POETRY AT THE HISTORIC Z MANSION:
DAVID MELTZER &
MICHAEL ROTHENBERG
presented by CHAX PRESS, with help from POG
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 7:00pm
288 N. Church Ave. in downtown Tucson
$5 at the door, $3 for students (we don't turn anyone away)
Contact: Chax Press: 520-620-1626
In the last several years, CHAX PRESS and/or POG have established a Tucson
ground-breaking series of readings by such writers as Robert Creeley, Robin
Blaser, Joanne Kyger, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, and more, writers who were
sparkplugs in the poetic revolution of the 1950s and 1960s that has changed the
landscape of American poetry from one of "tradition" to one of "energy," from an
East Coast-centered poetics of Quietude to a global practice of visionary
poetry. Within that seachange, David Meltzer is a must-see poet we are fortunate
to bring to Tucson. All the better that he is accompanied by Michael Rothenberg,
an outstanding poet who has also edited the collected poems of several of those
writers who entered our poetic history from 1950 to 1965.
My friends, this is one not to be missed. Also look ahead to another poet who is
a part of this great American wave, David Gitin, together with Frank
Parker, presented by POG on October 27 at 7pm at Stone Ave. Gallery, 2007 N.
Stone.
Other upcoming Chax or POG and related events include
Oct. 8, Cushing Street Poetry, 198 W. Cushing St., 8pm: Jefferson Carter & John
Spaulding
Oct. 11, MOCA, 6pm, 174 E. Toole in downtown Tucson, poetry/poetics lecture:
"Away We Shall Float: Where Poems Take Us." MOCA Lit is pleased
to host award-wining poet and founder of Chax Press Charles Alexander as he
shares the pleasure of poetry as writer and reader. Alexander will discuss his
work vis a vis Hugo Ball and bpNichol under the theme of poetry as the
language of excess.
Oct. 14, noon to 5pm, UA Poetry Center Housewarming Festival. Reading with music
& more, at Poetry Center new location, 1508 E. Helen St. Poets include Brenda
Hillman, Charles Alexander, Richard Shelton, Jane Miller, Robert Hass, Steve
Orlen, Alberto Rios, Alison Deming, & more.
Chax Press & POG events are made possible in part by contributions from
the Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, with
funding from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts.
ABOUT THE READERS ON OCTOBER 8, 7pm, at Z MANSION,
200 N. Church
In 1960, David Meltzer's poems appeared in the ground-breaking anthology,
The New American Poetry. He has gone on to create a substantial body of work
that is pervaded with "a kind of bop-perfection." Having arrived in San
Francisco in 1957, he is associated both with the Beats and the San
Francisco Renaissance, often reading with jazz musicians at bars and
coffeehouses. His recent book, Beat Thing (La Alameda Press), winner of
the
PEN Oakland Josephine Miles award, is both tribute to down-in-the-street
wildness and rant against the romantic commodification which surrounds the
Beat Generation. Meltzer brings forth the original spirit of Beat in an
encyclopedic cascade of details whose dense, deep, fierce, funny, raucous,
free-associative jazz energy infuses every line. Beat Thing is an
ecstatic
chant of defiance and celebration. Meltzer's Copy: The Selected Poems,
edited by Michael Rothenberg, has now come out with nearly 50 years of
Meltzer's poetry and provides ample evidence of his stylistic breadth as
well as the music and humor active in it.
Michael Rothenberg's work as an editor is well known, not only for
David's
Copy, but also As Ever: Selected Poems of Joanne Kyger; Overtime:
Selected
Poems of Philip Whalen; Way More West: Selected Poems of Edward Dorn and the
Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. He is also editor of Big Bridge,
www.bigbridge.org , a prominent online literary zine. Rothenberg is the
author of The Paris Journals; Monk Daddy; Grown Up Cuba; and recently
Unhurried Vision from La Alameda Press, which charts the year Rothenberg
spent caring for the terminally ill Philip Whalen. In 1976 he moved to
California and co-founded Shelldance, a bromeliad and orchid nursery in
Pacifica. An active environmentalist, Rothenberg has been a leading force in
the protection of Bay Area coastal lands and endangered species.
from THE ART / THE VEIL, by David Meltzer
Light on ancient text.
Flicker of word
Moving into word.
They ask me what I do.
Enough.
[]
Abruptly Europe dies.
Bloody tallis I wave
To cars to eyes. Dies.
The silk blazing.
[]
Noisily yank a failed poem
out of the typewriter roller.
My hair falls into the keys.
Not grey but silver
whose light
reminds me of work
to be done.
[]
It isn't fame or failure
just so many books to read
so many words to write
and the backyard garden is
Paradise. I could spend
all day naming things and all night
breaking promises
[]
Dawn loon
silhouette
skims over the lagoon
its crazed song
unable to tame my rage into
a haiku.
[]
The deception of a new typewriter ribbon
gets him going another few years.
by David Meltzer, copyright © 1981. All rights reserved.
SIMPLIFY INFINITY, by Michael Rothenberg
Rain slaughters the balcony
I'm invisible
Flowers blown off red skeletons
I'm describing my death
My mother tells me come inside
But there's nothing inside worth imagining
It's all outside
Starlings in confusion
Where the body is purified by danger
July 14, 2001
by Michael Rothenberg from Monk Daddy, Blue Press. All rights reserved.
charles alexander / chax press
fold the book inside the book
Chax Press
520-620-1626 (studio)
520-275-4330 (cell)
chax@theriver.com
chax.org
650 E. 9th St.
Tucson, AZ 85705