Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Poetic Research Bureau presents....
A Book Release Party for Doug Nufer
We Were Werewolves published by Make Now Press
Sunday, August 24 2008, 6:30pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Rd.
Glendale, CA 91206
Doors open at 6:30pm
Reading starts at 7:00pm
Note the later than usual starting time!
Doug Nufer writes prose and poetry as a rule, some of which he performs alone or with musicians or dancers, some of which has appeared in Bird Dog, Golden Handcuffs Review, and Monkey Puzzle. His novels include Never Again (Black Square), Negativeland (Autonomedia), On the Roast (Chiasmus), and The Mudflat Man/ The River Boys (soultheft). His recent book is a collection of Oulipian poetry, We Were Werewolves (Make Now).
WE WERE WEREWOLVES uses constraints to open up the English language to deeper and darker humours than any your basic run-of-the-mill prosaic verse can begin to imagine. The insistent permutations of alphabetical sounds, the severe word love run through film noir-based tonalities, & the small-to-epic scale of reordering found in so many of these Nuferian arrangements lay bare a gleeful prosody of the nervoussystem. Pleasure level herein: mighty high.
- Anselm Berrigan.
We Were Werewolves published by Make Now Press
Sunday, August 24 2008, 6:30pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Rd.
Glendale, CA 91206
Doors open at 6:30pm
Reading starts at 7:00pm
Note the later than usual starting time!
Doug Nufer writes prose and poetry as a rule, some of which he performs alone or with musicians or dancers, some of which has appeared in Bird Dog, Golden Handcuffs Review, and Monkey Puzzle. His novels include Never Again (Black Square), Negativeland (Autonomedia), On the Roast (Chiasmus), and The Mudflat Man/ The River Boys (soultheft). His recent book is a collection of Oulipian poetry, We Were Werewolves (Make Now).
WE WERE WEREWOLVES uses constraints to open up the English language to deeper and darker humours than any your basic run-of-the-mill prosaic verse can begin to imagine. The insistent permutations of alphabetical sounds, the severe word love run through film noir-based tonalities, & the small-to-epic scale of reordering found in so many of these Nuferian arrangements lay bare a gleeful prosody of the nervoussystem. Pleasure level herein: mighty high.
- Anselm Berrigan.
Triumph of the Exegetes
A professor of negative anthropology and a philosophy of mind professor walk into a bar.
Oof! Who'd guess limbo could be this difficult?
Putting the Cartesian before the horse, Dr. K orients Dr. B: "So here we are. Why the long fascia?"
Dr. B: "It's still a bar in principle. It's your jokes that need a rider."
Dr. K: "Well, on the condition that we've moved beyond all this human guff, I say you make us breakfast."
Dr B: "Ok, I'll be eggs. You be bacon."
Barkeep: "We don't serve breakfast here."
Doctors: "Pish! We're not breakfast! We're poets!"
'Keep: "Then why am I fed up?"
Good question. Other queries needing answers that may be addressed this weekend:
---"Aaron, you're new novel is called The Mandarin. Are we talking oranges or tyranny?"
---"Franklin, you've unpacked Armed Forces from its working title Emotional Fascism. Now can you tell us what Donald Fagen was talking about when he wrote "Brooklyn owes the charmer under me"?
---And alternately: "Is shame a relationship, a procedure or a unit? And if a unit, is self-possession also a unit, and is it divisible by the shame unit?"
---And again: "You've got good pipes, but how's your foundation?"
et cetera etcetera & etc
Well c'mon.
Aaron Kunin is the only fella we know who asserts that 'idea' is a trisyllable. The ideas in his new book The Mandarin are even stranger. They dispose of the objective world like Jakob Apfelböck disposing of the parental stink; it keeps coming back! Help him kill it off this weekend so we can can get back to bar and be done with these zombies and their bookbags.
Franklin Bruno is the only fella we know who thinks Shangri-la is "undercooked", but he's also famous for his quotations. Here's one: "Being a man, for me, is a bit like being a finite set." Okay, but does the new math sing? Does the drummer have a boyfriend? Can I have the setlist?
Enough questions. The gig is almost up.
AARON KUNIN & FRANKLIN BRUNO
Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.
