Downtown Brooklyn 09 Book Release and Reading

Please join us for a reading to celebrate the latest issue (#17) of Downtown Brooklyn: A Journal of Writing (the literary magazine of the English Department).

Readers

Rudy Baron
Wayne Berninger
marita casartelli downes
Charulata Dyal
Christine Gans
Stephanie Gray
Kathleen Kesson
Matthew Nagin
Gary Parrish
Zahra Patterson
Jon Peacock
Howard Pflanzer
Giorgios Qure-Lacroix Retsinas
Jessica Rogers
P.J. Salber
Charles Thorne
Mike Traber
Lewis Warsh

When & Where Details

Sunday, February 22, 2009
4-5:30 PM
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (at the foot of First Street)
Between Houston & Bleecker
Across from CBGB's

F train to 2nd Ave
4 or 6 to Bleecker

2 drink minimum

Amy King, Gary Parrish, Buck Downs and Todd Colby

Friday, March 6, 2009
	5:00pm - 6:00pm
	Bowery Poetry Club
	308 Bowery
	New York, NY

The Bowery Poetry Club in collaboration with Farfalla Press (Brooklyn) invites you to 

NEWS: North East West and South Poetry Series. 

A poetry Happy Hour featuring poets and publishers from Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Washington DC area. March reading 

featuring: Amy King, Gary Parrish, Buck Downs and Todd Colby.

Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, and forthcoming, Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox Books). For information on the reading series Amy co-curates, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series (http://stainofpoetry.wordpress.com/) or visit her at amyking.org.

Some of Gary Parrish's work can be found in Bombay Gin, Big Bridge, Puppy Flowers and Downtown Brooklyn. Co-founder of Farfalla Press, Gary edits the video poetry series viewable here http://www.farfallapress.blogspot.com

A native of Jones County, Miss., Buck Downs lives and works in Washington, DC. Recent books include Ladies Love Outlaws and Recreational Vehicle. This reading kicks off Buck's first leg of YOU CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF WHAT YOU REALLY DON’T NEED: Buck Downs 2009.

Todd Colby is the author of Tremble & Shine (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Riot in the Charm Factory (Soft Skull Press 2000), Cush (Soft Skull Press, 1995), Ripsnort (Soft Skull Press 1994).

5 dollars at the door and enjoy some of the best taps in on the Bowery.

Art work by Frank Tashlin

Old Man Blue by Boulder Poet Jonathan Witherspoon Huey

Old Man Blue

Old man

I’ll walk slowly behind you

 

I’m in no rush

consider the bread:

 

whole wheat, pumpernickel, rye expressions,

consider the soups: buy 2 get 3 free

 

chunky goodness

what a bargain—

 

Consider the white haired lady

hunched over eggs—

 

Does yr eye take in her form?

 

Old man—

tomorrow we’ll walk slowly across the plains:

a million acres of sunflowers will sprout from yr brain

 

You’ll dream of pretty women on bicycles with

ice cream cones—

 

The sweet technique of tongue—

the curl, the wrap around tingle vision:

 

Two still squirrels

perched on fence:

 

Old crow unafraid

pecking the snow:

 

One worm in the brain

the other hidden:

 

Look through yr broken window

at vast blue expanse—

 

A single seagull

sun-stained unbelievable afternoon—

 

Whose socks are you wearing anyway?

Why do these trees still have leaves?

Where was I when that douche-bag fractured yr back?

When you shed four units of blood unnoticed?

When they pumped zanax into yr veins unrequested?

When yr uterus was removed?  When you decided to quit smoking?

