Brooklyn Museum's "Art off the Wall: Decoding Basquiat" Reading Tonight

King Holiday
(Photo © Randy Pressman)

Tonight, I'll be reading poetry with some of my favorite writers, Erica Doyle, Christopher Stackhouse, and Harmony Holiday, along with the 10-piece band King Holiday, as part of the Brooklyn Museum's "Art off the Wall: 'Decoding Basquiat'" event. This reading and musical performance accompany the Brooklyn Museum's Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks exhibition, which runs until August 23, 2015. The events begin at 6:30 pm and run for three hours.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

UPDATED: Here are a few images from the reading, which took place in the Brooklyn Museum's vast and rather loud atrium. Upstairs things grew so crowded that we were told people waiting to see the show and hear the band, King Holiday, would probably not get in. Poet Harmony Holiday unfortunately could not join us, but Chris, Erica and I did our thing, and it was encouraging to see some familiar faces on what turned out to be a very busy night for poetry in New York City.

The crowd before we began 

Erica, reading her
poem about gentrification

Chris reading from his
"In Parts" series

Basquiat: The Unknown
Notebooks catalogue

40x40@40: C. S. Giscombe on Seismosis

Many thanks to Tisa for forwarding to me and others a very fine mention of Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006), the collaborative project I worked on with artist Chris Stackhouse. Small  Press Traffic is currently running its "40x40@40" series, about which SPT says:

As part of looking back and mapping what the amazing feats of the SPT community have been since 1974 [the year of its founding], we asked 40 writers to contribute one short text each celebrating—describing, anatomizing, remembering an encounter with, meditating on, shouting out to—a single book published by a small press between 1974 and 2014.

We’re interested in having writers reflect on a book that palpably shifted their perspective, startled their aesthetics, changed their life; a book they always recommend to others; a book that they would place in a time capsule. The one small-press publication that has obsessed them: cult classic—difficult pleasure—creased-cover favorite—out-of-print masterpiece…

The 40×40@40 list will, hopefully, sketch a 40-part haphazard history of independent publishing and ardent reading across these four decades.

How wonderful then to learn that out of many libraries' worth of compelling experimental texts published over the last 40 years award-winning author C. S. Giscombe, author of Giscombe Road (1998), Prairie Style (2008), and other important works of poetry and criticism, and professor of English at University of California-Berkeley, selected Seismosis as his pick.

Here's a snippet of what he writes:

Seismosis, John Keene’s collaboration with Christopher Stackhouse, moves and moves in more than direction.  From the title—which suggests the motion of earth and the motion of liquid—onward the book celebrates mix.  As the back of the book tells us, the text samples work from a variety of writers and performers (Guy Davenport, Leonardo da Vinci, DJ Spooky, Charles Olson, Marjorie Perloff, and Cecil Taylor, among others) and here, in that act, is the mix of languages that makes poetry—here Keene and Stackhouse have taken their collaboration outward and, in so doing, have brought the world into it.  The very end of the book, the one-line poem called “Process,” is signal and also, playfully, serves a summary function—“In the mark we choose and lose signature.”  

He concludes his short post by noting that

Here I feel the book coming again not to “a still but not deep center” (Roethke) but to a statement (via re-statement) of its collaborative project.  I’m struck, throughout the book, by the play of collaboration. The book seems to me to be an examination of what collaboration might look like if it crossed borders.  And here, in Seismosis, with its implicit ruptures of earth’s crust and violations of membranes, borders are being crossed.

Many thanks to Cecil and to SPT, and do visit their site to check out some of the other works they've selected, including works by Dennis Cooper, Elaine Equi, Bernadette Mayer, Karen Brodine, and Heather Fuller. There are a little over 30 more or so works to come!

Chris Stackhouse's Book Launch @ This Red Door

Plural, artist, critic and poet Chris Stackhouse's first collection of poetry, is now out from Counterpath (November 2012), and tonight he launched the book at This Red Door, the experimental arts collaborative, now running for a rich and exciting month at Kunsthalle Galapagos, in DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Chris's book encompasses his interests in visual art and theory, engaging with the likes of John Cage, Alain Badiou, Barnett Newman, Beauford Delaney, and many other mages, as well as deeply personal poems that conjure daily life in Brooklyn. It also includes one  in the lyric genre that famous so confounded the critic Joan Houlihan she had to call it out online.

As part of the launch Chris invited a number of friends--artists, poets and writers in other genres, filmmakers--to read from the book after he did, and to read other poems or texts they brought, if they so choose. Below are some photos from the event. You can purchase a copy of Plural here, on SPD's site, or here, directly from Counterpath.

