Jazz Poetry

Every now and then I get really into poets.org. It largely focuses on more classical forms and authors, but also has a nice selection of some contemporary work.

Anyhow, they just featured Hayden Carruth in their recent newsletter and I thought I'd share how a person can get lost at poets.org for a couple of hours.

1. You begin by reading the bio of a poet (Hayden Carruth), and if you can avoid clicking all the links provided then you may proceed to step 2. Otherwise click through the links, get lost, then return for step 2.

2. Read some poetry by the author (Of Distress Being Humilated by the Classical Chinese Poets). You can often find recordings of the poets reading the poem embedded in the page for you to read along to. Nice.

3. Read another poem by your selected poet. (The Cows at Night)

4. Decide to look into the larger framework of their movement and read about the history of the movement they may have been a part of. Follow links or not as stated in step 1 (A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry). Ultimately choose another poet whose work is listed in this section and begin again. (Jayne Cortez)

That's all there is to wasting time reading poetry at poets.org. I suppose you could do that anywhere. But that's what I was just doing. And it's not really a waste of time. So there.

UPDATED: I seem to have forgotten to mention that Hayden Carruth passed away this month. Read his Washington Post obituary.

InDigest Offices Temporarily Move to NYC

The InDigest office is temporarily located in New York for the week, as you may have read in the previous post (instead of being spread across the country like no office you've ever seen). This evening the whole office went out to the KGB Bar and saw two pretty great poets and the evening ended with David emerging a hero.

The reading consisted of both Rick Barot and CA Conrad reading some new poetry and I thought I'd provide some links here for you to go and check them out. I didn't get to see Mr. Barot read, but David promises that it was good, and I rather enjoy the poem that is located here. Mr. CA Conrad was also a very solid poet (and had a great delivery). His poems were funny in the way that you chuckle at a funny line, but can't full laugh because he then makes you grimace as you realize that, yes, life is both funny and very not funny. You can read his "Dear Mr. President There Was An Eggshell Under Your Desk Last Night in My Dream" here.

That's all for now.

I Could Use Your Lips on Me and a Little Bit of Dramamine

Holly Munoz, participant in Issue 7's Music section, invited me to ride on a bus with her and all the bands from Draw Fire Records on their trip out to New York for CMJ, where eight bands will play Friday night, before everyone piles back in the bio-diesel bus and drives another 20 hours back to the Twin Cities.

I am writing from Illinois about to cross over to Indiana. We have a long trip ahead still. It's not what you might expect from a bus full of bands. A lot of people (yours truly) are on their computers and, at least to my knowledge, there has been no drug use or drinking. And, if there has been, it certainly hasn't been in excess. Everyone panicked briefly before realizing that the bus was in fact equipped with wireless. We have updates heading into a number of places online: Twitter, How was the show, Facebook, etc.

The first few hours were kind of rough for me. When we stopped in Madison I picked up a little Dramamine and I seem to be doing better now.

I'll try to keep the updates coming. But it might be night time soon.

Our Friends at Whistling Shade Have a New Issue

Our friends over at the fine literary magazine called Whistling Shade have a new issue hitting coffee shops, book stores and the like across Minneapolis (and the world wide webs very soon). The intoduction to the release sounds familiar to us here in the InDigest offices, "I see that another issue of Whistling Shade is pulling into the station. This is a train that always makes its run - if not always quite on schedule!"*

Their new issue will contain poetry from Mary Kay Rummel, Gary Dop, Norita Dittberner-Jax, Thomas R. Smith and Bryan Thao Worra; new fiction from Eric Stener Carlson and Justin Teerlinck, and lots lots more. Check frequently to find out when the new issue is online...


*Look for issue 8 of InDigest to be out very very soon, and following on it's heels our One Year Anniversary Issue!

Some Good Stuff to Listen to From NPR

Poet Sharon Dolin talks about her new book Burn and Dodge. (there's a poem in it called "To The Family of the Man We Ate 130 Years Ago")

Neil Gaiman talks about his new book.

The Best Foreign Books You've Never Heard of.

Other Stuff to read:
Muumuu House is a new publishing house started by Tao Lin.

InDigest Columnist Jess Grover has new poems in the Fall '08 Forklift, OH. (the poems will be posted soon)

Ok, go read (and/or listen).

Travis Lindquist Gallery

New York artist Travis Lindquist, published in the Gallery of Issue 4, has an opening this weekend featuring many new pieces. The gallery, titled In The Darkest night, will take place at the McCaig Welles and Rosenthal Gallery in New York. The gallery opening will be held Friday night at the McCaig gallery from 7pm-10pm, and will be on display from October 10th - November 10th. The gallery is located in Brooklyn at: 129 Roebling Street, Suite B Brooklyn, NY 11211. We highly recommend you go and check out his work, Lindquist is a very engaging presence who's work is engaging, dark, fractured and incredibly beautiful.

The piece to the left is the gallery's title piece "Darkest Night".

Huffington Post

In case you haven't seen this yet, David has a great article up on the Huffington Post.

In case you haven't heard, I'm excited about the start of the hockey season. (I had to link to a page about the Wild, because I'm still in panic mode about not having found a bar in New York that will play all of the WIld games).