Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

“This is not the quiet tap of civilized literature; this is the loud raw truth of life.”
– Valentine Pierce

You thought I was going to forget to post, didn’t you. Sure you did. Hey, I’ve hardly posted anything but this listing for weeks but life has been busy, too busy for July in this city where you can almost see the swells passing through the humid air. The Counting House doubles as the Mad House, my mother is getting better but the last few weeks have been a nasty combination of roller coaster and carney fun house and I can feel the chilli dogs rising in my gorge at every twist and turn.

And just because You Can Never Have Too Much Fun I’ve been working with Sam Jasper on a book project. The announcement goes out this weekend so I won’t go into too much detail until next week. Just keep the night of Thursday, Aug. 26. It’s an exciting concept. People who have read the manuscript love it. And it’s a lot of fucking work, especially if you’re typesetting it yourself. Still, it will all be worth it in the end.

The project involves some very personal writing by 20 contributors. In reading some emotionally raw (but very well written) words from the months after 8-29, and in the back and forth with contributors, I have had a lot of occasion to think about nakedness in creative non-fiction and in poetry. I encouraged a contributor to stick with what was originally submitted instead of a much revised version because what we wanted was that immediacy, that nakedness. I worried if that was unfair in a way because I was asking her to reveal more than I do here. In the end we accepted the revision, and it’s good. Its not quite as visceral as the original but its good. Was it fair to push this person further than I push myself? Was I projecting my own desires onto their work? This is my first project as an editor and you find yourself asking a lot of question like this.

So, what are the limits? TheRumpus.Net isn’t just an excellent source of lazy links for worn out bloggers but concerns itself with this topic a great deal, as editor Stephen Elliot writes very nakedly about his personal life in his own work, and his contributors frequently return to this subject. What are the limits, I ask myself time and again. I agonized for almost a week before I posted Hospital. My mother was almost improving by the time I hit the publish button so perhaps it was even dishonest. Some people might think so but I don’t. Dishonesty is the mortal sin if you’re going to write from your own life. It was a snapshot of where I was in time a week and a half ago and a very personal one at that. Fortunately my mother doesn’t read things on the Internet, or she’d probably be mortified. (Think of another word. Quick. Can’t. Too tired. Never mind.)

There is an interesting quote in this piece (cribbed from The Rump; so sue me, its the Internet) but I’m not going to reproduce it here. If you haven’t wandered back to Google for whatever it was you were looking for in the first place, if you’re still reading this, then go read this. I think the money quote will jump out when you read it.

I am careful about what I post here, probably too careful. But I have a job, and unless you know me and I’ve told you where I work you probably can’t suss out what The Counting House is. I have a family, and I think sometimes my children read this although my wife doesn’t. There are limits once you’ve made certain life choices, limits that hold back what you can publish and what gets tucked away and what gets written in your head but never put down. You can’t be dishonest–I’ve said that–but sometimes you have to be disingenuous, to couch things carefully or work around omissions.

I’m a tremendous fan of Stephen Elliot and just devoured Jim Carroll’s Forced Entries twice through, and both men write about as nakedly out of their own life as anyone can. I can promise you I will never describe what happens if I have an abscess and it bursts not because it’s repulsive but because I may never be able to write about my mostly uninteresting life as powerfully as Carroll does about his in that book, may never make you care about the person behind this screen in the way Carroll does for himself, to make that grotesque moment perfect and cathartic for both the subject/author and the reader.

Some of my favorite books are to some extent about the author moving through the landscape. Bernard Moitessier’s The Long Way comes to mind, in which case it is the author moving through the sea scape. Unless you’re a sailing nut or a serious student of environmental writing, you have probably not heard of Moitessier or his books. This one is about his participation in the first solo around-the-world race, a race he never finished. This isn’t the heroic literature of the sea or arctic exploration (topics that fascinate me) but a book about his experience of the ocean, of his own journey of self-discovery, a book that succeeds so compellingly that you are fascinated by his account of being becalmed and feeding sea birds.

And that’s what I do here, or try to. I started out trying to write about New Orleans (and sometimes succeed) but often end up writing about myself in the landscape. It is a formula that seems to work for me, to accomplish my goal because landscape without character and event is a subject for painters. It was probably inevitable that I would end up in these posts as much as the city does, because most of what I have written for the last five years, here and on Wet Bank Guide, was not about New Orleans in a sense that would sell to the National Geographic or Southern Living, but about the experience of New Orleans, specifically my experience.

