Belz, Maxwell, Meadows, Schultz: Sun Jan 9

"A Chavez Ravine Reunion Quartet"

If you weren't one of the 200+ who socked into ArtShare last night to try on 70 poets-in-a-can, which was quite delicious, maybe you want to stretch out this afternoon, and listen to four of them read in the cozier compound of the Poetic Research Bureau in Chinatown.

Aaron Belz, Andrew Maxwell, Deborah Meadows, and Susan Schultz are just four baseball enthusiasts who last were all together for a Dodgers game, and suddenly -- all in one place again in an offseason freeze -- decided to do that other thing they do: scribble and mumble in public.

(Baseball poems not necessarily included.)

*** *** *** *** ***

Aaron Belz is the author of three books, including Lovely, Raspberry and The Bird Hoverer.

Andrew Maxwell co-directs the PRB, has edited some magazines and hosts several of his chapbooks at peepingmot.com.

Deborah Meadows is the author of many books, including Goodbye Tissues and involutia.

Susan Schultz edits Tinfish magazine and press, and her books include Dementia Blog and Memory Cards & Adoption Papers.

Poetic Research Bureau @ The Public School
951 Chung King Rd, Chinatown, LA, CA

This Many Poets Went to Market: 69 FTW!

69 Eggheads, 3 Minutes to Cook

And who said conference poetry wasn't sexy? You say MLA. We say MLAwesome.

Zero-sum speed-sport pachinko-style poetasty. Everything poetry is not supposed to be –– for four-and-a-half hours!

This is the shadow convention. Screw the well-lit spaces. Guidebook for conventioneers ahead.

Doors open at 7:00, the reading will start at 7:30.

Poets will read for 3 minutes (or less); we place violators on the subway to the sea, MTA-guaranteed, by which we mean they shall never arrive. We have to be out of the venue by midnight, so windbags will be haters. If it sounds like a puptent happening, get this: it is a proper theater, so at least there are no chairs to fold!

There is a parking lot, and during the event there will be an inexpensive cash bar, but we have no other details on the space. It looks really great in the photos.

Did we mention there's a grand piano?






Artshare
http://artsharela.org
801 East 4th Pl.
Los Angeles, CA

Here is a Google map that shows how to get there from the convention center. It's not a short walk, and there a few streets you might want to avoid.
View Map

For instance, we would probably take Hope or possibly Grand from 11th to 7th, and then Spring from 7th to 2nd. Of course, there will be cabs available from coventioneer hotels.

Another option is to take the Metro, which costs $1.50 and leaves right from the convention center and lands in Little Tokyo. It stops running at midnight, however.
View Map

And then there is the bus, which despite what you might have heard, runs very well in Los Angeles. Brian Kim Stefans take it to work every day. You'll get a pretty good tour of downtown LA as well. It costs $1.50 exact change, but takes bills of course. There are several optional routes.
View Map

The website taxicabsla.org has a complete list of phone numbers for taxis that serve the area. The area that includes downtown is C. Taxis can be pricey but the distance is so short and there will be no traffic at that hour downtown. There are also taxi stands at the various hotels downtown, though I don't know much more about this as I never take taxis. Here are the relevant numbers from the site:

United Independent Taxi
(213) 483-7660 or
(310) 821-1000 or
(800) 411-0303

Yellow Cab
(310 or 213) 808-1000 or
(800) 200-1085

Bell Cab
(888) 235-5222 or
(800) 666-6664

Beverly Hills Cab Company
(310 or 800) 273-6611

Checker Cab
(310 or 800) 300-5007

City Cab
(818) 252-1600 or
(800) 750-4400

Independent Taxi
(323) 666-0050 or
(800) 521-8294

Near the site of the reading are a lot of neat restaurants and bars. Traction Ave. is kind of the new hip area of downtown. Down 3rd street is SCI-ARC, a great school with a fascinating lecture series. The Google map below shows you some (but not all -- click on the unnamed dots) of the restaurants in the area. Did we mention it's near Little Tokyo?
View Map

Mr. Maxwell offers the following recommendations for restaurants in the Little-Tokyo-adjacent neighborhood:

Under $15:

Daikokuya: Still some of the best ramen in LA, with excellent cloudy pork bone broth. It'll be a wait, but if it's cold, it's very worth the wait.

Senor Fish: Local mom'n'pop Mexican chain, but well above the mean for cheap eats. Get the fish taco special if your cash is low, and just want a decent, tasty lunch.

Suehiro Cafe: Bento box and noodles place. Japanese comfort food. Solid, if not transcendent, easy to get in, open until 3am.

