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2011-05-10T16:37:00.001-05:00

May 6th: Urban Youth Literary Arts Program Meet & Greet!

2011-04-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

Woodland Pattern will be hosting a Meet & Greet on Friday, May 6th from 4:30- 6:30 for Milwaukee educators to learn more about our Urban Youth Literary Arts Program (UYLAP) and to celebrate 15 successful program years. If you are an educator or school administrator interested in finding innovative ways to make strides in improving your students' literacy, we hope you will join us! You will have the opportunity to learn how our inter-arts workshops and summer camps result in concrete gains in reading and writing, meet the UYLAP Education Coordinator, view a video screening of sample workshops and enjoy refreshments. Please contact Jenny Henry at (414) 263-5001 with any questions.

For more information on the Urban Youth Literary Arts Program, please visit: http://www.woodlandpattern.org/workshops/kids.shtml.

Hartford Avenue University School Workshop

2011-03-30T10:49:00.003-05:00

On March 18th and March 25th, Mikelle and Laura facilitated poetry workshops with Mr. Brad Dunning's 7th and 8th grade English Literature classes at the Hartford Avenue University School as part of Woodland Pattern's Urban Youth Literary Arts Program.

The first thing Mr. Dunning's students may have noticed when we walked through the classroom was our 5-foot tall dressmaker's mannekin wearing layers and layers of hats, scarves, t-shirts and jackets. We brought our inanimate friend along because the theme of our workshop was "Fashion & Clothing: What I Wear and Why I Wear It."

After discussing how sense imagery is a tool writers use to give life to flat words on a page, we asked students to touch and feel clothing and then describe the tactile imagery of a wooly hat, the visual imagery of a checked scarf, the auditory imagery of stomping tennis shoes.

We also read three poems in which the characters expressed a strong connection to the shoes they wore, then discussed how a person's clothing choices can influence personal identity, as well as how others perceive you. Mikelle illustrated by pulling articles of clothing off our mannekin and asking students to shout out what kind of a person would wear that: "A preacher!" "A business person!" "An old lady!" "My teacher!" Though my favorite (considering many of the clothes were mine) was "A bum!"

Later we discussed how symbols are used in poetry and how they show up in clothes as logos. Students talked about what they thought the purpose of logos are and why a person would buy one brand over another. Then the students did a hands-on writing exercise, writing a poem on fabric about what their OWN brand of clothing would be like, if they could design something that represented them and drew an accompanying logo. Other students wrote stories about their most or least favorite clothes and illustrated their writing with an image of that piece of clothing. Mr. Dunning's students were excited readers and creative writers and we had a wonderful time working with them!

Poetry Workshop at Lloyd Street Global Education

2011-03-25T15:30:00.001-05:00

On March 18, 2011, Anthony and I (Dinah) held a poetry workshop with Ms. Balistrierei's fifth graders at Lloyd Street Global Education School.

We took a few minutes to inspect the student artwork lining the hallway until a student came to the door and told us they were ready. We stepped inside, introduced ourselves, and got started.

Each student received a pre-made booklet with four poetry exercises within. The first page asked the kids, "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?"

The second page asked the kids to imagine what they would do if they really were that animal. They used adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.

The third page had the kids use the poetic convention of simile to think more deeply about their animals and how they relate to them.

On the last page, the kids made a rhyming poem about their animals. Even Ms. Balistrieri took a seat and participated in the workshop along with her students. Some of the poems turned out very funny!

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2010-12-21T14:05:00.006-06:00

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Workshop Reap: Writing a Literary Memoir with Jean Feraca

2010-09-14T16:06:00.008-05:00

Jean Feraca began her workshop, Writing a Literary Memoir, by discussing memoir as a way to develop one’s craft and open up other writing. “It’s about what you don’t know you already know you know,” she said. With timed exercises and questions, such as “What calls to you? What do you really want to write about?” students’ writing began to emerge. They wrote; they read. They talked about next steps.

Jean Feraca advised “When you write poetry, less is more…whittle down to essence…what you pull out can be another poem and another and…” She told her class to be ruthless. “All good writing is well-edited,” she said, “You (if you are lucky) are the editor.”

Reading examples of personal essays and memoirs, from Primo Levi to Vivian Gornick to her own I Hear Voices, Feraca guided workshop participants into the essence of what writing and memoir, in particular, are about. “What makes it worthwhile is you become aware of yourself. The only real reason to write is to find the truth of your life— and to tell it.”

“Organizing comes later…get it down on the page,” she pushed. “The idea is to generate yeast— germs that can sprout later.” Feraca wanted students to understand the generative process of rewriting; “ It’s as Natalie Goldberg says, ‘Write it. Rip it up. Write it to write it again.’”

“The most important thing is to allow the thing to unfold in it’s own time…you don’t need to know everything in advance.” She urged them to tell their stories without agenda and without over or under-valuing their meanings; “That’s the way you have to deal with it: as a metaphor for our time, not just a memoir of your time.”

In case you missed it, check out:

• Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg
• The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick
• I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death and the Radio by Jean Feraca

Pledge a Music Marathon Performer Today!

2010-07-09T10:06:00.006-05:00

For the past 16 years Woodland Pattern has been the proud home of the Alternating Currents Live concert series. Recorded live in the Woodland Pattern gallery and then aired Sundays on 91.7 WMSE-FM, Alternating Currents Live has brought in musicians from as far as Europe to as close as Chicago. Providing a space for the avant-garde, the improvisational, and the sensational for the past 16 years, Alternating Currents Live has proven to be a long-standing part of Woodland Pattern's programming. Please support ACL today by sponsoring a Music Marathon & Benefit performer. The Music Marathon will be held on Saturday, August 21, 2010; 1pm-9pm. Hope to see you there! If you are interested in signing up to be a performer, please contact WP Staff at 414-263-5001.

List of performers (as of 7/9/10):

2pm-3pm: Mark Anthony Hunkel

2pm-3pm: Craig Berg

2pm-3pm: Jeannine Rivers & Kay Augustine

2pm-3pm: Candice Nokes

5pm-6pm: Keith & Ben

7pm-8pm: Dan Schierl

7pm-8pm: Eria

8pm-9pm: Paul Schwarzkopf

8pm-9pm: Eric Blowtorch

Pre-Calculus for Small Press Publishers

2010-03-23T18:12:00.003-05:00

So, WP had more articles than could fit in the Riverwest Currents Woodland Pattern issue, January 2010. Below is one of the articles that didn't appear. We love the article and wanted you to see it!