The quote at the top of this post is from one of our contributors to the book, will in fact appear with the dedication if I can convince Sam of the idea before we go to press. I like that quote (which is all of the bio Pierce submitted) because it summarizes our book so well, and also what goes on here on Toulouse Street. “This is not the quiet tap of civilized literature; this is the loud raw truth of life.” It is not, however, the whole story. I am neither Moitessier nor Carroll. My life is not that fascinating, and there are limits. The subject need not be eccentric or a genius or otherwise exceptional for highly personal writing to be interesting. The secret, I believe, is to get the “loud raw truth of life out.” I don’t quite get there in this space. The secret to the whole story is hidden somewhere in that link above, and until and unless I cross that boundary this will never be the whole story.

And in the end it is, after all, just a blog. I’m shocked that you’ve read this far, really. Both of you.

It’s been a slow week for somebody if not for me, and the coming week promises more of the same as the listing are thin, but here’s what it is.

§ On Sunday August 1 at The Maple Leaf Poet Laurie Williams reads from her work, followed by an open mike.

§ Authors and photographers including Elizabeth Kleinveld, Tom Varisco and John Biguenet, sign the photo and essay book Before During After, at 6 p.m. Saturday July 31, Octavia Books, 513 Octavia St.

§ August 26th. Watch this space. Save the date. You won’t be disappointed.

Yes it’s summertime and the living is easy which is to say miserably hot and as my earlier one line post suggests, don’t out of the shade grasshopper unless there is cold beer involved. Sensible people, including writers, begin to dream of San Francisco or the coast of Maine. They don’t imagine hauling themselves down into the swampy funk of New Orleans, however writerly and romantic. So, what is there to do? Crib something from the Internet or pull out another dripping amber bottle and crawl back into the shade with a good book.

Or maybe a stack of them, as Doug Bruns writing over at The Millions did. (What did writers do when they couldn’t write, before the Internet gave us the cheap link trick? Go out and get drunk or laid or something. While I’m sitting here reading essays. Which leads us to Brun’s quote:)

I am a reader first. If I were an addict, I would get high and while high, presumably, worry about where I was to get my next fix. Reading is not all that different, I think. As a reader, I am always looking over the binding thinking about the next read, in some instances, longing for it. Some books, like some highs, are better than others. But even with not-so-good books–and there where two this past year I did not see to completion–I will come back to the drug, seeking the next high. I will always be a reader. Of this I am certain.

My colleague on a book project (watch this space) told me I should take last night off from edits and answering a contributor’s email. I replied by text message that unless there was a line a coke waiting for me inside there was no chance I would tackle either task. Bad, she quickly SMSed back. Yes, I told her, I would much rather nod. By which, of course, I meant collapse back onto the couch with a book.

§ How about some Emily Every Day? The internet is almost as strange in its interconnection as New Orleans. I found this via a local neighborhood group mailing list linking to a story in the local newspaper home and garden section, about a writer I didn’t know lived in the hood and her writing porch. Which I now covet, but would repaint.

§ At the Maple Leaf, poet Joseph Makkos reads from and signs new poetry chapbooks.

§ You don’t have to go to big box Metairie or a Sam’s Club or Books-a-Million to see Drew Brees and get a copy of the New Orleans Saints quarterback book Coming Back Stronger: Unleashing the Hidden Power of Adversity, but you will need an advanced ticket to see him in the intimate space of Octavia Books, 513 Octavia St., 1 p.m. Monday. Call quick: 899-7323.

§ I missed out on Macbeth, but I’m not going to miss The Tempest as part of the Tulane University summer theatre series. Details here.

The chemo claimed her hair months ago, but it was only tonight that I saw clearly how much my mother looks like her father, A.J. as I last remember him, in some nursing or hospital bed before he died, as if somewhere inside I lapsed into past tense, that even as she lay in the hospital bed I placed her among the passed. My aunt and older sisters tell me she looks like Aunt Tee at the end of her life, but I don’t remember Aunt Tee. When she was passing I was too young to be taken to visit the dying. I only remember my grandfather.