Franklin Bruno is the author of a book of criticism (Armed Forces) and a chapbook of poems (MF/MA). His poems have appeared in The Hat, Faucheuse, Vanitas, and the anthology Intersections: Innovative Poetry from Southern California (Green Integer). He has taught philosophy at UCLA, Pomona College, Northwestern University, and Bard College. A native Southern Californian, he keeps leaving Los Angeles, and keeps coming back.
***
The PRB: While Paul counts the almonds, we steal the cashews.
Oof! Who'd guess limbo could be this difficult?
Putting the Cartesian before the horse, Dr. K orients Dr. B: "So here we are. Why the long fascia?"
Dr. B: "It's still a bar in principle. It's your jokes that need a rider."
Dr. K: "Well, on the condition that we've moved beyond all this human guff, I say you make us breakfast."
Dr B: "Ok, I'll be eggs. You be bacon."
Barkeep: "We don't serve breakfast here."
Doctors: "Pish! We're not breakfast! We're poets!"
'Keep: "Then why am I fed up?"
Good question. Other queries needing answers that may be addressed this weekend:
---"Aaron, you're new novel is called The Mandarin. Are we talking oranges or tyranny?"
---"Franklin, you've unpacked Armed Forces from its working title Emotional Fascism. Now can you tell us what Donald Fagen was talking about when he wrote "Brooklyn owes the charmer under me"?
---And alternately: "Is shame a relationship, a procedure or a unit? And if a unit, is self-possession also a unit, and is it divisible by the shame unit?"
---And again: "You've got good pipes, but how's your foundation?"
et cetera etcetera & etc
Well c'mon.
Aaron Kunin is the only fella we know who asserts that 'idea' is a trisyllable. The ideas in his new book The Mandarin are even stranger. They dispose of the objective world like Jakob Apfelböck disposing of the parental stink; it keeps coming back! Help him kill it off this weekend so we can can get back to bar and be done with these zombies and their bookbags.
Franklin Bruno is the only fella we know who thinks Shangri-la is "undercooked", but he's also famous for his quotations. Here's one: "Being a man, for me, is a bit like being a finite set." Okay, but does the new math sing? Does the drummer have a boyfriend? Can I have the setlist?
Enough questions. The gig is almost up.
AARON KUNIN & FRANKLIN BRUNO
Saturday, August 16 2008 at 5:00pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm
$5 donation requested
$5 donation requested
Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.
Franklin Bruno is the author of a book of criticism (Armed Forces) and a chapbook of poems (MF/MA). His poems have appeared in The Hat, Faucheuse, Vanitas, and the anthology Intersections: Innovative Poetry from Southern California (Green Integer). He has taught philosophy at UCLA, Pomona College, Northwestern University, and Bard College. A native Southern Californian, he keeps leaving Los Angeles, and keeps coming back.
***
The PRB: While Paul counts the almonds, we steal the cashews.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
The Poetic Research Bureau presents...
AARON KUNIN & FRANKLIN BRUNO
Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.
Franklin Bruno is the author of a book of criticism (Armed Forces) and a chapbook of poems (MF/MA). His poems have appeared in The Hat, Faucheuse, Vanitas, and the anthology Intersections: Innovative Poetry from Southern California (Green Integer). He has taught philosophy at UCLA, Pomona College, Northwestern University, and Bard College. A native Southern California, he keeps leaving Los Angeles, and keeps coming back.
Saturday, August 16 2008 at 5:00pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm
$5 donation requested
$5 donation requested
Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of a collection of small poems about shame, Folding Ruler Star (Fence Books, 2005); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). He is assistant professor of negative anthropology at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles.
Franklin Bruno is the author of a book of criticism (Armed Forces) and a chapbook of poems (MF/MA). His poems have appeared in The Hat, Faucheuse, Vanitas, and the anthology Intersections: Innovative Poetry from Southern California (Green Integer). He has taught philosophy at UCLA, Pomona College, Northwestern University, and Bard College. A native Southern California, he keeps leaving Los Angeles, and keeps coming back.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wittgenstein's Daughters Think in Ink and the Mind Follows Apace: Moschovakis & Carter @ the PRB, Sat 4:30pm
Remember the days when Mallarmé was king and every poem was an archipelago of scattered force where the vehicle of the mind might enter at random and leave roger dodger at will?
Remember when poetry was ambient and sneaky ambiguous and jangled at the touch like mechanical tears on the blushing imago of the "novel form"?
Remember the faux finish, the "new elliptical", the liberation of the "open work", the clouds in the coffee of the post-language reverie gang?