Chris Stackhouse reading (Zane Stackhouse behind him)

The crowd gathering, before the event

Jomar Statkun introducing the event

Jared Friedman reading

Zane Stackhouse reading

Tonya Foster reading

Aram Jibilian reading

Tisa Bryant reading

George Positive reading

Panoramic photo of final reading, by Robert Galinsky, at photo's center

Group photo (Chris, Erica Doyle, Tyehimba Jess, Tisa, me, Tonya)

Reading and Roading in California

Once again I'm in the air, in mild disbelief that the driving-reading tour of southern California with Seismosis collaborator Christopher Stackhouse has concluded. As I noted in a prior blogpost, we read on Wednesday at the University of California-San Diego, in their Black Box Theater; on Thursday at California State University, San Marcos, in their Commons Theater; and on Friday at the Poetic Research Bureau's/Public School's reading space in Los Angeles's Chinatown.  I have thanked all of our hosts, meal companions and attendees directly, but let me again say many, many thanks, for the invitations, the meals, the conversations about all manner of things (Afrofuturism,  the crisis and effects of public university funding and the larger societal dismissal of the humanities, translating forgotten poets and trippy Argentinian novels, Hilda Hilst, the diminishing enrollment of free classes on Baruch Spinoza, St. Louis Cardinals baseball fans in Los Angeles, Cheikh Anta Diop, mental colonization and oppressive consciousness, UCLA vs. USC, life without an automobile in Los Angeles, fishing in Key West, the constrained appeal of loquats, the need for higher marginal federal tax rates, Ben Shahn, the genius of Geoffrey Chaucer, etc.), the books, the laughter, and especially the directions!

Chris and a friend of his had previously taken a cross-country road trip a few years ago, and some of my students have sung the praises of long and shorter trips over the years, but the furthest roadtrips I've trips since arriving at the university have been 1) to Milwaukee to read (which isn't very far at all); 2) Saint Louis to visit family members (again, not that all that far); and 3) with C back to New Jersey a few years ago, a trip I always remember fondly because almost immediately upon our arriving on the raceways of the Garden State, a furious rainstorm began, and it was only through C's steadiness behind the wheel and presence of mind that we got home in one piece. I think I still prefer traveling by train or plane more than cars, but this trip has subtly shifted my opinion.

For J's Theater readers from San Diego, San Marcos (are there any?) or Los Angeles, these images may induce leaden lids, but if not, do enjoy.

San Diego from the airplane

The Pacific Ocean

Surf school, Mission Bay Pacific beach, San Diego

Mission Bay, San Diego

On the campus of the University of California, San Diego

Kroc Center for Peace Studies reflecting pool, on the University of San Diego campus (poet and friend Jericho Brown gave us a brief and enjoyable tour of the campus)

Main plaza, California State University, San Marcos

Rural southern Orange County, heading north to Los Angeles

101 freeway in Los Angeles, with zeppelin

Union Station in the background, homeless Angelenos in the foreground

Los Angeles railway (funicular)

Nancy Rubens sculpture, LaMOCA

Events Tonight

If you're in or around Princeton, check out Audiologo's event, which will be accessible via the Net as well:

• Thursday, May 1, 2008 •
Uncovering What Is Brave: 2008 Generals Concert
Taplin Auditorium
Fine Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
8:00pm (live recording; seating until 8pm and during intermission only)

You Are Most Beautiful When... my live performance piece for the Composition Program's General Exams Concert. This concert promises to be a quite exciting affair, with each of us taking risks, and pushing forward our creativity with new works from my compatriot Graduate Fellows in Composition, Mark Dancigers, Anne Hege, and Andrea Mazzariello (as well as myself). Each of us has written work in response to a particular composer's work. My piece is a response to Der Doppelgänger by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) as performed by legendary contralto Marian Anderson and her long-time accompanist, pianist Franz Rupp. The theme of my response is gratitude, creative collaboration, and friendship, and features the "distinctive, rich, and compelling" voice of soprano Aurora Micu (replacing Boston Fielder), and the "...magical, something to celebrate..." pianist Francine Kay, along with other special virtual guests, and my first experimentation with a traditional libretto!

This is the second requirement of my 4-part General Exam. I hope to see you there!

For Directions to Princeton and information about parking (no campus parking permits required after 5pm, and meters are free after 7pm) and trains (NJTransit) check this link: visiting_the_campus

**Streaming Audio**
If you can't make it in person, you can access a streaming audio link via the main page of Music Department website: the link will become active on May 1st @ 8pm.

Performance order:
Mark Dancigers
Andrea Mazzariello
Anne Hege
MR Daniel

And if you're in New York City, from Khalil Jibade-Huffman:

(in conjunction with Xaviera Simmons' installation
for HOMEBASE III
[17 international artists transform a historical townhouse in Harlem
with site-specific artwork addressing the notion of Home]).

"Writing Home:
an evening with
Tisa Bryant and Christopher Stackhouse"

curated by Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Thursday, May 1st
7pm

764 St. Nicholas Ave. @ 148th St.
Harlem, New York
(A (express!),C,B, or D to 147th St. exit)

Project Homebase