 

A Dios Mio

Ya’ Allah—

 

 

 

 

If the bodhisattvas

are busy then Jameson & I will have to

see you through—

 

You shouldn’t be with someone

if yr offended by their eyes:

 

If the gaze lacks spirit

if the glance:

 

Hollow/Magicless/Killjoy—

 

Better to sign up with

Somalian pirates

 

& chase luxury cruise ships

& hijack oil tankers

 

Better to sign a 6 month contract with Blackwater

and make a pile of money escorting politicians

 

& to return from Baghdad unharmed

with a new pickup truck and tattoos

  to the open arms of the Catacombs—

 

Better to cough up blood in the women’s room at the Boulder Theatre

to have yr hand held & yr hair stroked in the back of an ambulance—

 

Better to lay in bed drunk laughing at sausage pizza

inventing typewriter fantasies grateful for a little chaos—

 

Better to laugh hysterically until yr too tired to have yr eyelids kissed

to ride yr bicycle in the cold snow slush & have yr ass soaked

 

 

Grateful to the elements:

thankful for being alive for a time—

 

Better to be held:

nostrils filled with sea spray

 

Sprawled on the deck of a ferry

bound for Santorini:

 

To chase fireflies in July

                                                                      & bats in September

 

Green Indiana hills

train tracks & cheap rice wine—

 

Better to sit Vipassana ten days & freak out

Noticing sensation of Royal Air Force Sonic Boom

Over Herefordshire England—

 

& to freak out again

On a double decker bus

listening to the kids speak Welsh—

 

 

 

Better to make $7 an hour beat boxing on the mall

in the Wells Fargo breezeway full of Dushanbe chai fearless & silly—

 

To recite old poems for spare change & eat chocolate covered mushrooms

& waltz into the Sundown Saloon hungry for conversation:

 

Then to abandon the whole scene & climb the red rocks

& dance barefoot in the new spring air—

 

Better to slant yr beret

don yr commando sweater & khakis

lace up yr combat boots & drill with Kasung Brethren—

 

Better to abandon desire

better to rule desire—

 

How many nails for Jesus:

 

Do you blame the gypsies?

Do you blame Oliver North?

Does yr blame fester like a dog’s wound

somewhere in Michael Vicks’ canine dungeon?

 

Do the unborn blame more or less than the living?

Are the cold asteroid cities of the future disingenuous?

Will their inhabitants not dance like Zorba?

Will they not toast the utterly un-opinionated egolessness with chamomile or whiskey?

 

Do

you

find

this

 problematic?

 

Will our grandparents always set the thermostat to 79 degrees Fahrenheit?

Would the world financial system collapse if they didn’t?

 

Ah—

 

Rain soaks tombstones

hummingbirds will return

 

Unborn born and reversed

& nobody will believe

 

except the beggar that thinks he’ll make more

standing on the edge of the Safeway parking lot

 

than he would on the edge of the Whole Foods lot

& that certainly is his prerogative

 

& all the peaceful & wrathful deities have their prerogatives too—

 

& are 13 gallon garbage bags hefty enough to hold

all the Shiner & 1554 bottles I’ve collected in my hobbit-like bedroom?

 

 

 

 

 

Who can say—

not even the sun

 

& Mr. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sings

“ Fill Up My Empty Beggar Sack”—

 

All the rest

vain slideshow bullshit—

 

Clandestine operations

objectives sought ‘neath sheets—

 

Visions of golden sky-hairs

 

Goose cries

manic conversations

dirty laundry—

 

Halfway asleep thinking of thoughts—

leaves in the wind softly to naught—

 

Dreams fulfilled when they come:

discipline to let them leave

 

Beyond the turquoise horizon sea:

 

pleasure is nothing—

 

Empty forms, Companions

Judgement disconnected

Sorrows absolved—

 

Rib cage tingle & Loss—

with old man aches:

 

Present luminosity

pretends to remain

 

Economics & political display

ancestors dissolve without thought—

 

Sorrowful as it flies.

                                                                                         

All is well.

Ed Baker Interview

Photo by Evie Baker

Interview with the poet and painter Ed Baker 

conducted January 31st to February 5th by Gary Parrish

Question 1

 

GP: How did you find yr way to New York in the late fifties, early sixties? Do you have a particular memory of poetry from this period, how did you become engaged?