Well, you'll get none of that here.
Not this weekend.
This weekend, proposition in poetry is back. Argument is alright. The didactic is generative. One frank sentence pops into place after another.
And why not? Anna Moschovakis is in town.
Screw the blurb gumbo about both of her parents being logicians and her first book containing sectionals like "The Blue Book", etc. The point is: when her mind pivots at the putative ground truths her notional stylus leads before it, your own mind pivots too, and cumulative pivots mean ice rink fantasia in your cognitive cluster.
You won't forget that action.
Joining her is Northeast LA's very own minister of clean design whose prosodic stumbling blocks stage explanations and illustrations of prototype theory on the robot clover of an inherited typeface ("of the world," she says, "of the world!"). She calls her new book "A Fixed, Formal Arrangement", but you'll be repositioned, I guarantee you. This poetry plays fidget rock.
Is it just me, or are all the boys flarfing in the backroom, fussing with collectible captchas and calling it "vis-po" or stealing pixels from the video fireplace like bantamweight prometheans busing data from one bottlenecked formal genre into another to make a claim for "sample culture" and the now sound?
Well, call me stumped. The gals are on it in this weather. The boys better get back to bureau.
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS & ALLISON CARTER
FEEL THE FUNCTION: PRB |---> ULLA
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.
***
$5 donation requested
***
The PRB: Your frontline against poetry snacks.
Remember when poetry was ambient and sneaky ambiguous and jangled at the touch like mechanical tears on the blushing imago of the "novel form"?
Remember the faux finish, the "new elliptical", the liberation of the "open work", the clouds in the coffee of the post-language reverie gang?
Well, you'll get none of that here.
Not this weekend.
This weekend, proposition in poetry is back. Argument is alright. The didactic is generative. One frank sentence pops into place after another.
And why not? Anna Moschovakis is in town.
Screw the blurb gumbo about both of her parents being logicians and her first book containing sectionals like "The Blue Book", etc. The point is: when her mind pivots at the putative ground truths her notional stylus leads before it, your own mind pivots too, and cumulative pivots mean ice rink fantasia in your cognitive cluster.
You won't forget that action.
Joining her is Northeast LA's very own minister of clean design whose prosodic stumbling blocks stage explanations and illustrations of prototype theory on the robot clover of an inherited typeface ("of the world," she says, "of the world!"). She calls her new book "A Fixed, Formal Arrangement", but you'll be repositioned, I guarantee you. This poetry plays fidget rock.
Is it just me, or are all the boys flarfing in the backroom, fussing with collectible captchas and calling it "vis-po" or stealing pixels from the video fireplace like bantamweight prometheans busing data from one bottlenecked formal genre into another to make a claim for "sample culture" and the now sound?
Well, call me stumped. The gals are on it in this weather. The boys better get back to bureau.
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS & ALLISON CARTER
Saturday, July 19 2008 at 5:00pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206FEEL THE FUNCTION: PRB |---> ULLA
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.
***
Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm$5 donation requested
***
The PRB: Your frontline against poetry snacks.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Poetic Research Bureau presents...
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS & ALLISON CARTER
Saturday, July 19 2008 at 5:00pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.
***
$5 donation requested
***
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.
***
Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm$5 donation requested
Friday, June 20, 2008
Triple Canopy Does the PRB
There's a tricky new online magazine that works some of the conceptual digs that magazines like Soft Targets, Cabinet and the Paul Ford-wing of Harper's Online have been staking out this century (in fact, a few of the editors have had gigs at those kindred publications). The joint is called Triple Canopy, dark nod to the private defense contractor of the same name. They've had a few recent coups, including an interview with foreign policy provacateuse Samantha Power and the first complete English translation of the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño's 1999 speech accepting the Rómulo Gallegos Prize.
This month in Issue #2 they feature the Poetic Research Bureau extensively, focusing on the Bureau's concern with derivate poetries and unoriginal literature. This includes contributions from the three directors (Mosconi, Shirinyan and Maxwell), and the summer issue of the quarterly PRB's Directors' Dispatch.
Triple Canopy editors will be visiting LA next weekend, June 27th - 29th, and have an Issue #2 launch at SiteLA on Friday night, plus a reading at Family Bookstore on Fairfax Sunday evening. PRB co-director Andrew Maxwell (c'est moi) will be reading from the Literary Product Trials on Sunday at the bookstore event.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)