Odd Words October 25, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.1 comment so far
This Saturday is the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge on the Capitol grounds, kicking off at 10 a.m. with the presentation of the Louisiana Writer Award for 2012 to John Bieguenet at 10 a.m. Currently the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University, he is the author of several novels and numerous plays, including a Katrina cycle Rising Water, and is best known around New Orleans for his reports on post-Federal Flood New Orleans for the New York Times.
You can read the full festival schedule here, but this is a quick rundown of events on Odd Words’ radar:
- Louisiana Writer Award ceremony, 10 a.m., House Chamber in the Capitol
- Oxford American panel on New South Journalism with James Pogue, Nathaniel Rich and Chris Rose, moderated by Bob Mann, 11:15 a.m. in House Committee Room 4.
- The Big Read: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. 12:15 p.m., House Committee Three.
- Conversations with Tim Gautreaux with panelists (not the author) including Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane and Susan Larson.
- In Conversation with Lousiana Writer Award Winner John Biguenet with Darryl Borque, 4 p.m., Senate Chamber.
There will be vendors aplenty up and down the mall, and a Barnes and Noble Tent, music in the food court and a generally delightful day for bookaholics.
We now return you to chronological order, already in progress:
& Thursday night at 17 Poets! the mad Minotaur of New Orleans poetry Thaddeus Conti launches his new book b-sides that from Lavender Ink, combining his startling poetry and drawings. Sign-up for open mic begins at 7:30 and the show at 8 pm. Open mic is hosted by the dreadlocked dreadnought of New Orleans letters, Jimmy Ross. From David Rowe’s introduction to Conti’s first book, apoetics: “Like Dionysus himself, Thaddeus is twice-born. Seems the first time, in the a.m., he managed to bring the womb along with him. So they stuffed him back in, separated him from the uterine lining, &, in the p.m., re-delivered him. All on a Halloween day in New Orleans. And since the good padre couldn’t very well name our protagonist after the dithyrambic god of tantric intoxication, he went with (Jude) Thaddeus, the flame-headed patron of desperate cases & lost causes. In lieu of/en route to being thrice-born, he aspires to leave behind–in tubs of Tupperware–ten thousand x-fine pen-&-ink line drawings. As for a price tag, well, he’d rather give you a drawing gratis, for, were he to charge what it cost him, you couldn’t begin to afford it.”
If you have not yet had the Thaddeus Conti Experience, it’s time you checked out the most dynamic and startling poet in New Orleans, sez me.
& Tonight at Octavia Books at 6 pm New Orleans’ own Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olin Butler reads from and signs his just released very first crime novel, THE HOT COUNTRY, an epic saga full of intrigue, romance and espionage set during the early stages of World War I. “No writer in America today can be said to surpass Butler in the eating-his-cake-and-having-it-too category: He’s literary, entertaining, serious and funny.” –The Sun-Sentinel.
& Tonight at Garden District Books Arthe Anthony’s Picturing Black New Orleans: A Creole Photographer’s View of the Early Twentieth Century is featured at 5:30 pm. Florestine Perrault Collins (1895–1988) lived a fascinating and singular life. She came from a Creole family that had known privileges before the Civil War, privileges that largely disappeared in the Jim Crow South. She learned photographic techniques while passing for white. She opened her first studio in her home, and later moved her business to New Orleans’s black business district. Fiercely independent, she ignored convention by moving out of her parents’ house before marriage and, later, by divorcing her first husband. Between 1920 and 1949, Collins documented African-American life, capturing images of graduations, communions, and recitals, and allowing her subjects to help craft their images.
& Another Thursday event: Ogden Museum of Southern Art is pleased to announce the New Orleans launch of “Clementine Hunter: Her Life and Art” (LSU Press). This book is the first comprehensive biography of this self-taught artist. Authors Art Shiver and Tom Whitehead explore her life and reveal this Louisiana painter’s impact on the modern art world. Hunter, using objects available around her—such as glass snuff bottles, ironing boards, window shades—as well as canvas, producing between 5,000 to 10,000 paintings, including the African House mural, located on the grounds of Melrose Plantation, where she lived and worked. Hunter’s paintings reflected the life around her on the plantation—cotton planting and harvesting, washdays, weddings, baptisms. The book signing is free; admission to Ogden After Hours for music, cocktails and art (not necessarily in that order) is free to museum members; $10 general admission.
This is an impossibly rich Thursday. I’m going to have to catch Thaddeus but there is something on tonight for every interest so there’s no reason to stay home.
& Friday, Oct. 26 Octavia George Singleton returns to Octavia Books to read from and sign STRAY DECORUM, his new collection of stories at 6 p.m. The book features eleven of his stories, all previously published in journals like “The Atlantic,” “Oxford American,” and “The Georgia Review,” in which George Singleton brings small-town South Carolina alive. Using everyday situations like a dog needing its annual vaccination and buckets of humorous observations, Singleton pokes and prods his readers into realizing we’re all simply restless for a pat on the head “Singleton may have invented a new genre. Call it The Hoot.” —Kirkus Reviews
& Friday night at 6 p.m. the Maple Street Book Store at Bayou St. John hosts is continuing The Diane Tapes reading series, featuring notable local authors Carolyn Hembree, Brad Richard and Adam Atkinson. Atkinson is an MFA candidate at LSU, where he’s also the Co-Editor of OH NO, the Literary Director of Open Thread, and the coordinator of various festivals and reading series. Richard’s poetry collection Motion Studies won the 2010 Washington Prize from The Word Works, and will be forthcoming in 2011. He is also the author of the collection Habitations (Portals Press, New Orleans, 2000) and the limited edition chapbook The Men in the Dark (Lowlands Press, Stuttgart, Germany, 2004). Hembree’s poems have appeared in Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, jubilat, and Witness, among other journals and anthologies. Kore Press published her debut collection, Skinny (paperback, $14.00), in 2012 . Her poetry has received three Pushcart Prize nominations, a PEN Writers Grant, a Southern Arts Federation Grant, and a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship Award in Literature.
& Friday at 7 pm a book discussion of poet and publisher Bill Lavender’s book-length, autobiographical poem Memory Wing will meet in the back patio of Pravda Bar, 1113 Decatur St. Organizer Laura Mattingly decided to take her love of the book, expressed in talking to everyone about it and urging them to read it, to the next level. Odd Words agrees and hopes to be there, and this is certainly way more organized than me doing through a countless copies of Gravity’s Rainbow pressing it on people, or circulating my paperback copy of Mystic Pig all through the city.
& Saturday at 6 p.m. Faubourg Marigny Art & Books, the city’s premier GLBT bookshop, hosts JM Redmann and Greg Herren, editors of “Night Shadows: Queer Horror” and Mary Griggs, author of “Crash Stop” FAB is at 600 Frenchmen Street. Email owner Otis Fennell at fabotis@yahoo.com for more details. FAB also carries a good selection of local interest books, and an eclectic selection of books, records and clothes on the tables outside. If you’ve stumbled past it a hundred times at the corner of Bourbon and Frenchman without stopping in thinking “gay book store, meh” you have been missing out on one of the Marigny’s signature experiences.
& Crescent City Books concludes its 20th Anniversary reading/reception series this Saturday at 2 p.m.with David Lummis, author of the newly published follow-up, “The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans, Part 2: The Last Beaucoeur.”
& Sunday, Oct. 28 at 1 pm you have a second chance to catch historian Arthé A. Anthony’s PICTURING BLACK NEW ORLEANS: A Creole Photographer’s View of the Early Twentieth Century at Octavia Books. I really ought to invest in a coffee table, but then I couldn’t afford glorious New Orleans picture books.
& Sunday Oct. 29 All you pale midnight rambler’s and fans of True Blood will have to venture into the sun for Marcelle Bienvenu’s True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temp at Garden District Books at 2 p.m. True Blood, HBO’s blockbuster paranormal drama, enthralls a diverse audience of 13 million viewers (and counting). Menus at the now-famous Fangtasia and Merlotte’s Bar and Grill play a key role in the series, providing sustenance for its human characters, evoking memories of a bygone life for its vampires, and serving as a powerful symbol for the desires and carnal needs the characters harbor. Plenty of underground parking in the building for the sunlight averse.
& Monday afternoon at 4 p.m. Karen Marie Moning returns to New Orleans for a spectacular pre-Halloween book launch party for ICED at Le Pavillon Hotel. The signing, hosted by Octavia Books will continue into the evening. To attend the signing, you must purchase ICED though Octavia Books. The first book in her hotly anticipated new urban fantasy trilogy, set in the world of her blockbuster Fever series, ICED is the addictive first book in this new trilogy, catapults us into the frenetic world of the Fever series, picking up immediately where Moning’s Shadowfever—an instant #1 New York Times, #1 Publishers Weekly, #2 USA Today, and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller—ended. At its center is Dani O’Malley, the powerful, tough-talking teen sidhe seer who has stolen readers’ hearts.
& Also on Monday at Maple Street Book Shop at 6 pm Beau Boudreaux will be reading from, and signing, his collection of poetry, Running Red, Running Redder. Joining Boudreaux is Theodore Ross, author of Am I a Jew?: Lost Tribes, Lapsed Jews, and One Man’s Search for Himself. Am I a Jew? is a story about the universal struggle to define a relationship with religion. Ross was nine years old when he moved with his mother from New York City to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Once there, his mother decided, for both personal and spiritual reasons, to have her family pretend not to be Jewish. He went to an Episcopal school, where he studied the New Testament, sang in the choir, and even took Communion. Later, as an adult, he wondered: Am I still Jewish? Seeking an answer, Ross traveled around the country and to Israel, visiting a wide variety of Jewish communities in an effort to experience the diversity of Judaism. Maple Street’s web site calls Boudreaux’s slyly humorous poems exquisitely lyrical, and quietly elegant.
& Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 6 p.m New Orleans foodie Poppy Tooker comes to Octavia Books for a talk and booksigning for the lauch of Mme. Bégué’s Recipes of Old New Orleans Creole Cookery originally published in 1900 from the handwritten notes of Mme. Bégué herself. Elizabeth Kettenring came to New Orleans from Germany in 1853. She married Louis Dutreuil and opened a restaurant in the French Quarter in 1863. After Dutreuil’s death, she married Hippolyte Begue and changed the restaurant’s name from Dutrey’s to Begue’s.
& Also on Tuesday at 6 p.m. on the north side of the Big Lake in City Park, join Megan Burns n claiming the space for poetry with an inaugural reading with poets Nik De Dominic, Tracey McTague and Ben Kopel. Seating provided in the outdoor mini-theater. Feel free to bring food & drink. Costuming encouraged. De Dominic is a poet and essayist. Recent work appears in Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor of New Orleans Review and a founding editor of The Offending Adam. He teaches creative writing and literature inside Orleans Parish Prison. McTague has officially gone AWOL, & may never be heard from again. In her former life, she organized the Battle Hill Poetry Marathon, the New Zinc Bar Reading Series, and served as both editor & consigliore for Lungfull! Magazine from 2001 to the present. Her forthcoming book, Super Natural, from Trembling Pillow Press, is due out this winter. Kopel was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1983. He holds degrees from Louisiana State University, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and The University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers. His latest book is Victory from H_NGM_N press
Wednesday, Oct. 31 (Boo!) the Algiers Regional Branch of the New Orleans Public library hosts Poetry Night at 5:30 pm.
If you love to write and/or read poetry now is your time to shine! This program will allow adults to perform original or borrowed poetry, lyrics, monologues, speeches, etc.
&Looking ahead to November: the annual Ladyfest music, art and literature event will feature two dates for the literary performance series of LadyFest New Orleans- Wednesday, Nov. 7 from 7-10 pm at 1501 St. Roch Ave, and Friday, Nov. 9th from 8-11 pm at Buffa’s Lounge. Each event will be free of charge and feature musical accompaniment.
& It’s your last chance to catch an exhibition featuring first editions of books by Lafcadio Hearn, whose writings promoted the mystique of New Orleans to the nation, as well as prized works from his art collection will be on view Oct. 18-28 in Tulane University’s Special Collections Gallery, located in Jones Hall, Room 205. The exhibit is free and open to the public, 10 am-6 pm Monday-Saturday and noon – 6 pm Sunday. “The Open Mind of Lafcadio Hearn in New Orleans” will celebrate Hearn’s tolerance and cooperative mindset with art from Greece, Japan and the Hearn Collection at Tulane. The exhibition, which is financed and co-organized by Matsue City, Japan with support from Tulane’s Asian Studies Program and Tulane’s Louisiana Research Collection, will also include “La Cuisine Creole, A Collection of Culinary Recipes” and numerous other Hearn works, as well as pieces by artists such as Ynez Johnston and Masaaki Noda. I’m somewhat sorry I missed the opening lecture by Bon Koisume, Hearn’s great-grandson and advisor to the Matsue,Japan Lafcadio Hearn museum but if I had not, I would have missed the magic of the moment of meeting him in the Yakumo Japanese Garden.
Organizers Jena Mae and Laura Mattingly are currently scheduling female poets and performers for both nights, and we want you to participate! Please email Laura Mattingly at lmattinglynola@live.com, or Jenna Mae at grokthegrass@yahoo.com, if you are interested in participating in either event. Please specify in the email which date works better for you! A note for the Wednesday reading: The St. Roch Ave. location is a private, but spacious residence. It will be a poetry salon and art exposition. We are also looking for female visual artists interested in displaying their works at this event. Please contact Jenna Mae for more details.
Odd Words Omissions October 24, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.add a comment
A couple of items I missed (it happens) for tonight:
& The Faulkner Society and partners will present a program on the importance of reading to students of the Roots of Music program today at 5 p. m. in the Arsenal, 3rd floor, reached through the main entrance of the Cabildo. Some 150 students and staff will hear the Guardians of the Flame Mardi Gras Indian Tribe perform and discuss the importance of reading to success and personal satisfaction in life. They will be focusing on A Lesson Before Dying by Louisiana Literary Master Ernest Gaines. The program will begin with a presentation by Tulane’s Dr. Nghana Lewis, an expert in the work of Mr. Gaines,who will explain to these middle and junior high students (all of whom are having difficulties with reading and with their studies in general) how to properly read the book to get the most out of it. Then, the Faulkner Society will present each child with a fre copy of the book, a book mark, and a readers’ guide to the book. Each book will have a book plate with a place for each child to personalize his/her book. Then the Indians will enter, enact a scene from the book, talk about reading and play with the students in place.
They will then lead the kids out into Jackson Square for a concert with the kids in front of the Presbytere, preceding refreshments and and program for adults on the second floor of the Presbytere.
& The NOCCA Creative Writing Program is pleased to present the Fall installment of its Creative Reading Series for 2012 – 2013 with authors Jamey Hatley and Brad Richard Wednesday oCT. 24 AT 7 p.m. in the Kirschman Artspace at NOCCA. 2800 Chartres Street. Reception to follow. Free and open to the public.
Jamey Hatley is a native of Memphis, TN. Her writing has appeared in the Oxford American and Torch. She has attended the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Voices of Our Nation Writing Workshop and received scholarships to the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 2006 she won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for a Novel-in-Progress. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University.
Brad Richard’s books include Habitations (Portals Press, 2000); Motion Studies winner of the 2010 Washington Prize (The Word Works. 2011); and Butcher’s Sugar (from Sibling Rivalry Press (2012). He has also published two chapbooks, The Men in the Dark (Lowlands Press, 2004) and Curtain Optional(Press Street, 2011). His poems and reviews have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Guernica, The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review, and other journals. He is chair of the creative writing program at Lusher Charter High School in New Orleans. He is also co-director of the New Orleans New Writers Literary Festival, a festival for high school writers, and the Scholastic Writing Awards of Southeast Louisiana, a regional affiliate of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Odd Words October 18, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.3 comments
New Orleans has more independent new-and-used bookstores per capital than any other major city except Manhattan in New York, which is a dead tie, according to Micheal Zell of Crescent City Books. More on all this later when I get through my notes on yesterday’s forum on New Orleans Literary Life at the University of New Orleans’ English Department’s 3rd Wednesday speaker series.
Against the Day Update/Kindle Update: Page 1085/100%. I sort of missing doing this the last few weeks, but I finished the book 10 days ago and hated the Kindle experience so much that I immediately downloaded Tom DeLillo’s the Angel Esmerelda and Matt Johnson’s Pym: A Novel on a recommendation by Maud Newton [sigh]. I am currently reading Louis’ Maistro’s New Orleans Stories: New Orleans Stories which is I should mention free. Why wouldn’t you want to go out and download that? My offer still stands to purchase my copy of Against The Day to fill that gaping hole in my Pynchon shelf from the first Indie book store owner to offer up a blurb for Odd Words.
& so to the listings…
& Tonight, Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. 17 Poets! hosts novelist LOUIS MAISTROS and poet JOSEPH MAKKOS followed by OPEN MIC hosted by Jimmy Ross. Maistros is a longtime resident of the New Orleans 8th Ward neighborhood, is the author of The Sound of Building Coffins and Anti-requiem: New Orleans Stories. His work has appeared in publications such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Relix Magazine, the Baltimore City Paper, Entrepot, and many others. He is also an accomplished art photographer, and has been called “a wizard with light, shadows, and colors” by Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane. Makkos is also a resident of New Orleans, serves as a full-time faculty member in the English department at Delgado Community College. He also operates an independent letterpress studio & publishing house, where he serves as editor-in-chief. He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans.
& Cynthia LeJeune Nobles will present and sign her fascinating historical book The Delta Queen Cookbook, a combination history and cookbook on the world’s last authentic overnight wooden steamboat and the food that was served on boardtTonight at 6 p.m. at Octavia Books The Delta Queen Cookbook brings the Delta Queen’s story to life with an engaging historical narrative and over 125 recipes prepared by the steamboat’s former chefs during their tenures in the “cookhouse.”
& Imagine growing up in New Orleans and developing a food allergy. (Try finding a place to eat dinner with someone with a violent allergy to anything that swims. This is hard.) Imagine growing up with a father known for his rich, Creole-style cooking, who instilled a love and appreciation of food from the very start. Now imagine not being able to eat most of his dishes anymore. That’s what happened to Jilly and Jessie Lagasse when they were diagnosed with gluten allergies in 2001 and 2004, respectively. So they learned to adjust, changing the ways they cooked, ate, and used ingredients. THE GLUTEN-FREE TABLE provides a well-balanced base of recipes that can add flavor and enjoyment to the menus of even the most demanding gluten-free eaters. Tonight, Oct. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at Garden District Book Shop.
& Tonight at Tulane City of Matsue, the official friendship city of New Orleans will host a Special Lecture on Open Mind of Lafcadio Hearn, Book and Art Exhibition at the Freeman Auditorium at 6 p.m. Professor Bon Koizumi (Hearn’s great-grandson) will give a special lecture on Open Mind of Lafcadio Hearn. Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Koizui Yakumo) lived in New Orleans for ten years from 1877 to 1887 working as a journalist. For Hearn who was accustomed to buying one way tickets and travelling the world, this was one of his most lengthy stops. ‘The Open Mind of Lafcadio Hearn in New Orleans’ will display approximately 24 pieces from the 2010 exhibition in Matsue Castle; 2 pieces from the American College of Greece; 3 of his favorite items from the Matsue Hearn Memorial Museum; 26 of first editions of the books mainly from his time in New Orleans (Rare Book Collection, Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library,*2 Tulane University).
& Michael Allen Zell will be signing his book Errata at Maple Street Book’s Bayou St. John location on Friday, Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. “In Zell’s debut novel, a young New Orleans cabbie named Raymond Russell has been dramatically shocked by the intensity of a crime and is blocked such that he cannot write about it directly. He lets elements leak out associatively so as to prime the engine of his obsessive mind for what he must reveal. Picture a neo-noir Nabokov using Stern-like disgressions directed by Joycean movements of the mind. This book, with its sultry darkness of city and soul, teaches the reader how to uniquely read it. Zell has an inventive and engaging voice, positioning him as an inheritor of the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundra, and Bruno Schulz.”
& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series is an open mic. Next week Oct. 28 Michael Allen Zell reads from and signs his novel, Errata.
& Also this Sunday you get another bite at the Lagasse girl’s The Gluten Free Table at Maple Street Book Shop’s Healing Center Location at St. Claude. No time listed. Call for details: (504)304-7115.
& I have no idea what Duck Commander is about, but I pulled the cable plug a while back. For fans on the curious (me) Willie and Korie Robertson, stars of the A&E hit series “Duck Dynasty,” will be at the Maple Street Book Shop Uptown location signing their book, The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family, and Ducks Built a Dynasty, Sunday, October 21st, 2-4PM. “Part redneck logic, part humorous stories of our family, combined with faith, business tips and a little history- this book is the inside sneak-peek for everything you wanted to know about growing up a Robertson and what it is like to be a part of this family,” says Willie.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Monday night Press Street’s Room 220 will host Adam Parfrey reading Ritual America and Joseph Scott Morgan will be reading Blood Beneath My Feet at 735 St. Ferdinand Street at 7 p.m. (This is a private residence, not the Antenna Gallery). Pafrey, described by the Seattle Times as “one of the nation’s most provocative publishers”, has published a book that peels back the curtains on America’s secret societies. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. Have you ever been locked in a cooler with piles of decomposing humans for so long that you had to shave all the hair off your body in order to get rid of the smell? Joseph Scott Morgan did. Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man’s belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Morgan became a death investigator with the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office in suburban New Orleans in 1987. At the time of his hire, he was estimated to have been the youngest medicolegal death investigator in the country working in a major metropolitan area. Over the course of his career he was required to work in the morgue during the day and subsequently work as an investigator for the coroner at night. Maple Street Book Shop (Healing Center) will be on-site to sell books.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& On Tuesday, Oct. 23 Octavia Books hosts a presentation and book signing with Tonja Koob Marking & Jennifer Snape celebrating their new book of historical photos LOUISIANA’S OIL HERITAGE from Arcadia Publishing, whose books on K&B, Maison Blanche and other local topics you may have seen checking out of Walgreen’s with their historical plaque title boxes and sepia covers.. This book covers the history of Louisiana’s oil patch from the discovery of oil in 1901 through 2001.
& Thomas Joseph Perez will be signing his novel Katrina Lashes Arabia at Maple Street Book’s Healing Center location at 6:30 p.m. A New Orleans ex-pat working as a nurse in Saudi Arabia looses her temper at a Saudi man in the marketplace shortly after the hurricane of the same name strikes her home and finds herself taking refuge from the authorities in the place of a Saudi Prince which interesting sexual tastes who is working on biological weapons on the side. The picture of a sexually submissive Saudi prince gives new meaning to the word spellbinding, and I think we can chalk this up as the Katrina Novel No One Could Have Predicted.
Next Week: Robert Olin Butler at Octavia Books.
Odd Words October 11, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.add a comment
“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.”
– Tennessee William
The chiseled academic definition of Creative Non-Fiction allows no room for creativity beyond style and there are only so many songs in the world. Tennessee Williams wrote drama, a species of fiction but when my brother died and my boss waited for an explanation all I could think to say was, “you probably thought Tennessee Williams was making all that shit up.” I try to imagine her, this Nordic woman from the polar edge of North Dakota, in her college-career crowning role as Blanche DuBois. All stage magic is dishonest, the pickpocket elevated to gentleman in a top hat with a pocket full of silk handkerchiefs. The best magic starts with “give me a quarter” and ends with it appearing behind your ear, just another moment on a street but more than that. What does it matter if it was a nickle or a dime? No one will dispute the creative power and the inner truth shining out of recognizable faces in Williams’ plays. Creative Non-Fiction is just another pigeonhole and good writing, fictive or factual, should draw you out of the mail room and into an unfamiliar place filled with familiar objects, people whose names you are certain you should know. Tell a story and tell it true, letting the facts arrange themselves as necessary. Don’t let exact change get in the way.
& so to the listings….
& Comix Comics fans will want to check out Stephan Pastis: Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury at 5:30 tonight at Garden District Book Shop. From fire-breathing jugglers to sword-swallowing illusionists, this treasury showcases all strips from “Larry in Wonderland” and “Because Sometimes You Just Gotta Draw a Cover with Your Left Hand,” along with Pastis’ original commentary, which provides insight into what Pastis was thinking at the time random strips were conceived, and also fan reactions. Tackling topics ranging from current events and modern technology to human and croc nature, “Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out” offers up a sideshow of feisty characters, including arrogant, self-centered, and totally hilarious Rat, who leads his four-legged collection of freakish friends through a carnival of misadventure. Joining the circus-like cavalcade are Pig, the slow but good-hearted conscience of the strip; Goat, the voice of reason that often goes unheard; Zebra, the activist; and those eternally inept carnivorous Crocs, who we learn happen to taste a lot like chicken. Pastis’ cynical humor and sharp wit imbue this entertaining vaudevillian collection
& Thursday at 8 p.m. 17 Poets! presents Ben Kopel and Carrie Chappell followed by open mic hosted by Jimmy Ross. Doors open at 7 and sign up for open mic begins at 7:30. Kopel was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1983. He holds degrees from Louisiana State University, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and The University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Chappell is a poet by ways of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and now living in New Orleans. Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Bateau Press and elsewhere. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans, where she serves as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine.
& Saturday from 10:30 am – 12 noon the Poems and Pink Ribbons project will host a reading by workshop leaders and participants. This program gives women with breast cancer and cancer survivors an opportunity to express themselves through poetry, working with local poets. At the newly renovated and expanded Rosa Keller Library, 4300 South Broad. The instructors in Poems and Pink Ribbons are Jarvis DeBerry, Kysha Brown-Robinson, Geryll Robinson, Kelly Harris-DeBerry, Melissa Dickey and Gina Ferrara. Come out and show some love and support for their brave students.
& Saturday afternoon the New Orleans Dickens Fellowship will host their monthly discussion on their current reading, Great Expectations. They will Part I, Chapters 7-14 at 2 p.m. at Metairie Park Country Day School’s Bright Library.
& Also on Saturday Crescent City Books will host George Schmidt Reading and Reception on for the Crescent City Books 20th Anniversary Celebration. The event will run from 2-4 p.m., with the reading/q&q/discussion from 2-3 p.m. and reception/signing following until 4 p.m. George Schmidt speaks about his art and signs his retrospective book “Satire, Scandal, and Spectacle.”
& At the Downtown Library on Saturday check out the Mutabilis Press/Improbable Words Poetry Reading featuring a Louisiana All-Star cast including Stella Brice, Megan Burns, Peter Cooley, Gina Ferrara Bruce Fuller, Ava Leavell Haymon, Julie Kane, Rodger Kamenetz, James Nolan and Biljana Obradovic. It’s not on the library’s Nutrias.org site and there’s no time posted on the event’sFacebook page so check back there and here later for the time.
& Downtown on Saturday Oct. 13 at 1 p.m. David Lummis will be signing his new book, The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans, Part 2: The Last Beaucoeur at Maple Leaf Book Store’s Healing Center location. This much anticipated sequel picks up almost exactly where Part 1 left off. It’s the morning of Friday, August 26, 2005, and B. Sammy Singleton is still reeling from the night before. Something is very wrong. Sammy’s best friend, Catfish Beaucoeur, is missing, having left behind clues including a book of lynching photography and a disturbing handwritten poem.
& Don’t pig out at Sunday dinner or you won’t appreciate the Sweet Potato Guacamole when Garden District Book Shops hosts Fred Thompson and Fred Thompson’s Southern Sides. Side dishes are the very heart and soul of southern cuisine. So proclaims Fred Thompson in this heartfelt love letter to the marvelous foods on the side of the plate. From traditional, like Pableaux’s Red Beans and Rice, to contemporary, like Scuppernong-Glazed Carrots, Thompson’s 250 recipes recommend the virtues of the utterly simple and the totally unexpected. “Fred Thompson’s Southern Sides” celebrates the sheer joy of cooking and eating these old and new classic dishes
& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series poet Chris Champagne reads from his work, followed by an open mic.. Followed by an open mic.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Tulane University’s Dixon hall hear authors E.O. Wilson and Alex Harris discuss their book Why We Are Here. Presented by Tulane University’s A Studio in the Woods; Center for Bioenvironmental Research; New Orleans Center for the Gulf South; and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, this historic collaboration between a beloved naturalist and a great American photographer presents a South we’ve never encountered before. Perceiving that Mobile was a city small enough to be captured through a lens yet old enough to have experienced a full epic cycle of tragedy and rebirth, the photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through a swirling tango of lyrical words and breathtaking images.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& 
& Tuesday night at 6 p.m. at Octavia Books and again Wednesday, Oct. 17 at the Maple Street Book Shop Michael Zell of Crescent City Books celebrating the launch of his debut novel, ERRATA. A young New Orleans cabbie named Raymond Russell has been dramatically shocked by the intensity of a crime and is blocked such that he cannot write about it directly. He lets elements leak out associatively so as to prime the engine of his obsessive mind for what he must reveal. Picture a neo-noir Nabokov. The title Errata reflects Raymond’s 22 day attempt at correction of his seeming culpability. Associative language forms the building blocks of the story via Montaigne-esque essays, 1984 World’s Fair era history, and literary ruminations. Errata uses neo-noir conventions as the trappings for an ambitious boundary-blurring meditation on balancing the in between of isolation and sociability, wisdom and madness, symbol and text, and innocence and guilt.
& Also on Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. the Hubbel Library in Algiers will host an author night featuring New Orleans Impressionist Cityscapes: The Allure of the Image by Phil Sandusky in the carriage house behind the Algiers Courthouse, 225 Morgan Street.
This book looks beautiful. It’s a good thing I don’t have a coffee table or I would be one broke-ass, semi-employed student and writer who can’t afford a coffee table much less this book I’m sure. It’s going on the imaginary display shelf close to that Diego Rivera catalog all in Spanish I couldn’t afford at Crescent City Books.
&If you can’t get across the river check out the Alvar Library also on Tuesday night but at 7 p.m. featuring Delia Tomino Nakayama & Peter Nu: Poetry, Song, & Piano Music. Peter’s amazing steel drum is not out of the question, I hope.
& Heads up: It’s time to register for the workshops at the Louisiana Book Festival held the day before the Festival, Friday, Oct. 26. This year’s four WordShops will focus on the fiction writing process, writing for young adults, writing about Louisiana and the process of getting published or self-publishing. The all-day WordShop will feature Robert Olen Butler who will present “After Craft: The Process of Writing Fiction.” It starts at 9 a.m. at the Capitol Park Museum. Butler is the author of Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. Three half-day WordShops are also scheduled, one morning session and two afternoon sessions. From 9 a.m. to noon, The New York Times bestselling young adult author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Walter Dean Myers will teach “Just Write: Here’s How! A Workshop for Writing Young Adult Novels” in the Seminar Center of the State Library. From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Capitol View Room of the State Library, authors Cheré Dastugue Coen and Ronald M. Gauthier will present “So You Want to Be Published?” This WordShop takes a look at the challenges and rewards of getting work published. Also from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., author Ken Wells will present “Selling Louisiana: Think Locally, Publish Nationally” in the Seminar Center of the State Library. To register for WordShops call Michelle Hobkirk at 225-342-4931 or download the registration form from the “Exhibits & Workshops” section of http://www.LouisianaBookFestival.org. Registration and payment are due by Oct. 23, $40 for half-day WordShops and $75 for the full day. Free parking is available.
If you are not on this list well I’ve asked you before and will remind you again: send the deets to odd.words.nola@gmail.com as soon in advance as possible.
Happy Birthday Everette Maddox October 9, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.Tags: Everette Maddox, Lines on this Thirtieth Birthday
2 comments
Join us tonight in the back patio of the Maple Leaf Bar to read some ‘Rette and celebrate. Until then, courtesy of 13Possums:
LINES ON HIS THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY
On a hill high above
the mild October day
I stand, heroic, hands
clasped behind my back,
as the last musket’s
crack fades
and the smoke drifts away
from the place where the famous
battle of my youth was fought.
Who won? Who lost?
Who knows? My speech,
which I seem to have misplaced,
tells. Oh well:
myself and loves and grey
uniform were not among
the casualties, quite; though
a gold button dangles.
Now we’ll bind the wounds,
free the slaves, and set up
(oh shrewdly!) a national shrine
in the decaying mansion
of my body: post cards,
stuffed possums, and (out back)
whiskey to be sold
such emissaries
from the glacial future
as have coin to spend
Odd Words October 4, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Everette Maddox, literature, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.add a comment
& then there is this, courtesy of Maud Newton [sigh]. A tempest in a thimble to my humble self, so far removed from the important world in which such people move. The problem I see with the proliferation of book blogs is for the writer and avid reader who spends too much time on them, the realization of how many potentially wonderful books are being churned out by presses large and small that I will never find time to read, one of which is the comprehensible book in Borges’ Library of Babel in which I will find the key that unlocks “aha! that is how it is done!”, to realize how deep and broad the competition is, a river I could never swim. It is a wonder that the visitors to such places, myself included, bother to write at all, but once you’ve been cursed with a tongue of fire there is no going back to mending nets.
& so, onto the listings…
& This coming Tuesday is Everette Maddox’ birthday, and the loose-fitting plan so far (hatched by me because I don’t have enough to worry about already) is to show up in the patio of The Maple Leaf Bar around 7:30 p.m. to read and celebrate the words of New Orleans’ most iconic poet, founder of the Maple Leaf Reading Series and by all accounts–including his own–a mess. I think a sort of half-baked plan involving the Leaf, poetry and alcohol would meet with the approval of the author of “Just Normal“. If you haven’t read Maddox you have no excuse since UNO Press, back in the days when it mattered, issued the wonderful I hope it’s not over and goodbye anthology. In fact, if you haven’t read Everette Maddox you are not allowed to mention Confederacy of Dunces again until you have rectified this oversight.
& Tonight at 6 p.m. Octavia Books hosts the New Orleans premier of MEANWHILE, BACK AT CAFE DU MONDE . . . Life Stories about Food, including readings and signings by the book’s creator/editor Peggy Sweeny-McDonald and contributors Margarita Bergen, Nell Nolan, Sal Sunseri, Liz Williams, Karen Benrud, Drew Ramsey, Matt Murphy, Leon Contavesprie, and more. “Based on presentations of Meanwhile, Back at Café Du Monde . . ., these foodie monologues invoke your own special comfort foods, recalling tasty memories of life, love, family, and friends to warm your heart, feed your soul, and make you pause to savor the sweetness of life!”
& Also at 6 this evening, Maple Street Book Shop Uptown will host Sonpri Gray signing her latest book, Kept, an insightful-narrator-rises-above-her-humble-circumstances book (as opposed to a gaggle-of-inseparable-girls-friends-and-their-lives subgenre of Chic Lit. I would definitely have picked up this book for my ex- on spec at the library, and I had a pretty good track record on picking winners.
& At 7:30 p.m. 17 Poets! hosts poets AMANDA AUCHTER and PATRICE MELNICK followed by OPEN MIC hosted by Jimmy Ross. AUCHTER is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review. She is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2012 Perugia Press Award and of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. MELNICK is a writer, arts administrator, educator and business owner. Melnick taught English and creative writing at Xavier University in New Orleans for 13 years where she founded and developed one of the first creative writing programs in New Orleans at a historically black university. Additionally, Melnick has taught a literary nonfiction workshop in the low-residency MFA program at the University of New Orleans
& Saturday is the monthly Poetry Buffet at the Latter Library at 2 p.m., featuring poets Vincent Celucci, Chris Shipman and L.A. Weeks reading from their work. I have to get the mistress of ceremonies and talented poet Gina Ferrara to start posting bios for her folks, ’cause I have to stop writing this and go make some money.
& Also this Saturday the excellent Crescent City Books is hosting a 20th Anniversary Reading/Reception from 2-4 p.m. with guest Carolyn Hembree, professor at the University of New Orleans and the author of the recently released collection of poems Skinny. Also, day-long discounts and giveaways are also promised. Best collection of new, used and noteworthy and collectible books anywhere. Try stopping by to visit with Michael when the American Booksellers are in town and try not to get trampled.
& On Saturday at 6 p.m. Maple Street Uptown will feature Andrew Kahrl signing and reading from his book, The Land Was Ours: African-American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South. The Land Was Ours delves deep into the history of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and tells the history of African-American beaches and resorts on Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In particular, the book traces the human and environmental history of Lake Pontchartrain’s southern shore over the course of the 20th century, and looks at how the struggle for outdoor leisure and recreational space became an important element of the larger civil rights movement in New Orleans. This definitely sounds interesting for those of us old enough to remember Lincoln Beach.
& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series. Followed by an open mic.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& On Tuesday at 6 p.m. Octavia hosts a presentation and signing with John McCusker celebrating the launch of his new biography, CREOLE TROMBONE: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz, a book that is going to wind up on my shelves for sure. “Drawing on oral history and Ory’s unpublished autobiography, Creole Trombone is a story that is told in large measure by Ory himself. The author reveals Ory’s personality to the reader and shares remarkable stories of incredible innovations of the jazz pioneer. The book also features unpublished Ory compositions, photographs, and a selected discography of his most significant recordings.”
& Maple Street’s downtown book club at the Healing Center , which meets the second Tuesday of every month, is reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. They will be discussing it Tuesday at 7 p.m. Newcomers are welcome!
& On Wednesday Maple Street Uptown presents Philip Meric at 6 p.m. to discuss The Fortress of New Orleans, compiled by Evans-Graves Engineers, Inc. Please join us for a wine and cheese reception before the presentation. The Fortress of New Orleans: A Photographic Tour of the Largest Civil Works Program in U.S. History serves as a visual record of representative parts and pieces of the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System, a true flood and surge defense system comprised of traditional earthen levees and floodwalls as well as state-of-the-art flood-control components that are viewed as engineering marvels.
Odd Words September 27, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.add a comment
A plague of blessings, that’s been the story for the last several weeks when I type up all the conflicting listings for the busiest nights. Two weeks ago it was the choice between Carolyn Hembee’s poetry book launch and the season opener for 17 Poets! Fortunately I wasn’t forced to make a choice between NOLA poet spirit warrior Jenna Mae and Jimmy Ross’ birthday at 17 Poets! and something else, but tonight it is either John Sinclair at 17 Poets! or a fabulous line up of international prose stars hosted by Room 220 at Melvin’s. I’ve seen Sinclair several times before, and I can almost smell the tamales. I haven’t been good about keeping my the Odd Words’ public Google Calendar but I would if I thought groups would take advantage of it to try to spread the word love out across the week. Keeping up both would turn this into a part-time job paying, um, well All Access passes to the local literary shindigs with a Total Cash Value of Over $1,000! (Applause sign. A drop of sweat rolls out from beneath Bob Barker’s mask, flashes like a tiny spark of life in the stage lights. ) Still, I think I’ll have to start keeping up the calendar and emailing reminders to organizers to try to make it possible for people to do more rather than force them to choose.
No Against the Day/Kindle update again this week. Work is the curse of the reading and writing class, and I’m too old and have too many self-inflicted responsibilities to do the cold-water walk-up poet thing. Foot loose and fancy free for me means not paying attention except to worries and tripping on the sidewalk.
There are only five days left to sign up for the writer’s workshops at the annual Tennessee Williams Festival, so you better get on the stick. Workshop facilitators include: Catherine Frank: YA and Children’s Lit; Zachary Lazar: Literary Fiction; Bev Marshall: Contemporary Fiction; Chris Wiltz: Fiction: All Genres and Creative Non-Fiction. Spaces are filling up fast and classes are limited to 10 people, so register now to reserve your seat!
