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.

The Bureau presents...

David Buuck & Harold Abramowitz

Saturday, June 28 2008 at 5:00pm

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DAVID BUUCK is a contributing editor at Artweek, and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute & the Language & Thinking program at Bard College. Recent booklets include Ruts, Runts, Between Above & Below, Paranoia Agent, and SITE/CITE/CITY. Full-length books are forthcoming from Palm Press and Tangent. He is the founder of BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics, which this summer will present Buried Treasure Island at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' "Bay Area Now" triennial. He lives in Oakland with his two dogs.

HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ is a writer and teacher from Los Angeles, author of a book, Dear Dearly Departed, forthcoming from Palm Press, a micro-book, Sunday, or a Summer's Day, forthcoming from PS Books, and a chapbook, Three Column Table, from Insert Press. Harold's writing, alone and collaboratively, has appeared in various publications. With Amanda Ackerman, he co-edits the literary project eohippus labs.

***

Five dollar donation requested (for traveling poets).

Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm

Magazines That Work

1. No magazine should include more than 50pp of work. It should be able to be consumed in one concentrated sitting.

2. No magazine should have a run longer than three years. Magazines should be understood to be ephemeral.

3. A magazine should be the stage for one rather focused idea, or a handful of related themes, rather than a synthetic pulp absorbing everything it touches.

4. A magazine should be issued at least quarterly, to keep its conversation alive.

5. A magazine should be portable, and tend toward smaller formats. Ideally its distribution will be hand-to-hand.

6. A magazine's print runs should be small: no more than 500 copies, and no reprints for at least five years after publication.

7. A magazine is still a fetish object, but its borders needn't necessarily end at the page. It can be germinated publicly in the laboratory of a blog, for example, and pruned at an arbitrary moment when the concentration is right, to maximize the effect or arrival (however accidental) of an idea.

San Fernando Will Not Forget This Moment

Our previous reminder just didn't cut it––

Even a butcher needs to butt in with the meat.

San Fernando Rd is alive and we don't want to kill it!

So we plant our flunky banner in the street:

Ahem.

Come see Gabriela Jauregui collect herself for the very first time,

in a book no less!

Why would she do it? The narrator puts his monocle on: "by gum, what a strange affair!"

At least 23 artists have cordoned off 23 miles of San Fernando to make the point:

This lady needs a witness!

Or... that's where you come in.

(sound of mental camera a-rolling, crickety-crank)

... ... ...

Walk hard, Starstruck Troopers, and do it our way, cuz as Teddy Bear Berrigan had it:

"My heart Your heart

That's the American Way

& so,

FUCK OR WALK!

It's the American Way"

Which is why all the 'art guerillas' get out

or get out of the way

to make a day of our post-pedestrianism.

What's the sound of 23 Angelenos walking? Can you hear it?!

That's what we've come to find out.

Perloff sez Gabriela has "perfect pitch". But we don't buy it!

The sneakiest poets are sharpies or flat-footed, and make a music of the accidentals.

(Here's a perfect pitch, btw!)

R. Duncan: If you haven't entered the dance / you've misunderstood the event.

Did I paraphrase? Well, fuck or walk, maybe I did: This event is new!

Come tell Gabriela to sing off key!

Unlock that responsibility!

& thusly examine: Controlled Decay.

Published by Black Goat / Akashic Books

A Book Release Party for Gabriela Jauregui

Sunday, June 8 2008, 4:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau

3702 San Fernando Rd.

Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:30pm

Reading starts at 5:00pm

& San Fernando Road Concert events from 5-9pm.

This gig is free. Save your bucks, and buy a book:

It's yr future:

The PRB Vortex. b/c

We've earned it.

The Bureau presents...

A Book Release Party for Gabriela Jauregui

Controlled Decay published by Black Goat/Akashic Books

Sunday, June 8 2008, 4:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Rd.
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm

Photos from the Rob Fitterman, Jane Sprague Reading

All photos by Harold Abramowitz
















Rob Fitterman Reads















Andrew Maxwell Announces












Jane Sprague Reads

Attention!

Notorious rogue Gothamite sampler takes unpleasant detour to clean clocks in the Southland!

Rob Fitterman makes an exception! Long Beach bravo Jane Sprague cuts the ribbon!

Come get a peek at the newest guff factory and prose booster on the block, the POETIC RESEARCH BUREAU in the fetal stage, wriggling like a bookworm in its library music. We'll be building the joint out through the summer, with occasional readings under the heatlamp, only to launch 'big time' in the fall, like stuck-up morning-glories with "good hunch disease"!

Meantime, Ara thinks if we grow beards and promote algorithmic poetry, we may just get into a proper argument. Let's see!

Doors open at 6:30. Reading is 7pm sharp in the theater, and first official pub walk at 8 to abuse your organ meats and carry on the debate!

(Note that Atwater is pre-famous for the highest density of post-chic, murky theme bars in the 5-2-134 triangle. You've never felt "almost there" until you've felt Atwater.)