June | 2013 | Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

Odd Words June 27, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, memoir, New Orleans, NOLA, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, spoken word, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Literary New Orleans, Odd Words, Team Slam New Orleans
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Featured Event: Ever thought of dating a poet, once of those charasmatic masters of the microphone you swoon to hear speak? Friday night Team Slam New Orleans is hosting a fundraiser for their trip to back to the National Poetry Slam in Boston this August. Team SNO will be hosting a date auction at the Red Star Gallarie from 8-11 p.m. hosted by The Hump Connection featuring D.J. Victoria Vixxen. Team SNO is a two-time winner of the nationals so everyone is encouraged to go out and help them raise that last $1,000 they need to get there. Come play for a date & hear in your very own ear the fierce & tender magic that’s Team SNO.

See your logo here and on Facebook daily! Sponsorship available. To reach 7,500 self-identified book readers & buyers a week, contact Mark Folse at odd.words.nola@gmail.com.

Some other literary chatter:

Pick up the current issue of the Oxford American to read a feature-length essay by Press Street co-founder Anne Gisleson, “Condolences from Death Row.” The essay, an early draft of which Gisleson read at a Room 220 event in May 2012, uses the author’s receipt of a letter from a death row inmate, who her attorney brother represented, as the jumping-off point to ruminate about their father’s recent death and her own mortality. Gallows humor (that, as we learn through Gisleson’s descriptions of her father, clearly runs in the family) and an urgent sense of longing pervade the essay, which is yet another piece of evidence that one of New Orleans’ best prose writers is getting better before our eyes.

Also check out Micheal Zell of Crescent City Books’ essay on the seminal New Orleans author, historian and folklorist Marcus Christian at Room 220.

Local poet and essayist Rodget Kamanetz has just co-published a book of pomes with illustrations by Michael Hafftka, To Die Next To You. From Amazon.com: “Two brother artists, both nurtured by the dream world and its imaginal colors and sacred words, have joined to produce a single work of rare quality. More that a collaboration this work is a journey into the power of the unconscious depth of word and image, in which master painter and poet present verbal and visual displays of agony and joy, destruction and falling, love and dying.”

Finally, this month’s find on the Intertubes is the Tumblr blog Structure & Style, where Rebecca Hazelwood and Savannah Sipple find marvelous poems and serve them up as a many course meal of poetic wonder. Check it out.

& so to the listings…

& This evening at Maple Street Books Brenda Marie Osbey will be signing her latest poetry collection, All Souls: Collected Poems (forthcoming, 2013); All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997), which received the American Book Award; Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Story Line Press, 1991); In These Houses (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); and Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Callaloo Poetry Series, 1983; University Press of Virginia, 1985). She is the author also of a series of Kongo-New Orleans libretti, including Sultane au Grand Marais: a New Orleans Opera (Rites & Reason Theatre, December, 2011).

& This Thursday at The International House, 221 Camp Street, welcomes journalist Stephanie Hepburn for a presentation & signing celebrating the launch of her new book, HUMAN TRAFFICKING AROUND THE WORLD: Hidden in Plain Sight. Octavia Books will be selling the books on location and Stephanie will be signing books following her presentation. A complimentary cocktail will be served. From New Orleans to New Guinea. From Baltimore to Bangladesh. From Laos to Los Angeles. Stephanie Hepburn brings uncommon passion and penetrating insights, born of exhaustive investigation, to a topic which needs both.

& This week’s Alvar Arts, held every third Thursday at The Alvar Library from 7 to 9 pm, features Ken Foster discussing his latest book, I’m a Good Dog: Pit Bulls, America’s Most Beautiful (and Misunderstood) Dog. Working in collaboration with book packager Becker & Meyer, photographer Karen Morgan, and Penguin USA, Foster will describe the collaborative process that produced the book, which features nearly 100 full color photos and historic images in addition to Foster’s text

& Likely as not you will find a bunch of poets sitting around outside Flora’s Coffee Shop in an informal reading/meeting organized by Jimmy Ross. 8 pm-ish.

