2005-2006
program
although we took a year off from regular programming in 2005-06
we did hold the one events:
distinguished scholar/critics
Marjorie Perloff
Robert von Hallberg
READING,
PERFORMANCE, TALK: 3 Poets 3 Nights
March 14-16 POG & Chax Press present a poets’ residency
featuring:
DAVID ABEL
ANNIE GUTHRIE
SIMON PETTET
Three nights of programming. Admission to all events is FREE, but we hope
you will consider a $5 contribution to Chax Press (as you are able) if you
attend one event, and a $10 or greater contribution if you attend two or more
events.
Tuesday, March 14, 7pm
A poetry reading (held as part of the Cushing Street Poetry Series)
by
Simon Pettet (New York)
Annie Guthrie (Tucson)
David Abel (Portland)
At Cushing Street Bar & Restaurant
198 W. Cushing Street, Tucson
just south of Tucson Convention Center, 1 block east of Main Street
Wednesday, March 15, 7pm
An evening of lexical performance work by
David Abel (Portland)
A group of Tucson poets performing works created by Jackson Mac Low
At Dinnerware Contemporary Arts
101 W. Sixth Street, Tucson
SW corner of 6th St. & 9th Ave. Entrance is on the 9th Ave. side of the
building
Thursday, March 16, 7pm
A conversation titled:
More Winnowed Fragments: The Ethics and Poetics of the Short Lyric
Poem
featuring Simon Pettet & David Abel & Annie Guthrie
At Casa Libre en la Solana
228 N. Fourth Avenue, Tucson
All three of these poets share an affinity for the short lyric poem, a poem at
once spontaneous and perfectly poised as art. They also are questioners in
their poems rather than answerers; the poems embody an investigation that
wants to know but that keeps open the possibility of both knowing &
un-knowing. An ethic of being personal without exhibiting dominant personae or
personal insistence allows entry into the poetry for all readers, even allows
the creation of poetic space that, while intimate, blurs the distinction
between private and public. A conversation will begin around issues of the
process of creating these poems, and the stance or ethic of the poet within
the poem, within the relationship to language and reader. This conversation
will travel wherever poets and audience take it, and we hope the audience
shares its questions and comments.
Please call 620-1626 for information about all of these events.
David Abel is a poet, performer, editor, and bookseller. He moved to
Portland, Oregon in 1997, after tenures in New York City (where he had the
Bridge Bookshop in the late 1980s) and Albuquerque (Passages Bookshop &
Gallery, in the mid 1990s). His publications include the chapbooks Black
Valentine (Chax Press) and Cut (Situations), and the artist's books and text
objects Threnos (Katherine Kuehn, 2001), Rose (Salient Seedling, 1997), and
Selected Durations (Salient Seedling, 1994). Recent performances and
installations include Signs in Situ (Land and Language exhibition, The Land/an
art site, Mountainair, NM, 2005; with Paul Maurer); Excerpts from the Actual
Teaching Practice of Agility (Richard Foreman festival, Performance Works NW,
Portland, 2005; with John Berendzen); Closet Drama (Second Annual Sound Poetry
Festival, Portland, 2004); and Frozen Sea (Collaborative Poetics festival,
Portland, 2003; with Karl Lind). A founder of the Spare Room reading series in
Portland, he recently played Mephisto in the defunkt theatre production of
Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights.
Annie Guthrie is a writer and artist who returned to Tucson this
year after spending two and a half years in Tuscany where she studied Italian
and taught jewelry fabrication at Fuji Studios, an international arts school
of design.
Guthrie received her MFA at Warren Wilson and has received grants from the
Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She serves on
the Poetry Center Advisory Board and last read for the University of Arizona
in August. She has published poems in Harness and
canwehaveourballback and is currently working on her second manuscript of
poems, "J'arc, Loss Translations," which sifts through the language of
mystics/martyrs for the untranslatable speech of the "divine."
Simon Pettet is the author of Selected Poems and, most recently, More
Winnowed Fragments (both from Talisman). English-born, he is a long-time
resident of Manhattan. Aside from his work with James Schuyler, he published
two important books with the photographer, film-maker, Rudy Burckhardt
(Talking Pictures and Conversations About Everything). A selection of poems
and essays on his work and an interview appear in Jacket 25. He is a Scorpio
(like James Schuyler) and happy to be one!
I wish I were in my own garden now, naked or not, reading Simon Pettet. He
has been such a bright and consistent light amidst the usual gathering glooms.
He lives as though life were its own pleasure, which it is and must obviously
be. He sounds those same simplicities of profound music Blake also knew. He
moves with a deft and practiced quiet. ‘It is as though he were telling us/
that this small space/ contains the pattern for/ all eternity.’ He speaks the
truth.
Robert Creeley
(from Black Valentine, by David Abel)
Sunset makes the windows
music lights the sequence
so there is a code
and a precipice
the basin is inviting
as on a holiday
history seems poetic:
grave
but sustaining
a soapy taste on the tongue
independent of the music
or the prospect
Climb into
the coldest day’s
the most replete
emptied sky’s
vibrant
maddening ass
at a distance
love-filled face
collapsing
in the view
(Untitled, by Annie Guthrie)
As an American I wasn’t happy
not making progress.
One time though, in the vineyards |the moon|
an escape hatch, etc. A man’s body.
A moment drop skipped itself.
Whimper/seam.
Attempted equivalence
a sputtering engine. Moon on the lean.
Concealed chutes & pulleys
their illegible tracks
now unzipped revealing a sheen:
Guilt
kept as a standard
by which the self to measure
Up.
In the morning I flew into town
a shade of green gone yellow
Children had grown into hysterical builders
and the sky had a highness
no one could put down.
(Two Poems by Simon Pettet)
‘Sleep fitful wake grumpy...’
Sleep fitful wake grumpy go down stairs in dark still morning fill kettle
tin can
cold water
make tea light fire kindling examine
the early morning light, put on the radio (it is quarter to seven
you are listening to the farming report)
blessed sleep I know not what you wear or who you are
I imagine you in something extraordinary
slept last night again a baby what do I know?
(what is my plot?) all curled up like that
(on a blanket)
The Sentence
It is as though he were telling us
that this small space
contains the pattern for
all eternity
Chax Press & POG events are sponsored in part by grants from the Tucson/Pima
Arts Council, the Arizona Commission on the Arts (with funds from the State of
Arizona and from the National Endowment for the Arts).