Pre-Calculus for Small Press Publishers

by Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

The other day, I drank coffee while Chuck Stebelton ate a BLT. Chuck is the Literary Program Manager at Woodland Pattern. He asked me what I was going to write about for this issue of The Riverwest Currents.

Then a guy with a beard brought Chuck a second sandwich because there had been a mistake in the kitchen. Chuck offered it to me.

“No thanks,” I said. “I was going to write a little bit about how I've been doing this documentary about small presses in the Midwest and how Woodland Pattern fits into that.”

Chuck was a very attentive listener, even while he chewed a BLT with cucumbers on it.

I said something like: "One of the difficult things about doing a documentary about small presses in the Midwest is that small presses typically resist quantification." Except it probably didn't sound that good.

What I didn't say was: At any given time, there is a known quantity, Q, of small presses and then there is a variable quantity V, so that an expression for the set of all small presses in the Midwest [SP(M)] would read something like SP(M) = Q + V.

Which is to say that small press economics doesn't need to give the caveat common to other market analysis. With small presses, ceteris is never paribus. (You'll have to pardon my conjugation; I never took Latin.)

“That's why Woodland Pattern will always be vital," I said. “Because it's the actual experience of an individual confronting a wall of books that, for all intents and purposes, are alien artifacts waiting to be understood and eventually interpreted.”

In a project like a documentary that aims at being analytical, you've got to at least start by wanting to ask questions that beg for statistics. How many small presses are there? What are the average number of publications annually by each in every quintile? How many writers published annually, and how many copies per? Etc.

Even if we had something like an Institute for Small Press Market Research (leaving aside the questions of ideological consistency) there are always those who publish all kinds of things who probably wouldn't bother to register with the aforementioned ISPMR. I know I probably wouldn't.

Then I thought, when I get my hair cut I always notice a couple hairs that are longer than the rest.

"There are a lot of stray hairs," I said.

Chuck nodded and swallowed. “You don't have to know what you're looking for when you walk into Woodland Pattern.”

Then I said: “It's a lot like a poem that way.”

Chuck told me it that sounded like it would make a good article.

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is the organizer of The Racquetball Chapbook Tournament which will take place on April 10th at 9am sharp. For more info on the tournament visit
http://racquetballchapbooktournament.wordpress.com/about/

2010-02-21T12:48:00.007-06:00

A Woodland Pattern Poem by Angela Trudell Vasquez

If a neighborhood is lucky it has an anchor

something holding it together.

Riverwest has many organizations

and organic businesses

sprouting, grounded, dug in,

Woodland Pattern Book Center

is one of them one.

But it is special to me

because it’s about books and people

who read:

literature, poetry, politics and art.

It’s about those who admire

those who write and publish.

Well known artists visit,

mingle with aspiring poets, the masses.

It’s a destination, an island of learning,

education, sharing and encouragement

of the written word and understanding

in an age of increasing distractions and detractions.

Not to mention its terrific staff and founders,

Anne Kingsbury and Karl Gartung.

Never mind great old and new artists

haunt its bookcases

alive and dead pleading

buy me, read me, listen.

Never mind magic happens here

oral, written and sometimes

at the hand and pen of a young

Woodland Pattern friend

at poetry camp in the summer

under the tutelage of a real poet and sunshine.

WP is a treasure and it would be

a benefit to Milwaukee and the world

if it stayed ingrained in the neighborhood

feeding us good vibes, acts, images and words

so self expressions can ripple out

from its core affect change.

It is a positive in a world that easily

descends into chaos and greed.

Art lives there and breathes

and so do the people.

The 2010 Woodland Pattern Book Center Poetry Marathon and Benefit Lineup!

2010-01-19T18:30:00.017-06:00

2010 Poetry Marathon and Benefit Schedule

10-11 am

An hour of readings from kids that have participated in Woodland Pattern's programming.

11-noon

William Seidler

Paul McComas

Lucille Rosenberg

Sally Tolan

Margot Peters

Jennifer Jones

Eloisa Gómez

Jeanatte Alred

Eve Dicker Eiseman

Mark Anderson

noon-1 pm

Sara Parrell

Ronnie Hess

Kathie Giorgio

Paul Scot August

Larry O. Dean

Khristian Kay

Dylan Engel

Evan McDoniels

Laura Goldstein

Courtney Becks

1-2 pm

Denise Brown

Annie Parcels

Karla Huston

Cathryn Cofell

Robin Chapman

Catherine Jagoe

Susan Elbe

Jesse Lee Kercheval

Alison Townsend

Monica Thomas

2-3 pm

John Sierpinski

Katy Phillips

Barbara Bache-Wiig

Janet Leahy

Jeff Johnson

Judith Zukerman

Charlesetta Thompson

Carolyn Vargo

Ed Werstein

Brant Goodman

3-4 pm

Lenore Lee

Maria Scott

Jackie Reid Dettloff

Richard Roe

Virginia Cameron

John Morillo

Richard Hedderman

Michael Jay Varga

Dennis Trudell

Sheryl Slocum

4-5 pm

Bob Hanson

Suzanne Rosenblatt

Louisa Loveridge-Gallas

Dale Ritterbusch

Jim Stevens

Charlie Rossiter

Eddee Daniel

Jeff Poniewaz

Antler

Steven Platt

5-6 pm

Joan Miller

Sally Kuzma

JoAnn Chang

Kim Suhr

Chuck Stebelton

Roberto Harrison

Karl Gartung

Traci Clark

Paul Schwarzkopf

6-7 pm

Rhymin' Jymn

Elliot Lipchik

Paul Enea

Steve Pump

Steve Anderson

Chris Austin

Stacie Williams

Barbara Wuest

Susan Firer

Jim Hazard

7-8 pm

Cristina Norcross

Catherine Ries

Charles Ries

Edwin Perry

Phyllis Wax

Helen Padway

Nikki Wallschlager

Tyesha Turner

Kris Mathes

Peter Goldberg

8-9 pm

"Five-minute fiction"

