow, decomP, BAP, PANK and Out of Nothing. She lives in Los Angeles.

Last Nights of Paris, named after a novel of mad love & mystery by surrealist author Philippe Soupault, is the sound project of Los Angeles resident David Eng. David is currently involved with Machine Project & Betalevel in addition to performing with Ambient Force 3000 & synth/drums duo Crime Wave.

Margaret Wappler writes for the Los Angeles Times about arts and culture, and has been published in Black Clock, The Believer, Joyland, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone and the upcoming debut issue of Public Fiction. She read from her novel-in-progress at the Hammer Museum earlier this year with Ann Beattie, and also presented at the EMP Pop Music Conference at UCLA. She is finishing a novel that explores environmentalism, the suburban landscape, and alien spaceships.

Featured Fig: Paul Hoover

2011-07-01T10:00:00.001-07:00

1. Tell us a little bit about your aesthetic inclinations?

Romantic irony is my inclination (Wallace Stevens more than John Ashbery), with Oulipian tendencies. This can be seen in my Sonnet 56, sincerity tempered with humor. I love the poetry of César Vallejo and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. I’m also fond of the metaphysical: Emily Dickinson, George Herbert, and Thomas Traherne. Stevie Smith’s poem “Pretty” is amazing to me.

2. Where did you come from and are you happy that you’re no longer there?

I was born in Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and raised in the rural and small-town Midwest by a children’s author from Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and a Church of the Brethren minister from Maryland. Our church was related to the Amish and Mennonites, and we were southern by accent and culture. No world or family connection remains for me in the places I lived before moving to Chicago in 1968, such as Girard, Illinois, and Danville, Ohio.

3. What does your work demand? What does it offer?

Someone told me that my work contains “difficulties,” but I see it as utterly precise and transparent. If I had to offer only one of my poems, it would be “The Mill” from Poems in Spanish. My favorite poems in Sonnet 56 are “Villanelle,” “Ballad,” and “Course Description.” Another recent book, Edge and Fold, contains two long serial poems that are serious and lyrical in tone; so does a forthcoming book, Desolation : Souvenir. At the same time, playfulness and a quick turning of the thought has always been a feature of my writing. Ashbery’s lines from “Paradoxes and Oxymorons” ring true for me: “Play? / Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be a deeper outside thing.”

4. Where do you what you do?

I live in Mill Valley, California, but also spend a lot of time in the Coyoacán area of Mexico City.

5. If push came to shove…

In the social realm, I would push rather than shove and hope for the same in return. Pushing can at least be seen as encouragement. The tropes of pushing and shoving, as identities with a slight difference, model an area of consciousness that is active in my work. I like the self-cancelling gesture, the near-miss, the double strike, the palimpsest, and one hand writing what the other erases.

6. Please tell us about beauty, belief or bawdry. You may begin . . .

Wallace Stevens wrote that every poet must be something of a peasant; Frank O’Hara spokes of “evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” The limit of bawdry (earth) in the poem is also its limit of beauty. Better to be “the lion in the lute” than “the lion locked in stone.” (“The Man with the Blue Guitar,” xix)

7. As Gertrude Stein says “let us why why.” Please proceed.

Perhaps Stein was saying, “Why ask why?” There’s no point in asking people why they behave as they do, such as carry a butcher knife under the driver’s seat to insure a safe journey home. Likewise it’s pointless to ask ourselves, “Why write?” or “Why do I write as I do?” I love to read statements of poetics. It’s one of my favorite writing genres, but much of it is contradictory wish fulfillment, like Eliot’s insistence on the impersonality of poetry in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,”1919. Three years later, he wrote “The Waste Land,” which contained references to his wife Vivian (“My nerves are bad tonight”), his seduction of her, or her of him, in a narrow canoe, and his nervous breakdown and hospitalization in two locations, on “Margate Sands” and the banks of Lake Geneva: “By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept.”

The “why” of writing can cause it to move laboriously from one predetermined point to another. Proceduralism and Oulipo are attractive to me because their “why” is playful and encourages swerving.

8. What does art do to you?

(1) It makes me want to name all my children Rainer Maria. (2) It makes me feel, as an artist, superior to ordinary people. (3) It has made me into a more deeply satisfying sexual partner. (4) It allows me to gaze upon the Pacific “with a wild surmise.” (5) It allows me to identify equally with Fay Wray and the great ape who desires her.

9. Who (or what) do you admire?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eye lashes

10. What is a good question? What questions do you ask?

I try not to ask many questions. I’m a got-all-the-answers, ham sandwich kind of guy.