& Friday night Team Slam New Orleans is hosting a fundraiser for their trip to back to the National Poetry Slam in Boston this August. Ever thought of dating a poet, once of those charasmatic masters of the microphone you swoon to hear speak? This is your chance. Team SNO will be hosting a date auction at the Red Star Gallarie from 8-11 p.m. hosted by The Hump Connection featuring D.J. Victoria Vixxen. Team SNO is a two-time winner so everyone is encouraged to go out and help them raise that last $1,000 they need to get there. Come play for a date & hear in your very own ear the fierce magic that’s Team SNO. Team members include Akeem Martin, Justin Lamb, Sam Gordon, Kaycee Filson and Quess?. Team SNO came in sixth out of 32 of the best teams of the country in the recent Southern Friend Poetry Slam hosted by Team SNO. Quess? says the SFPL is “a competition that is getting fiercer every year. That was with that new members who just started writing, much less performing just last year. I put EVERYTHING on my team. We’re some of the best slam poets in the world and one of the best teams.”

& Also this Friday Word Connections @ The Juju Bag Cafe Open Mic features Mr. Spoken Word Lionel King. Word Connections aims to be a weekly fix of good times with people you know and soon will know, words being shared, great food being served, drinks and laughter all night with the amazing ambiance provided by The JuJu Bag Cafe’s outdoor patio area. Open mic so all poets (and singers) are welcomed to come sign up and showcase their skills

& Also on Friday night Octavia books hosts author Sheila Heti celebrating the paperback edition of HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? with a reading and book signing. Hailed as “a breakthrough” (Chris Kraus, Los Angeles Review of Books) for the critically acclaimed Sheila Heti, HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? is an unabashedly honest and hilarious tour through the unknowable pieces of one woman’s heart and mind. It has ignited conversation and earned Heti comparisons to Joan Didion, Henry Miller, Kathy Acker, and Gustave Flaubert. “Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Unlike any other novel I can think of.” —David Haglund, The New York Times Book Review

& On Saturday at 11:30 am Story Time with Miss Maureen at Maple Street Book Shop will feature Dr. Sues’ The Butter Battle Book.

& Also on Saturday, the , the Teen Zone of the Main New Orleans Public Library will be hosting an visit by two Young Adult authors, for teens: e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, author of FAT ANGIE, and Michelle Embree, author of MAN STEALING FOR FAT GIRLS. The authors will read from and discuss their books. 2 pm at the Main Library, 219 Loyola Ave

& The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street.

& 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. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.

& Also on Tuesday, Maple Street Book Shop’s The First Tuesday Book Club will be meeting at 5:45PM at the Uptown location to discuss Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Pick up your copy today! Newcomers are always welcome. August’s titled will be In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White.

& Also on Tuesday the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

& Every Wednesday at Buffa’s in the back room there will be music and poetry from 7-8 p.m. followed by an open mic.

Coming next week: The Community Book Store on Bayou Road celebrates its 30th anniversary with two days of events July 5 and 6

Moloch’s Kabbalah June 25, 2013

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Moloch, New Orleans, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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I sit in the coffee shop sipping green citron iced tea and making notes on the Rumpus poetry club book. Behind me sit two techno-yipsters cackling acronyms and algorithms, the hollow stories of the latest Agile software development process. Tonight I will sit on the phone for hours with people whose entire minds–excepting perhaps a spot for a favorite sports team–are entirely dedicated to the minutiae of a vast project, who can call up any obscure detail of it without frantically searching through email and documentation as I do. I will spend the dead hours of this long call reading the same book of poetry, and a novel for a class: a heathen among the rabbinical faithful constructing the final algorithm of their Moloch’s Kabbalah.