Paul Druecke

Joe Riepenhoff

James Blessington

Keith Gaustad

Matt Wilson

Susan Engberg

Christi Clancy

Angie Trudell Vasquez

Josh Lickteig

Mike Hauser

Louise Zamparutti

9-10 pm

"Women of Milwaukee"

Angie Trudell Vasquez

Marilyn Taylor

Jan Christensen

Marcie Eanes

Marie Larson

Jacqueline Lalley

Shelly Davis

DarlinNikki Janzen

Dasha Kelly

Kasia Drake-Hames

LaVonne Natasha Caesar

10-11 pm

Eric Beaumont

Tom Rohe

Daniel Khalastchi

Caryl Pagel

Marsha Thrall

Carmen Murguia

Eric Hansen

Matt Trease

Peter Whalen

Ruth O'Malley

Mary Behm

11-midnight

Kathleen Klein

Dano Peterson

Dan Godston

Shana Lucas

Benjamin Slang

Elizabeth Marino

Vittorio Carli

Janina Ciezadlo

Ken Woodall

John Horton

midnight-1 am

Melissa Czarnik

Julie Strand

Earl Karp

Steven Karp

Shane Skinner

Yvette Mitchell
Nicholas A Deboer
Matt Schumacker
Brian Sevedge

A very big thanks to our event sponsors who have already committed to supporting this special event

AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop

Beans & Barley

Dean Muller

Direct Supply

KBS Construction, Inc.

Maedke Chiropractic

Milwaukee Community Journal

Outpost Natural Foods

Padway & Padway

Seven Sisters & Suns

Stone Creek Community Coffee

2010-01-13T11:31:00.004-06:00

Check out the marathon ad!

And don't forget to tell your supporters that they can pledge you online! www.woodlandpattern.org

Featured Hours:
10-11am Youth Hour
8-9pm Five-Minute Fiction Hour
9-10 Women of Milwaukee Hour

2009-11-05T11:15:00.004-06:00

&

Joe Amato Once an Engineer $24.95
Arthur C. Danto Andy Warhol $24.00
Nona Willis Aronowitz & Emma Bee Bernstein Girl Drive $19.95

&

Restocks from Godine/Black Sparrow:
Don't have $150 for the Collected Larry Eigner?
Larry Eigner Windows/Walls/Yard/Ways $14.95
Larry Eigner Waters/Places/A Time $12.95
&
John Wieners Cultural Affairs in Boston $15.00
John Wieners Selected Poems $15.95
Aram Saroyan Day & Night $16.95
Carl Rakosi Ere-Voice (New Directions) $9.95 (might be the last of these)

&

New Arrivals from MIT/Semiotext(e):
The Invisible Committee The Coming Insurrection $12.95
Jean-Luc Henning (trans by Ariana Reines) The Little Black Book of Griselidis Real: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore $14.95
Monica Szewczyk (ed.) Meaning Liam Gillick $24.95
plus new additions in the Documents of Contemporary Art series: Utopias, Situation, Beauty, & Appropriation $24.95 each

Andy Warhol's Soap Opera November 21

2009-10-21T10:43:00.001-05:00

Saturday, November 21, 2pm-8pm: Soap Operas ($4)

Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video Series

Presented by the UWM Film Department

Andy Warhol's Soap Opera 1973-1975 :

Vivian’s Girls; Phoney; Fight

Woodland Pattern’s gallery space will be converted into a couch potato’s haven for this marathon (5 or so hours) of acting out -- and some kind of fun -- via the platform of the domestic melodrama, featuring many Factory stars in fine form, especially Candy Darling, and in the incredible psychodrama exercise/verbal sparring match Fight, Charles Rydell and Brigid Berlin. Truly the flows of energy in the latter sessions are to be experienced to be believed as Rydell and Berlin impressively invest themselves (attack, modulate, repeat) into this duel for the camera, Rydell, a deliciously unstoppable torrent of complaint and invective; Berlin evasive, vulnerable, giving as good as she gets.

Spend the afternoon! Partake in parts!

Snacks, comfortable seating, entertainment to be provided.

Andy Warhol's Soap Opera 1973-1975 is final program in a season of rarely screened video work from Andy Warhol and his Factory cohorts, curated by Thomas Schur and Carl Bogner. The videos are available thanks to the generous permission of the Andy Warhol Museum (with great thanks to Greg Pierce and Geralyn Huxley.) The series Andy Warhol Video & TV is presented by the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival and the Milwaukee Art Museum and made possible thanks to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Johnson & Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund.

To screen: Vivian's Girls (Edit #2) (30min., 1973); Phoney (Edit #2) (49min.,1973); Fight Test #1 (33min., August 15, 1975); Fight Test #2 (30min., August 23, 1975)

Fight Test #3 (33min., August 28, 1975); Fight Test #4, Tape #1 (30min., August 29, 1975); Fight Test #4, Tape # 2 (30min., August 29, 1975); Fight Test #5, Tape #1 (33min., December 2, 1975); Fight Test #5, Tape #2 (33min., December 2, 1975)

Eileen Myles reading November 14

2009-10-21T10:17:00.001-05:00

Saturday, November 14, 7pm: Eileen Myles Reading $8/$7/$6

Woodland Pattern, 720 E. Locust St. Milwaukee, WI 53212

Eileen Myles will be reading from: The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays on Art

Poet and post-punk heroine Eileen Myles has always operated in the art, writing, and queer performance scenes as a kind of observant flaneur. Like Baudelaire's gentleman stroller, Myles travels the city—wandering on garbage-strewn New York streets in the heat of summer, drifting though the antiseptic malls of La Jolla, and riding in the van with Sister Spit—seeing it with a poet's eye for detail and with the consciousness that writing about art and culture has always been a social gesture. Culled by the poet from twenty years of art writing, the essays in The Importance of Being Iceland make a lush document of her—and our—lives in these contemporary crowds.

Framed by Myles's account of her travels in Iceland, these essays posit inbetweenness as the most vital position from which to perceive culture as a whole, and a fluidity in national identity as the best model for writing and thinking about art and culture. The essays include fresh takes on Thoreau's Cape Cod walk, working class speech, James Schulyer and Björk, queer Russia and Robert Smithson; how-tos on writing an avant-garde poem and driving a battered Japanese car that resembles a menopausal body; and opinions on such widely ranging subjects as filmmaker Sadie Benning, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and flossing.