& J.K. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy goes on sale today. I missed posting up Maple Street Book Shop’s launch party breakfast. This is Rowling’s first novel for adults and her first since ending the Harry Potter series.[COPY DESK NOTE: ADULT NOVEL? REALLY?] Do you really want to run out to Metairie for this? Of course you don’t, not with all of the indie stores here in New Orleans.
& 
Tonight at the Goldmine Saloon 17 Poets! presents the return of John Sinclair to New Orleans at 8 pm. Hailed as “The Hardest Working Poet in Show Business” (Ben Edmonds, San Francisco Chronicle) and “The Last of the Beatnik Warrior Poets” (Mick Farren, Los Angeles Weekly), John Sinclair is likewise a music journalist widely recognized as one of America’s leading authorities on blues and modern jazz. Famous for his role as DJ and a forced behind the MC5 during his days in Detroit, Sinclair moved to New Orleans in 1991 and joined the volunteer staff of WWOZ radio, winning OffBeat magazine’s reader’s poll as the city’s most popular DJ five years in a row (1999-2003). In 1992 he formed his band, the Blues Scholars (founded in Detroit ten years earlier), recorded his first CD in 1994 and began to tour the United States as a performance artist backed by jazz, blues and rock ensembles. He has collaborated with musicians from Little Milton and Jimbo Mathus to the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, Ras Moshe, the Kudzu Kings, Afrissippi, the Pinkeye Orchestra and the Dutch rappers Lange Frans & Baas B. Sinclair has published several collections of his poetry along with his major work in verse, Fattening Frogs For Snakes: Delta Sound Suite, an investigation in verse of the Delta blues and the world that produced it. His latest collection SONG OF PRAISE Homage to John Coltrane was published in 2011 with Trembling Pillow Press and is accompanied by a CD with the same title. It is also available as an Ereader through Kindle.
& Tonight at Garden District Book Shop at 5:30 pm John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920′s. In the years following World War I, the New Orleans’s French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived Bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the “artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter,” as they styled themselves. In Dixie Bohemia Reed introduces Faulkner s circle of friends ranging from the distinguished writer Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer, from Tulane s president to one of its cheerleaders and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.
& Tonight at Melvin’s on St. Claude at 7 pm Room 220 presents the first installation of this fall’s LIVE PROSE reading series with T. Geronimo Johnson, Khaled al-Berry, and Lucy Fricke at 7 p.m. at Melvin’s. Fricke is one of 14 residents in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) who have made a pilgrimage to New Orleans this fall—the program’s sixth annual visit—bringing writers from around the world to the Crescent City for a week of readings, tours, and classroom visits. Fricke and al-Berry are both distinguished writers of nonfiction as well as prose, and they have been the recipients of accolades and acknowledgements both here and abroad. Egyptian-born al-Berry, who currently works as a journalist in London, has written for numerous publications, including the BBC, and is a columnist for the Tahrir Newspaper. He is the author of the autobiography Life is More Beautiful Than Paradise, and his 2010 novel An Oriental Dance was shortlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize. Fricke is the author of two novels (in German). She has also worked as an organizer for such events as the Berlin International Poetry Festival and is the current director of the HAM.LIT festival in Hamburg. They are joined by New Orleans native and University of Iowa MFA graduate T. Geronimo Johnson.
& Friday night at Octavia Books hosts what sounds like a fascinating book, John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920′s. In the years following World War I, the New Orleans’s French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived Bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the “artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter,” as they styled themselves. In Dixie Bohemia Reed introduces Faulkner s circle of friends ranging from the distinguished writer Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer, from Tulane s president to one of its cheerleaders and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.
& Saturday at 3 p.m. organizer Dennis Formento will host the New Orleans venue for 100,000 Poets for Change, the second anual world-wide event, at Cafe Istanbul at 3 pm. The event is free and open to the public with a focus on The crisis in public education and the American obsession with violence
& Saturday at 5 p.m. Simpatico Press poets Megan Burns, Gina Ferrara and Jonathan Kline will read at the Creole Gardens Bed and Breakfast Hotel,1415 Prytania Street. Simpatico Press is making chapbooks for this reading with work from all 3 poets, so come by and get a special chap.
& Saturday at 6 pm the Garden District Book Shop Bayou St. John Location T. Geronimo Jackson will be signing his book, Hold It ‘til It Hurts, at our Bayou St. John location. T. Geronimo Johnson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His fiction and poetry have appeared in “Best New American Voices,” “Indiana Review,” “Los Angeles Review of Books,” and “Illuminations,” among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Johnson teaches writing at the University of California-Berkeley. Hold It ‘Til It Hurts is his first book.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& Also on Tuesday at 5:45 pm Maple Street Book Shop’s First Tuesday Book Club meets at 5:45 to discuss Sara Gran’s book, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. Newcomers always welcome. In the first of a new mystery series featuring quirky private investigator Claire DeWitt, Claire investigates the disappearance of a top prosecutor in post-Katrina New Orleans.
& Tuesday night at 7 pm the 1718 Reading Series hosted by students in the English departments of Loyola, UNO and Tulane will feature poet Andy Stallings on Oct. 2 at their usual venue, The Columns. I’ve got nothing bad to say about the Goldmine or the Maple Leaf, but there are only certain places you can relish a proper Sazerac with your poetry. Hopefully this does not disqualify me from any future Pirate Shots at You Know Where.
& Also on Tuesday night at 7 pm, the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop hosts its first night of Poetry at the Sandbar. Visiting poets Alison Pelegrin and Joseph Wood will read from their collections. The reading will be followed by a brief Q&A and book signing. Please find bios and sample poems below. Also, check out our Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/468920439796753/
A plague of blessings. 1718 is a group of students including UNO. What can I say?
Odd Words September 20, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, FYYFF, Gallatin & Toulouse Press, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.2 comments
My mind is wandering away from books as I crash through a week’s school work in order to blaze through Season Two of Treme, which is not to say that watching Treme is drifting away from literature. I don’t think the world will ever see another Emile Zola or Upton Sinclair except through the lens of television. The Great Google turns up no recent trace of Salman Rushdie’s announced intent to author and produce a science fiction television series, but I still think David Simon has started something that is not likely to die but flourish in the future.
(Insight into the middle-aged mind: Sit on stoop and think, “Google Rushdie’s project”. Walk inside. Suddenly become unable to remember Rushdie’s name. Google “novelist jihad” and get a list of every novel with Jihad in the title or subject. Google “jihad against novelist” and read all about the recent events in the middle east, including Rushdie’s on television talking about it. Mission accomplished. Go take another whats-the-name-of-that-supplement-again.)
And then there is this:
& so to the listings…
& 
Tonight at 9 p.m. 17 Poets! features an Open Mic Host Jimmy Ross Birthday Roast with a reading from our celebrity host together with fellow poets Jenna Mae and Chris Toll. Ross is a poet, playwright and fiction writer. He has been long recognized as one of New Orleans’ finest satirists. Ross’ collection If Bricks Were Books was published by Think Tank press in 2003. He has been moderating the 17 Poets! Open Mic since 192007. His next collection is forthcoming from Lavender Ink. We all think we would like to be Jimmy when we grow up, but we’re waiting for Jimmy to get there first. Did I mention this is a Roast? There will be cupcakes. And frivolity. And drinking. And cupcakes.
& Thursday at 6 p.m. Octavia Books hosts T. Geronimo Johnson featuring his riveting debut novel, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts.
Johnson is from New Orleans originally and although he now makes his home in Berkeley, he maintains a strong connection to his hometown – and New Orleans figures prominently in the novel. Hold It ‘Til It Hurts is one of the few literary takes on the war in Afghanistan and the veterans who served there. “The magnificence of Hold It ‘Til It Hurts is not only in the prose and the story but also in the book’s great big beating heart. These complex and compelling characters and the wizardry of Johnson’s storytelling will dazzle and move you from first page to last.” — Anthony Swofford, , author of JARHEAD.
& Also tonight at 6:30 p.m., Vicki Salloum will be signing her novella, A Prayer to Saint Jude, at the Maple Street Book Empire Shop Healing Center location.
& One more Thursday event: Richard Sexton, Randy Harelson and Brian Costello will be signing New Roads and Old Rivers at 5:30 p.m at Garden District Book Shop. The book captures the natural and cultural vitality of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, as seen in the stunning photographs of Richard Sexton, with text by Randy Harelson and Brian Costello. Pointe Coupee is one of the oldest settlements in the Mississippi Valley, dating to the 1720s. French for a place cut off, the name refers to the area s three oxbow lakes, separated from the Mississippi over centuries. A peninsula edged by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, Pointe Coupee remains a land rich in Creole heritage, distinct in geographical beauty, and abounding in historic homes and farms.
“Which,” he asks in his best imitation of the maniacal voice of folk singer Theodore Bikel as the Rance Muhammitz in Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, “do you choose?”
& Friday night at Octavia at 6 p.m. Stone Barrington is back in Severe Clear, a thrilling new addition to the series by perennial New York Times–bestselling author Stuart Woods—the fiftieth novel of his stellar career. Woods’ long list of titles include the New York Times–bestselling Stone Barrington and Holly Barker series.
& Also on Friday at 6 p.m. The Maple Leaf Book Store Bayou St. John locations kicks off the new The Diane Tapes Reading Series at 6 p.m., the first in a monthly reading series hosted by Ben Kopel and Anne Marie Rooney. Readers will include Ben Pelhan, a Pittsburghist living in New Orleans. He makes poems, screenplays, videos, and combinations of poems, screenplays, and videos. His work is available or forthcoming at OH NO, Spork, Fairy Tale Review, Diagram and YouTube. He likes most rivers, most movies, and most of the people he knows; Lara Glenum, Fullbright Fellow and NEA Translation Fellow, is the author of “The Hounds of No” and “Maximum Gaga”. Lara’s writing pushes the boundaries of gender politics and poetics through the use of the sublime and the grotesque. She is also the co-editor (with Arielle Greenberg) of the anthology Gurlesque, which promotes a re-imagined feminist aesthetic, which blurs the boundaries between femininity, burlesque, and the grotesque; Kristin Sanders is the author of the chapbook “Orthorexia” (dancing girl press). Her writing has appeared in places like Octopus, elimae, Strange Machine, HTMLGIANT, and Airplane Reading. Originally from California, she currently teaches at Loyola University, New Orleans, where she is the associate poetry editor at the New Orleans Review.
& Saturday at Xavier will mark the seventh annual Rising Tide Conference on the Future of New Orleans, with key note speakers including Lawrence Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans at 9:15 am and Lolis , author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country and coproducer and author of the PBS documentary, Faubourg Treme: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans at 2 p.m. Lolis is also a member of the writing team of the HBO series Treme. Tickets are $28 in advance, $38 at the door, $18 students and include lunch and a day-long series of panels on subjects of interest to New Orleans. Octavia Books will be on hand so you can pick yourself up a copy of the author’s works, or maybe a copy of A Howling in the Wires, a collection of essays from the year after The Event including many of the founding members of Rising Tide. You know you always wanted a hard copy of Fuck You You Fucking Fucks by Ashley Morris.
& Sunday at 3 p.m. fiction writer Vicki Salloum visits the Maple Leaf Bar reading series with her novella, A Prayer to St. Jude (Mint Hill Books, 2012) Followed by an open mic.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Tuesday the 25th the Lunch ‘n’ Lit group will be meeting at the Keller Library Community Center Loft at 12pm with Richard Ford’s Canada. Participants should bring their lunch. If you’re interested in joining a bookclub and you’ve got some daytime availability in your schedule, mark down the fourth Tuesday of the month.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& A week from today you should mark your calendar for what sounds like a fascinating book, John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920′s. In the years following World War I, the New Orleans’s French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived Bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane, were among the “artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter,” as they styled themselves. In Dixie Bohemia Reed introduces Faulkner s circle of friends ranging from the distinguished writer Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer, from Tulane s president to one of its cheerleaders and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the jazz age.
& Also next Thursday (more details then) Room 220 presents the first installation of this fall’s LIVE PROSE reading series with T. Geronimo Johnson, Khaled al-Berry, and Lucy Fricke at 7 p.m. at Melvin’s.
& Also down the road (included here so I don’t forget to include it next week), on Oct. 4 the 1718 Reading Series hosted by students in the English departments of Loyola, UNO and Tulane will feature poet Andy Stallings on Oct. 2 at their usual venue, The Columns. I’ve got nothing bad to say about the Goldmine or the Maple Leaf, but there are only certain places you can relish a proper Sazerac with your poetry. Hopefully this does not disqualify me from any future Pirate Shots at You Know Where.
Odd Words September 13, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.add a comment
A busy Thursday, a busy boy. I’ll save you my ramblings and just get this out so you can plan your evening.
&Tonight, Thursday Sept. 13 Room 220 presents the book launch for Carolyn Hembree’s Skinny, a collection of her poetry published by Kore Press, at 7 p.m. at Lipstick & Lingerie Boutique in Arabi (7011 St. Claude Ave). Copies of the book will be on sale and complimentary libations will be available. Donations are accepted. Carolyn Hembree is a poet and beloved teacher of English and creative writing at the University of New Orleans. Her work has appeared in a variety of respected publications, including DIAGRAM, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, jubilat, and Witness. Skinny, her first book, is the result of nearly a decade of work. It follows its protagonist from the Deep South to New York City, where she encounters a variety of horrors that Hembree vividly depicts in myriad poetic forms: ekphrastic works, prose poems, dramatic monologues, odes, elegies, a pastoral, and a word problem, among other free verse experiments. The publication of such an ambitious work is as much a testament to the resiliency of independent press as it is a welcome introduction to Hembree’s startling, shining voice. Read an essay on Hembree by Taylor Murrow at Room 220: http://press-street.com/fever-ribbons/ Read an interview with Hembree by Room 220 contributor Erik Vande Stouwe at NolaVie: http://nolavie.com/2012/06/an-interview-with-carolyn-hembree-67352.html
& 17 Poets! tonight at 7:30 p.m. presents Jamie Bernstein and Bill Lavender. Bernstein is the author of the story and song Black Santa. He first became visible in the New Orleans entertainment scene as a spoken word poet performing throughout the city before the turn of the century. In 2009, Jamie released his first album Songs from the Tree of Life. He released his 2nd album Very Same Dream in January 2011. Lavender is a poet, editor, publisher, and teacher. He grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas but has spent most of his adult life in New Orleans. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including I of the Storm, which includes passages on the Katrina disaster, and an innovative book of short poems, While Sleeping. He also edited the ground-breaking anthology, Another South: Experimental Writing in the South, from University of Alabama Press. His poems and stories have appeared in dozens of print and web journals and anthologies, and his essays and theoretical writings have been published in Contemporary Literature and Poetics Today, among others. His latest book is Memory Wing from Black Widow Press.
& Also tonight. Sept. 13 at 6:00 p.m. David Lummis celebrates the long-awaited publication of The Last Beacour, Part Two of The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans at Octavia Books. “Here is a guy who can paint accurately while he suffers—a talented bohemian, in other words. A worthy addition to your growing New Orleans shelf.” —Andrei Codrescu Garden District Books hosts
& Thursday is a busy night: At 5:30 p.m. Garden District Books features William Barnwell’s Lead Me On, Let Me Stand: A Clergyman’s Story in White and Black, “a moving, passionate memoir of a life of ministry by a dedicated preacher striving to bring together things that tend to pull apart–the church and the world, women and men, old and young, straights and gays, works and faith, the Deep South and the Far North, blacks and whites, a quest for the love described by philosopher-theologian Soren Kierkegaard, “Love is the unity of hostile elements.”
& Sunday at 3 p.m. is an open mic at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
My First Moleskine September 8, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.4 comments
The first full entry in my new Moleskine, kind gift of a dear friend. The Moleskine is the recreation of handmade notebooks made by 19th and 20th century bookbinders in Paris.
Odd Words No. 140 September 6, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, bookstores, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, signings, Toulouse Street.1 comment so far
Bill Lavender and the New Orleans academic and literary community lost their battle to save the University of New Orleans Press from the governor’s and university president’s budget ax, but Lavender sent out the following announcement this week: “I’ll be reinvigorating my old-micro press, Lavender Ink, with a new imprint, Diálogos, and aggressively continuing to publish work of the caliber we were producing at UNO Press. I may even try offering some private workshops. If you would like to receive updates about Lavender Ink / Diálogos shenanigans (we do hope to have a major launch event before the end of this year), please sign up for the mailing list. I promise I won’t spam you; I’ll just send updates once every couple of months.” One of Lavender Ink’s next titles will be Black Widow Salon host Micheal Zell’s Errata, described as “Italo Calvino meets David Lynch in a neo-noir tale of obsession.”
Against the Day Update/Kindle Update: Page 691 (63%) and and a bit of aggravation to my tennis elbow from holding up the surprisingly light Kindle (blame my bad posture). My thumbs keep wanting to go to the buttons at the bottom instead of the page turners on the side, but that’s electronics habits imposing themselves on the reading of a book. I remember my first reading of Gravity’s Rainbow back in the early 70s, frequently while siting in the back of some unrelated high school class. I would make lists of terms, places and historic figures to look up, and scurry to the library at lunch. I believe the librarian thought me mad and I didn’t want to get into what I was reading as I’m not sure the stern old woman would have approved. Reading something this dense in the age of Google is so much easier. And yes I will end up buying a hard copy from the first independent bookstore to pimp mention Odd Words on their web page.
Susan Larson has assembled a humbling list of book events for the fall for Gambit’s The Book Issue, but you know you’re going to use that issue to start your charcoal or lose the link so don’t forget to check back here weekly.
The Young Leadership Council’s One Book One New Orleans pick for the fall is Ned Sublette’s The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
, by Ned Sublette. The onebookoneneworleans.com web site is down but you already own this one, don’t you? Really? Well, all the local indie bookstores are open and you have no excuse not to grab a copy. More details on the YLC’s annual project to get an entire city reading and talking about the same book when they get their website back up.
& so to the listings…
& On Thursday, Sept. 6 17 Poets! launches their Fall season with Poet John Knight and Writer Constance Adler. Knight is the recipient of the Louisiana Literature Award for Poetry, the Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, the Pirates Alley William Faulkner Poetry Award and the Eyster Prize for Poetry. He is a native of Georgia, but now resides in Louisiana. Adler teaches a creative writing workshop and writes a blog, Emily Every Day. Her writing has appeared in Spy Magazine, Utne Reader, Self, Cable Guide, Baltimore Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine, Oxford American, and Gambit, New Orleans’s alternative newsweekly. You can check out the entire fall schedule on the 17 Poets! web page.
& This weekend Sept. 7-9 Worldplay New Orleans hosts its annual Write, Nola! spoken word poetry fest including seminars and performances. Registration and a fee is required. The event concludes with a performance at Cafe Istanbul Sunday, Sept. 9 at 8 p.m. featuring an awards ceremony and performances by local and national artists.
& On Saturday, Sept. 8 at 2 p.m. the Dickens Fellowship of New Orleans will meet at Metairie Park Country Day School’s Bright Library for a discussion of GREAT EXPECTATIONS – Part I, Chapters 1-6.
& A new women-only book club has started up at Fair Grinds Coffee Shop, meeting at 1 p.m. Sundays. The current title (which they began Aug. 12th) is Bell Hooks All About Love. Drop a line to ladiesnight@noboyfriends.org for more information.