11. What do you find deeply satisfying?

A moonlight fisting, old-vine zin, a path of crushed goslings, turtles you can fling.

12. What are your favorite kinds of figs?

Les Figues, of course!

PAUL HOOVER is the author of eleven books of poetry including Sonnet 56 (2010), Edge and Fold (2006), Poems in Spanish (2005), which was nominated for the Bay Area Book Award; Winter (Mirror) (2002); Rehearsal in Black (2001); Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems (1999); Viridian (1997); and The Novel: A Poem (1990). He is editor of the anthology Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994) and, with Maxine Chernoff, the annual literary magazine New American Writing. His collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation, was published in the Poets on Poetry series of University of Michigan Press in 2004. He teaches at San Francisco State University. Check out his Poetry Blog

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #9

2011-06-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

The provenance of this work was written during a collaborative writing session at LACE on 30 January 2011. Writers include: Amanda Ackerman, Harold Abramowitz, Kate Durbin, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and Teresa Carmody. Event writer collaborators: Aimee Bender, Allison Carter, Mark Z. Danielewski, Carribean Fragoza, Veronica Gonzalez, Janice Lee, Harryette Mullen, Janet Sarbanes, Anna Joy Springer, and Stephen Van Dyck.

It is unclear at what point the work passed from Applegate into the hands of American rock musician and songwriter Wolf Temple, but selections from Temple’s diaries, recently published by Akashic Books, indicate that by 1982 he considered himself its rightful owner.

From MY DIARY:

THE WORK is now in my possession. The question occurs to me, of course. What a waste. Or, rather, why waste? Why the waste, at first? And then why the waste later? It occurs to me that it is all waste. It is all waste. I have wasted my life, but have now obtained THE WORK. I must explain. Or must I explain? It must be explained that I am in love with a certain feeling I get. I wake up in the morning and I am very happy. I was happy this morning. I woke up in a very particular way. And then I think of THE WORK. The ways I view THE WORK. Or, more importantly, perhaps, how THE WORK came into my possession. I am dreaming of living a good life. It is the life I have always desired to lead. I am leading strange and wonderful existences. Or if I have to get out of bed in the morning. I find that I am filled with leisure and the color of the other works in the room makes me feel good. But this is how I know what I know. I wonder what on earth could have happened before. I am in trouble. It is that sort of day. All of my communications have been bad. I don’t do what I used to do. I am out of the woods. I live in the woods and it is dark. But that is only when I am on vacation. I wanted to live in a room and look at beautiful objects. I wanted to say to them that I was on earth for a purpose. But then I belong. I long for the rope. I long to put the rope around my neck. It is 1982, but I have gotten ahead of myself and away from the things I wanted to talk about up to this point. I was waiting for THE WORK to arrive. I was always in such a rush. But that was then. I have to remember that it is 1982. I love that it is 1982. Why such a year? What things can possibly occur. But I will have to wait to explain that. I will have to open and close my heart. I will have to carry my eyes. I am in love with color and with other opportunities. I have obtained THE WORK to this point. I am a caretaker of THE WORK. The way I look when I get up in the morning. And how things have changed. There is a bit of music in the room. I am looking now different. I am older. Things have changed. You have chased me. I have not chased you. But the ways we live. The manner of things. How I have gotten what I wanted. What I would say to future generations is something I think I say all the time. Something I say when I am not thinking at all about it. But there used to be a clock. And there used to be time. THE WORK was stolen once, I think. I think about how things are stolen. I think about the ways in which I take what I need and don’t take what I don’t need. I was using my microwave oven just the other night. It is not often that I indulge myself in thinking about such things. But, as I have said, things have changed. The time is different. This is not yesterday, after all. It is right now. I was going to hang my hat on a stick and then tell the whole world what I thought. I was sitting in a chair and I was wondering what I would do now. Next. I meant to say next. What would I do next? I was wondering that. And then I realized that THE WORK was in my possession. I have obtained THE WORK. This is what I realize. And then and now. And in the middle of the night I wake up and I wonder what it would mean if things were otherwise. A wall or two or ten. And I think about crates. And the way I have to unpack things. It is morning and I am writing in my diary. It is 1982. And I have just obtained the work. I have a picture on my wall. I have a list too. I have a list of all of the things I expect to do. But this does not become you. It does not become you just because you let it be. I can sit here I think, and I can feel all of what I feel. I can tell my diary about everything. There is some much more I can say. I want to sit here all day, but I am concerned. And I am red. And I am establishing all sorts of things. I live by myself. I have very many possessions. I have a tree. I have slow days, and then I have better days. I am on top of the world and then I fall down. It is the rejection I feel the most. However, nothing bothers me. At least. The least of which I can say is that it is today.