Eileen Myles, named by BUST magazine "the rock star of modern poetry," is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Sorry, Tree, and Not Me (Semiotext(e), 1991), and is the coeditor of The New Fuck You (Semiotext(e), 1995). Myles was head of the writing program at University of California, San Diego, from 2002 to 2007, and she has written extensively on art and writing and the cultural scene. Most recently, she received a fellowship from the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation.

Music Marathon and Benefit

2009-09-02T14:02:00.011-05:00

"music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without" - Confucius

On August 22, Woodland Pattern (in partnership with 91.7 WMSE) successfully held its first ever Music Marathon and Benefit, to support our Alternating Currents Live Music Series. After eight hours of music and 38 performers, we raised over $2000! Thank you to all of the musicians who performed, our sponsors, and everyone who came out and made the marathon a success!

Summertime

2009-07-17T09:46:00.005-05:00

Hello Friends,

We are nearing the end of inventory and boy are we tired!

After two summer poetry camps and counting all the books in the store we decided that we are so tired we should have a packed schedule of events once our doors reopen!

Here is a taste of what is to come, please join us for one or many of the events:)

NOW- Aug. 30 ART EXHIBIT Jeff Clark's Quemadura Design Exhibit
Saturday July 18 2pm Creativity & Aging Anthology Reading & Celebration: Featuring poet-in-residence Jack Collom along with Creativity & Aging workshop students and instructors Aviva Cristy and Joe Radke, at the Loos Room at the Milwaukee Public Library.
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Saturday July 25 1-4pm WORKSHOP Life Writing in Poetry with Judith Harway
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Sunday July 26 2-4pm MUSIC Collective Neurosis with Frank Marquardt, reeds; Carl Raven, drums; Henry Steinfort, amplified cello; Rob Schoenecker, trumpet & Native American flutes
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August
=====
Saturday August 1 1-5pm WORKSHOP Write Here Write Now: A Journaling Workshop with Chuck Eigen
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Sunday August 9 2pm PERFORMANCE Other Peoples' Poetry with Thomas Gaudynski
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Wednesday August 12 7pm READING New Prose Series with Spencer Dew and Greg Gerke
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Sunday August 16 7pm ALTERNATING CURRENTS MUSIC
The Mallozzi/Zerang/Lonberg-Holm/Rammel Quartet
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Friday August 21 7pm REDLETTER READING & OPEN MIC featuring Luis Valadez
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Saturday August 22 1-9pm FIRST ANNUAL MUSIC MARATHON & BENEFIT
in support of Alternating Currents Live series
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Saturday August 29 1-3pm WORKSHOP August Fun with Form with Peggy Rozga

Small Press Focus: Switchback Books

2009-05-15T16:20:00.005-05:00

A Reading & Workshop with the ladies of Switchback
Saturday, May 30
12-4pm Workshop
7pm Reading

Switchback Books is a feminist press publishing poetry by women. Founded in 2006 by a group of students at Columbia College Chicago, Switchback Books publishes two books a year, one of which is the winner of the Gatewood Prize for a first book of poetry by a woman aged 18 through 39.

===================================================================
Sense & Nonsense: A Poetry Workshop
with Becca Klaver Saturday, May 30, 12-4pm
$40 / $35m - includes the workshop AND a ticket to the 7pm Reading

Through a variety of sensory and nonsensical experiments, in this workshop we will explore our relationships to each of the traditional five senses (especially those we take for granted), consider the additional senses that poets rely on (sixth, seventh, seventeenth), examine synesthesia and other sense-related poetic topics, and indulge in nonsense. Experiments may or may not include flâneuring, blindfolds, taste/smell/touch-tests, and speaking in tongues, or in Stein. Participants will be asked to bring a few simple supplies to aid in the experiments, and will use the material generated to compose one or more poems or short texts by the end of the workshop.

===================================================================

SwitchBack Books Reading
Featuring Becca Klaver,Brandi Homan & Kathleen Rooney, 7pm

Becca Klaver was born and raised in Milwaukee, attended the University of Southern California (BA) and Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and currently lives in Chicago, where she works and teaches at Columbia. With Brandi Homan and Hanna Andrews, she co-edits the feminist poetry press Switchback Books. Recent work can be found online in No Tell Motel, H_NGM_N, and Coconut. Her chapbook, Inside a Red Corvette: A 90s Mix Tape, is available from the greying ghost press.

Brandi Homan is the author of Hard Reds (Shearsman Books, 2008). Her chapbook, Two Kinds of Arson, is available from dancing girl press. She earned her MFA at Columbia College Chicago and is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books.

Kathleen Rooney was born in Beckley, West Virginia and raised in the Midwest. Along with Abby Beckel, she is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. She is the author of Reading with Oprah: the Book Club That Changed AmericaThat Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008), a poetry collaboration with Elisa Gabbert, Oneiromance (an epithalamion), which won the the 2007 Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books, and Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press, 2009), an occupational memoir. (University of Arkansas, 2005.

To register for the Workshop call 414-263-5001.
Tickets for the reading are $8 if you are not a workshop participant.

http://www.woodlandpattern.org/

Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E. Locust Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212
phone 414.263.5001

Elizabeth Willis Workshop & Reading! Saturday May 9th

2009-05-06T14:23:00.009-05:00

What's Your Local? with Elizabeth Willis 11-1pm

This workshop will combine workshop and discussion. We will begin by talking about a few poems by Lorine Niedecker, paying particular attention to their sound, their culture, their environment, their combination of world history and the local 'now.' We will look at how these poems travel and what they can reveal in and about the present. These poems will serve in part as a guide to finding our own ways into language, taking into account our biological and political environment, individual experience, overheard language, and other found elements. How can a poem represent—or point you toward—the depth and scope of what you know and experience? What is your sound—and what makes it specifically your own? What belongs to you—and to what do you belong? We'll all write poems and discuss them as a group.

Elizabeth Willis' most recent books of poetry are Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan, 2006) and Turneresque (Burning Deck, 2003). The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995) was selected for the National Poetry Series. Recently she edited a collection of essays entitled Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place (University of Iowa Press, 2008). She grew up in Eau Claire, WI and now lives in Massachusetts. She teaches at Wesleyan University.

$25 gets you the workshop AND a ticket to the 7pm reading

To register call (414) 263-5001.