EB: OK! my mother born in Manhattan in 1915!  HOA  I got stories!  I once

asked her about her dad who had a horse wagon selling cloth and needle

about Charles Reznikoff..  she knew him from the home  "Charles was

always well dressed. His family in clothing.. an he was a good dancer"

soooo  that first question... I go wayyy back into NYC / Brooklyn...

then meeeting Pauline (Fay) Chin who yet lives in Manhattan 1959  this

inter view will be phun.  one question at a time.... please

so  I was connected to NYC in 1915 and before  prior to my birth in 1941

I used to go up to may aunt an uncles  176 th and Longfellow Ave in the

early 50's  more drive-by gang shootings than "poetry"

 

Question 2

 

GP: Can you speak a little bit more about how you came into contact with poetry, perhaps an early memory of writing or reading and having some satori. 

 

Answer

 

EB:

Sure I can

Sure I can

 

in 6 th grade  I had a teacher...Miss Strawn

and, as I clearly recall  on Octobre 7, 1951

wrote my first poem  I guess I was about 10

Harry Truman was President (he came into my dad's grocery store (Herb's

Market) once  looking for fresh herbs!

 

it was for a geography class  subject: Chile

 

Chile is long

Chile is thin

Chile has a lot of tin

 

Chile is about sixty miles wide

and Mount Popocatapolt reaches from side to sid

Chile is a large producer of copper

I don't know what country can top her

 

 

oh well

:then I discovered Stefan Vincent Benet   ...

next I lept into the phray!  so.to.speak:

I discoverd Pushkin (and some othe Russian poets (in translation)

which led me directly to WCW, Pound (not so-much the cantos  except I

"really" got into The Pisan Cantos

(see my Hopkins thesis   OKEANOS RHOOS

   http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/okeanos_rhoos/1.html

 

 

hey, my early writing  1950's - 1965 or so...

 

all that "stuff" was in a trunk... when I got back from

Mexico/Greece/etc  ((((I was traveling steadily around from about

1960-1970  so out of ALL poetry scenes  then  and now  and especially

between 1078 and 1998)

                                  when I got back all my "stuff" had

been thrown out by my parents who wanted the trunk to store their tax

returns!!!

 

even when I was in The City  visiting friend  I prefered her AND thos

neat book stores   one in about 1970 carried my Butcher of Oxen..

 

on consignment   60/40

 

so I am standing there holding MY book and oogeling this cute girl just

off my left shoulder   and says: "This is my NEW book."  she replied

and one thing led to another and she said "I'll buy your book if you

sign it."  "Sure,  ($1.50 and no charge for my signature) what name?"

 

"just sine it 'to Hettie'"

 

so   early on  I came to poetry via cute girls... Pauline was my

Original Muse'

 

Williams, Ths Wyatt, Fenoloosa, Yeats,Olson etc etc etc I gleaned and

skimmed and seeked out a form/style to imitate

 

best I could do was cop an attitude or down right steal a posit

when ever I met a poet  I "laid" an ms on 'em ( I always carried some

xeroxe copies w me every where I went in Manhattan, in San

Fransico/Berkeley, Portland, Seattle, Corvallis,

so... "hey John (Cage), you got time to read this?"  and then I'd go

read everything tha John Cage had writte.published

 

same with countless othe writers  (HOWEVER!  in NYC  with Pauline along

side  we went int the poetry cafes/clubs   mostly The Beats  and  to me

mostly bores and not nice people

 

so  I pretty much did my "own thing"   (while out in Eugene  about 1973

was on that Multicolored Bus   Ken Kesey, Hunter T, Jamie Brownlow and a

dozen others:

                 mostly I listened, didn't inhale, drank a beer

                 so, Kesey tells me  "just, get-in-you-bag and do your

thing"

 

hey, I'm forgetting the original question!  shit.