$15-25:

Izayoi: Japanese Izakoya joint (small plates). Big with locals and the kids. Can be inconsistent, but also cheaper than some other options, and has its on nights.

Shabu Shabu House: Popular shabu joint, steamy hot broth, excellent sauces -- folks swear by it, but can be a bit of a wait at times.

Wurstküche: Craftsman beers and homemade brats. Gastropub in a German beer hall, often packed, long tables, family style. Good stuff, but can be 20 min wait to order and get food.

$25 and above:

Sushi Gen: One of the better sushi joints in LA. Definitely will want to call ahead. Not so cheap, but definitely very solid sushi.

Lazy Ox Canteen: Bistro/gastropub, a little more upscale, one of the better young chefs in LA. Can usually get in for lunch, but is more of a reservations place on evenings and weekends.

Mr. Timmons recommends the following bars and cafes to the south of ArtShare:

Villains Tavern - great for before or after reading - a kinda steampunk nowheresville, somewhere old west parisian feel - beautifully designed space - with outdoor patio and lots and lots of heat lamps - like 30 beers on tap - half of them belgians - paired with shots for $8 and old school fancy cocktails - nice balcony - Cherry Bacon Marmalade Burger - grilled cheese with cave-aged cheddar and tamarind chili - they also have veggie options though I'm not sure about vegan

Urth Caffe - a great place to go before the reading - they aren't open late - but they have really amazing coffee and tea and great sandwiches and food - very down to earth stuff - not cheap but not really expensive either

Church & State - only open until 11pm - good for before the reading - somewhat expensive but great cocktails - great coffee - very good food

(This escapade is sponsored, organized, and hosted by Brian Kim Stefans, Matt Timmons, and PRB Directors Andrew Maxwell, Joseph Mosconi, and Ara Shirinyan. If you see 'em, give 'em a shake or a drink.)

NADA GORDON & K. LORRAINE GRAHAM

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

NADA GORDON & K. LORRAINE GRAHAM

Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 7:30pm

The PRB@The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

Doors open at 7:00pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm

$5 donation requested

Nada Gordon is the author of several poetry books: Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, and foriegnn bodie-- and an e-pistolary techno-romantic non-fiction novel, Swoon. Her new book, Scented Rushes, is just out from Roof books. A founding member of the Flarf Collective, she practices poetry, song, dance, dressmaking, and image manipulation as deep entertainment. She blogs at ululate.blogspot.com.

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming, (Edge Books), recent work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, the Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium, and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels.  She lives in Carlsbad, CA, with her partner Mark Wallace and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

Cotner, Fitch & Krilanovich

Saturday, December 11 @ 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown.

Lest the trio of names ring otherwise, they've arrived not to do your taxes or plan your estate -- but rather to ring the bells on a new PRB doorhandle, and kick our portable Tinguely machine into motion, once again.

Messrs Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch, hailing from NYC and Wyoming respectively, reanimate "pedestrian" literature in the recent UDP book, Ten Walks / Two Talks, a sneaky zigzag amid improvised thought maps and urban space, giving new swerve to the kinematic and analytic in a peripatetic tradition as old as toga parties or the buddy film. We'll leave it to Jon and Andy to unwind who is trucker and who is chimp in this glad dyad, but they're sure to blow up our chatroom with buggy repartee and collaborative intoxication, while the city nevertheless survives them like it does all fantasy creatures stumbling down alleyways in mothraic parade march.

And talk about creature (first) features -- dig Grace Krilanovich's consumptive thought burble of a book, The Orange Eats Creeps. It's a sort of "this land is your land and we'll eat it alive" reclamation project, populated by soul-starved anarcho-punks bumrushing the hobo costumes and mind trips, getting jumped and jumping everything that looks like meat and magic carpets. If the Twilight Saga were directed by Larry Clark in the drop-dead Gus Van Sant secular no-place of a Pacific Northwest instead of that CGI mattework substitute --  if the nevergonnadie tweens-with-fangs were huffing black light paint in gas station bathroom killzones like Gary Gilmore in a literary panic, you'd maybe grok the departure point for this choose-your-wrong-adventure novel. 

Need more breadcumbs? Ok, this one. And this one. And this.

Still hungry? Good. 

These are the new kids -- this is our new place. And no one gonna take the body down. But you can come and give it new lungs Saturday night.

Saturday Dec 11, 2010 at 7:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
951 Chung King Road

LA, CA 90012

Doors open at 7:00pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm

$5 donation requested. All funds go to the authors.