For an extended bio and poems visit: http://woodlandpattern.org/poem/elizabeth_willis01.shtml

This weekend at WP

2009-04-17T12:44:00.009-05:00

Here at WP we are an ambitious group of poetry lovers. That is why we try to provide you will the best lineup of contemporary authors available. This weekend @ WP:

Friday April 17 7pm Open Mic featuring James Shea & Caryl Pagel
=======
Saturday April 18 2-4pm Time & Materials: A Masterclass On Adventures in Diction, Syntax, Rhythm & Tempo with Kit Robinson $25 includes the workshop and the 7pm reading
So you want to write a poem. Where to start? You’re going to need some words, that's for sure. But which ones? OK, so you found some words, now to put them together in some kind of order, so that they make sense, or don't, but sound as if they should, your call. How do units of measure such as phrase, line, sentence and stanza overlap? How fast is your poem? How slow? How do you know? In this workshop, we will experiment with several techniques, including vocabulary constraints, parallel constructions, and group collaborations. Please bring a book or two to plunder for material.
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Saturday April 18, 7pm Featured Reading Bill Berkson and Kit Robinson, $8/$7/$6

Kit Robinson:
The Messianic Trees is the first major collection of thirty years of poetry by Kit Robinson, one of the core members of the Bay Area literary renaissance and language movement. In the 1970s and 1980s Kit Robinson performed with San Francisco Poets Theater and produced "In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets", a weekly radio program of live readings and interviews on KPFA radio in Berkeley (with Lyn Hejinian). He has published seventeen books of poetry and has also taught poetry writing in schools through the California Poets in the Schools program. Robinson's awards include a Fund for Poetry Prize and an NEA creative writing fellowship.

Saturday April 18 7:30pm Featured Reading
Bill Berkson:
Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties. Director of Letters and Science at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1993 to 1998, he taught art history, critical writing and poetry and directed the public lectures program there from 1984 to 2007. He studied at Trinity School, The Lawrenceville School, Brown University, Columbia, the New School and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.
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Sunday April 19 2pm Gallery talk with Bill Berkson (To close WP's gallery exhibit The Graphic Poem)

Please take time out of your weekend to come to one or all of these events!

For more info on all of these events visit: www.woodlandpattern.org

To Eat or Not to Eat, That is the Question!

2009-04-10T14:36:00.007-05:00

Here are some of the pictures from Milwaukee's 3rd Annual Edible Book Show at Woodland Pattern Book Center!
April 5, 2009

Rick & Salomea Ollman, Best Seller

Anne Kingsbury, End of a Tail

Julie Strand & Ginny Fulfill their ravenous appetites!

Poetry Month!

2009-03-24T11:07:00.004-05:00

We don't usually make a big deal about poetry month at WP because every month is poetry month here; however, this April is extraordinarily packed with poetry and other interesting events!

Please take a look and celebrate by participating in one or two or three or all of the events;)

Saturday April 4, 2-4pm Master Class: The Prose Poem and "The Undulations of Reverie" with Donna Stonecipher

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Saturday April 4, 7pm Reading: Oni Buchanan & Donna Stonecipher
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Sunday, April 5, 1-4pm The Third Annual Edible Book Show- you can still sign up!

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Wednesday, April 8, 7pm Prose Series: Kass Fleisher, author of Talking Out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman
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Thursday, April 9,8pm Off-site event An Evening with David Sedaris @ Riverside Theater
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Friday, April 17, 7pm Open Mic & Redletter Reading: James Shea & Caryl Pagel
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Saturday, April 18, 2-4pm Time & Materials: A Masterclass On Adventures in Diction, Syntax, Rhythm & Tempo with Kit Robinson
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Saturday, April 19,2pm Gallery talk with Bill Berkson (closing of The Graphic Poem)
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Tuesday, April 21, 7:30pm Off-site event C.D. Wright @ UWM
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Wednesday April 22, 7pm UW-M Student / Faculty reading with Kimberly Blaeser, Molly Magestro, Paul Dworschack-Kinter, and Matt Schumacher
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Thursday, April 23, 6pm Off-site event Poetry Under the Dome at the Milwaukee Public Library (Central)
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Friday April 24, 7pm Carousel: What Goes Around The 3rd Annual Milwaukee Invitational Slideshow.
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Saturday & Sunday April 25-26 1-4pm WordBlast! (A Workshop in Animated Text) with Lane Hall & Paul Fuchs in two sessions
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Sunday, April 26, 2pm Off-site event Judith Harway @ MIAD
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Sunday April 26 7pm Alternating Currents Live Music The Lou Mallozzi-Michael Zerang Duo

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Whew! That month is going to be crazy! Just in-case you are wondering, the difference between a workshop and a master class is that a workshop is taught by someone local and a master class is taught by a writer/artist that has been brought in from out of town and includes a ticket to the teacher's reading.

Hope to see you all in April!

Gary Sullivan- Poetry & Comics living together!

2009-03-13T11:50:00.004-05:00

Opening Reception & Reading —Sunday, March 15, 2pm $8/$7/$6m

The exhibition runs from January 30 to April 19

In his comics, as in his poetry, Gary Sullivan has focused on material that other artists avoid or relegate to the sidelines. The 24-page travel comic "The Japanese Notebook" juxtaposes images culled from urban spaces in Tokyo, Kyoto and Takayama with language seen in those cities on T-shirts, handbags, notebooks and signage. In another 24-pager, he winds Nada Gordon's poem "Coney Island Avenue" (a rewrite of Frank O'Hara's "Second Avenue") through signage created by and for the people living and working along one of Brooklyn's longest north-south streets in a celebration of urban, immigrant America.

This exhibition includes original art from the first three issues of Sullivan's comic book series, Elsewhere, as well as collaborations with contemporary poets including Brandon Downing, Juliana Spahr, and Brian Kim Stefans. The exhibit will also include original art from comics biographies of Cleveland poet d.a. levy and New York performance artist Jack Smith, never-before seen ASCII poems, and original drawings and cover art for a variety of books and magazines.
Gary Sullivan began serializing his first comic strip, "Reverend Gary's Church of Fun," in the SF Weekly in the late 1980s. After a 10-year hiatus, he began "The New Life," which has been serialized in Rain Taxi Review of Books since 1997. He has published three issues of Elsewhere (the fourth issue is due out soon), and maintains a blog at garysullivan.blogspot.com.