Creole Red June 24, 2013

Posted by The Typist in food, Louisiana, New Orleans, NOLA, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Creole tomato, terroir
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In other parts of the world they dream of watermelons in August, and the home-grown tomatoes of Guy Clark’s famous song are just beginning to get spots of pink. Here we dream of Creole tomatoes, grown in the particular alluvial soil at the river’s lower reaches, and they come in June. I have grown my own tomatoes in places as far north as North Dakota, and yes the flavor of a vine fresh tomato is amazing, but it falls short of the particular savor of the Louisiana Creole. There is a certain minerality like that of of certain wines, a flavor imported by what old-world vintners call terroir. Unlike wine, where the experts say minerality is a lack of fruitiness and has absolutely nothing to do with the soil in which the grapes are grown, there is clearly a particular flavor imparted to tomatoes grown in St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish, which surround the lowest reaches of the river. The tomatoey fruityness is extraordinary, but there is something else just underneath that, a crystalline mystery that I can only describe this way: if ice had a flavor, it would be that note under the fruit of the Creole tomato.

I live for this season, will paper the cabinets over the kitchen with grower’s stickers until my landlord has a fit. Like a prisoner counting his days to release, I am counting how many Creole tomatoes I can manage before the season is run. Bagels with a tomato for breakfast, sandwiches in which meat and cheese are reduced to a garnish and my usual heavy hand with the course Creole mustard holds itself to just the slightest schmear. For a snack, a Creole with just a bit of salt is the finest piece of fruit you will ever eat For dinner I just ate a bowl of nothing but cut up Creole’s and (sadly, store-bought) cucumbers. I hadn’t finished it when a friend popped up on Facebook asking “who wants some garden cucumbers”. Oh, me, me! And careful how you dress them. Vinaigrette is ideal but don’t go overboard. You don’t want some tarted up Balsamic getting between you and your tomatoes. After cruising the aisles of the neighborhood grocery not a single one of the fancier bottled Vinaigrette contained olive oil. I’m clearly going to have to whip up my own dressing. A simple white wine vinegar, good olive oil, a good grind of my five-pepper store blend and a bit of the Grains of Paradise my sister found me. A bit of salt. Nothing more, really. Maybe a bit of garlic if we’re going to call it vinaigrette but as much as I am likely to pop a whole clove into my mouth like a piece of candy, here we are all about the tomatoes. Even the cucumbers are mostly there for texture, although I find their own mild fruitiness perfectly complements the Creoles.

There are a lot of things to miss if you live away from New Orleans–Carnival, the music, the unique cooking, the go cups–but nothing could bring tears to my eyes faster than Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans than slicing into the priciest hydroponic or even my own home grown Dakota tomatoes, and recognizing immediately that there is no substitute for a real Creole. Someday they will be gone. St. Bernard and Plaquemines are vanishing into the Gulf of Mexico at a frightening rate, the rich soil that flavors the Creoles pouring over the continental shelf as the levee-ed off terroir slowly subsides back into the sea. All the more reason, now that my dinner is done, to think about dessert: just one more thick slice, no salt, no oil, no vinegar; just the pure fruit of the finest tomato on earth.

Odd Words June 20, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, reading, Toulouse Street.
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Sad news: Maple Street Book Shop is closing its downtown Healing Center and Bayou St. John locations. I didn’t shop there often enough, but I don’t think I have bought a book anywhere else since it opened. I have such a backlog to read, and to paraphrase the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books. (If you not a ’70s comix fan, just let the name guide you if you want to know what they were talking about. Hemp makes excellent paper, in civilized countries).I remember when I meekly walked in to my first sales call for my first self-published book and Donna Allen immediately took 10 copies and wrote me a check; no question of consignment. I don’t mean to hold them high above other local indie book sellers but Donna and uptown manager Gladin Scott are people who live to sell books, and are happy to support emerging local artists. The Bayou St. John location was such a great addition to my own neighborhood, they are going to be sorely missed. BSJ manager Matt Carney was always a pleasure to visit with when I stopped in. The shop is going to be sorely missed.