In my mother’s sepsis dementia she keeps raising her head from the pillow, looking at me and turning away, putting her head back on the pillow and closing her eyes. I leave my hat on so she might recognize me. The last truly lucid thing she said Saturday, as we stood in the ER hallway waiting for her papers, was: ‘I might need one of your hats to cover up my bald head…” and the rest was lost in the noise of the jostling nurses station and her increasing difficulty speaking. I don’t know if she turns away now because she recognizes me and does not wish to us to be here like this, or if she wakes every half minute and sees the hospital room and lays her head down hoping to see something else, or if she turns away from the ghost of her husband haunting my face, unready to go yet.

She cannot speak, so I cannot know.

She had a brief recovery on Tuesday, greeting her brother-in-law (but not her sister or my middle sister) when they all entered the room. Based on the positive reports of some improvement, I relented to my wife’s desire to let the children come see her. Although she had about worn herself out with visitors and was lapsing back into twilight when they arrived, she managed to tell the nurse, “these are my grandchildren.” I had resisted their visit, wanting them to keep their living memories of their grandmother/ I was glad they were able to see her while she was responsive and recognized them, while she could graciously accept a dutiful kiss on her bald head.

By the time I arrived that night, she was again unresponsive.

My sister thinks she does not recognize us when she opens her eyes but I think she does, or at least manages to recognize a familiar voice. The Dominican nun who lives across the hall in mother’s apartment building came by to visit the other night. My mother is a Dominican girl through and through, educated by Dominican’s her entire life: St. Anthony Grammar School, Dominican High School and College, and she spent her life an officer of her college alumnae association. She and her Dominican friends would visit the remaining sisters from the college in their retirement home across the lake. As Sister Jamie speaks to her, mother stretches herself as if to sit up and opens her eyes wide, but she cannot reply.

In her macular degeneration blindness compounded by dementia she likely cannot see well enough to recognize us except by voice. My eldest sister thinks she lifts her head and turns to look not at us but at the window, in her near blindness to look toward the one thing she can most likely see, the light she can just make out pouring in the window. And perhaps that is what she wants, what she is waiting for: the light.

I just noticed last Saturday morning that Books is no longer listed on the NOLA.COM site under More New Orleans Entertainment. There is, however, a link for MTV’s Real World New Orleans. Books is a listing on the Times-Picayune web site. However, the Books link under Living on the T-P home page brings you to an empty page. I feel a haiku coming on, so before that happens I think instead it may be time to remove the hyphen from my preferred acronym for the paper. If anyone can recommend a comprehensive site where I can subscribe to the Sunday funnies on line, let me know. It’s not like we have a lot of fish to wrap down here lately.

Oh, here is the listing for Events under Books.”Sky without color/the blank page a branch without/leaves. Write a haiku.: (OK, that sucked. Don’t make me read it twice). So if you want your listings out there you had best send them to me. Look what happened when I actually acknowledged in this space that there is a (chain, big box) bookstore in Metairie last week. If I had known he was bringing donuts, I would have led with him.

§ I was pleased last week when the second stop at my daughter’s Loyola University of New Orleans orientation was a table where she was handed a hardback copy of A Confederacy of Dunces, which is required reading for all incoming first year students. What can I say except: two Ignatii for the price of one, even if it’s costing me a thousand a page. So far she’s not entirely impressed with Ignatius Riley, whom she finds “annoying”. If I were a cute 18-year old coed from Generation Whatever-We’re-Up-To-Now (I think we’re out of letters) and Ignatius Riley came up to me on the street, I would probably put my hand on the pepper spray and cross the street.

§ The Black Flood. I’m not exactly inundated with contributors, which I guess is a good thing given my available time. I do need to get around to writing a couple of polite declines for submissions. This should be easy, as I am quite familiar with the genre, but it’s going to be hard to send the first one.

§ 17 Poets! is dark Thursday, and the Maple Leaf is an open mike. Last Sunday the Maple Leaf crowd had a visit from H.R. “Stoney” Stoneback and bought his fascinating Hurricane Hymn. Stoney is a songwriter, educator and poet who lived in Nashville for years, and his Hurricane Hymn mingles “Hymns,” some from the classical protestant cannon and some from Bob Dylan, The Band, Johnny Cash, etc. Another tells the story of his songwriter neighbor, who would frequently bother him for ideas. While studying for his PhD Orals he hold the guy to scat and “go read some Faulkner; go read some Fitzgerald” and the result was the song Delta Dawn. Hurricane Hymn is highly recommended for anyone who (like me) has been filling a book shelf with Katrina books. You can get it from Codhill Press.