Sullivan's non-comics work includes: Dead Man (Meow Press, 1996); Swoon, with Nada Gordon (Granary Books, 2001); How to Proceed in the Arts (Faux Press, 2001); and PPL in a Depot (Roof, 2008). Other work has appeared in the anthologies Telling it Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s; Nineteen Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology; and The Consequence Of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Nada Gordon.

For more info on this event visit: http://woodlandpattern.org/gallery/exhibits.shtml

PROSE SERIES TONIGHT!!! Oh yeah and it's free:)

2009-03-08T14:46:00.008-05:00

NEW PROSE SERIES FEATURES
Rejected: Tales of the Failed, Dumped, and CanceledEdited by Jon Friedman. (Villard, 2009)
with Jacqueline Lalley and Christi Clancy

In this comic anthology of short essays, rejection veteran Friedman (creator of popular New York reading series "The Rejection Show") brings together a double-handful of writers and comics to share rejected work and their thoughts on it. The criterion for entry is an unpublished piece that has been rejected at least once; rejecting parties range from the New Yorker to television's Saturday Night Live to the perfect boyfriend to the suddenly silent agent... The overall quality of the work is remarkable; Friedman allows his writers immense latitude in style and substance while keeping his theme front and center. - Publishers Weekly

Contributors include Jacqueline Lalley, Christi Clancy, David Wain, Michael Ian Black, Neal Pollack, Mandy Stadtmiller, David Rees, Tom McCaffrey, Kristen Schaal

Jacqueline Lalley is a contributing writer for The Onion, and her essays have been aired on WUWM's Lake Effect and published in several anthologies, including Secrets and Lies: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships (Seal Press). She lives in Milwaukee and serves on the board of Woodland Pattern Book Center.

Go to: http://www.wuwm.com/programs/lake_effect/view_le.php?articleid=670
to listen to an essay by Jackie Lalley that appeared today!

Christi Clancy is working on her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her work has been rejected by plenty of publications, but some of her short stories, essays and poetry have been accepted by the Rambler Magazine, Glimmer Train Stories, Hobart, literarymama.com, Yalobusha Review, the Cream City Review, the Wisconsin Academy Review, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2008 award for short fiction by the Wisconsin Council of Writers.

MASTER CLASS & READING! THIS SATURDAY

2009-03-05T09:50:00.005-06:00

Travelers' Tales a Master Class with C.S. Giscombe
Saturday, March 7, 2-4pm
$25 = master class & ticket to 7pm Gudding & Giscombe reading

We'll look at some examples of how poets (and some prose writers) have accounted for the places they've gotten to and traveled through. We'll do some experiments and I'll ask workshop participants to try to bend ways of talking about places to fit their own needs as writers. What sorts of things can be done to make a place new for both writer and reader? What's the value that different sorts of language (published guide-books, personal journals, language found en-route, etc.) can bring to the project? How do one's particulars (gender, race, national identity, etc.) contribute to the way one sees? How is the place we've been different than the place we're describing? We'll read pieces by Basho, Jean Toomer, Michael Ondaatje, Joanne Kyger, and a couple of others. (People should bring a few pages from a journal or a few written notes based on a memory of a particular trip.)

=====================================================

C. S. Giscombe was born in Dayton, Ohio. His poetry books are Prairie Style, Two Sections from Practical Geography, Giscome Road, Here, At Large, and Postcards; his prose book—about Canada—is Into and Out of Dislocation. Prairie Style was awarded an American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation; Giscome Road won the Carl Sandburg Prize, given by the Chicago Public Library. C. S. Giscombe's writing has also won him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, and the Canadian Embassy.

To read a full bio and some of his poetry visit:
http://woodlandpattern.org/poems/cs_giscombe01.shtml

=====================================================

Gabriel Gudding is the author of two books, A Defense of Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002) and Rhode Island Notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2007), a 436 page poem written in his car. His essays and poetry have appeared such venues as Harper's Magazine, Great American Prose Poems, New American Writing, The Nation. He serves on the Board of Directors for the internationalist magazine Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas/ Nueva Escritura de las Américas and teaches "experimental" poetry and poetics at Illinois State University.

To read a full bio and some of his poetry visit:
http://woodlandpattern.org/poems/gabriel_gudding01.shtml

February 28: Duncan / Levertov and The War Now

2009-02-10T15:29:00.012-06:00

Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and The War Now

Saturday, February 28 at Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E. Locust Street, Milwaukee, WI

How should artists as citizens respond to war? What response is possible beyond protest?

Over the course of their decades-long friendship, Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan wrote passionately and eloquently about their writing and revision processes. During the years of the Vietnam war, however, their once-close friendship began to show signs of strain. Their diverging views on how to respond in the face of that war ultimately caused the friendship to founder.

In 2006 a group of poets and Woodland Pattern community members starting meeting regularly to read and discuss the decades long correspondence between Duncan and Levertov. Our reading group then became a poetic “research” group leading to The War Now forum. Looking at the lessons drawn from the dissolution of friendship between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, we hope to promote further conversations and collaborations among artists, scholars, and activists about the role that literary texts play in disseminating information in war-time.

The schedule for the day will include a panel session followed by an open forum. The event will close with forum participants joining John Balaban in a group reading in the evening.

The War Now

Responsibility is to keep the ability to respond.
– Robert Duncan

It is hard to be an artist in this time because it is hard to be human.
– Denise Levertov

2:00 Panel: Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and The War Now (Ed Block, Faith Barrett, Karl Gartung, Andrew Graff, Dale Ritterbusch, and John Balaban). Panelists will consider what lessons artists can draw from the correspondence between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, two poets with deeply considered responses to the war(s) of their time. To what extent can literary texts represent the horrors of battlefield violence and should writers try to do so? In what ways might poetry be particularly well-suited to the task of representing war, and what ways might it be a particularly limiting or confining form of representation? Does an artist have a responsibility to register some artistic "truth" or to persuade? What is a "just" response? Is it possible, being human, to respond to events both contemporaneously and justly? Each panelist will offer 3-5 minutes of prepared remarks, with presenters responding to one another as well as raising further questions for the audience members and panelists to discuss. Admission is free.

3:00 Open Forum with Paul Lacey: Participants include Peter O'Leary, Anne-Marie Cusac, Angela Sorby, John Balaban, Ed Block, Faith Barrett, Karl Gartung, Andrew Graff, Dale Ritterbusch, Chuck Stebelton, Peggy Hong, Roberto Harrison, William Allegrezza, and Woodland Pattern community members. Admission is free.