I missed Bloomsday 2012 with what I’m generally referring to as the Boiling Cauldron of Pharmacologically-Enraged Contagin, but organizer Michell Zell reports, “We mostly filled the upstairs dining area at The Irish House with around four dozen people. There was a strong range of readers, including from puppeteer Pandora Gastelum to UNO prof Richard Goodman, and from the insight of relative John Joyce to Dickens Fellowship co-founder Marigny Dupuy. Onward and upward next year.” Zell has grown this event amazingly from the rag tag bunch I managed to pull together in the back of Mick’s Pub three years ago. Next time your downtown, stop into Crescent City Books to say thanks. And, well, it’s a bookstore. You know what to do. I may have to pick up a copy of Finnegan’s Wake as pleasant pennance.

Another notable local event you won’t have to wait a year to attend is Esoterotica. Guided by mistress Aimé SansSavant, this rollicking collection of comedy, stories poetry and the long-running soap opera Model X-Y is one of finest collections of readers and performers you will find at an open microphone in New Orleans, With her core of provocateurs and a parade of willing new comers (“virgin voices”, she called them one night) put on a show at the Allways once a month. (Among the now less virginal voices you will find one Oddball, who bears a strange resemblance to the editor of Odd Words, but appearances can be deceiving.) If you’ve already picked out the same $1,200 technical rain slicker Jim Cantore wears during hurricanes to be buried in to be better prepared for the second circle of hell, you should definitely get down and check them out. You can read more about this group in June’s Antigravity. Their next event is for Pride Day this Friday, “Queer Hearts”! A Benefit for Women with a Vision and an Open Mic!”, and the next regular show is in July. Watch this space. Don’t miss it.

& At 5:30 on Thursday the Garden District Book Shops presents David Berg’s Run, Brother, Run.From a renowned trial lawyer, a searing family memoir of a wild boyhood in Texas that led to the vicious murder of the author’s brother by actor Woody Harrelson’s father. Writing with cold-eyed grief and lacerating humor, Berg shares intimate details about his striving Jewish family that perhaps set Alan on a course for self-destruction, and the wrenching miscarriage of justice when Berg’s murderer went unpunished. Since burying his brother, David has never discussed how he died. But then about three years ago, details from his past crept into his memory and he began to research his family’s legacy and his brother’s death, informed by his expertise as a seasoned attorney. The result is a raw and painful memoir that taps into the darkest human behaviors, a fascinating portrait of an iconic American place, and a true-crime courtroom murder drama—all perfectly calibrated.

& The Booked for Murder Book Club meets at the Norman Mayer Library at 5:30 pm. Club meets every 3rd Thursday of the month. New members are welcomed to join.

& There will be an open mic poetry reading at Flora’s Coffee House hosted by Jimmy Ross at 9 pm Thursday. Jimmys says he hopes to makes this a regular thing through the summer.

& On Friday Esoterotica hosts their annual Pride event “Queer Hearts”! A Benefit for Women with a Vision and an Open Mic! Mlle SanSavant says ” join our provocateurs on the stage to share your original queer-rotic experiences, fantasies, needs, and desires! Whether they are sexual, sensual or downright dirty, we want to hear your voice! So bring it loud and proud because it’s freakin’ Pride, People!” Doors at 7, show at 8 at the Allways Lounge. Donations encouraged.

& On Friday, Spoken Word rules at the Special Tea Coffee House. Doors at 7, show at 8. By admission

& At the Community Book Store on Bayou Road, Chakula will be performing ‘Poems from the Unknown Poet’ at 7 p.m.

& On Saturday at 11:30 am for Story Time with Miss Maureen at Maple Street Uptown she’ll read Miss Maple’s Seeds by Eliza Wheeler!

& Todd-Micheal St. Pierre will be signing his Taste of Treme cookbook at Fluerty Girl, 3117 Magazine Street, starting at 11 a.m. and again Sunday at Fluerty Girl’s Metairie location starting at 1 p.m.

& On Tuesday at 2 pm the Alvar Library will host Blackout Poetry, a literary craft event for teenagers. Participants will black out words on pages of donated old books to create their own poetry.