§ OK, I’m not crazy about Chris Rose but this upcoming book (featured at the Octavia Book Store on Saturday, 7/16 at 6 p.m. caught my eye: ONE BLOCK: A New Orleans Neighborhood rebuilds – Photographer Dave Anderson (text by Chris Rose). And on Saturday 7/31 Octavia will host BEFORE DURING AFTER: Louisiana Photographers’ Visual Reactions to Hurricane Katrina. Both of these sound like coffee table sized (and priced) books, so I’m going to have to think hard about both, but I know I’m going to be picking these up and sorely tempted to leave with a copy of one or both.

Well it’s Wednesday and I’ve really got nothing to spice up the listings. In fact, I don’t have any listings. And I completely forgot to post an Odd Words last week until it was about 11 at night and all I could do was groan and drag myself to bed and think, well, better luck next week. There was a large crowd to hear poet, playwright and story teller extraordinaire Jonathan Kline at the Goldmine in spite of my failure.

And in spite of this reminder that I’m mostly doing this to entertain myself, I’m back although I have something else I really should be doing right now and I’m basically stealing time from sleep for this. Which is silly because I Got Nothing.

Except maybe this: there’s a feature on The Millions called Difficult Books which returned this week featuring Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany and, well, yes it’s a hard read no doubt, vanishing deep into the character’s head about halfway through by way of his hallucinatory journal, itself an alternate version of the novel. I found it strangely satisfying as I only got around to it a few years ago after returning to New Orleans’ real-world apocalypse and finding a powerful resonance in the bizarre adventures of the plot and its idiosyncratic characters, not one of whom you’d give a second glance passing on a bicycle in the Marigny. If they had decided to close the city after Katrina but abandoned the die hard downtown folks to stay you would likely end up with something uncannily like Dhalgren’s Bellona. Not long after I finished the book I found this fellow’s exoskeletal costume at Mardi Gras immediately put me in mind of novel’s scorpion street gangs. If you are headed to the beach (OK, maybe not) and you are ready to crawl into the shade and completely leave reality behind without waking up with a hangover or wandering naked somewhere looking for your clothes, I suggest you give Dhalgren a whirl.

§ The Maple Leaf takes the Fourth off. And the Dinky Tao Poetry Series continues its long running non-occurrence on Tuesdays (although I’m hatching a plan to revive it with my friend Sam, since it still comes up in the local newspaper listings). There are no interesting book signings. Nothing. It’s the Fourth of July in New Orleans and that means nothing is going on except the sweaty crowds in the Quarter trying not to pass out before the fireworks, or (better yet) staying in Mid-City and reminding ourselves of the consequences of mixing fireworks and alcohol. Again.

I have a novel idea (Ed.’s note–please untie me before he makes any more bad puns): maybe this is the ideal weekend to pick up Dhalgren or Gravity’s Rainbow or Ulysses. Go spend some serious cross-eyed quality time decoding Dylan Thomas. Or even make your way at last through the dreadful Tennyson-on-Seconal wasteland of the later works of Auden. Somewhere on your shelves is That Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read/Finish. You’ve got a long weekend and nothing else to do.

A NEW ABOMUNIST MANIFESTO!

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE BOB KAUFMAN IS THE SECOND COMING OF EZEKIEL.

ABOMUNISTS WILL HOST THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK AND COCKTAIL SERIES THIS WEEK, FEATURING THE MOLOTOV.

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE JIMMY ROSS’ HAIR IS THE SECOND COMING OF BOB KAUFMAN.

ABOMUNISTS PLAY TUBA NAKED IN FRONT OF THE FIRST DISTRICT POLICE STATION

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE DAVE BRINKS HAS THE COLDEST BEER ON DAUPHINE STREET.

ABOMUNISTS REJECT ALL SCHOOLS OF POETRY WHICH WOULD ADMIT THEM.

ABOMUNISTS GATHER SECRETLY AT THE GOLDMINE SALOON ON THURSDAY NIGHTS AND DISTRIBUTE FLYERS TO PROVE IT.

ABOMUNISTS DISCOVER THE TRUTH THROUGH THE DIALECTIC OF A BEER & A SHOT OF JAMESON’S.