I Heart Woodland Pattern!

2011-06-26T22:12:00.000-07:00

Woodland Pattern Book Center was founded as a non-profit organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Riverwest neighborhood by Anne Kingsbury and Karl Gartung in 1979. The center houses a bookstore with over 25,000 small press titles, in addition to an art gallery where they present exhibitions, artist talks, readings, experimental films, concerts, and writing workshops.

Due to the state budget cuts in Wisconsin, Woodland Pattern needs to raise an additional $48,500 in less than seven months. This means that NOW is an excellent time to visit, shop, and make a donation. Racine, Wisconsin poet Nick Demske has outlined some inspirational ideas here.

Tired of seeing arts funding getting cut in your state? Here are some talking points for your legislators:

The arts are central to healthy communities.
• Stimulate economic and community development.
• Educate our children to succeed in school and beyond.
• Beautify our neighborhoods.
• Attract tourists and out-of-town visitors.
• Make our cities and towns attractive and vibrant places to live and work.
• Provide important social and creative outlets for all residents, including seniors, those with disabilities, children and adults.
• Bring people of diverse backgrounds together in productive and cooperative ways.
• People who are involved in the arts are also more civically engaged, they volunteer and they vote.

The arts build and sustain prosperity.
• Cities thrive, grow, attract and retain businesses when the arts are supported.
• Arts and creativity education is proven to keep students in school, increase high school graduation rates and prepare students for college and for the careers of the 21st century.
• The new economy (insert your economic system here) requires a workforce that will be highly disciplined, collaborative, innovative, imaginative, creative and focused. These are the traits the arts teach.

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #8

2011-06-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

At this point the work moved into a rather murky stage of its long journey to Los Angeles. In 1974, an explosion in the gas main at the Musée D’Accord resulted in considerable damage to the neoclassical structure, and with great reluctance the museum’s trustees decided to sell off some of its holdings in order to pay for the extensive repairs. Thus the work entered the private collection of British music producer Ian Applegate.

The work is the third item in an inventory of Ian Applegate’s artworks housed on his estate near Burnham-on-Crouch in southeast England. Applegate had achieved some notoriety as the producer for the first two albums by platinum-selling hard rock artist Wolf Temple. Having purchased his country estate at the end of 1973, Applegate then went about assembling a suitably distinguished art collection. The work was an early acquisition, bought at auction for £9500 on the suggestion of his spiritual advisor, Mara Nooney, who believed that the work was originally commissioned by the descendant of one of Applegate’s past selves. The work was displayed in what had once been the estate’s conservatory, and incurred some minor sun damage while in Applegate’s possession.

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #7

2011-06-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

In 1961, the work momentarily disappeared for a 24-hour period, to the great dismay of the French authorities, who feared a heist or sabotage (or both a heist and sabotage). It had been loaned to the Minneapolis Biennial for an exhibition entitled New Realists/Old Fantasists, which paired works of what would soon come to be called Pop Art (by artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton) with older works seen as historical precursors or provocation. The Minneapolis police were called in to investigate, but were slow to take action in the case. Indeed, the head investigator was quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune the following morning as saying, "You mean they made this kind of junk back then too?" Luckily, the drunken songs of the pavilion's night watchman alerted the Biennial staff to the work's whereabouts later that evening. They found him in the supply closet with the work balanced on his knees, fondling it and singing, inexplicably, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor." The work was promptly restored to the curators at the Musée D’Accord, who blamed the surrounding Pop paintings and sculptures (though not the work itself), for the watchman's apparent mental breakdown, and declined to press charges.

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #6

2011-06-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps emboldened by the work’s disappearance during the war, and unaware of its ongoing reassembly at the Musée D’Accord in Paris, a young Italian actress, Anna Maria Massetani, gave an interview in March 1953 to the BBC World Service in which she claimed to be in possession of the work, and announced her intentions to sell it.