& Also on Tuesday the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

Odd Words June 13, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.
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This week’s featured event in Odd Words: Bloomsday NOLA returns to The Irish House Sunday, June 16 at 2 p.m. for Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses, appropriately on Father’s Day. Come read or just join us and enjoy good food and drink. All are welcome to read, up to 10 minutes max. Featuring guest readers: John Joyce, The Brothers Goat (Michael Jeffrey Lee & Christopher Hellwig), Vincent Cellucci, Pandora Gastelum, Herbert Kearney, and Susan Larson.

& Thursday evening Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues and impetus behind V-Day and One Billion Rising, returns to New Orleans this week. Ensler will sign her recent memoir In the Body of the World at Ashé Cultural Arts Center at 6 p.m.

& Also on Thursday, a poetry open mic at Flora’s Coffee House on Royal at Franklin at 8 p.m., hosted by Jimmy Ross.

& Starting Friday Author Michelle Embree’s presents “By The Skin of the Words–A Sermon” at the Allways Lounge at 8 p.m. “Embree exposes the links between the deeply private terrors of growing-up with a psychopathic father and the overwhelming terrain of global terrorism. These are stories of survival, sanity, and transformation.” Shows Friday, Saturday and Sunday. By donation.

& On Friday Night Spoken Word New Orleans hosts featured performers and an open mic at Special Tea on Banks St. $5 admission, doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Watch Odd Words’ daily updates for features as they are announced.

& Saturday at Maple Street Book Shop Uptown Storytime with Miss Maureen hosts Bring your dad for cookies and a book! In honor of Father’s Day, we’ll read When a Dad says I Love You by Douglas Wood and Jennifer Bell.

& On June 16th The Ashe Cultural Center, at 1712 Oretha C Haley Boulevard, will be hosting the Beasts and Books, a Father’s Day Picnic to benefit the Southern Food and Beverage Culinary Library. The library is a partnership project of The SoFab Museum and The New Orleans Public Library, an effort to preserve the culture of Southern food and drink by consolidating all materials in a central location. The event will be held from 12:30pm to 4pm and will host a Culinary Book Fair featuring vendors of old and new culinary themed books, dance and music performances.

& Also on Sunday Bloomsday NOLA returns to The Irish House Sunday, June 16 at 2 p.m. for Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses, appropriately on Father’s Day. Come read or just join us and enjoy good food and drink. All are welcome to read, up to 10 minutes max. Featuring guest readers: John Joyce, The Brothers Goat (Michael Jeffrey Lee & Christopher Hellwig), Vincent Cellucci, Pandora Gastelum, Herbert Kearney, and Susan Larson.

& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar is the Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox. In the back patio, weather permitting. Periodic features and an open mic every Sunday. This Sunday Poets it is a Bloomsday open mic. “Bring your Irish,” says organizer Nancy Harris.

& The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. This week featuring Asia “Preach” Palmer, Will “Duece” Powell and and J. Mickey McKinney and special guest from St. Louis, MO, Louis Conphicltion. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street.

& On the second, fourth, and fifth Sunday of each month, Jenna Mae hosts poets and spoken-word readers at 8:00 p.m. at the Fair Grinds Coffee House on 3133 Ponce de Leon St.

& Monday the Jefferson Parish Library Fiction Writers Group hosts a critique session at 7 p.m. at the East Bank Regional Library.

& Also Monday night The New Orleans Haiku Society shares Haiku on the third Monday of every month at the Latter Branch Library, 5120 St. Charles Ave., from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. All are invited to attend. For more information call 596-2625.

& Also on Tuesday the M.L.K. Branch Library features ReWrite, a writing workshop led by Zuri McCormick for ages 18 and up at 11 a.m. and the Hubbel Branch hosts Author’s Night with a discussion by Erin Greenwald of A Company Man: The Remarkable French-Atlantic Voyage of a Clerk for the Company of the Indies

& Wednesday, June 19 Garden District Books features Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone at 6 p.m. The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both.

Odd Words June 6, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, bookstores, literature, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Literary Listing, Odd Words, Slam New Orleans, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
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& Team Slam New Orleans is hosting and defending their title in the Southern Fried Poetry Slam in venues all over the city, with qualifying rounds and after hours events. Here is the schedule, with more details on their Tumblr.