ABOMUNISTS CELEBRATE THE TRANSCENDENTALLY ABSURD BY READING FROM THE WORKS OF NEW ORLEAN’S BORN PROTO-BEAT BOB KAUFMAN AT 17 POETS! ON JUNE 17.

ABOMUNISTS DO NOT BELIEVE IN STARTING AT EXACTLY EIGHT, SO HAVE ANOTHER BEER AND RELAX.

ABOMUNISTS BELIEVE YOU DON’T EXIST IF YOU DON’T COME AND CAN CONSTRUCT CIGARETTE SMOKE SYLLOGISMS TO PROVE IT.

§ In other news, oil still flows in the Gulf like blood pulsing from an artery. Frederico Franco was unavailable to comment on the situation. However, you can by submitting poetry, stories, photos, art, music or any damn thing you please to TheBlackFlood.Net. Send submissions here.

§ Minrose Gwin, who will be the featured reader at the Maple Leaf on Sunday June 19 at 3ish (OK 4 but we all need a couple of beers first and to catch upz) signs and reads from her novel The Queen of Palmyra. 6 p.m. Friday. Octavia Books, 513 Octavia St.

§ While I think everyone in American should be required to read Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast by Mike Tidwell and pass a short quiz to prove it before they are allowed to refill their gas tanks, I am intrigued by new book Losing Ground: Identity and Land Loss in Coastal Louisiana by David M. Burley from the University Press of Mississippi which typically puts out very high quality work of regional interest. Burley can be found around town several times this coming week including 4 p.m. Saturday. Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, 3133 Ponce de Leon Ave and 5 p.m. Sunday. Lost Love Lounge, 2529 Dauphine St.

§ The New Orleans Haiku Society hosts their monthly meeting 6 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Monday. Latter Library Carriage House, 5120 St. Charles Ave.The New Orleans Haiku Society hosts their monthly meeting 6 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Monday. Latter Library Carriage House, 5120 St. Charles Ave.

§ Odd Words wishes to inform Gambit and the Times-Picayune that the Dinky Tao Poetry Reading no longer occurs at Molly’s at the Market on Tuesday after that unfortunate incident with the drunken sorority girls, nitrous oxide and the gypsy industrial vacuum cleaner. At least, we think it doesn’t. We haven’t dared go back to check. The organizer would be very sorry if he could remember the incident more clearly.

§ FREE FOOD DAMMIT. When am I ever going to arrange things so I can attend Loren Murrell’s weekly poetry and spoken-word night with free food? Free admission. 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Yellow Moon Bar, 800 France St., New Orleans (Bywater).

First, sorry about the premature announcement last week. It was not the Bob Kaufman event and in fact 17 Poets! was canceled at the last minute. If posting other than Odd Words (and I had to drag myself out of bed early to manage this) even with recent good news about efforts to capture some of the oil spewing out of BP’s well in the Gulf things are a bit gloomy here on Toulouse Street. Fortunately, I’m so insanely busy at work that I’m not allowed time to notice. Its good to be a beta.

OK, all you creative types: it’s time to rethink your enslavement to all things Apple (c) after you learn that Apple, unlike Google, doesn’t even pretend to renounce or avoid evil. This case: censorship. Apparently nudity is too prurient even for content for the I-Pad rated for ages 17+, forcing the creators of a graphic novel version of James Joyce Ulysses titled Ulysses Seen to revise some of their work. “Apple has strict guidelines and a rating system to prevent ‘adult content.’ Their highest mature content rating is 17+, which doesn’t seem to be a problem since no one reads Ulysses at sixteen anyway. But their guidelines also mean no nudity whatsoever. Which is something we never planned for.” The link to UK MacWorld courtesy of HTMLGIANT. I’m with this guy.

§ Tonight 17 Poets! Literary & Performance series presents a reading/performance featuring poets EDMUND BERRIGAN, JESSICA FIORINI and JAMEY JONES on THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010, 8:00pm @ The Gold Mine Saloon. And be sure to bring your luminous words & jests for yet another amazing evening of mirth, fantasm & reverie! Feature will be followed by Open Mic hosted by Jimmy Ross (sign-up begins @ 7:30 p.m.)…storytellers, poets, fiction writers, essayists, vocalists & performance artists are welcome.