7:00 Reading & Reception Forum participants will join John Balaban in a group poetry reading at 7:00 p.m. Each reader will present a short set of their own writing in addition to sharing work that relates to the Duncan-Levertov debate, or a poem from the tradition of war writing. $8/$7/$6

Panelist Bios

Faith Barrett is Assistant Professor of English at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. With Cristanne Miller, she co-edited Words for the Hour: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry (U Mass Press 2005). She has also published articles on the Civil War era poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville, and she is currently completing a manuscript on American poetry of the Civil War.

Ed Block is Professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has been editor of Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature since 1995. He has overseen the publication of two special issues of the journal (1997 and 2005) on Levertov and her work. He has authored or co-authored three essays on Denise Levertov and is currently at work on an essay on Levertov and her poems for paintings.

Andy Graff is completing an English degree at Lawrence University. He is currently writing a novella titled Flat Black which draws on his time served in Kandahar, Afghanistan in the US Air Force during the spring of 2002. Andy is also working on a book of prose poetry, design, and photography in collaboration with his brother, Aaron Graff. This manuscript in progress is titled "The Bishop Project.”

Dale Ritterbusch is the author of Lessons Learned, a collection of poems centered on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and more recently, Far From the Temple of Heaven, a collection that contains, as well, war poems derived from more recent military ventures. He served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1969. After receiving his commission from the Infantry School at Ft. Benning, he served as a hazardous munitions escort officer before being attached to JUSMAAG/MACTHAI where he was responsible for coordinating shipments of aerial mines for dispersal along the Ho Chi Minh trail and elsewhere in Vietnam. He is Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English and Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy for the academic year 2004-2005.

John Balaban is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he was a judge for the National Book Awards. His latest book of poetry is Path, Crooked Path, published by Copper Canyon Press (March, 2006).

Karl Gartung was born in Liberal, Kansas in 1947. He married artist Anne Kingsbury in 1970. In 1976 he was hired to run a small press bookstore (Boox, Inc.) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Gartung says this was the beginning of his serious apprenticeship to contemporary literature. In 1979 he was a co-founder, with Karl Young and Anne Kingsbury, of Woodland Pattern Book Center. His first full-length poetry collection, Now That Memory Has Become So Important, was recently published by MWPH Books in Fairwater, Wisconsin.

Paul Lacey is Professor of English emeritus at Earlham College and is currently chair of the national board of the American Friends Service Committee. His publications include The Inner War (1971) on the work of poets Levertov, Bly, Wright, and Sexton, as well as several articles on Levertov. He is also the editor of Levertov’s posthumous poems This Great Unknowing and her Selected Poems. He is currently working on an edition of Levertov’s collected poems.

Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E. Locust Street, Milwaukee, WI
414-263-5001

UPDATE: Ici et ailleurs to screen in conjunction with The War Now

Friday, February 27, 7pm, $4

Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video Series
Presented by the UW-M Department of Film

This rare screening is made possible thanks to the support of the UW-M Center for International Education. Print courtesy of Contemporary Films, London.

Book Release and Potluck! MMMMMMMMMMM Food & Poems

2009-02-06T22:19:00.003-06:00

Sunday, February 8, 2pm

Now That Memory Has Become So Important Karl Gartung
Book Release Reading and Potluck (Free)

Karl Gartung was born in Liberal, Kansas in 1947. He married artist Anne Kingsbury in 1970. In 1976 he was hired to run a small press bookstore (Boox, Inc.) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Gartung says this was the beginning of his serious apprenticeship to contemporary literature. In 1979 he was a co-founder, with Karl Young and Anne Kingsbury, of Woodland Pattern Book Center. His first full-length poetry collection, Now That Memory Has Become So Important, was recently published by MWPH Books in Fairwater, Wisconsin.

"This long awaited collection finally puts Karl Gartung in the foreground. ...Karl's shapely poems use line with restless invention and versatility. His vertical line space—a signature gesture—inserts hesitation, careful articulation, breakage, confusion, it sends the eye searching for meaning. The vertical line is a spine, an axis of grief, a gutter, the gap of memory’s slippage, a fault line, a mirror’s edge. Karl Gartung’s Now That Memory Has Become So Important is a brilliant first collection. Happily, the title promises more."

- Jenny Penberthy

The Longest Open Mic Ever! The 15th Annual Poetry Marathon and Benefit

2009-01-15T12:53:00.003-06:00

The 15th Annual Poetry Marathon!

Saturday, January 31, 2009 10am till 1am ONLY $8!

Every year, on the last Saturday of January, over 125 poets, writers, and performers show their support for Woodland Pattern by participating in its Annual Poetry Marathon & Benefit. Each writer presents five minutes of work to a packed house and raises pledge money benefiting Woodland Pattern programming.

Hundreds of people faithfully turn out for this vibrant community event. Last year's Marathon drew an audience of over 500 people, and featured over 125 readers from across the nation. Through the funds brought in by each reader and the generosity of donors, we were able to further support programming for Woodland Pattern during the calendar year of 2008. We expect to have another great turn out in 2009 and hope that you can be a part of our legacy!

Participating in the Marathon is one way you can invigorate the literary arts community in Milwaukee. It is not too late to sign up to read, become a donor, or bring a friend along to witness the action. Hope to see you on the 31st, your spirit and energy is important as we kick off another year of great poetry and art at Woodland Pattern.

Young Poets Hour from 10am-11am
Don't miss the first hour of this year's marathon! We will feature students from Woodland Pattern's writing workshops and our Woodland Creatures Poetry Camp. We are continually impressed by their imagination, honesty, and energy. Please show your support and join us in celebrating Milwaukee's young and promising poets.

Women of Milwaukee Hour from 9pm-10pm
This hour will feature talented women writers from the Milwaukee area. Last year's Women of Milwaukee hour packed the house. Make sure you show up early this year if you want to get a good seat!

Collaborations Hour from 10pm-11pm
This hour will feature writers, artists, musicians, singers, and song-writers. Come see how these talented artists weave words with other forms of artistic expression to make successful collaborations.

Host of Alternating Currents on WMSE leads a workshop at WP!