& Sunday at 3 p.m. is an open mic at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Monday, Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. the Black Widow Salon sponsored by Black Widow Press starts its fall schedule with its annual Lafcadio Hearn Tribute. Special guest readers include: Priestess Miriam Chimani from the Voodoo Spiritual Temple reading about Marie Laveau and All Saint’s Day, Burlesque doyenne Trixie Minx reading about NOLA glamour, and historian/author/playwright Rob Florence reading from Hearn’s Chita. All ages welcome to bring Hearn books to read. Email books@crescentcitybooks.com for more information.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& Next Thursday, Sept. 13th David Lummis celebrates the long-awaited publication of The Last Beacour, Part Two of The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans at Octavia Books. “Here is a guy who can paint accurately while he suffers—a talented bohemian, in other words. A worthy addition to your growing New Orleans shelf.” —Andrei Codrescu Garden District Books hosts
& Also next Thursday the 13th at 5:30 p.m. Garden District Books features William Barnwell’s Lead Me On, Let Me Stand: A Clergyman’s Story in White and Black, “a moving, passionate memoir of a life of ministry by a dedicated preacher striving to bring together things that tend to pull apart–the church and the world, women and men, old and young, straights and gays, works and faith, the Deep South and the Far North, blacks and whites, a quest for the love described by philosopher-theologian Soren Kierkegaard, “Love is the unity of hostile elements.”
Looking ahead:
& Starting Sept. 25th, the Keller Library and Maple Street Books will sponsor a new, lunch-time book club. The selection for August is Richard Ford’s Canada. The dates for the first four months are: Aug. 28th, Sept. 25th, Oct. 23rd, and Nov. 27th. (I’m pretty sure they didn’t meet on the 28th).
&The 2012 Louisiana Book Festival is Oct. 27 in Baton Rouge. If you want to get into the closer hotels downtown book early, as I ended up way out on I-10 last year desperately trying to reproduce my forgotten business cards at Kinko’s. Odd Words will be there writing up the best of the fest if you can’t make it.
Odd Words No. 139 August 30, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
After Hurricane Betsy passed and the novelty of crawling around on downed oak trees and skim boarding on the puddles wore off, I retired to the pastime I’ve enjoyed since I can remember: reading a book. With the power out, no Internet, phones out in the running car charging (and maybe you sitting with it basking in the air conditioning) and WWL-AM become a complaints and returns line from hell, there is no better time to wander over to your book shelf and pull off an old favorite, or that book you just had to buy six months ago that you haven’t gotten around to reading. If the kids are howling because their xBox is dead, try sitting everyone down in the coolest room or the porch with a book and read together, or better yet have someone read out loud. Pick something you still love and the kids can follow. If it were me, I’d probably choose Treasure Island.
Against the Day Update: Page 506 (48%) and no signs yet of musculoskeletal damage to my hands or sudden changes in vision or cognition from extended use of a Kindle. And yes I will end up buying a hard copy from the first independent bookstore to pimp mention Odd Words on their web page. I don’t understand why people find this book so difficult. There is way less math than Gravity’s Rainbow.
Either there were no events scheduled for the end of the week or weekend, or all the book shops have been to their websites and taken down those since they probably don’t have power. I’ve sent all the indie book stores an email asking them to let me know when they will re-open, and I’ll push that info out the Odd words Facebook page and Twitter account, both of which you subscribe to, right?
& Sunday at 3 p.m. is an open mic at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series. Give everyone my regards, as since I’ve started swapping my sons at five o’clock on Sunday I just haven’t been able to make it. Make sure somebody helps Nancy haul in the amplifier and mike stand.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p..mm. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& On Tuesday, Sept. 4th the 1718 Society, a student-run literary organization made up of Tulane, Loyola, and UNO students, will be continuing their reading series this fall. On the first Tuesday of every month, students and locals alike meet at 7:00 pm at the Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue to listen to local authors read their work and indulge in happy hour. Open to the public, these readings provide an opportunity to experience writers (primarily local poets, but also fiction writers both local and national), while giving students a forum to present their own work to their peers and the community. Lee Barclay will be September’s featured reader. She will be reading selections from New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost, which she edited. Maple Street Book Shop will be on site selling the featured reader’s book.
& On Wednesday, Sept. 5 Garden District Book Shop hosts Tal McThenia and Margaret Dunbar Cutright and their new book A Case For Solomon at 5:30 p.m.
A CASE FOR SOLOMON: BOBBY DUNBAR AND THE KIDNAPPING THAT HAUNTED A NATION chronicles one of the most celebrated—and most misunderstood—kidnapping cases in American history. In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar, the son of an upper-middle-class Louisiana family, went missing in the swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recognizable, in the pinewoods of southern Mississippi. A wandering piano tuner who had been shuttling the child throughout the region by wagon for months was arrested and charged with kidnapping—a crime that was punishable by death at the time. But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South.
& On Thursday, Sept. 6 17 Poets! launches their Fall season with Poet John Knight and Writer Constance Adler. Knight is the recipient of the Louisiana Literature Award for Poetry, the Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, the Pirates Alley William Faulkner Poetry Award and the Eyster Prize for Poetry. He is a native of Georgia, but now resides in Louisiana. Adler teaches a creative writing workshop and writes a blog, Emily Every Day. Her writing has appeared in Spy Magazine, Utne Reader, Self, Cable Guide, Baltimore Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine, Oxford American, and Gambit, New Orleans’s alternative newsweekly. You can check out the entire fall schedule on the 17 Poets! web page.
Looking ahead:
& The 1718 Society’s fall poetry reading schedule has been announced: Sept. 4: Lee Barclay; Oct. 2: Andy Stallings; Nov. 6: Carolyn Hembree and Dec. 4: Benjamin Morris. The readings all take place at the Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue.
& The New Orleans Review’s Walker Percy Prize for short fiction is now accepting submissions through Dec. 12.
&On Sept. 13 David Lummis celebrates the long-awaited publication of The Last Beacour, Part Two of The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans. “Here is a guy who can paint accurately while he suffers—a talented bohemian, in other words. A worthy addition to your growing New Orleans shelf.” —Andrei Codrescu
& Starting Sept. 25th, the Keller Library and Maple Street Books will sponsor a new, lunch-time book club. The selection for August is Richard Ford’s Canada. The dates for the first four months are: Aug. 28th, Sept. 25th, Oct. 23rd, and Nov. 27th. (I’m pretty sure they didn’t meet on the 28th).
Odd Words No. 138 August 23, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.1 comment so far
Crikey. How could I have forgotten to post this last week? Just another sign that things here at the Fortress of Squalitude are spiraling out of control toward some revelation too terrible to comprehend, such as the floor of my son’s room.
Happy [Belated] Birthday Charles Bukowski.
Against the Day Update: Page 442 (40%) and no signs yet of musculoskeletal damage to my hands or sudden changes in vision or cognition from extended use of a Kindle. And yes I will end up buying a hard copy from the first independent bookstore to pimp mention Odd Words on their web page.
& so to the listings:
& Tonight, Aug. 23rd Author Marie Bookman will be signing her Katrina-fueled book of poetry, Breach of My Heart, at Maple Street Book’s Healing Center location.
& On Saturday Aug. 25th at 1 p.m. at Garden District Book Shop Angus Woodward reads and signs Americanisation: Lessons in American Culture and Language. “Biti Namoeteri, an enterprising young man from South America’s Lichtenstein, comes to the US to get a graduate degree in Spiritual Geography, never expecting to become a multi-level marketer or to fall in love with a woman named Janet Broccoli. But he does just that, and then discovers that personal injury lawsuits can be the keys to both success and failure. Woodward’s narrative strategy is both accessible and experimental in this comic novel posing as a textbook.
& Saturday night, Aug. 25th at 6 p.m. historical fiction novelist Katherine Howe, author of the New York Times-bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, will be at Maple Street’s Uptown shop Saturday to read and sign her newest book, The House of Velvet and Glass. “Set in 1915 Boston, The House of Velvet and Glass is the story of a young woman poised on the cusp of a tumultuous new century, torn between loss and love, driven to seek answers in the depths of a crystal ball.
& Sunday at 3 p.m. is an open mic at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series. Give everyone my regards, as since I’ve started swapping my sons at five o’clock on Sunday I just haven’t been able to make it. Make sure somebody helps Nancy haul in the amplifier and mike stand.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p..mm. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Starting Monday, Aug. 28th, the Keller Library and Maple Street Books will sponsor a new, lunch-time book club. The selection for August is Richard Ford’s Canada. The dates for the first four months are: Aug. 28th, Sept. 25th, Oct. 23rd, and Nov. 27th.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& On Tuesday, Aug. 29 the Healing Center location of Maple Street features Thomas Joseph Perez’ Katrina Lashes Arabia. “Katrina Owens is an American nurse working in a Riyadh hospital in Saudi Arabia. After six years in the desert kingdom, the outrageous Katrina now has had her fill of the dysfunctional Saudi society. Especially fed up with the oppression of women, she is itching to finish her contract so she can move on to a hospital job in more liberal Dubai. But on the same day that Hurricane Katrina hits her hometown of New Orleans, Katrina is harassed by a religious fanatic in a Riyadh bazaar. Katrina goes ballistic. To avoid arrest and imprisonment, Katrina takes refuge on the palace grounds of a powerful Saudi prince. As she settles in under his generous patronage, she realizes that he will secure for her an Exit visa only if she agrees to satisfy his needs… At the same time, she finds herself in the middle of palace intrigue involving biological weapons under development in the palace clinic. She has landed in the center of an international plot. The wily Katrina must elude her male oppressors as she outwits the tyrannical government that aims to imprison her . . . or worse.” If you’ve been waiting to go to the beach until Labor Day, this sounds like one for you.
Looking ahead:
& The 1718 Society’s fall poetry reading schedule has been announced: Sept. 4: Lee Barclay; Oct. 2: Andy Stallings; Nov. 6: Carolyn Hembree and Dec. 4: Benjamin Morris. The readings all take place at the Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue.
& The New Orleans Review’s Walker Percy Prize for short fiction is now accepting submissions through Dec. 12.
&On Sept. 13 David Lummis celebrates the long-awaited publication of The Last Beacour, Part Two of The Coffee Shop Chronicles of New Orleans. “Here is a guy who can paint accurately while he suffers—a talented bohemian, in other words. A worthy addition to your growing New Orleans shelf.” —Andrei Codrescu.
Place Not Space August 20, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, geo-memoir, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Crap, another book I have to read. Actually two–Triburbia and Life, A User’s Manual–plus maybe re-read Dubliners. If Odd Words is a Geo-Memoir, as I have styled it, then I guess I need to keep up with the literature of place. And because sleep is such a goddamn waste of time:
Karl Taro Greenfeld, reviewers have been quick to do two things: compare Triburbia to Joyce’s Dubliners and pound on you about how dislikeable your characters are. Whereas I can see the comparison to Dubliners—that is, geography is story, geography becomes narrative—I don’t think that’s the most apt comparison. You two aim at very different things, with very different points of both departure and arrival. If anything, I think Triburbia is a lot like Georges Perec’s Life, A User’s Manual—this is no small compliment—only more modest in scope. The irony being your book is geographically situated in an entire neighborhood, whereas Perec’s is a mere apartment building. Much like both you and Joyce, Perec’s building becomes its own character.
– From HTMLGiant
Odd Words August 16, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
This time last year I though the Kindle was the Cylon of the literary world. I was convinced I loved books too much–the smell and the feel and the heft–to ever consider giving e-books the least attention until the world as I knew it was destroyed and I was forced to get one. And to use recycled garbage bags in the bathroom because all the trees were destroyed in the attack.
Then I went back to school, and picked up the world cheapest Android tablet, a device almost as useful as it is annoying in its quirks. It did, however, allow me to load up Kindle Reader for Android and give it a whirl. At first I just figured out how to get the public domain, Internet readings into Word and converted to PDF in a format I could read. The professor was a Kindle users, and would either search for something or ask someone in the class to do the same. I decided I had to try it (and a couple of the books were out of copyright and cheap).
Searching. Highlighting. Notes. I was hooked. Then I got a reminder from a credit card I’ve had for years that I had tens of thousands of those points you can use to buy useful things like flying toasters. It’s sort of like S&H stamps for people who remember those. I always wondered who saved up enough books of stamps for the Winnebago in the back. Did anyone ever really do that? Ah, but I had to go look and Lo! there was a Kindle. Granted it’s the cheap one that displays ads on the screen after you turn it off or when you use the menu but who cards? It was next to free.
Because I am never happy unless I overload myself with so much stuff to do that I start to feel unhappy, or worse exacerbate my Generalized Anxiety Disorder (which is probably why I do this in the first place, or perhaps ADHD and I — look, a squirrel — so between a full work week that tends so start around 6 a.m. when I check my VPN and two courses at UNO that start next week and the kids and the blog and the other writing I do I just had to decide now was the perfect time to read Thomas Pynchon’s 1085 page whirlwind of character, setting and plot Against the Day. I was maybe fifty pages in when I decided it might help preserve my sanity to go in and start highlighting every character’s name for reference.
Boy, am I ever hooked now. The problem is, I just know I’m going to go out and buy the damned book when I’m done. For people like me (us?) that bookshelf in the front room is as much a part of who we are as a facial tattoo. And since I’ve read everything else Pynchon has written there’d be this obvious, gaping hole in my library should another Pynchon fancier walk into the house. I wonder if the whiz kids in accounting and marketing took folks like us (or just me?) into account when they came up with this idea. “We can sell these addicts two copies easier and faster than glass pipes at the corner store!”
If I once thought the Kindle was the Cylon race of literature, I am now a fully woken skin job embed.
& so to the listings:
& Tonight (Thursday) at 5:30 p.m. Garden District Book Shop hosts Daniel Wolff and his new book Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back. After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became ground zero for the reinvention of the American city, with urban planners, movie stars, anarchists, and politicians all advancing their competing visions of recovery. In this wash of reform, residents and volunteers from across the country struggled to build the foundations of a new New Orleans. For over five years Wolff has documented an amazing cross-section of the city in upheaval: a born-again preacher with a ministry of ex-addicts, a former Black Panther organizing for a new cause, a single mother, “broke as a joke” in a FEMA trailer. “The Fight for Home “chronicles their battle to survive not just the floods, but the corruption that continues and the base-level emergency of poverty and neglect. From ruin to limbo to triumphant return, Wolff offers an intimate look at the lives of everyday American heroes. As these lives play out against the ruined local landscape and an emerging national recession, “The Fight for Home “becomes a story of resilience and hope.
I knew Dave Eggars was right when he told the Tennessee Williams Festival crowd a few years back there were a hundred Katrina manuscripts waiting to be written.
& On Saturday August 18th (so you don’t miss it by heading off to Whole Foods that morning) Octavia Books will celebrate Julia Child’s birthday featuring Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by Jessie Hartland. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raves, “Chef and TV personality Julia Child likely would have delighted in and hooted over this wide-ranging picture-book biography…. Readers young and old will devour this fete pour les yeux.”
& On Saturday at 2 p.m. Octavia Books hosts an afternoon book signing with local fitness trainer Jennifer Lorman celebrating her new book, MOMMYMOVEMENT: New Baby • New Body • New Life. Lormand shares her proven method of getting your body back after baby.
& Also on Saturday at 1 p.m. Maple Street Book Shop will host Retired Basketball Players James “Dukes” Donaldson (Seattle Supersonics, San Diego/L.A. Clippers, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Utah Jazz, Harlem Globetrotters; and NBA All-Star 1988) will be reading and signing his book Standing Above the Crowd: Execute your Game Plan to Be the Best You Can Be Saturday, August 18th at 1PM. Donaldson will be joined by Stephen Bardo (Continental Basketball Association, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs), who will be discussing his own book, How to Make the League Without Picking Up the Rock: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide.
& Sunday at 3 p.m. is an open mic at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series. Give everyone my regards, as since I’ve started swapping my sons at five o’clock on Sunday I just haven’t been able to make it. Make sure somebody helps Nancy haul in the amplifier and mike stand.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p..mm. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
Against the Day August 12, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, cryptic envelopment, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.Tags: 2666, Against the Day, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Roberto Bolano, Thomas Pynchon
1 comment so far
“As an era of uncertainly comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s theire lives that pursue them.”
–From Thomas Pynchon’s own back cover summary of Against the Day
The Internet version of Cultural Anthropology 2052 is the only section with four books, one a thick and expensive text, which is why I got up this morning and after ordering as many books as I could from Alibirs, I downloaded Against the Day onto my new Kindle: all 1,085 pages of it. We won’t go into BIOS 1053, but I managed almost half of that before I got hired back and started dropping courses. Stay awake, make 3×5 cards and it won’t be so bad. (Yes, 3×5 cards. I remember card catalogs).
The only consolation is that the online version of the course looks much more interesting from the titles. In addition to the text Conformity and Conflict (14th edition; if you have one lying around call me) there are: Writing Womens’ Worlds: Bedouin Stories by Lila Abu-Lughod and Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeffrey Schonberg. There’s another reference book on ethnographic field notes already on the Kindle as it looks mostly like a reference.
I hope to bill a good 40 hours a week. I only get paid for what I bill. I hope to manage both classes with good grades. It wouldn’t do any harm to pull up my mediocre 70s gradepoint (all A’s in English courses, barely C’s in others and we won’t even talk about my semester at LSU. In the midst of all this there will be Poetry Book Club’s monthly suggestions, books lingering on the unread pile, and now Pynchon’s twisted, sprawling tale of the death of the Guilded Age. I considered Infinite Jest and the Kindle Store pointed out people who purchased this book also bought Gravity’s Rainbow. As someone who has plowed through the latter at least a half dozen times, each with more relish and discovery, I could have followed the augury of online marketing but it was as if an unseen hand over ruled that algorithmic affinity. After I had pushed the button, I then remembered Daniel’s Handler’s “What The Swedes Read” column in The Believer.
“I would defy anyone to read Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, for instance, and not be tempted to give up more than once, so bamboozling and bitchslappy are the tougher sections. But if the books doesn’t defeat you, you will close it with the rare and deep pleasure of “Now that’s a book.”
How can I resist such an endorsement from a man with regular space in The Believer bold enough to start sentences with conjunctions? And it’s Thomas Pynchon. Infinite Jest will have to wait for next semester.
Last semester work slowly ramped up from 20 hours to closer to thirty and I carried three classes, a senior/graduate class in Writing American Nature and the obligatory course in English Literature Before 1690 or some such date. I choose Chaucer and haven’t had that much fun since I discovered Zap Comix. And as I managed all that, I read 2666. Perhaps I didn’t read it as closely as I should of. It was mostly my nighttime companion with all the skipping back that entails and at 898 trade pages that doesn’t exactly speed things along. Still, I managed it and will certainly go back through it again and more carefully. Two words divirged in a wood and some followed Wallace and Jonathan Franzen into the blank America panorama and others followed writers like Bolaño into a different nightmare, into something difficult, bracing and with a sense of danger, “an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” as 2666′s epigraph from Chalres Baudelaire says. Somewhere along the path you pass Pynchon as well as the entire parade of Latin American writers of the late 20th century. Section Four, “The Part About the Crimes”, reads like a perverse combination of Julio Cortazar’s Hopsctoch and Blow-Up.
OK, you hate Pynchon. You hate Bolaño. There is a very black and white division among readers on these folks. But that is not the point of this ramble into insanity. If you see me bleary-eyed on the bus but intent on my Kindle, you will know why. If I must toil for Moloch I will take a C and genius over sleep.
Odd Words August 10, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
A few random thoughts:
The next person who suggests G-Chat is the basis of a new literary movement I am unfriending on Facebook, which is to say I’m spending too much time inside on the Internet. Blame the rain.
According to The Millions, literary blogs only count if they are on Tumblr. ToulouseStreet.net out ranks The Doobie Brothers on Google, so there’s no way I’m moving.
Coaxing authors to New Orleans in August is clearly not an easy thing but writers are their publisher’s new marketing department and a few keep pounding away at it but this week’s list is short.
& On Saturday, August 11 at 1:30 p.m. Garden District Books will feature Pamela Binnings Ewen’s Chasing The Wind, a New Orleans-based novel on the intertwining of three disconnected lives: an attorney, a businessman and a Cambodian refugee child.