§ I don’t normally read crime fiction (although I am trying to get around to reading some George Pelacanos based on his association with David Simon) but I do read short stories, and the idea of a book of short crime genre tails called Delta Blues and centered around Clarksdale, MS sounds almost irresistible. Contributing authors Alice Jackson & Suzanne Hudson will sign Delta Blues. 1 p.m. Saturday. Maple Street Book Shop, 7523 Maple St..

§ At the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street Sunday poet Delia Nakayama presents poems and songs.

§ I keep listing this based on the recommendations of others but haven’t been here yet: – Loren Murrell hosts a weekly poetry and spoken-word night with free food. Free admission. 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Yellow Moon Bar, 800 France St. in the Bywater. And yes, I am told, there is free food. This is clearly hosted by someone who understands poets as well as the people who host their series in bars.

§ Finally, another chance to pimp <a href="§ “>Back of Town where my level of exhaustion of late is clearly demonstrated in the comments trying to defend the idea that long trajectory television series are clearly novelistic, and that there is not that large a gulf between the direction of attention by a novelist and the direction of gaze by a filmmaker. Sort of, in a rambling sort of way that other people told me made sense. OK, fine, but if you’re here you probably care at least a week bit about New Orleans, and if you’re watching Treme’ BOT is becoming an essential companion piece. Hey, even David Simon stops by. Why don’t you?

Finally: On second through (or second cup, first thought) perhaps I will correctly the clearly flagged typos in this post and update. Many I need a vacation. Oh, and submissions to <a href="§ “>TheBlackFlood.net are encouraged and welcomed.

I apparently have no more sense than Tony Hayward has scruples because I’m already overwhelmed at the office, working on a consuming performance/book project for August with someone else, have a wife and two teenagers with their own plans and generally am bone weary at the end of the day and not writing much here.

That’s why I’ve decided to launch yet another project, TheBlackFlood.net. This blog format e-zine offers authors and artists a place to submit work focused on the oil flood in the Gulf of Mexico and not wait six months to see it in print. Right now the academic journals are all closed to submissions for the summer and there aren’t that many markets for poetry, art or creative non-fiction that don’t have time lines longer than the average cable news watcher’s attention span.

My own initial reaction to British Petroleum’s disastrous accident was of course to start writing and I imagine others are doing the same. If you have, maybe you hustled down to your local open mike and shared it. Share it with a wider audience online by submitting original poetry, prose (fiction or creative non-fiction), original art work to theblackflood@gmail.com. I will consider short but powerful essays on the subject but that’s something you can probably peddle much more quickly to another market. Go read the electronic submission guidelines so you don’t swamp my mailbox.

If this thing gets legs and I collect a lot of powerful work, I will look for a publisher to anthologize it, with all net proceeds going to a Gulf Coast organization working to restore Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. Send nominations for that agency to the same address. Details are again in the Submissions section.

§ Thursday, June 3rd 17 Poets! will host a celebration of New Orleans-born Beat poet Bob Kaufman, featuring readings of his work open to audience participation. Kaufman was the proto-Beat–beatific, beat down, a man marching very much to the beat of his his own drum. Dave and I will have collections to pick something and read from. If you’re coming and you own a Kaufman book bring it. Climbing (carefully) on the furniture to declaim will be encouraged. Going outside and climbing on cars to spout poetry and getting arrested for disturbing the peace is optional, but if you do we will start a donation jar for your bail just like the one kept for Kaufman in San Francisco back in the day. Starts 8-ish at the Goldmine Saloon at Dauphine and St. Peter streets in the French Quarter.

§ The Community Book Center in Gentilly needs your help! The air conditioner is dead… just in time for summer. They are hosting a fundraiser supper for the Community Book Center. Fish, Chicken, Mac & Cheese, Potato Salad, BBQ Tofu and Veggie Rice, Salad Plates, Vegetable and Dessert. $10.00 Donation per plate. Dates: Friday, June 4, 2010, 11am – 7pm and Saturday, June 5, 2010, 11am – 5pm. Volunteers, Advance Orders, Food, Drink and Paper Product Donations are also welcomed! CBC is an independent book store, literary hub and meeting place serving the community for 27 years. “More than a book store”, CBC offers African Centered books by and about people of African decent. Please help out this important indie book store. I mean, you’ve got to eat, right? 2523 Bayou Road just off Broad.