New Digs, Old Dudes, Present Findings

As Messrs Fagen & Becker had it in 1974, any minor world that breaks apart falls together again, and so it has.

The Messrs of the Poetic Research Bureau –– after six months of whim, errancy and reconstruction –– return to rearrange the chairs and podia, reopening their forum to peers and public alike. And should you read further, Public it is.

After two and a half years in southwest Glendale, where like Lou Reed in an imagined 1974 Berlin, they have constantly watched the bluebird fly over their shoulders (to Rally Burger, no doubt), the Messrs draw the curtains on a new prospect, this the one into which Robert Towne placed a hapless Jake Gittes in 1974 to do "as little as possible" while the world convulsed about him.

It's Chinatown: 951 Chung King Rd to be exact. New digs –– okay and huzzah! –– but old habits all the same.

You may recognize the address, home to the visible college of the open program: The Public School, a school with no curriculum save for that which, like Australopithecus afarensis dug up from the slate in 1974, has somehow been there all along. The Messrs promise not to call their discoveries Lucy -- they have no idea who that is. But the PRB nonetheless joins the Public School as active cohort, in deference to any collaborative future that shakes the pelvic girdle from its earthly Depression.

Believe in their enterprise. It's not quite like that of Donald Barthelme's protagonist in his tale of central planning gone awry "I Bought a Little City," published in mid-November 1974. The Messrs have not purchased Galveston, and they'd never shoot a dog. But like the interstellar radio message deployed from the Arecibo Observatory toward the M13 Great Globular Cluster in 1974, their aspirational reach is no less great and their career no less patient.

And you don't have to wait until year 27000 to receive the message. It arrives in December, when irregular programming recommences with readings by Grace Krilanovich and Messrs Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch, on the evening of the 11th. Check the calendar to the upper right for future noise. Of the rest, they'll remain silent, like the Indian Smiling Buddha that swallowed the mushroom cloud in 1974. Unlike him, however, they promise the tension will be creative.

Consider this the relaunch of yet another minor world, or yet another green world, mayhaps (though that LP would not be released until 1975, why quibble with promise?). When you want to visit, give these old Messrs a write.

As ever:  directors@poeticresearch.com

The PRB Recommends...

Karen Weiser & Anselm Berrigan @ Machine Project

Tuesday Night, Oct 12, 8pm.

Anselm Berrigan is a poet and author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Free Cell (City Lights, 2009). Other books include Zero Star Hotel, Some Notes on My Programming, and Integrity & Dramatic Life, all published by Edge Books. He is the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail (brooklynrail.org), an arts and culture monthly in print and on-line, and co-editor of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (UCal, 2005) as well as the forthcoming Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (UCal, 2011). An archive of blog entries kept for The Poetry Foundation in 2009-2010 can be found here. He lives in New York City, where he grew up, and has worked in various capacities for The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church over the past thirteen years, most recently as a workshop leader.

Karen Weiser has published five chapbooks: Pitching Woo (Cy Press, Fall 2006); Heads Up Fever Pile (Belladonna, 2005); Placefullness (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004); Eight Positive Trees (Pressed Wafer, 2002), and Beneath The Bright Discus (Potes and Poets Press, 2000), which she coauthored with Nadine Maestas. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Chicago Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Canary, The Germ and The Hat and several anthologies including Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets (Verse Press, 2004). Her correspondence with Anne Waldman is part of a book entitled Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia, 2008). She is also the recipient of a Fund for Poetry award and the Mellon Fellowship through the Center for the Humanities. She lives in New York City and has taught literature at St. John’s University and Barnard College. To Light Out from UDP is her first full-length collection.

PRB: New Collaborations

Just a note that the Poetic Research Bureau, after a summer hiatus, is beginning to peep up from its burrow, and will be hosting some visiting writers later this fall. Keep the ears pricked!

We our currently in the process of relocating our modest library from the Luna Playhouse, which is housing a new theater company that will soon begin programming in earnest, making for a slightly more crowded accommodation for the Bureau. We wish Luna well, and may occasionally do events there in the future, but most of our events will take place elsewhere.

One such place is Alias Books East, finely-curated by Patrick Paeper in Atwater Village. Patrick has agreed to let us host an event or two a month on Sundays thru Thursdays, so if you are passing through the LA basin, give the directors a write (directors@poeticresearch.com) and we'll see what's available.

Simultaneously, we are discussing possibilities for a more permanent mailing address with likeminded projects in Chinatown and elsewhere. Let us know if you hatch a scheme.