& On Sunday August 12 at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series Poet Melanie Leavitt reads from her work.
& Spoken Word New Orleans Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Sunday evening at 7 p..mm. Spoken Word New Orleans presents Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Monday, August 13 at 6 p.m. Octavia Books will present a reading and booksigning with writer Kiini Ibura Salaam featuring her new collection of short fiction, ANCIENT, ANCIENT. Acclaimed author and critic Nalo Hopkinson writes, “Salaam treats words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce, gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions, and leave you breathless with their beauty.”
& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. repeating Sundays at Noon. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.
& On Saturday August 18th (so you don’t miss it by heading off to Whole Foods that morning) Octavia Books will celebrate Julia Child’s birthday featuring Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by Jessie Hartland. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raves, “Chef and TV personality Julia Child likely would have delighted in and hooted over this wide-ranging picture-book biography…. Readers young and old will devour this fete pour les yeux.”
It’s a slow enough week, I might as well remind everyone that the Big Three indie bookstores are host various book clubs:
& Maple Street Book Shop hosts a First Tuesday Book Club at 5:45 p.m. on, well, the first Tuesday of every month. Check their website for titles.
& Octavia hosts two book clubs, a standard book club and a science fiction book club. The next regular book club meeting is August 18 so it’s probably not too late to get in on this month’s title: The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje.
& Garden District Book Shop also hosts two clubs. The standard book club meets the second Wednesday of the month at 6 p.m., and helpfully lists the upcoming titles. The cookbook club usually meets on the first or second Monday of the month “depending on our guest speaker’s schedule”, includes a discount on the featured book and is a potluck!
Odd Words August 2, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, literature, Odd Words, Poetry, quotes, Toulouse Street.add a comment
… I’ve driven to Amarillo
in one day and one night, through St. Louis
and Cuba, Missouri, where an old Coke facadehung ike a stage prop above the gas station,
through Miami, Oklahoma, where there were birds
and cottonwords and Do Not Drive Through Smokesigns and we wondered what could be burning
along a highway with so few exits, but by then
we were half-asleep and so when I say birdsI am inventing them. I am a revisionist.
– Poet Leigh Stein
Ms. Stein was the featured poet in this month’s The Rumpus Poetry Book Club. I could never pin her down on how autobiographical maIterial informed here book, especially the first sections. If I had enough space in my small apartment for a wall of poems (I have a place in mind but I think that’s where the bookshelves might have to go) this would be up there. “I am a revisionist.”
Sometimes I am the Typist. Sometimes I am a Revisionist. I am sitting at my home work desk while I type. While you read this your brain is soaking in dish-washing detergent. Relax, it’s Palmolive. I am wearing a promotional orange polo shirt embroidered with a Trystero logo and smoking an American Spirit Yellow. Your ashtrays are emptying the coffeepot. I am a terrible liar. I am a revisionist.
& On Saturday, Aug.4 at 2 p.mm. the Latter Memorial Library will host the monthly Poetry Buffet at 2 p.m. featuring Chris Champagne, Megan Harris and Valentie Pierce .
& On Sunday, Aug. 5 at 3 p.m. Poet Harry DelaHoussaye and writer Jeanne Soileau read from their work at the Maple Leaf Bar reading series.
& Spoken Word New Orleans Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& On Monday at 7:15 p.m. The Black Widow Salon will feature award winning writer and director of Loyola’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Uriel Quesada is coming Monday, August 6th to the Black Widow Salon. Upstairs at Crescent City Books @ 230 Chartres St. 7-9 p.m. (We start promptly at 7:15 p.m.) Seating is limited, so come early if you want to sit. Complimentary refreshments of wine, beer, and water.
Uriel Quesada (San José, Costa Rica) is the Latin American Studies Chair and the director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Loyola University. His areas of interest are Central American and Caribbean literatures and cultural studies, U.S. Latino studies, Queer studies and Latin American Popular Culture studies. He has written about Central American detective fiction, Latin American masculinities and travel writing. In 2009 he co-edited a special issue of the academic journal Istmo devoted to the study of gender and sexualities in contemporary Central American literature
& On Monday Aug. 6 Octavia Books will be present for the launch of Tom Wooten’s WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED, a narrative nonfiction account of recovery in five New Orleans neighborhoods. The event will be held at the Rosa F. Keller Library and Community Center at Broad and Napoleon. The evening will include Talks by residents featured in the book, Author talk and book signing, Light dinner provided by Tsai NOLA and Live music.
& On Tuesday Aug. 7 McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music will host a reading by Gina Ferrara, Scott Nicholson, Danny Kerwick & Dennis Formento. There will be a collection for the recovery of FootHills Publishing, publisher of Dennis Formento and Danny Kerwick, which suffered a catastrophic fire. Michael Czarnecki and most of his family were out of town and his oldest son escaped unharmed, but they lost the house, the press, the back catalogue and books in progress.
Odd Words July 20, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Well yes its Friday again not Thursday but the attendant has apparently left the ride unattended and as far as I stretch out toward that red lever like it was the old brass ring on the flying horses (long ago sent to the lawyer junkyard) I can’t quite reach it. But first: Learning to Type with the Raymond Carver method or What I Learned in Writing Class.
Quick, fox, jump the dog. Jump and run. The fox merged with the bloddy sunset. The dog, confused about what just happened, licked itself a few times and padded home for dinner.
& A Night of Poetry and Fiction featuring Aqueous Books, Ampersand Books, Prick of the Spindle Literary Journal will be at the mothership Uptown location of Maple Street Books for A Night of Poetry and Fiction on July 25th. The authors are all affiliated with one of these presses: Aqueous Books (New Orleans), Ampersand Books (St. Petersburg, Florida), and Prick of the Spindle Literary Journal. (Do I get my Ampersand Evangelist merit badge now?) Participating Readers include:
- Carissa Halton, from her novella, The Mere Weight of Words (Aqueous Books, June 2012)1
- Ben Rogers, from his novel, The Flamer (Aqueous Books, February 2012)
- Derrick Medina, poetry featured in Prick of the Spindle literary journal
- Clark Theriot, New Orleans-based author, reading his flash fiction piece Mr. Fix-It
- Thaddeus Conti, New Orleans-based poet
- Benjamin Lowenkron, Baton Rouge-based poet
- Eric Elliot, poetry from his collection, The Graves We Dig (Ampersand Books, 2011)
- Carrie Causey, poetry from her collection, Ear to the Wall (Ampersand Books, 2012)
&OMG there is nothing else going on in the bookstores this week! If you don’t rush and buy a book right now they may all close their doors and you’ll be stuck going to Barnes and Noble in Near Kenner or, if you don’t have a car, taking the Esplanade/Jackson to WalMart and picking something from that wonderful selection just outside electronics. (Chicken Soup for the Soul of Those Who Have Just Lost Their Ferret looks new and interesting). (And there are lots of books with guys on the cover who look like they have just gone through The Incredible Hulk transformation and absolutely no books with topless women.) And really, if you don’t buy more books than you can read how are you going to pass the time during the zombie apocalypse?
& At the Maple Leaf on Sunday Poet Kim Vodicka reads from and signs her new book, Aesthesia Balderash (Trembling Pillow Press 2012) 3ish in the back patio Sunday, July 22.
& Spoken Word New Orleans Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
That’s it. I’m serious. So what book are you going to buy this week and what book are you going to read?
Odd Words July 14, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, memoir, Odd Words, Poetry, The Narrative, The Odd, The Typist, Toulouse Street.add a comment
I promise, we’ll get to Odd Words in a moment, but first a word from our sponsor” The Typist.
I think you have the right to tell your story and like I said I think you should do what you can to protect the privacy of those you write about . . . ultimately, what you’re really trying to do is tell the story of who you are. Sometimes you have to include other people, but mostly it needs to be about you.”
— Cheryl Strayed, who wrote the pseudonymous column Dear Sugar on The Rumpus.
The explosion of auto-biographical writing and creative non-fiction (and the line between the two is not at all clear unless autobiography appears somewhere in the cover, making the other people in the writer’s life just fuzzy enough to not be easily identifiable), may be the last gasp of the Me-X-Y generation. The seminar leaders take up the line as old as Hemingway: write what you know. That is what so many writers are doing, except they are not concerned with fictionalizing their material but with creatively structuring real lives, real people. If they do not do it well it will not be compelling and will fall by the wayside. Joan Didion has not fallen by the wayside. Tom Wolfe has not fallen into obscu1rity. Grab the reader by the short hairs and drag them into a compelling story and the lines between autobiography, creative non-fiction, roman de clef, and first-person New Journalism become matter for academics.
It would take more time than I have to find the point at which Toulouse Street began to become something other that just Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. It begins with the first person nature of the vignettes that filled the early blog and I don’t think it happened all at once. First Moloch entered the picture, the large national bank I work for. I was not writing about the bank. I was writing about my own descent into burn out working for a corporate monolith. I don’t have time to scan through 1,150 posts to find the real tipping point but I jetted all the way to the back of the list and on Sept. 21, 2007 I posted up a You Tube video of Radiohead’s “Fitter, Happier” not just as another “I have nothing to say today bit of music I like but as a clue, no not a clue because I didn’t consciously know where I was going at the time, where it would lead. By October 2010 it has progressed to this:
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin
the that appeared Oct. 17, 2010, just a few weeks after I left the house on Toulouse Street, grabbing what I though most important and fleeing to the St. Vincent Home for Wayward Boys, the hotel on Magazine noted for its low rates, interesting clientele and bed bugs. I have not mentioned the world divorce in the first person until this moment. I searched and checked. If you are still hear not just for Odd Words (and yes we will get to that in a minute) you may or may not have found The Narrative hidden among the other posts. Perhaps you had to know me already. I hope not as that would mean I have failed in some sense, been too cryptic or simply failed to tell a compelling story. No, this is not a swan song. I am not about to stop now. Some things bear repeating, a technique known at tautology when it is used in writers as sparse as Raymond Carver. I am not half to clever. I am simply going to repeat the quote that has probably appeared too often in the main column in recent months, and cannot be repeated often enough: “I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning. – Samuel Beckett.
Enough.
& If I were a timely person I would not be telling you about an event that starts in less than an hour, but I’ll stick it in here anyway as we are in the summer doldrums at the bookstores. Garden District Book Shop features novelist Pamela Binnings Ewen and her book Chasing The Wind starting at 1 p.m. and running until 3 p.m., although by the time you see this the reading will probably be past and she’ll just be signing books. Shame on me.
& Today is Bastille Day and there will be all sorts of festivities just up the block and the Bayou (Faubourg St. John) location of Maple Street Books will be having 20%$ off sale. In fact all of the shops will be having a sale but I’m trying to lure you down to Esplanade. The party starts at 5 but the bookstore is already open. All day July 14.
& On July 18th the Healing Center location of the Maple Street Empire Bookshop will host Kim Vodicka and her first full length book of poetry AESTHESIA BALDERDASH, published by New Orleans’s own Trembling Pillow Press. July 18th, at 6:00 P.M. Aesthesia Balderdash is Kim Vodicka’s first, full-length book of poems which “both mock and exalt femininity and feminine “types”. The text is drunk most of the time on seduction and repulsion. It satirizes the American girl’s desire to be an elle—a woman worthy of the belles and whistles of the French feminin suffixes (-ette, -euse, -enne). In short, Aesthesia Balderdash is “whispery, pink-packaged poesie signed by Elizabeth Arden and sealed with an adulteress.”
And that’s it for bookstore events, which I knew before I started and lapse into my rambling thoughts above. Open mic at the Maple Leaf on Sunday, and the weekly Spoken Word New Orleans Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
An event I missed entirely until I was led their last night was the Southern Comfort Tour reading at the Mudlark Theater last night. The most memorable was local author Utahna Faith’s piece featuring Exile on Main Street. Somehow Sam Jasper and I managed to avoid rehashing, except for a raised eyebrow reminding me of our disagreement, the long standing argument over the place of Keith Richard’s triumphant monument’s place in the Stones’ discography. If I’d had Piano Dave there to back me up we might still be there disputing this point. We all got dinner at the St. Roch instead and grabbed cabs home.
Odd Words July 6, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
I guess what I want to tell you (which is to say, what I want to tell myself) is that we should get our hands dirty. We should write the things about ourselves and others that we never thought we could. We should not be silent in our quiet rooms and offices. We should hold our words in our bare hands.
– Poet Matthew Siegel from his recent contribution to Letters in the Mail
It is hot. It is slow. These two things are one. {Pages of illustrations}
& Saturday at the Latter Memorial Library poets Thaddeus Conti, Jonathan Kline and Melinda Palacio read from their work at the monthly Poetry Buffet hosted by Gina Ferrara. July 7 at 2 pm
& New York Times bestselling author Chef Jeff Henderson – COOKED: My Journey from the Streets to the Stove – is coming to New Orleans to cook some of his down home Deep South dishes and sign his book alongside friend Chef Dominique Macquet at Tamarind, the new French-Vietnamese eatery in The Hotel Modern on Lee Circle. Octavia Books will be on site at the restaurant with Chef Jeff’s book during the event. Books may be purchased from us there and may also be pre-purchased/reserved by calling Octavia Books during store hours, or online here anytime prior to the evening of the event. Saturday, July 7 at 7 p.m.
& I haven’t gotten an update on the Maple Leaf Bar reading series this week. You could always stop by and have a drink at 3 and see what’s going on.
& This and every Sunday Spoke Word New Orleans hosts Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& There is true crime and then there is this: Joseph Scott Morgan – Blood Beneath My Feet: The Journey of a Southern Death Investigator. Have you ever been locked in a cooler with piles of decomposing humans for so long that you had to shave all the hair off your body in order to get rid of the smell? Joseph Scott Morgan did. Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man’s belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Have you ever wept over a dead dog while not giving a shit about the dead owner laying next him? Morgan did. Were you named after a murder victim? Joseph Scott Morgan was. This isn’t Hollywood fantasy, it’s the true story of a boy born into the deprivations of a white trash trailer park who as an adult gets further involved in the desperate backdoor sagas of the “New South.” No hot blondes here, just maggots, grief, and the truth about forensics and death investigation. Maybe I should get this for my daughter, who wants to be a forensic psychologist. Then again, maybe not. Garden District Book Shop, Tuesday, July 10 at 5:30 pm.
Odd Words June 30, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
at Odd times, but then I can tell you more than you ever want to know about the history of the Populist Movement and the People’s Party and the election of 1896 than you would ever want to know, and turned it in only a day late and didn’t get to make a single reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy has silver slippers and the wicked witch a golden cap. Stop. That. Now. And here I don’t get five points off for being late but I probably should have squeezed another hour out of the day yesterday as three of the book events this week are today. Yes its going to be 100º today but I’m old enough to remember at least the fading remnants of signs on places like movie theaters the read “Conditioned Air.” Do you really want to schlep across some ghasty errand’s hot blacktop or settle into a nice cool bookstore?
& Maple Street Book Shop’s Maple Street location will feature Patty Friedmann’s new novel No Takebacks. Otto Fisher has ADHD. He’s also adopted. At thirteen, he never has thought much about where he came from until his seventh-grade teacher asks her class to write about an ancestor. Each student must perform his piece in a school play. Otto’s adoptive mother, whom he adores, helps him write about one of her ancestors, who was in the Holocaust. Today, June 30th at 12 noon.
& Also today at the Garden District Book Shop features Ellie James Broken Illusions. It’s almost Mardi Gras, but for 16 year-old psychic Trinity Monsour this is no time for celebration. Another girl is missing. Tormented by visions she doesn’t understand;of an empty street lined by crumbling old buildings, a terrified voice warning her to be careful, and a body lying motionless in the grass, Trinity embarks upon a dark odyssey she could never have imagined. She’ll stop at nothing to better understand her abilities, convinced that doing so is the only way she can make sure the terrifying images she sees never actually happen. Saturday, June 30 at 1 p.mm.
& This and every Sunday Spoke Word New Orleans hosts Speak Easy Sundays Poetry at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road at 7 p.m. Cover. Visit their website for updates on other spoken words and visiting artists all around town.
& This week at the Black Widow Salon is singer/songwriter/native son Paul Sanchez. Paul will discuss adapting Dan Baum’s book “Nine Lives” as a musical (http://www.offbeat.com/2011/02/01/nine-lives-a-chorus-second-line/) as well as the craft of songwriting. You’ve heard Paul’s songs even if you don’t realize it, as he’s written and co-written with Irma Thomas, John Boutte, Shamarr Allen, and many others. More about Paul at http://www.paulsanchez.com Upstairs at Crescent City Books @ 230 Chartres St. Monday, July 2 at 7 p.m. Seating is limited to go early.
& After the salon you can head over to the amphitheater steps on Decatur Street across from Jackson Square for the weekly Writer’s Block reading. No mic, no list, sometimes cookies and a great time. Performers of all sorts welcome. Every Monday at 9 p.m.
& The second annual Bayou Soul Writers and Readers Conference is a home-grown literary festival that runs Essence Week. You can check them out here. There will be a Women Writer’s Awards Luncheon iIn Honor of Zora Neale Hurston anc z Our Distinguished Gentlemen of Literature Awards Breakfast in Honor of James Baldwin. Featured appearances include: Omar Tyree, Victoria Christopher Murray, Mary Monroe, Julie Kane, RM Johnson, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Keith Boykins, Kiki Swinson, Pamela Davis-Noland, James Earl Hardy , Ronlyn Dominigue, Jed Horne , Yvette Hayward,Troy Johnson, Nicole Porche, Jumata Emill Jones, M.W. Moore, Pamela Davis Noland, Victor LaValle, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Naleighna Kai, Tamika Newhouse, Victor McGlothin, Regina Brooks, LaTosha Johnson, Walter “Trifelon” Johnson, Ashley Hebert, Avery Washington, Monique Mensah, Allison Hobbs, Dr. Maxine Thompson, Ronald M. Gauthier, Lee Hayes, J. L. Woodson, Trevor Baldwin, Pamela P. Reed, Francis Ray, Renee Daniel Flagler, Tiffany L Warren, Sadeqa Johnson, TaNisha Webb, and Victoria Turner. July 5th and 6th at the New Orleans Public Library and the Downtown Holiday Inn. More details here. July 5th and 6th.
& The Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series is taking it’s annual July 4th break and 17 Poets! is done until September. So go listen to Allen Ginsberg read America with music by Tom Waits.
Odd Words June 22, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.2 comments
Matisse illustrated Ulysses? Dali illustrated Alice in Wonderland? Who knew? I steal stuff straight off of sites like The Rumpus. Nah, can’t believe that. I’m thinking the last one would make a cool tat, but it would require a belief in conventional time as opposed to orthogonal alternate universes, especially the one in which Pauley Parrette assists me in providing a critical bodily fluid sample that proves she was not the perp and out of gratitude ties me to one of those stainless steel tables and ….
Um, yes; books.
& Spoken Word New Orleans’ open mike (which I’ve forgotten to list for a while) has moved to Sunday Night at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Doors at 7, show at 8 with a $5 admission. This Week’s Featured Artists are Tank & The Black Star Bangas. Sunday, June 18.
& Leonard Pitts, nationally-syndicated columnist and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, discusses and signs his new novel Freeman at Garden District Bookshop. In the months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Sam–a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army–sets out on foot to return to the war-torn South. He is compelled to find his wife, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the farm to which they all “belonged.”s Thursday, June 21 at 5:30 p.m.
&Garden District hosts Geoff Wyss amnd his new book How0. If every story is born of a question”–”How did we get here? How do you make your arm do that?–the stories in Geoff Wyss’s “How “search for answers to the mysteries of an astonishing range of characters. The narrator of “How I Come to Be Here at the GasFast” explains why he hasn’t left a truck stop in the two days since he scratched a winning lottery ticket. In “How to Be a Winner,” a sports consultant browbeats a high school football team with his theory of history and a justification of his failed coaching career. Lost in the mazes they’ve made of themselves, Wyss’s characters search for exits on ground that shifts dizzyingly from humor to pathos, from cynicism to earnestness, from comedy to tragedy, often within the same sentence. Although propelled by a razor-sharp, contemporary voice, Wyss’s stories–many set in a New Orleans unknown to television and tourists–have more in common with Chekhov and O’Connor than with “Treme”. Saturdayu June 23 at 1 p.m.