Thursday

11 -12pm Community Service: Poetry In Motion Care Bears Children Hospital

10-12am Slam Master’s Meeting (TBD)

10-12pm Youth (Y) & Adult (A) Workshops (New Orleans Public Library-Main Branch)

12-1pm Lunch

6-8pm Round 2: Bout 1 (Café Istanbul, The Cathedral, Byrdie’s, Sweet Lorraine’s)

8-10pm Round 2: Bout 2 (Café Istanbul, The Cathedral, Byrdie’s, Sweet Lorraine’s)

Friday

11am-12pm Community Service: Poetry In Motion Care Bears Ochsner Hospital

10-11am Slam Master’s Meeting (TBD)

10-12pm Youth (Y) & Adult (A) Workshops: New Orleans Public Library-Main Branch

12-1pm Lunch

5-6 pm *Black On Black Rhyme Presents The Staccato Slam (Sweet Lorrain’s)

8-10pm Round 3: Bout 1 (Café Istanbul, The Cathedral, Byrdie’s,Sweet Loraine’s)

8-10pm Round 3: Bout 2 (Café Istanbul, The Cathedral, Byrdie’s, Sweet Lorraine’s)

10:30-1am *Slam Masters Slam (Café Istanbul)*

Beauty vs. Brawn (Sweet Loraine’s)*
Inclusive Gauntlet Slam (Venue TBD)*

Saturday

10-12pm Youth Showcase (New Orleans Public Library)

1-3pm City Tour

7:30-10pm Final Slam (Ashe Cultural Arts Center) & Closing Remarks

10:30pm The After Party (Venue TBD)

Sunday

10am-12pm Southern Fried Brunch (Trolley Stop)

12-2pm Farewell Open Mic (Venue TBD)

(*) denotes that event is free to the general public. A ticket to all qualifying events is $20 and finals admission is $25 at the door.

& This Thursday at 8 p.m. the Thursday poetry scene moves to a reading at the open art salon at 1501 St. Roch Ave. features Brad Richard, Chris Tonelli and Megan Burns followed by an open mic. Food and Drink, please feel free to bring something. Richard’s Motion Studies won the 2010 Washington Prize from The Word Works. 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). He is a recipient of fellowships from the Surdna Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and poetry winner in the Poets & Writers’ 2002 Writers Exchange competition, he is chair of creative writing at Lusher Charter High school in New Orleans.c Tonelli is one of the founding editors of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He also founded and curates the So and So Series and edits the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press), and his first full-length collection is The Trees Around (Birds, LLC). New work can be found in or is forthcoming from jubilat, Fou, La Fovea, and Leveler. He works at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and their two kids, Miles and Vera. Burns edits the poetry magazine, Solid Quarter (solidquarter.blogspot.com). She has two books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008) and Sound and Basin (2013) published by Lavender Ink. She has two recent chapbooks: irrational knowledge (Fell Swoop press, 2012) and a city/ bottle boned (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Her chapbook Dollbaby is forthcoming from Horseless Press. Her 30 Days of Weezy project is annotated over at Rap Genius.

& Thursday at Garden District Book Shop Kent Wascom and The Blood of Heaven is featured at 6 p.m. “The Blood of Heaven is a remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world, a moving love story, and a vivid tale of ambition and political machinations that brilliantly captures the energy and wildness of a young America where anything was possible. It is a startling debut.”

& Friday at Garden District Book Shop Walter Culpepper presents The Replacement Son at 6 p.m. “From a thriving 19th-century New Orleans to the city’s devastation in Hurricane Katrina and amidst the harsh realities of England during World War II, The Replacement Son takes readers through vividly depicted locales and eras as Harry pursues his existential quest. With motifs ranging from chivalric adventure to metaphysical mystery, author W.S. Culpepper brings a charming but most unlikely hero and an exotic range of supporting characters to life in a compelling story of sacrifice and discovery.”

& Saturday’s Story Time with Miss Maureen is one of my favorites from when my kids were young: “We’ll eat cookies and read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie written by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond.” 11:30 a.m. at Maple Street Book Shop uptown.