§ The artist’s retreat in Algiers A Studio in the Woods hosts FORESTtival! on Saturday June 5th 11:00 am – 5:00 pm at 13401 Patterson Road in Algiers. Artist presentations include: ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro, and Raymond “Moose” Jackson present an excerpt from Loup Garou, Jane Hill sculpture demonstration and “poetic installation” by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. There will be food, drink, tours of the site by a botanist and music by Panorama Jazz Band and Beth Turner and friends. If you did not see Loup Garou last year, don’t miss a chance to see at least part of it before it goes on tour this summer.

§ From Chere Coen of the Louisiana Books mailing list, this sad news: THE LOUISIANA BOOK FESTIVAL, an annual event celebrating the state’s literary tradition, has been canceled this year because of budget cuts. State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton says she decided to cancel the festival after losing funding and staffing for her department. “I put a lot of thought into this; this was not an easy decision,” she says. “I would rather us not have a festival than not to have a great festival.” This year’s event had been scheduled for Oct. 30. The festival attracts authors from across the U.S. for workshops, panel discussions and events spread across the Capitol Grounds and the State Library. It costs about $500,000 to put on the festival, with money coming from state and federal sources; previous attempts to secure private funding for the 7-year-old event were unsuccessful. Please be sure to go here and tell Gov. Bobby Jindal thanks for his continuing war on the arts.

§ Garden District Books will host a reading/signing by Alex Heard for The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South Saturday June 6 from 2-4 p.m.

§ Octavia Books will host a Thursday author event for Attica Locke’s BLACK WATER RISING, a book that resonates on the theme of how race and class intertwine in the South, on Thursday at 6 p.m. This is always a subject percolating in the back of my mind, which bubbled up to the surface just earlier this week.

§ A final note, not a listing:

Dear Metizen: Thanks for the link. Was the opener of last week’s Odd Words a “review of a review”? I’m not sure that entirely fair. Yes it referenced Joseph Goosey’s review of Daniel Bailey’s DRUNK SONNETS extensively, asking why Goosey didn’t see this (Berryman) in Bailey’s writing along with that (O’Hara and Bukowski). It was written after reading Goosey’s review twice through, finding the link that took me to a half-dozen of the DRUNK SONNETS online and becoming as fascinated as the original review with what I found. It was written based in part on a comment I left for Goosey, wondering why he didn’t hear Berryman along with O’Hara and Bukowski in the poems. And now that I have a copy of DRUNKEN SONNETS I wonder why he didn’t even mention the recurring and obscure references to loss that permeate the poems, the reason he is writing while crunk. Has she just left him or has she died? My first reading last night left it unclear, and so I will read them again shortly. In the end there was just more to say than could fairly be left as a comment. And I think I’ll have more to say again.

It was, in the end, a form of extended communication, a riff on the short comment I left at TheRumpus.net, an expansion of the thoughts launched by a review on another site, and ultimately my own review of DRUNK SONNETS crediting Goosey for putting the work in front of me. It was an example, in a nutshell, of how writing on the Internet sometimes works. It truly is a web of linked ideas, around which communities build. I may send a link about this one-sided dialogue to Goosey or to Stephen Elliot, as this answer comes out of something the latter wrote last week in his Daily Rumpus email about writing and community and the Internet.

Yes I sometimes crib link to and riff on stuff from TheRumpus or HTMLGIANT, LitDrift or Millions but only because I think it is something worth reading from a site everyone who has made it this far down this blog post should know about. That is how virtual communities grow. You may not have discovered this, as on your site comments are closed, and the email address you publish bounces. Your link generated a whopping two hits. You may wish to open up a bit. There a whole world out here beating a path to your door, but when we knock, no one is home.

Here in the land of 10,000 bars you have to love the idea of a book titled THE DRUNK SONNETS. I think we’ve all penned a few bar napkin or pocket notebook masterpieces we wish we could read the next day.

This was the part of the review of Daniel Bailey’s book that intrigued me: “…I found it difficult not to admire Bailey’s willingness to put himself on the page without regard for how he might be received in a current poetic climate which more and more seems to be spitting on personal sincerity. These aspects of the collection look into the eyes of existing trends in poetry and say “NO” and that is something hard not to get behind. I say the approach in “Drunk Sonnet 15” is only seemingly formulaic due to the fact that by virtue of the formula usage, Bailey is refusing to pander.”