& On Saturday June 23 & Sunday June 24, our Bayou St. John location will be donating 10% of our total sales to Re-Bridge – the Bayou St. John Bridge Restoration Project. Help out a great project by buying a book and check out the rest the Fairgrinds and Swirl while you’re down here. And maybe grab some stuffed pork chops as Terraanova’s. Man, I love this hood.
&Octavia Books features R. J. Smith’s THE ONE: The Life and Music of James Brown, the “definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time. So Get Up Off Of That Thing and head over to Octavia on Tuesday, June 26 at 6:00 pm [I need those funky horns and a copy of this book. Come on, give me them horns!)
& Next week Octavia Books delves into the history of the first degree-granting coordinate college with the release of Susan Tucker and Beth Willinge, NEWCOMB COLLEGE, 1886-2006: Higher Education for Women in New Orleans. Touching on three centuries, the book concludes in 2006 when Tulane University closed Newcomb College and Paul Tulane College, the arts and sciences college for men, and united the two as Newcomb-Tulane College. This absorbing collection offers both a scholarly history and an affectionate tribute to a Newcomb education. Thursday, June 28 at 6 p.m
& Hey, Faubourg Marigny Art & Books on Frenchman Street has a website! No announcements there but go sign up for emails. I just signed up odd.words.nola@gmail.com and I’ll get them up here as well.
The Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series features a reading by qwriter and professor Ruth Salvaggio reads from her new book from LSU Press, Hearing Sappho in New Orleans: The Call of Poetry from Congo Square to the Ninth Ward. Several poets featured in the book will also read. Sunday at 3 p.m. if I’m late, I’m still waiting at the beer for a bar.
Which reminds me it’s probably time for my somesortofenia reminder to send your events to odd.words.nola@gmail.com if you want to see them here and Facebook and Twitter. OK, I’ve been falling down on the Twitter and Facebook announcements but then I’ve been falling down a lot and I’m going to see the doctor about that. Oh, and I just ate a meatloaf sandwich from the meatloaf I made, um, I think last Saturday. And I’m eating some chocolate covered strawberries that usually get thrown out at the end of the day at the candy shop where she works “because they don’t keep.” Please make donations to the Tennessee Williams Festival in lieu of flowers. Of you can stop by and see if I answer the door, in which case I have a bunch of white chocolate ones left.
& Just around the corner is a local festival to get you out of the crowds at the Essence Fest author events and reach out to local writers while you’re in town. The second annual Bayou Soul Writers and Readers Conference is a home grown literary festival that runs Essence Week. You can check them out here. There will be a Women Writer’s Awards Luncheon iIn Honor of Zora Neale Hurston anc z Our Distinguished Gentlemen of Literature Awards Breakfast in Honor of James Baldwin. Featured appearances include: Omar Tyree, Victoria Christopher Murray, Mary Monroe, Julie Kane, RM Johnson, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Keith Boykins, Kiki Swinson, Pamela Davis-Noland, James Earl Hardy , Ronlyn Dominigue, Jed Horne , Yvette Hayward,Troy Johnson, Nicole Porche, Jumata Emill Jones, M.W. Moore, Pamela Davis Noland, Victor LaValle, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Naleighna Kai, Tamika Newhouse, Victor McGlothin, Regina Brooks, LaTosha Johnson, Walter “Trifelon” Johnson, Ashley Hebert, Avery Washington, Monique Mensah, Allison Hobbs, Dr. Maxine Thompson, Ronald M. Gauthier, Lee Hayes, J. L. Woodson, Trevor Baldwin, Pamela P. Reed, Francis Ray, Renee Daniel Flagler, Tiffany L Warren, Sadeqa Johnson, TaNisha Webb, and Victoria Turner. July 5th and 6th at the New Orleans Public Library and the Downtown Holiday Inn. More details here.
Odd Words — Mea Maxima Culpa June 17, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Yes, no Odd Words in two weeks. (Strikes breast three time but can’t remember the proper Catlick Latin so MMC will have to do.
Why I didn’t post is a long and boring story I won’t impose on you. Oh, and Tiresias says hi.
If you hurry over to the Irish House hopefully they will skip ahead to the naughty bits. And if you don’t: “. . . I was a Flower of the mountain yes where I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used to or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask agai nyes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like made and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Please submit 500 words from a Feminist or Post-Colonial critical view by next Wednesday. Or help me remember which Firesign Theater album ends with this.
&The Maple Street Bar Poetry Reading Series features performance poet LEX presenting his work, followed by an open mic. Sunday, June 17 at 3 p.m., or pretty close to that after everyone gets a drink at the bar. 17 Poets! is sadly finished for the year but will be back in September.
& Get your funk on and meet me at the Eastern Market next Saturday for some Rare Essence but then the market burned down years ago and I have no idea if that band from the 80s is stil around and sadest of all, Chuck Brown–the father of Go-Go music which is to DC what the original Funky Meters line up is to New Orleans — just passed away. But you can get a chuck of funk at the Maple Street Book Shop’s Healing Center location for a reading and signing by Natalie Hopkinson, author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. If you were listening to Soul Sister the weekend after he passed you know what I mean. Remind me if I show up that I CAN’T AFFORD TO BUY ANY MORE BOOKS for a while but please loan me yours when you’re done. Tuesday, June 19th, 6:30-8pm.
& Wwe all knew it was coming for years now but here’s another Katrina-tinged book also over at Octavia this week, Rosalyn Story’s Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans Thursday, June 21st, at 6:30pm. There is a chef living in Treme who stays and his son the trumpeter who rushes home to find his father and finds his old girlfriend instead. I normally don’t get much of a thrill out of formulaic but it is beach reading season and it is an Essence Book Club selection.Thursday, June 21st, at 6:30p at the Healing Center And who knew Essence had a Book Club? Maybe that’s why Oprah is bringing her’s back what with Essence getting all up in her shit.
And the Maple Street Book Shop Healing Center location is in St Claude (and the Bayou one is just four blocks over), Maple Stret location which is of courses on St. Claude which is not confusing at all people in New Orleans who know where Bayou Road, Kelerec, North Dorgenois and Bell Street all cross in one crazy ass intersection. With no stop signs. Fortunately Bayou Road is one of the last of the brick paved stretches of street in this town so you tend to go slow.
& And with Essence just around the corner I’ll give an early shout out to a home grown literary festival that runs Essence Week, the Bayou Soul Writers and Readers conference. You can check them out here. And I’ll by cutting and pasting like crazy is a couple of weeks listing all the authors at Essence but whether you’re a visitor or from just around the corner, show this local festival of writers some love during Essence week.
& Octavia Books hosts Ruth Salvaggio’s books Hearing Sappho in New Orleans: The Call of Poetry from Congo Square to the Ninth Ward. Author Event While sifting through trash in her flooded New Orleans home, Ruth Salvaggio discovered an old volume of Sappho’s poetry stained with muck and mold. In her efforts to restore the book, Salvaggio realized that the process reflected how Sappho’s own words were unearthed from the refuse of the ancient world. Undertaking such a task in New Orleans, she sets out to recover the city’s rich poetic heritage while searching through its flooded debris. Hearing Sappho in New Orleans is at once a meditation on this poetic city, its many languages and cultures, and a history of its forgotten poetry. Using Sappho’s fragments as a guide, Salvaggio roams the streets and neighborhoods of the city as she explores the migrations of lyric poetry from ancient Greece through the African slave trade to indigenous America and ultimately to New Orleans. NOT BUYING ANY BOOKS. REMEMBER? But you just missed my birthday. Thursday June at 6:00 p.m.
OK, I’m getting all out of chronological order here but if you’ve gotten this far down you can figure this out. Or you can ask your high school aged kid who has a $39 calculator that exceeds the entire computing power of the Apollo mission command modules. Which is almost as amazing as the Space Pen, or the fact that people still buy them. Silly Russians, they didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a zero gravity pen. They used pencils.
& Spoken Word New Orleans’ open mike (which I’ve forgotten to list for a while) has moved to Sunday Night at the Club Caribbean 2441 Bayou Road. Doors at 7, show at 8 with a $5 admission. This Week’s Featured Artists are Tank & The Black Star Bangas. Sunday, June 18.
& In a city that tried to shut down some of the best Latino cooking we ever had just because the restaurants had wheels, Garden District Books brings us John T. Edge, The Truck Food Cookbook. The book delivers 150 recipes from America’s best restaurants on wheels, from L.A. and New York to the truck food scenes in Portland, Austin, Minneapolis, and more.John T. Edge shares the recipes, special tips, and techniques. And what a menu-board: Tamarind-Glazed Fried Chicken Drummettes. Kalbi Beef Sliders. Porchetta. The lily-gilding Grilled Cheese Cheeseburger. And in case you sadly miss the food truck that used to park on Frenchman you know the guy that ran it cooks in the back of Cafe Negril and makes the most awesome Central American tamales you will ever eat.
& Leonard Pitts, nationally-syndicated columnist and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, discusses and signs his new novel Freeman at Garden District Bookshop. In the months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Sam–a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army–sets out on foot to return to the war-torn South. He is compelled to find his wife, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the farm to which they all “belonged.”s Thursday, June 21 at 5:30 p.m.
Odd Words May 25, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
A day late and a dollar short. Sometimes cliches are the best way to say what you want to say. Or something like that. It was in a song, and meant to be ironic. I hope. Let’s just say yesterday was so much fun I began to think it was Wednesday, probably in hope that I would get to do Thursday over. No such luck.
& This is where the 17 Poets! listing would have gone if yesterday had not left me pining for the days I was prepping for an exam on The Canterbury Tales. I guess if the Times Picayune can go to a three times a week newspaper, I can miss one edition by a day. Sorry y’all.
& Chuck Perkins and Voices of the Big Easy will be at Cafe Istanbul featuring Chuck Perkins, Spyboy Honey, Michaela Harrison, Roland Guerin, Red Morgan, Mario Abney, Gene Harding and the rest of the voices crew. There will be room for other singers and performers to sit in with the band. Dancers are welcomed as well. Feel free to let your performing friends know they will be able to sit in. Friday May 25 at 9 p.m.
& Maple Street Book Shop’s Bayou St. John location will move over to the upstairs of Fair Grinds Coffee House to host Lawrence Powell will be discussing and signing his latest book, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. This is the story of a city that shouldn’t exist. In the seventeenth century, what is now America’s most beguiling metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding, infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site Sunday, May 27, at 4 pm.
& The Maple Leaf Bar Poetry Reading Series will host a Memorial Day Open Mic on Sunday, May 27 at 3 p.m.
& Garden District Books will feature Kerri McCaffetu’s New Orleans New Elegance. Award-winning photographer Kerri McCaffety looks at the city’s most innovative and iconic interiors in a quest to define the essence of the unique New Orleans style. Sumptuous fabrics, elegant architectural details, intricate collections, bold abstract art, and fresh, contemporary lines are all captured in her stunning photographs. Saturday, May 26 at 1 p.m.
& Octavia books will host Rich Cohen who will present and sign his new book, THE FISH THAT ATE THE WHALE: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King. The banana king is Samuel Zemurray, a little know antihero, the son of a Jewish Russian farmer. He started with nothing but a pile of rotten bananas, overthrew two governments in Central America, created the basic CIA template, bested and took over United Fruit, and went to war with Huey Long. As Rich puts it, if Zemurray had owned a football team, they would’ve won all the time. Zemurray’s rise began at the docks of New Orleans. Monday, June 4 at 6 p.m.
Odd Words May 17, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Holy Moly, is it Thursday again already.
& Tonight at 17 Poets! Dave Brinks announces “CLARK COOLIDGE, Poet Uberist of Golden Realms, has secretly arrived in NOLA to give a poetry reading for The Ages!In fact this will be Clark Coolidge’s first sojourn to Our Lady of Swamplandia!” Thursday, May 17 at 7:30 pm
& Tayari Jones will be at Maple Street’s Healing Center location presenting her new book Silver Sparrows, “a breathtaking story about a man*s deception, a family*s complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle” Thursday May 17, 6:00 pm
& Martin Behrman Charter School will celebrate its second “Poetry on the Avenue”, an evening of art, spoken word poetry, and live music.. The event will feature performances by student performers from Behrman Charter School, several local poets and musical artists, and nationally renowned feature poets Sunni Patterson, an HBO Def Poet and Team SNO, New Orleans’ first national slam poetry championship winning team. The event will be hosted by New Orleans’s own Gian Smith of Treme and Alphonse “Bobby” Smith and will take place on the school’s front lawn from 3pm to 6pm. The school is located at 715 Opelousas Avenue, New Orleans, LA, located in New Orleans’s historic Algiers Point. Saturday, May 19 from 3 pm to 6 pm.
& On May 19th The New Orleans Secular Humanist Society is hosting an event with Lawrence Powell in the Dominion Learning Center at Audubon Zoo. It its open to the public. Dr. Powell will be discussing and signing his new book, Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. Saturday May 19, at 4:30 pm
& Octavia Books hosts a booksigning with photographer West Freeman featuring his recently published work, THE GARDEN DISTRICT OF NEW ORLEANS. The Garden District of New Orleans has enthralled residents and visitors alike since it arose in the 1830′s with its stately white-columned Greek Revival mansions and double-galleried Italianate houses decorated with lacy cast iron. Photographer West Freeman evokes the romance of this elegant neighborhood with lovely images of private homes, dazzling gardens, and public structures. Saturday, May 19 at 2 p.m.
& Sunday the Maple Leaf Bar reading series will feature a SOLAR ECLIPSE/VERNAL EQUINOX OPEN MIC! These powerful forces and drawing you to come. Do not resist.
& Ron Tanner will be at Maple Street’s Uptown location on to sign and discuss his book, From Animal House to Our House. A story for inspiration-seekers, old house lovers, DIYers, and American dreamers, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story shows how Ron and Jill learned the hard way — about love and life and saving precious things from ruin. Monday, May 21 at 6 pm.
& Octavia Books will host Carolyn Turgeon featuring her new middle-grades novel, THE NEXT FULL MOON, a “horoughly compelling, gorgeously told tale.” Tuesday, May 22 at 6 pm.
I’m sure I’ve missed something but I’ve been up since 3:45 a.m. for a work conference call and no amount of coffee is going to make that right, it seems. I think I need a six pack of Mexican Coke to get my blood sugar up. If you know where I live, I will pay you handsomely to drop some buy. And a bag of donuts.
Odd Words May 10, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.1 comment so far
Class, this week’s reading assignment is “Lonesome Was the Blacktop.” The Rumpus is an Odd place. They review a lot of fiction (and a lot of poetry). It hovers, however, in the curling cigarette haze of the twilight zone between fiction and reality, in that space named Creative Non-Fiction by people who’s ideas on literary criticism are greatly influenced by those little boxes from which they pick up their departmental mail. Does it matter if this story is fiction or memoir or something entirely different, something that never crossed a fact checker’s desk, something outside of all the rules I learned in the English Department of 30 years ago where I rarely appeared because I had a goddamn newspaper to run, a newspaper where I learned an entirely different set of rules?
Rules. Neither the department chair nor the managing editor would approve of that last sentence. If you think I care, you clearly have me confused with someone else. Rules. If adjectives are bad how are you going to describe those atrocious hot pants you wore in the Seventies? You know, the ones that were (mumblety) pink. I lived long enough in the land where the chain restaurant ruled to know three things: Outback has a pretty decent lamb, an awesome blooming onion and the second best food slogan I’ve ever heard: No Rules, Just Right.
That story is Just Right. The rest doesn’t matter.
The best restaurant slogan ever belonged to Corn Dog 7. You remember it, right across from the ice rink at the Plaza Shopping Center. “Better Than Good.” I mean, for a corn dog, that’s pretty high praise. And entirely less creepy than the old 7-Up slogan, “You Like It. It Likes You.” Really. In like a friendly way or is that woman in the tank suit and cap swimming up through the bubbles painted into the engraving on the Sixties-era bottle just waiting for you to run laughing with her behind the sand dunes? Questions like this are important when you are 11. They don’t make bottles like that any more so I guess I’ll never know.
This is your brain. This is your brain on two pots of coffee. This too shall pass, but not before I convert a significant amount of tooth enamel into credit hours. And now the listings. I hope you’ve made it this far. Or just skipped to the bold faced ampersands. That’s what they’re there for.
& The World Affairs Council of New Orleans and Octavia Books invite you to a discussion and booksigning with Imran Ahmad featuring his memoir, THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN: A Muslim Boy Meets the West. ““… irresistible – a charming, laugh-out-loud-funny memoir, according to John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 6 p.m. Thursday, May. 10 at Octavia Books. This sounds fascinating but I still have to finish Andrew Lam’s East Eats West first, which I loved until it fell back onto the unread book pile under the bed.
& This Thursday at 17 Poets you can catch May 10th Poets Laura Mattingly and rob mclennan and fiction writer Stephen Brockwell. Laura Mattingly is the author of The Book of Incorporation (Language Foundry, 2012), and How to Become Black Water. rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). Stephen Brockwell is the author of The Wire in Fences (Balmuir, 1988), Cometology (ECW Press, 2001), which Harold Bloom described as having “rare and authentic promise,” Fruitfly Geographic (ECW, 2004), winner of the 2004 Archibald Lampman Award, and The Real Made Up (ECW, 2007) Thurday, May 10 at 7:something p.m.
& Dr. Dale Archer, author of Better Than Normal, will be at Maple Street Book’s Healing Center location on Thursday. His book is “a groundbreaking new view of human psychology that shows how eight key traits of human behavior, long perceived as liabilities, can be important hidden strengths. What if the inattentiveness that makes school or work a challenge holds the secret to your future as an entrepreneur? What if the shyness in groups that you hate is the source of deep compassion for others? What if the anxiety and nervousness you often feel can actually help energize you? What if the mood swings you sometimes experience can be the source of tremendous creativity? What if all that coffee makes you afraid to take the garbage out because you’ll get bats in your hair? OK, I just made that last one up. Actually if you managed to get through the babble at the top of this page you just might find this one as interesting as it sounds to me. Thursday, May 10 at 6:30 p.m.
& On Saturday, Octavia Books hosts Anne Butler, former editor of Country Roads magazine, and her new book MAIN STREET OF LOUISIANA, a tour of thirty-two lovely little Main Street Communities scattered across the state — from Bastrop to New Orleans. Because I am in a perverse mood, I think I’m going to order a copy for every motorcycle club in Louisiana with skulls in their colors. Just kidding. I was thinking this looks like an awesome Mother’s Day gift. Really. 2 p.m. Saturday, May. 12
& The Black Widow Salon on Monday, May 14th welcomes guest David Rutledge. Rutledge, editor of the two strong Chin Music Press New Orleans anthologies, will be discussing creative non-fiction and his own recent book on layers in the work of Vladimir Nabokov. Upstairs at Crescent City Books. 7-9 p.m. (starts promptly at 7:15 p.m.) books@crescentcitybooks.com for more information and to reserve your seat. It’s a small room. And if you follow Micheal and I down to the Chart Room, you can help plan Bloomsday.
& On Tuesday Octavia Books presents a special launch event and booksigning with award-winning photographer Kerri McCaffety (OBITUARY COCKTAIL) who now turns her lens toward New Orleans’s most innovative and iconic interiors in a quest to define the essence of the unique New Orleans style. This is certainly less likely to get you arrested than peering through the leaded glass windows of some Uptown manse or Lakefront UberHaus.