 

oh:

     "how you came to poetry"

 

well  that is an heavy question  and deserves a straight/serious/cogent

response:

 

I came naked and virginal and naive and (all) trusting

;the first time was in the back seat of a 1955 Buick Special

 

GAWD!  "She" yet dominates my (thinking/doing/writing/drawing)

 

I call her by her real names : Wild Orchid, Full Moon, Shrike, UMA,

Stone Girl, Some Flower

 

I just seem to be consumed!

so

in a way  I am just doing what comes naturally  what do those (present)

Credentialist Poets-Teachers-Experts call "it"

 

stream of consciousness?  lanpo? mopo, mepo etc etc

 

I feel very close to these poets  (and I may leave someone out  but,

pardon me,

I gotta pee and check the Silliman blog-n-roll)

 

WCW, Larry Eigner, Frank Samperi, John Martone, John Phillips, John

Levy, David Giannini, Thomas Wyatt the Elder ( now I REALLY got to pee!

hey, I better read one of your previously don intervies to see how I

should (fuckin) behave  and maybe spell-via-a-dictionary.

 

here is a little piece I wrote as a reply to something Cid (Corman)

saud-wrote to me ( I think in here

     http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/restoration_letters/1.html

 

sometimes

it s not so easy

being myself.

 

                 oppps  saud =s said

 

Question 3

GP: Did you experience any change in the central components of your poetry and other artistic endeavors since suffering a stroke? Or, have any new doors for the creative process been opened to you by this experience?

EB: well; that's a deep subject (old child hood joke  get it? deep dark

well)  dig it!

 

there is now a hole in my mind

 

(actually it is the back  as you are looking forward  in the back lower

right quadrant  now, if you look in The Mirror  thing reverse and get

turned "upside down)

 

 through which things

willy-nilly

just come and go

 

well, sometimes after going and "they" come back

 

so that 'every thing depends'  'nothing is permanent'

 

 

the morphine was great! In it, I discovered my other country     and the

attention that cute nurse paid to me showed me "herself" as more than

metaphor

 

 

as far as 'experience"

 

I can truthfully say that, all of a sudden, I realized!

I realized that I am nothing more that the sum of my own

 

        e x p e r i e n c e s

 

and that I (can) extend those experiences via my written pieces and my

visual pieces

               which,  are  in themselves as what they become  adequate

 

just as they are

 and I seem to have returned to embrace those "things" that I hate.

 

so  I do what they ask me to do... mostly "goddesses" I just gotta get

things out of mind and into some kind of a

viewable form..

 

the form depends on the needs the thinking brings to a certain kind of

"reality"   or should that be a question

 

three things The Goddess has taught/thought me:

 

1. every time something good comes in, the shit gets there before it.

almost immediately.

 

2. it's not the words that tell us. It is the experience of the thing.

 

3. if I am teaching someone through something that I've done (created)

THROUGH MY EYES, then it is wrong.

 

4.  kiss kiss kiss  kiss-kiss all you think about is sex. what kind of a

koan IS t h a t?

well

 

you following this line of thinking?  hell, I'm not answering your

question.  Shit!    I'm "doing" it!  regardless of the con:see:quences

or

any other need/want/desire   or any other ersatz political/religious

dogmatic drivel

                  I got my own drool to use/clean-up

Question 4

 

GP: The "be here now" quality of yr work and life suggest that you have a

relationship Buddhism, not dogmatic but filtered through your own

experiences. Can you speak about yr own enlightenment during this

lifetime, art or otherwise.

EB:

not really. oh, I suppose

that

I could invent something specific to this....

 

however:  I just don't know!

