Thursday, January 21, 2010

Some good nights

Last night met up with Dennis Tobenski--next Wednesday, January 27 is the first performance this year for the Tobenski-Algera new composer series (see info in an earlier blog post or go to tobenskialgera.com ). They'll be performing echoes which has four poems from Tourist at a Miracle. Dennis will spend the month of March at the VCCA. Lucky guy.

After that, Jesse and I headed over to the Poetry Project for the William Corbett and Jonas Mekas reading. Bill read some wonderful poems, not only his own, but some by Jimmy Schuyler (a kind of memorial for Darragh Park) and ended with a poem by Rolfe Humphries. Jonas Mekas, the godfather of avant-garde film-making read some wonderful and amusing anecdotes about from his life. The last one was a serious and moving one about Allen Ginsberg's last days.

Jesse shot some video, converted it into a short film, Nearing the Edge, which you can see by going to bandoftheland.com.

Pam Laskin's book party at Perch on Tuesday was a good deal of fun. She read from her new short story collection, a collection of poems that came out last year, and the new (though the poems span 30 years) Van Gogh's Ear (Cervena Barva Press). Saw Sarah Porter there who was very excited about her three book young adult deal. Look for more when it comes out.

School starts next week and syllabus writing has been the order of the past few days. Hope to finish that up today and have a few more days to work on some new poems, some Hinojosa (which is almost done in this draft, lacks an into). But more on him later. Still having Tourist at a Miracle
feelings.

abrazos,

Mark

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