& On Saturday Garden District books features Lesley Crawford Costner;s Goodnight Acadiana
This tribute to the bountiful ecosystem and fond traditions of Creoles and Cajuns is beautifully illustrated and presents a foundation for appreciating the singular heritage of this region. Tragically it will someday only exist in books like this one. So you should get a copy and read it on your imminent road trip to Lafayette via Houma. Saturday, May 12 at 11 a.m.
& The second half of Garden District’s Saturday double header is Peter J. Murray’s Mokee Joe is Coming. “When Hudson receives the weird message that Mokee Joe is coming, his life turns into a nightmare. Who is Mokee Joe? And what has Hudson done to make him so mad? There’s only one course of action—Hudson must destroy this monster before it destroys him!” I think Murray’s been into my Morning Thunder, but I’m curious about a Cambridge-trained metallurgists turned author is writing some pretty twisted children’s books or has been working with mercury too long.
& OK, as the titles get weirder I’m getting more obnoxious. Or Cambridge-clever. Probably obnoxious. So we’re going to be nice and include the entire blurb for Ken Budd”s The Voluntourist: A Six-country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem: “he Voluntourist is a remarkable memoir about losing your father, accepting your fate, and finding your destiny by volunteering around the world for numerous worthy causes: Hurricane Katrina disaster relief in New Orleans, helping special needs children in China, studying climate change in Ecuador, lending a hand–and a heart–at a Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East, to name but a few. Ken’s emotional journey is as inspiring and affecting as those chronicled in Little Princes and Three Cups of Tea. At once a true story of powerful family bonds, of sacrifice, of self-discovery, The Voluntourist is an all-too-human, real-life hero whom you will not soon forget.” OK, after reading that I’m a little embarrassed but too tired to go back and change the lead in. He sounds like a nice guy. So go buy his book why don’t you? At Garden District Book Shop Wednesday, May 16th5:30 p.m.
& On Wednesday New Orleans’s own John Barry will be at the Maple Street Book Shop Healing Center location from , to sign and discuss his latest book, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, a revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America. “This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams*s interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop’s vision of his ‘City upon a Hill.” Heady stuff. 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 16.
& Here’s an early plug for an event Saturday May 19th so you can plan your weekend around it: Martin Behrman Charter School will celebrate its second “Poetry on the Avenue”, an evening of art, spoken word poetry, and live music on Saturday, May 19, 2011. The event will feature performances by student performers from Behrman Charter School, several local poets and musical artists, and nationally renowned feature poets Sunni Patterson, an HBO Def Poet and Team SNO, New Orleans’ first national slam poetry championship winning team. The event will be hosted by New Orleans’s own Gian Smith of Treme and Alphonse “Bobby” Smith and will take place on the school’s front lawn from 3pm to 6pm. The school is located at 715 Opelousas Avenue, New Orleans, LA, located in New Orleans’s historic Algiers Point.
P.S. Please direct questions about typos or any other errors to the Community Coffee Co. and the University of New Orleans Department of English.
Feed the Lake April 30, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street, Writing.1 comment so far
A Jean Rhys quote from writer Tao Lin’s letter to the subscribers to The Rumpus’ Letters in the Mail.
Odd Words Doesn’t Go To Jazz Fest (But You Should) April 28, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.add a comment
at least to check out the events at the Book Tent this year:
April 28th – Saturday
Tom Piazza 1 – 2:00PM
Devil Sent The Rain
Keith Spera 2 – 3:00PM
Groove Interrupted
*Al Kennedy 4 – 5:00PM
Big Chief Harrison and the Mardi Gras Indians
Peggy Scott LaBorde 5 – 6:00PM
Lost Restaurants of New Orleans
April 29th – Sunday
Alden Taylor 12 – 1:00PM
Harry Taylor Who Dat Dog
*Johnette Downing 1 – 2:00PM
Why The Oyster Has the Pearl
Ben Sandmel 3 – 4:00PM
Ernie K-Doe
Larry Powell 4 – 5:00PM
Accidental City
John Klingman 5 – 6:00PM
New In New Orleans Architecture
Second Weekend — May 3rd – Thursday
Ann Benoit 1 – 2:00PM
Broussard’s Restaurant & Courtyard Cookbook
Moira Crone 2 – 3:00PM
The Not Yet
Alison Fensterstock 3 – 4:00PM
Definition of Bounce: Between Ups and Downs in New Orleans
May 4th– Friday
Tom Fitzmorris 12 – 1:00PM
Lost Restaurants of New Orleans
Laura Rowland 1 – 2:00PM
Ronin’s Mistress
Jeremie Gersin 2 – 3:00PM
New Orleans Sojourn
Sherry Alexander 3 – 4:00PM
Courtroom Carnival
Jim Nolan 4 – 5:00PM
Higher Ground
West Freeman 5 – 6:00PM
Garden District of New Orleans
May 5th – Saturday
Robert Jeanfreau 12-1:00PM
Story Behind the Stone
Constance Adler 1 – 2:00PM
My Bayou
Alex Cook 2 – 3:00PM
Louisiana Saturday Night
Tom Piazza 3 – 4:00PM
Devils Sent The Rain
* Keith Spera 4 – 5:00PM
Groove Interrrupted
May 6th – Sunday
Cornell Landry 12 – 1:00PM
Happy Mardi Gras, Happy Jazz Fest, Goodnight NOLA, One Dat Two Dat
Mary Richardson 2 – 3:00PM
Open Your Heart and Let Love In
* Ben Sandmel 3 – 4:00PM
Ernie K-Doe
Errol Barron 5 – 6:00PM
New Orleans Observed
* Indicates an interview or performance is scheduled prior to the booksigning and the booksigning will be mentioned
Treme staff and actors will be signing the second season DVD in one of the empty slots. I will notify you as soon as I know what day.
Odd Words Readers should stop by the Fortin Street Stage on your way toward the side gate. I got water. I got cold beer. I got red beans. I got good red beans.
Odd Words’ Thursday in Briefs April 26, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, Fortin Street, literature, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
I really need to get in the shower. By the time I got home last night from my son’s NOCCA concert and made dinner, I realized I needed to knock off a pile of reading for class today so here’s a list of Thursday’s events. I’ll put up a complete list for the week later today so I can avoid working on my papers.
& Tonight 17 Poets features April 26 New Orleans author Moira Crone reading and signing from her book of stories The Not Yet (UNO Press). I heard her read excerpts on a panel at the Faulkner Festival this year and it sounds like a wonderful book.
& A quick heads up so you can plan your weekend: Studio in the Woods will host its annual Forestival featuring artists in residence from the past year. Among those will be Benjamin Morris, fiction writer, essayist and playwright, is the author of numerous award-winning works of literature and was an “Ebb & Flow” writer-in-residence at A Studio In The Woods from September-November 2011. As a resident, he began work on a new poetry collection provisionally entitled “Ecotone.”
Odd Words Does World Book Night April 24, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.Tags: The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, World Book Night
1 comment so far
World Book Night was a gas. I gave away 24 copies of Tim O’Brien’s The Things The Carried to tourists, street musicians and other various and sundry folk in the 600 block of Frenchman Street. A lot of younger people stopped but told me that every college professor in the last decade has assigned the book in some class. And how much they loved it. I’m glad to see it is so widely read. One gentleman stopped and asked what the book was about, then told me “he’d half enough flashbacks.” I ran into Donna Allen and a friend who were wandering the neighborhood distributing books. I would do this again any time WorldBookNight.org decides to do it again.
Odd Words April 19, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.2 comments
Who knew New Orleans’ own Susan Larson, former book editor of the Times Picayune and literary woman about town, was a Pulitzer Prize fiction judge? I caught her on NPR Morning Edition discussing the prize board’s decision not to award a prize in fiction. Ms. Larson was very politic in accepting the panel’s decision but I think its crazy to ask people to screen 300 nominees down to three and then not pick a winner.
An important editorial decision: In the interest of occasionally eating and sleeping, all events are going to present the damn book title however the original source listed it. Anyone offended and requesting I follow strict MLA guidelines is invited to proof my end of semester papers.
Without further ado, we have three events on a night when all sensible people will be power chugging french press and working all night on a paper on the role of medieval theater and festival in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale (knight procouned nicht, medieval root of “ni”), worrying about where Odd Words is going to do its World Book Night distribution, and demonstrating our new found knowledge of the concept of occupacio by writing this extended “without further ado” introduction that does exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do, at great length, and with a great deal of further ado:
& Thursday at 17 Poets! readers will include Poets Christopher Shipman, Vincent Cellucci,
and Allison Cobb. Shipman is the author of Human-Carrying Flight Technology (Blaze VOX), Romeo’s Ugly Nose (forthcoming from Allography Press), and co-author with DeWitt Brinson of Super Poems (forthcoming from Kattywompus Press). Shipman was a finalist for the 2011 Carolina Wren Poetry Series Award, the 2010 Akron Poetry Prize, the 2010 Copperdome Prize, and the 2009 Slash Pine Press Prize. Cellucci founded the Baton Rouge reading series River Writers. He wrote An Easy Place / To Die and teaches communication for Louisiana State University’s College of Art + Design. Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press, 2004) about her hometown of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Green-Wood (Factory School, 2010) about a famous nineteenth-century cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Her work combines history, personal narrative, and poetry to address issues of landscape, politics, and ecology. 7:30 p.m. at that prominent power spot on the ley lines of the poetry multiverse, The Goldmine Saloon
& Maple Street Book Shop will celebrate the release of Ben Kopel’s poetry anthology, Victory Friday, April 20 at 6 p.m. CA Conrad and Magdelana Zurawski will be helping Ben do his victory lap. Kopel currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he teaches creative writing and English literature to high school students. He also curates the Left of the Dial Reading Series at Euclid Records in the Bywater neighborhood. Victory, his first full-length collection of poems, was recently released by H_NGM_N Books. You can see what he is currently up to on partmutilationpartvictory.tumblr.com.
& Last but not least Octavia Books hosts a reading & signing with Gerald Duff featuring his novel, DIRTY RICE Thursday at 6 p.m. Dirty Rice is the tale of Gemar Batiste, a talented young pitcher from Texas recruited into the minor Evangeline League during the 1930s. Unlike his Acadian team mates Batiste is a reservation-raised Alabama-Coushatta Indian who is asked to play the stereotypical Indian among other challenges.
& On Friday at NOMA , Megan Burns and Gina Ferrara, whose poetry has been influenced by art, and one artist, Tricia Vitrano, whose art has been influenced by poetry will be the speakers in a panel discussion moderated by Susan Larson, host of The Reading Life on WWNO. The event starts at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall, with a reception for Megan Burns, Gina Ferrara, Susan Larson, and Tricia Vitrano. Snacks will be provided, and a cash bar will be available. At 6:00 p.m. the panel discussion will begin in the auditorium At 7:00 p.m. there will be a book signing in the Great Hall.
& Garden District Bookshop will host Susan Morse discussing and signing her book The Habit on Saturday, April 21 at 3 p.m. Morse’s book is the story of a sandwich generation daughter caring for her 85-old mother who has decided to become a nun.
& Also on Saturday, April 21, at 3 p.m. Maple Street Book Shop Healing Center location on St. Claude hosts an Earth Day discussion with Antonia Juhasz, the author of The Tyranny of Oil (Harper Paperback) and Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill (Wiley).
& On Sunday the Maple Leaf Bar Reading Series hosts a group reading by THE NEW ORLEANS HAIKU SOCIETY followed by an open mike, and possibly some drinking completely unrelated to the featured guests. Unless, of course, they’re buying.
& This and every Monday is The Writer’s Block, an open reading on the steps of the amphitheater across from Jackson Square at 9 p.m. You can follow their Facebook page here.
& On Tuesday, April 24 Octavia hosts French artist Gersin comes to present and sign his recently publishied NEW ORLEANS SOJOURN. A sketchbook by definition, this impressive book is Gersin’s travel diary, written in French, from his three-month trip to New Orleans. Gersin chose New Orleans for its aura of culture, history, music, and soul, and immersed in the local atmosphere, he documented the city—its day-to-day life, history, myths, and folklore, as well as his impressions—in the form of notes and detailed illustration.
& And before I am severely punished for failing to remind both of us (that’s me and you all, not me and my only reader, although that’s possible): the distinguished Pulitzer Prize Judge Susan Larson hosts A Reading Life Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. on WWNO-FM, 89.9. I’m putting it in my Android calendar right now. I swear. (Oh, look, a squirrel! . . .
Odd Words April 12, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair. (Maybe that last ain’t a bad idea).
When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.
– Charles Bukowski, in a letter to William Packard
You can read the whole thing here at Letters of Note.
Another one:
Are we all collage? Dense, tensed and unlocatable?.
– Untitled ((on John Wieners) ), by Bruce Andrews,
from the first edition of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
I think that one line, very early from his career, is a great introduction to Bruce Andrews’ L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, better than I could ever hope to.
& This Thurday 17 Poets! at the Goldmine Saloon features poets Poets Bruce Andrews and Alex Rawls. Andrews co-edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine from 1978 to 1981 and has published numerous volumes of poetry. Rawls is the editor of the local culture magazine Offbeat and has published two chapbooks, Jayne Mansfield’s Dog and Gatsby. Opening for the features will be your humble narrator, Mark Folse. An open mic follows. 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 11.
& Also on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. Garden District Books hosts Lawrence Powell and his book The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans tracing New Orleans’ history in its earliest years from its founding through statehood. come meet Messrs. Iberville and Bienville and a host of other fascinating characters Thursday, April 12 at 5:30 p.m.
& Also on Thursday Maple Street’s Healing Center location will host Frank Perez and Jeffrey Palmquist will discuss and sign their book In Exile: The History and Lore Surrounding New Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Gay Bar. Thursday, April 12 at 6 p.m., and at the Uptown location, Susan Haltom, author of One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place at 6 p.m.
& Rounding out an awfully busy Thursday, Octavia Books will present Vince P. Caire’s Louisiana Aviation: An Extraoordinary History in Photographs, at 6 p.m.
& Saturday Garden District Books features Jim Fraiser and West Freeman and their book The Garden District of New Orleans, an architectural and historical tour of the big easy’s cardinal suburb. Saturday, April 14 at 1:00 p.m.
& At the Maple Leaf Bar on Sunday, April 15 WHAT?
& The New Orleans Haiku Society meeting is on Monday April 16, 6 p.m. at Latter Memorial Library.
& On Tuesday, April 17 Octavia Books will launch Please local author Moira Crone’s new novel, The Not Yet, an adventure set in New Orleans of the future.
& Poets Andy Young, Jessica Henricksen and Andy Stallings will read at Antenna Gallery, 3161 Burgundy St., Tuesday, April 17 at 7 p.m. Young is instructor in poetry at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Stallings is co-editor of THERMOS magazine and a creative writing instructor at Tulane University. Henrecksen has just published her first chapbook, Past the Breakers (Lost Hill Books, 2012). 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 17.
Odd Words April 5, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Fans of outlaw poetry are going to want to rush over and start downloading the images of Fuck You – A Magazine of the Arts edited by Ed Sanders in the early 1960s. It is not all outlaw W.H. Auden joins Charles Olson, Philip Whalen, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Pound, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Antonin Artaud and Robert Duncan in these pages. (My copies are coming down as I type).
It’s a day off but I have to take a car out for a body repair estimate and then I have booked some serious book and nap time all through today, and I don’t want to miss a page or a single Z so let’s get right down to business.
& You last chance to see ruth weiss (no, she doesn’t capitalize her name) is tonight at 17 Poets! at 7 p.m., an earlier than usual start time. One of the last surviving members of the Beat move and a noted jazz poet, she will be joined by THE POET OF NEW ORLEANS BRASS BAND. If you missed her Tuesday at the Black Widow Salon (I did; drat) or last night then you need to get yourself down to the Goldmine Saloon early to snag a good seat.
& On Thursday McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music hosts their non-fiction book club discussion. It’s a different sort of book club, where members bring their own recent or favorite non-fiction books and the discussion goes from there. Thursday, April 5 at 4737 Tchoupitoulas starting at 7 p.m.
& Also on Thursday the Maple Leaf Book Shop Healing Center location on St. Claude welcomes Pamela Davis-Noland discussing, reading, and signing her book Coffee Colored Dreams, described as “a beautiful and engaging story. It speaks to the part of the human soul that wants to love and be loved. This book had so many messages and mantras entwined within it’s pages. Self-respect,self-esteem, self-love,holding out for love. Healing our hearts,following our hearts,and giving our hearts. Listening to our elders and respecting them.” Thursday, April 5 at 6 p.m.
& Another Thursday event: Octavia Books will present Lawrence N. Powell and his book THE ACCIDENTAL CITY: Improvising New Orleans, “the story of a city that shouldn’t exist”. His book covers the period from settlement through 1812, the time of “intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic world.” Thursday, April 5 at 6 p.m.
& On Friday we round up the usual suspects and put them up against the wall of poetry: spokenwordnola.com’s weekly event at the Red Star Gallery on Bayou Road at 9 pm and the No Love Lost Poetry Reading at the Love Lost Lounge at 5:30 pm. Take you pick, or take two for the same price, as NLLP doesn’t charge a cover.
& Saturday the Latter Memorial Library will host Poets Reading Poets, an annual feature of their monthly poetry series under the direction of poet Gina Ferrara. (I need to come up with something to read, but it’s almost Bob Kaufman’s birthday which might make that easy). A galaxy of local notables have signed up on read so it should be a splendid event. Saturday April 7 at 2 p.m. at the Latter Memorial Library.
& Also on Saturday at Maple Street Book Shop’s Healing Center location Mr. Robert Jeanfreau, author of The Story Behind Stone, will share “the truth (ominous music playing) about some of our NOLA monuments.” Saturday, April 7 at 3 p.m.
& On Sunday at the Maple Leaf Bar Poetry Series the explosive and unpredictable Sulla reads from his newest poems (or so he told me on the bus the other day) followed by an open mic. Threeish, after everyone settles in with a drink, in the back patio weather permitting. Otherwise, reading around a pool table by barlights is an experience not to be missed.
Sunday Garden District Bookshop will host Robert Olmstead and his new novel The Coldest Night, ” a passionate story of love and war, it is a timeless story of soldiers coming home to a country with little regard for, and even less knowledge of, what they’ve confronted. Through his hero, Olmstead reveals an unspoken truth about combat: that for many men, the experience of war is the most enlivening, electric, and extraordinary experience of their lives.” Monday April 9 at 5:30 p.m.
& This has to be a fascinating book (he says, glancing back at the unread shelf which seems to stare back): Alexandra Styron will discuss her book, Reading My Father, a memoir of a childhood in an intellectually glittering, artistically engaged and emotionally precarious household of her father William Styron, the charming bon vivant undone by depression, the gifted and prolific writer whose long struggle to finish his final novel may have imperiled his sanity. Tuesday, April 10 at 6 p.m. at the Maple Street Book Shop Uptown location.
& Suzanne Johnson’s Royal Street kicks off a brand-new urban fantasy series set in New Orleans, written by a native of Louisiana. While the novel deals respectfully with the disaster of Katrina, the book offsets the serisouness of the setting with a heroine with a sense of humor, a good pace, and a cast of intriguing supernatural characters. At Garden District Bookshop, Tuesday April 10 at 5:30 p.m.
& Next Thursday, Maple Street’s Healing Center location will host Frank Perez and Jeffrey Palmquist will discuss and sign their book In Exile: The History and Lore Surrounding New Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Gay Bar. Thursday, April 12 at 6 p.m.
& Also next Thursday, Garden District Bookshop hosts Lawrence Powell and his book The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans tracing New Orleans’ history in its earliest years from its founding through statehood. come meet Messrs. Iberville and Bienville and a host of other fascinating characters Thursday, April 12 at 5:30 p.m.