The reviewer calls up the memory of famous tipping authors Charles Bukowski and Frank O’Hara, but given the attempt to stuff a rebellion against contemporary poetic preferences into sonnets published in ALL CAPS, I can’t imagine why John Berryman didn’t come to mind. He quotes DRUNK SONNET NO. 1 and Berryman’s clever disregard for syntax and convention even as he managed to create hundreds of poems in the same form. If you don’t hear a bit of Berryman in these two lines, you’re not listening hard enough.

I CAN’T SLEEP AT NIGHT AND AT DAY I DON’T WANT AWAKE
AND A BODY THAT RUSTS INTO HARD AND AND UNBELIEVABLE

As the reviewer points out, it’s hard to criticize the occasional erratic syntax of a man who confesses to writing while drunk, and whose author photo shows him holding a PBR. Then again think about talking to someone who’s quite drunk and the syntax makes as much sense as Berryman and Mr. Bone’s minstrel speak. Here’s another example from the author’s blog DRUNK: THE DRUNK SONNETS. The first line is one example of many on the blog (I don’t have the book yet) of what I would suggest is not a fortuitous accident of drunken scribbling but a serious attempt to create what looks like drunken scribbling.

IF EVERYONE IS OK THEN WHY I AM I NOT
IT’S OK TO CRY A LITTLE, I THINK, JUST CRY
I THINK I WANT TO EAT YOUR SMILE TONIGHT
I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING IN IT TO KEEP ME ALIVE

I also hear Bukowski, in a poem like DDRUNK SONNET NO. 10:

THE AIRPORT IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
THE GROCERY STORE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
PETSMART IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST
THE THAI PLACE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST

His litany of terrible places to exist goes on for four stanzas ending with:

I’M THINKING ABOUT EVOLUTION AND THE WAY WE CHANGE
AND HOW LONG IT WILL BE BEFORE I HAVE A TAIL AGAIN
AND I CAN FORGET ALL THAT’S HAPPENED

Just because what sounds good to you as your rattle the empties on your desk with loud music from the PC speakers doesn’t mean you won’t delete it in the morning. I am a huge fan of Bukowski and I must confess he likely published more than he should have but there are lines that come in the dark of night, wishing there was another beer in the house and watching the traffic roll buy or perhaps a police stop across the street that won’t come anywhere else. In the right hands, there is a drunken Buddha fortuitousness that produces a wonderful poem. In the few poems that he has up on the blog, Bailey has me thinking that I won’t like every one in the book but that like Bukowski there will be great rewards for my trouble.

And what can I say about a reviewer whose brief bio at the bottom tell us “Joseph Goosey parks cars in Jacksonville, Florida but he should soon be getting out of there.” And a hat tip (or, as we say on the Intertubes, h/t) to TheRumpus.Net. If I didn’t have sites like this to lead me to some of what I’m reading now I would probably have to quit my job and find them myself, and I would end up like Roberto Belaño’s teenage hoodlum poets, stealing books instead of buying them.

§ This week’s edition of Odd Words almost didn’t get written, as I’m in knots over the oil spill, but I feel like having started this I had better keep up my obligation to myself and you, my dozens of readers. Part of my reaction to the BP disaster was to send off a poem I wrote about the oil spill to The New Yorker, as there really aren’t that many outlets for poetry with a weekly publishing schedule and I wanted to get it out there and I thought: why they hell not? The reject slip is going to look mighty impressive up on the nail on my wall.

Another reason I almost skipped this week’s OW is that it’s another quiet week in Gulf Wobegon, without a lot of events but there’s always a lull after Jazz Fest in the first of summer’s heat. The bands all leave for the road, and I guess traveling author’s from more temperate climes aren’t banging on the door to come either. Here’s the usual suspects

§ The 17 Poets! series hosts a weekly poetry reading. An open mic follows. Free admission. 8 p.m. Thursday. Gold Mine Saloon, 705 Dauphine St. No note from Dave yet. I’ll post an update if he doesn’t get his announcement out before this goes up in the morning.

§ The south’s longest running poetry event, the Maple Leaf Reading Series has a Memorial Day open mic. Free admission. 3 p.m. Sunday. Maple Leaf Bar, 8316 Oak St.

§ I have yet to check this out but it comes highly recommended: Open Mic Poetry & Spoken Word – Loren Murrell hosts a weekly poetry and spoken-word night with free food. Free admission. 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Yellow Moon Bar, 800 France St., New Orleans.

Remembering the dead over at the Back of Town Treme blog.

Je me souviens.