& Saturday night Chuck Perkins and Voices of the Big Easy will host an show and open mike/poetry slam at 8pm at Cafe Istanbul. In honor of the poets who are in town for Southern Fried we will have a open mic from 10pm until 11pm and the poetry slam will start afterwards.

& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar is the Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox. In the back patio, weather permitting. Periodic features and an open mic every Sunday. This Sunday Poets Sarah Beth Wildflower and Sulla (Charles Morgan) perform their work. Followed by open mic.

& On the second, fourth, and fifth Sunday of each month, Jenna Mae hosts poets and spoken-word readers at 8:00 p.m. at the Fair Grinds Coffee House on 3133 Ponce de Leon St.

& On Monday June 10th Andy Cohen visits Garden District Book Shop with his book Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture. “From a young age, Andy Cohen knew one thing: He loved television. Not in the way that most kids do, but in an irrepressible, all-consuming, I-want-to-climb-inside-the-tube kind of way. And climb inside he did. Now presiding over Bravo’s reality TV empire, he started out as an overly talkative pop culture obsessive, devoted to Charlie’s Angels and All My Children and to his mother, who received daily letters from Andy at summer camp, usually reminding her to tape the soaps. Dishy, funny, and full of heart, Most Talkative provides a one-of-a-kind glimpse into the world of television, from a fan who grew up watching the screen and is now inside it, both making shows and hosting his own.”

& Monday the Jefferson Parish Library Fiction Writers Group hosts guest author Wanda Ramirez. In Hurricane Tsunamis, Ramirez shares her experiences in Hurricane Betsy as a child and Hurricane Katrina as an adult. After Katrina, she relocated to Memphis with her brother Sam. She works as an administrative assistant with Avon District 1804 of Louisiana. She also is a clarinetist with the Bartlett Community Band and the River City Concert Band of Memphis. She says she hopes to return to Louisiana to be near family and friends. Ramirez is working on another book titled, Born into Two Lands: Between New Orleans and Puerto Rico. The author says she is “privileged to be culturally endowed with two great lands with many similarities as well as unique differences.”

& On Wenesday Maple Street Book Shop’s St. Claude Avenue Book Club will be meeting June 12th at 7PM at Fatoush in the Healing Center to discuss Hope Against Hope. The author, Sarah Carr, will be in attendance for the discussion. Please join us! Newcomers are always welcome.

& Also on Wednesday, The Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University kick’s off their 2013 season with a benefit featuring great food, drink and Elizabethan music with your friends. Get an insider’s look at the final dress rehearsal of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Join the auction for a wonderful weekend at the Windsor Court Hotel. Reception begins at 6:45 pm/ Curtain at 7:30 pm. Champagne, Desserts & Auction at 9:30 pm. at the Lupin Theatre at Tulane University. Single Tickets $100
Couple Tickets $180.

& Also on Wednesday Room 220 hosts a special event as part of the New Orleans Loving Festival—Black Rabbits and White Indians: Racially Controversial Children’s Books—at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12, at the Press Street HQ (3718 St. Claude Ave.). NOTE: Unlike most Room 220 events, this one will start (sort of) on time. It will be immediately followed by another Loving Fest literary event in the same location, beginning at 7 p.m.

& The following event at Room 220 is A Poetic Gathering to celebrate Mixedness and the 46th anniversary of Loving Day featuring performances by local poets Travis Duc Tran, Rosana Cruz, Geryll Robinson and Delia Tomino Nakayama. Sponsored by Poets & Writers Inc. The victory of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving – in the court case of Loving vs. Virginia – not only won them their freedom to love, but it also granted the same freedom to every interracial couple in every state in America.

Hysteria June 4, 2013

Posted by The Typist in Odd Words, Poetry, quotes, Toulouse Street.
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I always thought of T.S. Eliot as a cold British fish, something served at breakfast with the bangers and weak tea. The distraction of “the shaking of her breasts” changed that opinion a little.

Hysteria
BY T. S. ELIOT
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden …” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
Source: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1920)