If you have something going on and I missed it, its not for lack of trying. Send your events from tomorrow through the zombie apocalypse to odd.words.nola@gmail.com to make sure its not missed. If I don’t see you out at one of these events, let me remind you that I am a Registered Agent of Santa in charge of keeping the local naughty list. You have been warned.
Odd Words: Drips and Drabs Edition April 3, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.2 comments
This is what, my third post this week? Now that the crazy is behind me, I need to finish off this week’s events and start writing up next week’s before I sign up some other sort of crazy. It’s spring break which gives me today and Thursday off, but there are a lot of things I haven’t gotten around too between school and work, and I’ve got papers I should be working on.
& First, a reminder that ruth weiss (no, she doesn’t capitalize her name), one of the last of the Beat generation poets, is in town this week for a strong of events. Tonight she will be the guest of The Black Widow Salon at Crescent City Books at 7 p.m. It’s a cozy space upstairs with very limited seating so you need to email the store at books@crescentcitybooks.com to see if there are any seats left.
On Wednesday, April 4 there will be an Avant Film Fest at Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center featuring weiss at 7 p.m. On Thursday weiss, noted for her jazz poetry, will be featured at 17 Poets! with the Poet of New Orleans Brass Band at 7 p.m. Take note that’s an earlier that usual start
& This evening Garden District Bookshop features Wayne Pacelle and his book The Bond: Our Kinship With Animals, Our Call to Defend Them. Pacelle explores the many ways animals contribute to our happiness and well-being, and he reveals scientists’ newfound understanding of their remarkable emotional and cognitive capacities. Pacelle also takes on animal cruelty in its many varieties, as well as stubborn opponents of animal protection–from multinational agribusiness corporations to the National Rifle Association and even our own government. Tonight, April 3 at 5:30 p.m.
& Also this evening at the Maple Street Book Shop’s uptown location its the First Tuesday Book Club discussing Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter at 6:00 p.m. That’s kind of late notice, but at least you know there’s a First Tuesday book club, and you can check their website for the next book (while I try to get them to give me some early notice of upcoming books.
& On Thursday McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music hosts their non-fiction book club discussion. It’s a different sort of book club, where members bring their own recent or favorite non-fiction books and the discussion goes from there. Thursday, April 5 at 4737 Tchoupitoulas starting at 7 p.m.
& Also on Thursday the Maple Leaf Book Shop Healing Center location on St. Claude welcomes Pamela Davis-Noland discussing, reading, and signing her book Coffee Colored Dreams, described as “a beautiful and engaging story. It speaks to the part of the human soul that wants to love and be loved. This book had so many messages and mantras entwined within it’s pages. Self-respect,self-esteem, self-love,holding out for love. Healing our hearts,following our hearts,and giving our hearts. Listening to our elders and respecting them.” Thursday, April 5 at 6 p.m.
Another Thursday event: Octavia Books will present Lawrence N. Powell and his book THE ACCIDENTAL CITY: Improvising New Orleans, “the story of a city that shouldn’t exist”. His book covers the period from settlement through 1812, the time of “intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic world.” Thursday, April 5 at 6 p.m.
I’ll hopefully catch up on Thursday (starting with Friday’s events) by, um, Thursday.
Odd Words: ruth weiss April 1, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
I have been tardy in completing this week’s Odd Words but this deserves its own notice:
New Orleans School for the Imagination proudly presents…
JAZZ POET ruth weiss returns to New Orleans for the first time after 61 years on April 3-5, 2012
Three evenings of events including:
Tues, April 3, 2012 @ 7pm (starting promptly at 7:15 pm) The Black Widow Salon featuring weiss Upstairs @ Crescent City Books
Wed, April 4, 2012 @ 7pm (reception @ 7pm, films @7:30pm) Avant Film Fest featuring weiss @ Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center
Thurs, April 5, 2012 @ 7pm Performance featuring weiss and THE POET OF NEW ORLEANS BRASS BAND @ Gold Mine Saloon, 701 Dauphine Street
.
ruth weiss (born 1928) is a German-born poet, performer, playwright and artist who made her home and career in the United States. weiss is an artist of the Beat Generation, a label she has recently embraced and that is used frequently by historians detailing her life and works.
weiss spells her name in lowercase as such as a symbolic protest against “law and order,” since in her birthplace of Germany all nouns are spelled capitalized.
FOR MORE INFO go to: http://www.17poets.com
Odd Words March 29, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.add a comment
Paper Tuesday, exam today. This, and more later.
& Tonight at 17 Poets! New Orleans fiction writer, poet, artist and teacher Sunday Shae Parker. Her writing has appeared in Louisiana: In Words, New Orleans What Can’t Be Lost, a handful of poetry magazines and the margins of countless student essays. She has a book review forthcoming in the New Orleans Review. Thursday, March 29 at 7:30 pm.
& Garden District Books features John Klingman presenting his book New in New Orleans Architecture. From the New Orleans Arena to the Cotton Mill, this pictorialcompilation of contemporary architecture highlights eighty of thebest projects completed during the past fifteen years
Sex on a Hot Tin Roof March 25, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Theater, Toulouse Street.Tags: Tennessee Williams Festival
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“I was thinking about what might entice the crowd in on a beautiful day in the Quarter and I thought: put sex in the title,” moderator Robert Bray explained, and the title William’s Sexual Politics is partly why I find myself at the Tennessee Williams Research Center.
How do you resist a title like that, suggesting Stella on the staircase, Maggie astraddle a conquered Brick?
I had started out in a room full of biographers talking about presidents, dutifully scribbling in my notebook until I came to the end of a line, stopped, and asked: what am I doing here? I scoured the program until I found the panel I had noticed earlier, the one with the come hither description.
This was the first time in several festivals attended I set foot in the Tennessee Williams Research Center, which is usually filled with academics and their acolytes, the people who own every word every written by or about Williams. In dog-eared hardback. They sit through days of panel discussions that start out with a session for the reading of abstracts. If two hours listening to academics reading abstracts isn’t enough to keep you away you should seriously step back from your life and reconsider.
The room at the Historic New Orleans Collection where the master classes are held is the porcelain blue tea room for the well dressed lady’s book club sort who, with their walkers, fill the place with just a scattering of writers hunched in the front and another set in the very back where they stumbled in late. The Research Center is just as formal a space but instead of the pearls and porcelain chatter of the Collection this room is hushed as a temple, the last panelists renewing their long-standing acquaintance with the next set. The walls are a barely discernible light olive, the lighting largely directed at the portraits of vague historic figures in the front (is that Governor Claiborne?) and modern canvases of New Orleans in the back: a second line, a shotgun street, a scene out of Katrina. I take a seat under one of the few spotlights in the ceiling to I can take notes.
Moderator Bray starts out with William’s cover article in Time magazine in 1961 which called him a “kind of peddler of sex…intent on shock” and went on to catalogue play-by-play his written sins: rape, homosexuality, nymphomania, alcoholism, drug addiction, castration, masturbation, cannibalism. It concluded, Bray said, but calling him the world’s greatest living playwright.
David Savran, co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theater and Distinguished Professor of Theater at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, offered a quick explanation: “In historical terms, the period from 1946 until the early sixties was the most conservative period in American history, a time when McCarthy linked Communism and homosexuality, and here homosexuality was central to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire.j Williams was making the theater going public confront issues they didn’t want to confront but where incredibly curious about.
Will Brantley of Middle Tennessee University quickly agreed. In plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth Williams built a play around the penis, took a word that couldn’t be said in his era and “made it the center of his drama [but] the controversial was presented as symbolic and metaphorical so it stays with us.” Savran also noted the intense homophobic reaction to Williams in criticism through the author’s career.
Actress and filmmaker Jodie Markell, the one woman on the panel disagreed, with categorizing Williams as sexually political. “I think of Tennessee Williams as a poet, not political but writing from the heart about what makes people want to connect, what makes them want to desire each other. He speaks to so many people about human vulnerability. It was so universal..how brave it was to explore these territories without being perverse and not judgmental of his characters.”
Bray asked about depictions of Blance as a nymphomaniac, and Savran again asserted this was w symptomatic of a time when “any woman of strong desires was called a nymphomaniac.” Markell says was drawn to Williams as an actress and now as a director of The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond because “I was interested in the women in Williams who were too sexual, too bright, too too too…women who project their desires onto idealized and flawed men.”
Ah, finally the audience were (OK, I was) being released from prurient curiosity and into the meat and bone of what the Research Center programs are about, the reason we were all here: peering deep into Williams and finding ourselves.
Bray paraphrased Night of the Iguana: “nothings disgusts me except intentional cruelty”. Savran chimed in immediately, “Williams’ theater is a theater without villains [but one] of connections, not villains but antagonists of desire. In so many of his plays there the meeting and the parting, ” which Savran said is found in Chekov as well. Markell said Williams was interested in sexual alienation. “He enjoyed the play of how opposites attract.”
Bray returned to sexual politics, suggesting that characters in Williams approach sex with a manipulative praticallity, citing Maggie and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie stuffing her daughter’s bra. He suggested Williams women were sometimes sexual predators. Markell agreed with the practical sexuality of William’s women and said that is what her film is about, but disagreed with the idea of the women as sexual predators.
The panel also considered the differences in endings between Williams’ plays and the film versions. “He was up against the Production Code Administration, which not only censored but encouraged happy endings.” One panelist (my notes get blurry here) suggested . “Williams wanted people to supply their own ending, to leave the end ambiguous,” and Savran agreed. “Modern drama is about asking not answering questions. It doesn’t tell us how we should think or feel.”
Creative Non-Memoir March 23, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, memoir, New Orleans, Odd Words, Toulouse Street.Tags: Tennessee Williams Festival
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Today’s Tennessee Williams Festival panel SPEAK, MEMORY: WRITING THE MEMOIR was Odd. Only one of the four panelists was a true memoirist. Here at Toulouse Street, where Creative Non-Fiction is one of our cornerstones, this made is all the more interesting
Zachary Lazar wrote a book about the killing of his father decades ago by members of the Mafia. Jesmyn Ward wrote a book about the death of five young Black men in her small, Gulf Coast Mississippi town, and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts has written a book about Harlem, base both on research and on her interactions with the people of Harlem when she moved there in 2002.
Only Claudia Sternbach, author of Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses wrote a true memoir, an account of how kisses mark important points in a person’s life, focusing on her own experience.
Rhodes-Pitt kicked things off by pronouncing “I don’t consider my book a memoir. I write essays and Creative Non-Fiction, the ugliest genre name in all of literature.” Lazar, with one novel under his belt, was up next and said he wanted his second book to be a novel but his publisher refused. “I thought writing it as a novel would be a better way to get readers engaged…I invented dialogue between people I never met and imaginistic descriptions of places I’ve never been. My model was (Truman Capote’s) In Cold Blood.”
Ward, the author of two novels who is working on a memoir, said her book The Men We Reaped is the story of five young men who died in her small hometown of DeLisle, Mississippi. “I knew these young men … and I wanted to try to get them to live again on the page.” By their author’s descriptions, all these books except Sternbach’s skirt the boundary between memoir, creative non-fiction and journalism.
Sternbach’s book, a compendium of kisses and how each played a prominent role in her life, an intimate personal history of kisses sounds like memoir gazing straight at the navel, she asserts that “I don’t think memoir is a style of writing that’s predictably about the author. I think it’s more universal. People come up to me all the time and say, ‘ah, that happened to me’.” The editorial board board chair of Memoir Journal and edit in chief of their publicaiton Memoir (and) has been a daily newspaper columnist and wrote her first memoir in 1999. Between the column and the memoir she said she had “lost a few friends but made some, too.”
Ward, winner of the National Book Award for fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones, wrote Reaped to explore “why we would have an epidemic like that happen in a place where I live, a small down on the Mississippi Gulf Coast?” The deaths all took place in a short period of time, and her book could just have easily been a non-fiction title had she not chosen to make it a personal exploration of five young men she knew before their deaths. Asked by moderator Ted O’Brien to compare working on this book to working on a novel, she said it was much more difficult.
Rhodes-Pitts, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Vogue and Essence, said her book Harlem is Nowhere grew out of a move to Harlem in 2002, where she was working on a novel in progress. She would walk the streets of her new neighborhood. “I was constantly inundated with people’s stories and the conversation always turned to something that happened forty or fifty years ago.” Hearing the stories she set her novel aside and wrote instead about “this place that held such a large place in African-American culture.” She now plans to make this the first part of a trilogy, with books on the African-American experience in Haiti and the American South to follow.
Lazar is also a novelist, whose book Sway fictionalizes an actual meeting between the Rolling Stones and the Manson family. “I found myself in the head of Keith Richards,” he said to the laughter of the crowed, “and strange as it sounds he was the voice of reason” in the story. He wanted his father’s story to be a novel at first because “fiction is always a weird sort of autobiographical work. I’m interested in appropriating people and figure out what they’re like.” He said he didn’t mind writing about difficult things like his father’s death, because “all writing is that, or it’s hard to make it interesting to the reader.”
The panel may have wandered far from its announced topic, but we live in an age saturated with memoir and navel gazing blogs like, um, never mind. Face it, we are not all Joan Didion. I left the room inspired not to open a new Word doc and Kindle my way from an online audience of hundreds into several more hundreds but instead itching to spend far too much money adding to my monstrously unstable “to read” pile. Except perhaps Reading Lips, unless I can get a deeply discounted copy to send to the notoriously crabby memoir bashing Neil Genzlinger at the New York Times Review of Books.
Odd Words March 22, 2012
Posted by Mark Folse in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.Tags: Tennessee Williams Festival
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“How to write beautiful and 100% true nonfiction.”
First you take a magic wand. No, wait. First you probably read this review, then decide if you want to read the book. If you ever worked as a journalist in the days when working a microrecorder without a foot pedal (and no, the newspaper wasn’t going to spring for any such fancy thing) required a reliance on notes by people who never learned shorthand, notes that in my case were legible to me for about 72 hours after which they became cuniform gibberish.
Do you something approaching accuracy or something approaching truth? Do you want to be moved or run a ruler down a table of figures? What the hell is truth anyway? Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth then try to explain under cross-examination why your truth differs from someone else’s truth.
The closet you will come to Truth here are these listings, and once I start inserting my own remarks and not just cutting and pasting from the bookstores web sites or email people send me we have started down the slippery, black-diamond slope. And who says the author is as wonderful as the website or the New York Times or Publisher’s Weekly claims?
I’m afraid if I add another book to that unread pile, it will come crashing down and take out several pedestrians and close the street for the rest of the day, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.
Rant over. Listings begin here.
& Yes, its Tennessee Williams Festival week and I put up the listings through Friday in a separate post. I think I’ll do the same for the weekend listings as well. In fact I may have already done so by the time you read this. (Forget truth. Forget accuracy. We’re fucking with the time-space continuum here and there’s no telling what will happen).
& 17 Poets hosts poet and songwriter Jessica Ruby Radcliffe is the child of an Irish Gypsy and a Spanish aristocrat. She was taught by nuns until the age of 13 , when she hit the road. Her writing has been published in several magazines which she cannot remember because there was no money involved. She has performed throughout the USA and in England, Ireland, Canada, Japan, France, Italy and Hong Kong.She created and presented the performance group BOA Poets for a few years in the 1990′s. Jessica does not read very often and is delighted to be coming to The Goldmine. Thursday, March 22 at 7:30 p.m.
& Also on Thursday, at the Maple Street Books Bayou location Alex V. Cook will perk up your weekend with his book Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in Louisiana’s Juke Joints, Honky-Tonks, and Dance Halls. A map, a journal, a snapshot of what goes on in the little shacks off main roads, Louisiana Saturday Night provides an indispensable and entertaining companion for those in pursuit of Louisiana*s quirky and varied nightlife. Thursday, march 22 at 6 p.m. at 3141 Ponce de Leon.
& OK, this goes on the TWF list as well, but it’s so damned New Orleans and one of the few events I know I am absolutely not going to miss: on Friday the Festival presents Literary Late Night: Lafcadio Hearn, a choreographed evening of readings, music, and dance, the People Say Project, Cafe Instanbul at the Healing Center. $15. (Yes I posted “horeographed” in the TFW list. Stop snickering. You probably laugh when you see a Hotard bus in front of you. What is this, 6th grade?)
& Oh, and the Friday routines:spokenwordnola.com’s weekly event at the Red Star Gallery on Bayou Road at 9 pm and the No Love Lost Poetry Reading at the Love Lost Lounge at 5:30 pm. Take you pick, or take two for the same price, as NLLP doesn’t charge a cover.
& On Saturday, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation will host “Between Heaven and Earth: Soothing the Troubled Soul With the Arts of our Ancestors” Two of the world’s top experts on African and African-American culture will speak on art as a healing force in a Jazz & Heritage Foundation symposium on March 24 at the Joy Theater.“Between Heaven and Earth: Soothing the Troubled Soul With the Arts of our Ancestors” will explore the origin of art as a spiritual release from Earthly pain – and its continuing expression in modern culture. Starting at 10 a.m. at the Joy Theater. Lots more detail here.
& This is rich, as in if you go to this you will eat only celery the following day and no, Bloody Mary’s don’t count. Join us at the Royal Sonesta Hotel kickoff of the 4th Annual New Orleans Roadfood Festival for an unforgettable evening that includes food (of course), live music, libations, and books (naturally). Featured authors include:
* Lynne Rossetto Kasper and her producer Sally Swift signing The Splendid Table’s HOW TO EAT WEEKENDS: New Recipes, Stories & Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show and HOW TO EAT SUPPER: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show;
* Jane Stern and Michael Stern signing ROADFOOD: The Coast-to-Coast Guide to 800 of the Best Barbecue Joints, Lobster Shacks, Ice Cream Parlors, Highway Diners, and Much, Much More;
* Poppy Tooker signing THE CRESCENT CITY FARMERS MARKET COOKBOOK. Books will be available from Octavia Books onsite at the event.
To purchase event tickets ahead and for additonal details on the evening, see go here. Or you can support the station that brings you Susan Larson’s The Reading Life and make a generous pledge to WWNO local public radio here. In the Grand Ballroom of the Royal Sonesta, Friday March 23 at 6 pm
And yes I’m sensing a bit of a competition here between Octavia at the Sonesta and Garden District at the Monteleone.
Octavia will also host the participants over the weekend at Roadfood Street Festival in the French Market.
Saturday, March 24th
1:00 PM – Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift
3:00 PM – Jane and Michael Stern
3:00 PM – Poppy Tooker
Sunday, March 25th
3:00 PM – Jane and Michael Stern
& Sunday in the patio of the Maple Leaf Bar the Maple Leaf Poetry Series hosts at open mike, starting at 3ish or as soon as everyone gets their drink. Bar scotch available at reasonable rates.
& On Monday, Garden District hosts Cory MacLauchlin and Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces. The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. After writing A Confederacy of Dunces, Toole corresponded with Robert Gottlieb of Simon & Schuster for two years. Exhausted from Gottlieb’s suggested revisions, Toole declared the publication of the manuscript hopeless and stored it in a box. Years later he suffered a mental breakdown, took a two-month journey across the United States, and finally committed suicide on an inconspicuous road outside of Biloxi.
Following the funeral, Toole’s mother discovered the manuscript. After many rejections, she cornered Walker Percy, who found it a brilliant novel and spearheaded its publication. In 1981, twelve years after the author’s death, A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize. In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression. Monday, March 26 at 5:30 p.m.
& Mondays at 9 p.m. The Writers Block meets on the steps/amphitheater on Decatur across from Jackson Square. Readings and all other performers welcome.
Even if you’re not crazy about the TWF there is so much going on this weekend you have no excuse not to get out and buy a book at your favorite local, independent bookstore. Yes, I see that tiny little spot on your bookshelf where one book is leaning just ever so slightly. You better fill that spot before that one tipping book pushes that entire shelf onto the floor.
or at these independent New Orleans bookstores:
