Odd Words

Readings
Stolen in its entirety from HTML Giant because I really should be 1) writing a lede into these listings and 2) there is a stack of 3×5 cards on the adjacent table screaming my name, and I am spending way too much time nose down trying to remember how to match up Emerson’s Understanding and Reason to epistemology and ontology.

observation recent
Sean Lovelace

One writer is very earnest, a Poet, sprinkling tendrils, donning hats, trying to enunciate the fuck out of words, trying to pull a stick of butter out a badger’s ass, something, and in one way you think, young, trying, at least still believes while another hand says (hands talk now—this is poetry) relax Thing, calm your gossamer spirit down, flutterby, it’s only poetry and I need to ABS glue the couplings on the toilet drain on Monday—it’s going to smell like shit. One writer has recent stories in Paris Review and New Yorker and steps up to the mic and quickly contextualizes an excerpt and reads calmly, clearly, slowly for 7 minutes and thanks the organizers of the reading, the audience, sits down and shares a beer with me. One writer screams penis!/penis!/penis! into the microphone but only for a short while so it’s fine. (The word penis makes everyone think; I mean it has built careers [Freud or Hilton or your own, etc].)

One writer opens with, “This is the shortest story in my collection” and I feel a shiver through the room as three people turn to the bar to reload their urns with beer. It’s still not quite right to text, turn away, talk to someone, rumple yourself loud, walk through, at least not too often—the writer is looking right at you. The writer is a human being. One writer sort of sways and/or faints. I feel for them. One writer reads and you want to grab them right then and sleep with them—who can say words don’t work? One writer reads and you want to put a bracelet on their ankle, to monitor them, so you can stay reliably away. One writer wears a black shoe and a brown shoe, and it’s a fun bar conversation, this presentation of shoes. One writer is terrified; one writer might as well be in their own bathtub, luxuriating in the warm bubbles of audience eyes. “I don’t know what to do up there,” she said, when I asked her opinion. “Just don’t be that guy.” Well said, I suppose. But which guy was she asking us not to be?

& If you’ve missed it elsewhere, there is no better place to appreciate Constance Adler’s MY BAYOU, NEW ORLEANS THROUGH THE EYES OF A LOVER than at at Bayou St. John teams up with Swirl, which I sure hope means wine. It’s not clear which room it will be in but they’re next to each other so it won’t be hard to find. And I assume there will be wine, so the confluence of geography and alcohol is just irresistible. Thursday March 8, 2012, 6:00 P.M

& At Maple Street’s Uptown location Professor John Klingman, the Richard Koch chair at the Tulane School of Architecture, is stopping by to discuss and sign his book, New in New Orleans Architecture. Thursday, March 8 at 6 p.m.

& 17 Poets! will feature Professor ARTURO (aka Arthur Pfister), a poet and fiction writer from New Orleans, Spoken Word artist, educator, performer, editor, speechwriter one of the original Broadside poets of the 1960s together with poet and performance artist Valentine Pierce. In its review of the “From a Bend In the River” anthology, which included Pierce’s, “Rivers of My Soul,” the Times-Picayune called her one of the stalwarts of the New Orleans poetry scene. Thursday, March 8 at 7:30 pm.

& Bill Lavender will read from and sign his new book, MEMORY WING, A memoir in verse that explores the outer reaches of truth: of memory, language and art, at Octavia Books Thursday, March 8 at 6 p.m.

& McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music will host an evneing A Night of Words and Music hosted by Songwriter and Poet Jamie Bernstein and featuring poets Bill Lavender, Thaddeus Conti, Carolyn Hembree, and Megan Burns. Friday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m.

& Friday at Garden District Books, you have another chance to catch Constance Adler’s MY BAYOU, NEW ORLEANS THROUGH THE EYES OF A LOVER. Friday, March 9 at 5:30 p.m.

&Oh, and the Friday routines. Friday’s 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.

& UPDATE: The Latter Library will feature a poetry reading with Arthur Phister, LaBertha McCormick and Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy Saturday March 10 at 2 p.m.

& Don’t miss Saturday’s rebroadcast of The Reading Life, historian Carolyn Morrow Long, author of “Madame Lalaurie: Mistress of the Haunted House,” and poet Bill Lavender, whose new memoir-in-verse is called “Memory Wing.” Listen Saturday at 12:30 on WWNO, 89.9 FM. Or you can catch it Tuesdays like you’re supposed to.

& Did you see praline bacon? Wait did I say that last week? Here’s another chance to catch Kit Whol’s pane to New Orleans Classic Brunches at Maple Street Bookshop on Maple Street, n Saturday, March 10 at 1:00 p.m.

& UPDATE Shame on me for forgetting Nancy and the Maple Leaf Bar Poetry Series, which will feature an appearance on Sunday by Professor AURTURO as part of his whirlwind visit to New Orleans. Sunday, March 11 at 3 p.m.

& The Black Widow Salon with Bill Zavatsky is Monday, March 12th. 7-9 p.m. (Starting promptly at 7:15 p.m.). Upstairs at Crescent City Books, 230 Chartres St.

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On Wednesday Octavia will host Robert Kanigel, the highly praised author of The Man Who Knew Infinity and The One Best Way, who is coming to present and sign his new book, ON AN IRISH ISLAND, a love letter to a vanished way of life. In it, Kanigel gives us a sparkling history of the remarkable Great Blasket Island, an Irish outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century. He tells the story of this wildly beautiful island, notable for the unadulterated Irish language spoken by its residents, and recalls the adventurous men and women who were inspired by it. Wenesday, March 15614 at 6 p.m.

&Next Thursday 17 Poets! will have to compete with The Poetry Society of New York brings the Oral Tradition to new heights (or lows), presenting The Poetry Brothel: New Orleans Launch! The Poetry Brothel is a unique and immersive poetry experience that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and places it in the lush interiors of a bordello. The Poetry Brothel presents poets as “whores” who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private poetry readings on couches, chaise lounges and in private rooms. I am completely down with monitizing poetry but unless you like them hairy, gray and tubby I’m out. (I don’t really want to know if you do). Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m. at the Allways Lounge. Admission: $5

& In fairness to Dave and Megan: Next Thursday’s 17 Poets! will present the slightly more staid Bill Zavatsky, poet, teacher, translator, jazz pianist, and former publisher, editor-in-chief of SUN press and SUN magazine, together with New Orleans’ own local poet and renowned scholar Dr. Jerry Ward, Thursday March 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Goldmine Saloon where there’s never a cover on Thursdays but don’t miss the books for sale or the donation bucket on your way out.