 

I mean,

 

it's like playing with no thought, it's near-on to impossible to

live

w out thinking

 

so, if you want to say

some thing

just  say something

and, maybe  go with

 

Walking Mind   (my Japanese name I gave to myself)

 

something like  "kokoroarunite"wher I now can accompany Stone Girl

 

wherever thinking/mind/heart takes us...

so

 

this is  now practice zen  not Buddhism as thought at, say Nairopa

Youniverse

              or that mass-movement  BeatZen

 

I do read lots of "stuff"   S Suzuki, Thick Knot Hands, Seung Sahn,

Dogen, etc

 

also,  Reid's book, The Tao of Health,Sex, & Longevity

and,

      My Husband the Poet  then, The Unknown Craftsman, Brush Mind

 

heck, in the tradition of many of those GREAT zen-monk poets I've even

eaten

The Comma Sutra for Idiots (yeah, I know  KARMA SUTRA)  but

I only read the good parts!

 

Philip Sudo's little book  also "big"

 

so, as far as "enlightenment" goes:

 

just  switch on the light!     or switch off the light(I wrote a poem in

1969 or so  "Ode to Ths A. Edison:  Switch off the Light"  it's around

here some where.

 

so:

 

I practice my own brand of "zen/religion"  which "means"  soething or

other:

 

         I just don't know

 

if this sounds crazy  well, we can call "it" Crazy Buddhism/zen  and

progress to a posture of

 

Crazy Learning/Crazy Teaching

 

or

 

vice-uh-versa

 

  

I suppose I got "enlightenment" first time I saw Victor Borge do that

Punctuation bit...

                   or was it when Milton Berl   ?

 

does this answer the question... or beg it?

what Cid wrote me stands:  "do not beg what you have yet to give.".

 

 

Question 5

GP: Ed can you talk about the projects that you have going on now or on

the horizon, writing or otherwise?

EB:

 

Projects?  let me see...

 

just last week "completed"  Hexapoems ll, Asherah, and Ratula  and got

them into the computer

 

 

thinking of scanning ALL of my 8 1/2 X 11 paintings  watercolores and

sumi-ink things  and the little sketches and crayons-ed things   and the

"doodles (vispo?) things-things  must be about 3216 of these in plastic

(acid-free) sleves in binders

-  a daunting task

 

then there are piles of half-started or half-finished or half-abandoned

(real-lized and released),or half-ass-ed "books" to work  to frewition

 

then there are   lets see  approximately 143times60 (8580) pages of my

emails that I printed out  cause of the veryEEus and sundry possible

"stash" of poems there-n  to make... I mean  on every page! countless

twists and turns of/ my 'sent' emails..

 

well  "everybody" 's got their "The Collected Letters of {put your own

name here}

 

mine will be:  The Collected E-mails of Ed Baker

 

projects completed when they get "published

 

like Neighbors  (first of the six books just last week "put up' on New

Mystics  (at the bottom of)  here:

 

      http://www.newmystics.com/lit/EdBaker.html

 

some of G OO DNIGHT done by/in/on Sketchbook Journal

here:

http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook2-1Jan07/Jan07SKB_Ed_Baker_00_Goodnight.htm

as a matter of fact I am in  as far as I know) every issue of sketch

book:

 

http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook0-0Home/Archives_Sketchbook_A_Journal_for_Eastern_and_Western_Short_Forms.htm

 

HERE I found it:

 

http://poetrywriting.org/02SketchbookTributeEdBaker08-03April/Sketchbook_3-5_May_2008_Ed_Baker_Contents_Tribute_Page.htm

 

then I wrote!   STONE GIRL E-pic

 

I got it somewhere in my computer as I scanned ALL SIX BOOKS  in  all

525 pages

 

so, not much to do  and I spend all of my time doing it..

 

everyday I write a book

everyday I do some art

 

http://edbaker.maikosoft.com

 

a photo attached and also one on the New Mystics site.

 

well, I am very hungry!  think I'll go eat two poems today!  I mean,

with the economy

the way it is  and it's effect on Poetry, what's a boddhi to do?

but, Eat their own poems?

 

                        and try to maintain