My great uncle was a painter. His paintings, some of them, hung in our living room, the living room we never used — a formal area of the house which we seldom entered. The real “living” room, of course, was a different, much smaller room, furnished in lighter tones, not the weighty dark furnishings of the room with the paintings. The paintings, by the time I was fifteen I knew, for I had been repeatedly told, were of my great grandparents, my grandmother’s and great uncle’s parents, one of them on each wall. They were dark colored paintings, with eyes which followed you as you moved about the room. They were terrifying, those paintings, and I avoided entering that space as much as I could. When my grandmother grew ill, in 1950, three years ago, my aunts and uncles began fighting over her belongings. My mother went through her closet one day, when no one else was at home. There was a section of it in which she found eight or nine further canvases — all rolled up — and when she opened them up she recognized some of the people in them, including my grandmother’s sister who had died when she was twelve and my great uncle was barely ten. The girl had been my great uncle’s twin. The paintings were all signed by my great uncle, and so were dear to my mother, though nearly valueless. Still, she decided to take and hide two of them away, including the one of the twin. As she was making her way out of the closet she tripped over the work, and as she bent to right it found the letter Nigel Van Eyck had written my great uncle. It was a love letter. He and my uncle had had a prolonged affair, and the letter, along with the work had been, it seems, hidden away by my grandmother who was protective of my great uncle’s privacy. I have the letter here. I have the object; my great uncle is long since dead. There is no one to protect. My grandmother has just passed away and we, her descendants, have decided to split the value of the work through its sale, while also making public, finally, our great uncle’s affair.

Massetani’s claims to ownership were never substantiated, and she soon changed her name to Lea Massari and began pursuing her film acting career in earnest. She went on to become famous in art cinema circles as the missing girl Anna in Michelangelo Antonioni's “L'avventura” (1960), and as the mother of a sexually precocious 14-year-old boy in Louis Malle's “Le Souffle au Coeur”(1971). Meanwhile, at the Musée D’Accord, the painstaking restoration was finally completed.

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #5

2011-06-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

In the early 1930’s, despondent after a series of miscarriages and the early, unexpected death of her husband Edward, Alice Adams began making frequent trips to Austria, where she received treatment at Alfred Adler’s clinic in Vienna. Adler was an early follower of Freud who had broken away from the psychoanalytic movement to establish his Society of Individual Psychology. Intrigued by Adams’ account of the recurring role of the work in her dreams, Adler asked to see the object and Adams agreed, bringing it with her to Vienna at considerable expense in the fall of 1932. In a letter to her mother, she remarked on how incongruous the work looked in Adler’s consulting rooms. Before she was able to return the work to Chicago, however, the Nazis took control of Germany, and Adler’s Austrian clinics were soon closed due to his Jewish heritage, despite the fact that he had converted to Christianity. Adler hastily left Austria for a professorship at the Long Island College of Medicine in New York, and Adams ceased her visits to Vienna.

The exact whereabouts of the work then remained unknown for over a decade, until it resurfaced in the aftermath of World War II.

At the end of the war, the work, which had been disassembled and its constituent parts divided among various Nazi plunderers, was reconstituted by a corps of art experts recruited by the Allied forces. This process of finding and re-assembling the work took several years as the gang of war criminals first had to be hunted and tracked to their various hiding places all over the world. This involved an international team of freelance agents specializing in the kind of secret operation that can be managed without the express orders of government officials. Then each art thief had to be bribed, threatened, or tortured to reveal the location of his or her respective piece of the dismantled art work. Eventually, the work was rounded up and pieced together like a marvelous jig-saw puzzle at the Musée D’Accord with the assistance of well-trained art restorers under the supervision of Professor Bricolage, who exclaimed, “I feel as Isis must have felt when she re-assembled the dismembered body of Osiris.”

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #4

2011-06-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Sidebar: Literary Impact of the Work

Alice Adams was a prominent philanthropist and patron of the arts; her home in Chicago served as a Midwestern salon for important artists, writers, and intellectuals of the time. The work was thus seen, presumably, by the many influential thinkers who passed through her home. Among her guests were Katherine Anne Porter and Raymond Chandler, whose respective biographers have noted the presence of the work in their writings.

Porter was apparently thinking of the work in these early sketches from 1931 of the story that would eventually become “Hacienda,” published in 1934.

A little stone trinket dug out of the mud at the edge of the river. Its tiny jade eyes sparkling through the black wet earth. Such a tiny trinket she could hide it easily, clutch in the palm of her hand when she walked to church on Sundays, she could slip it quietly into her cleavage, still not quite a “cleavage,” but rather a large valley between her budding breast mounds. Between the breasts, a place for secrets and valuables. Some coins to pay for the coffee, a letter slipped into a sweaty hand by the boy down the way. It would’ve been a good place maybe for the item, but she liked to feel its dark stone edges, carved little teeth and nostrils flaring. She fingered them quietly in her grip. The work had come into her possession the way so many ancient clay whistles or arrowheads had, as if waiting to speak to her about something from long ago that was not only lost with time, but deliberately smashed and buried right back into the earth.

She kneeled at the river outside the hacienda, ready to wash it over the smoothed rocks.

This girl, Lourdes, lived near a demolished hacienda, burnt to the ground. Her family had set fire to the bushels of corn they had themselves grown. They captured the hacendados, gave themselves permission to hang every single member of that family. The hacendado, the wife, the children. Lourdes saw it. Didn’t ask questions. This was post-revolution central Mexico. The ashes, years buried in the ground still blackened the earth.

Lourdes was not allowed to keep anything, leave everything where it belongs, buried in the ground. Let it rot, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to the ghosts and the worms.

But the work, half buried in the mud; its tiny body so precisely cut was too fine, its little eyes and laughing tongue. What a wonderful secret to sweat into the palm of the hand. What a wonderful scratch on the chin with its granite paw. Talk to the little work, such a wise and funny little creature. Laugh with it because it’s so delicious to laugh with it alone in the fields away from everyone. What a sweet thing to keep, such a thing that is not to be kept. To own the ghost and own the worms, withhold death and withhold forgetting. What a mouth! It should not be forgotten! What a laughing to be found at the river. A loud loud laugh drowned out by the waters also laughing. What a stirring thing to pray with this work between her palms. Without knowing how it got there: so many things plundered, so many things haunting from the earth, it didn’t matter.

The work also makes a brief yet pivotal appearance in Raymond Chandler’s supernatural story “The Bronze Door,” his attempt to move beyond the hard-boiled detective stories he had been publishing for nearly a decade in the pulps. “The Bronze Door” was published in November of 1939 in Unknown magazine:

Doctor Harry Lewis left his office at 7:48 P.M. On his way home, he stopped by a Chinese medicine shop to pick up his daughter's prescription. His daughter, Henrietta, was prone to bouts of anger, rage, strange dreams at night that kept her awake, and stories she would whisper into her father's ear, her father who couldn't really listen, a man of practicality, rationality, believing only what he could see and all too ready to give his daughter away to the label of yet another hysteric girl lost to the night. Mrs. Yenwui Wu had something in addition to the prescription that night, a strange box to which was affixed a sealed white envelope. "Open the envelope, but not the box," she instructed, and before he could ask anything in response, she dismissed herself behind the red curtains, and even Dr. Lewis knew better then to follow her.

When he arrived home, 207 East Antin Street in Leeds, he crept into his office, softly closing the door behind him. If he was heard, he knew Ms. Duchaney, the caretaker, would insist on giving him a day's report, something he both feared and detested. He opened the envelope, pulling out the letter inside.

Dear Dr. Lewis,

The box which you currently have in your possession contains a very special object. Under any circumstances, do not open the box yourself.

Hide the box in a safe place, and on your daughter's sixteenth birthday, give this to her as a gift. Tell her it is from you. Ask her to open it in your absence.

Follow these instructions exactly and you will not hear from me again.

Sincerely,

A friend

Dr. Lewis was a rational man, and under most circumstances would have regarded such a letter as hodgepodge. He was though, today, in a strange mood, it had started to rain outside, and the letter gripped him with something he had not felt in a very long time.

As far as we know, he followed the instructions exactly. The following is a small portion of the diary entry written by Henrietta on her sixteenth birthday, exactly one year after the doctor received the strange package. Most of the diary was destroyed in a fire, seven months later. Only the following portion remained.

Today I received a strange package from my father. He thrust it upon me as if he was happy to be rid of it, but when I placed my two hands upon it, felt a slight hesitation as he slowly loosened his grip and let me have the "gift." The box was dusty, and I opened it slowly. Inside, I found THE WORK, a strange object, and I felt the same horror creeping up behind as I felt in my dreams at night, the dark ones lurking behind the shadows, waiting for me to close my eyes, in the dream, so that they could approach. I stared at it, and was mesmerized by the horror seizing my throat. My father found me at suppertime still staring into the box. He didn't say a word, but forced the box out of my hands. I never saw THE WORK again.

Explanation as Composition: Provenance #3

2011-06-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

In 1922, the work came into the possession of Alice Lyle Adams of Chicago, the former fiancée of Bradney Right. According to the notes of a private investigator retained by Adams:

The work was wrapped lavishly and given as an engagement gift. When the engagement was called off (by her) she refused to return the work, which he claimed to have given her “in good faith.” She displayed it in the foyer of the three-story 1895 mansion she shared with her new husband, a lawyer. On occasion, the work’s former owner would stroll past the house, even though his own home was on the other side of town, in order to look in the window at the work. One afternoon in particular he stood outside for close to an hour, when the light struck the work most intensely, and he gazed at the work with an expression upon his face that had a peculiar quality to it — not quite sadness or devotion, but something in between. That was the last time he visited the work.