2009-01-07T10:10:00.003-06:00

Creating an Ensemble Voice: A Workshop in Collective Musical Improvisation
with Hal Rammel
Saturdays & Sundays, January 10-11, 17-18, 1-4pm $75/$70m

This workshop is open to musicians of all musical experience and background: classical, jazz, folk, rock, experimental or electronic, amplified or acoustic, amateur or professional, experienced or novice.

Participants will be required to bring a musical instrument on which they have reached a reasonable degree of comfort and dexterity. Musical instruments may be commercially manufactured or homemade. The voice may also be considered an instrument in this context. If your instrument is amplified bring your own amplification.

Participants will extend their skills toward freely improvising outside of conventional ideas about musical structure and style; or, in other words, they will explore music that follows the sound rather than proscribed formula or expectation.

This workshop will take place over 4 sessions exploring group improvisation and will culminate, for the final session, in a performance by the ensemble in the gallery at Woodland Pattern Book Center on Sunday, January 18th, at 2pm.

Hal Rammel has been involved in music and the visual arts for over 40 years. As a composer and improviser he utilizes instruments of his own invention. He has taught musical instrument design and construction alongside composition and improvisation with unconventional sound sources at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Experimental Sound Studio, and, under the auspices of Meet the Composer in the 1990s, for A. E Burdick Elementary School in Milwaukee. He is the curator of music programing at Woodland Pattern Book Center and hosts Alternating Currents on WMSE (91.7 FM) every Sunday night.

To register call (414) 263-5001.

new

2008-12-18T16:48:00.002-06:00

Bookstore news!

2008-12-09T19:25:00.002-06:00

We’re proud to announce the arrival of a book over thirty years in the making: Karl Gartung’s Now That Memory Has Become So Important.

“This long awaited collection finally puts Karl Gartung in the foreground. Founder of the world’s most remarkable poetry bookstore—Milwaukee’s Woodland Pattern Book Center—loyal friend and promoter of American, Canadian and British avant-garde poets, he is also a superb poet himself.
Memory here is imprinted with grief and happiness but, most importantly, with language. There are echoes of forebears—Bunting, Oppen, Niedecker, Metcalf—lines from Whitman, the split line of the Anglo-Saxons. Karl’s shapely poems use line with restless invention and versatility. His vertical line space—a signature gesture—inserts hesitation, careful articulation, breakage. confusion, it sends the eye searching for meaning. The vertical line is a spine, an axis of grief, a gutter, the gap of memory’s slippage, a fault line, a mirror’s edge. Karl Gartung’s Now That Memory Has Become So Important is a brilliant first collection. Happily, the title promises more.”

--Jenny Penberthy, editor, Lorine Niedecker, Woman and Poet,and Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky

WP's OPEN HOUSE! Baked Goods & A Charles Olson Film (FREE) THIS SUNDAY

2008-12-05T11:31:00.002-06:00

MMMMMMMMMM Cookies MMMMMMMMM Charles Olson

Sunday December 7th 1-4pm
Come celebrate another year with Woodland Pattern. As always, there will be Anne's famous baked goodies, beverages, good conversation, books to browse, and an opportunity to check out Configurations, an exhibit featuring the artwork of Jane Dalrymple-Hollo and Anselm Hollo in the gallery!

At 2pm, as part of the Open House, WP in conjunction with the UWM Department of Film will be showing:

Polis Is This:
Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place.
(Henry Ferrini, 57 min., 2007)
a film by Henry Ferrini & Ken Riaf, featuring John Malkovich

The Open House is ALSO a great way to get a jump on your holiday gift buying and to sign up for the 15th Annual Poetry Marathon & Benefit (To be held on January 31st).

For more info on the film visit:
http://woodlandpattern.org/gallery/open_house08.shtml

James Liddy

2008-11-05T19:51:00.002-06:00

Very sad news this afternoon (somehow made sadder by the fact it was delivered via mass e-mail from the university) that James Liddy died this morning. I knew James had been ill for the past few months, but wasn’t really aware of the extent of his sickness.

Not sure what I can say really, except to acknowledge the feeling I’ve had since hearing the news a few hours ago: that I wouldn’t be where I am now (philosophically and, by extension I suppose, literally…sitting at the store, waiting to close up in a few hours so I can meet with friends at one of the bars James brought us to after class) had I not met James. I know there are dozens (hundreds probably) of poets here in Milwaukee and across the country that feel the same way.

I first met James at his and Jim Chapson’s place at a party to celebrate the release of an issue of Blue Canary. I stood with a group of people I didn’t know (I was a student of Jim’s and this was my first introduction to the real world of poetry) on the porch out back. From inside the screen door, James told me to look at the people around me and tell him who was the best poet. My failure to comply with his request was the first of many times I would disappoint him. But I quickly grew to share his affinity for gossip and legend-building and I think it was that bond that saved me, always allowed me a way back in despite various spats.

Again speaking for so many others along with myself, James not only presented us with our poetic heroes, but he made them real. You couldn’t mention a poet’s name, especially if they had been in San Francisco in the 60s, without a lesson on both their poetics and their drinking habits. That might seem petty, but to be a kid in your early twenties, just starting out, and to have someone like James not only teach you Duncan and Spicer and Kerouac, but to bring them out of the books and make them alive, well, I’m still not sure I fully appreciate the value of those lessons.

A good friend of both mine and James was at the store today when we got the news. He said he had written a few weeks ago to ask James if he thought he’d be well enough to read at a magazine launch party next month. James, as is his way, wrote back to suggest he book John Ashbery to take his place.

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Feel free to use the comments to share any Liddy stories or memories if you feel so compelled. I'll try to use this space to pass along any info on various readings and tributes as they happen.

New Workshop

2008-10-29T11:22:00.005-05:00

Hello WP fans
On November 8th Woodland Pattern will be offering a workshop taught by the local feminist author Ellen Bravo. Ellen had a reading here a few months ago which was very very well attended and well received. Please read further and consider signing up.

-julie

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Writing Your Work Life: Transforming Workplace Realities
into Powerful Narratives with Ellen Bravo
Saturday, November 8, 1-4pm
$35 / $30 members

Ellen Bravo will guide participants through exercises on how to write about experiences on the job, both for fiction or creative non-fiction purposes. Learn to turn experiences of discrimination or exploitation into powerful narratives that resonate with the audience, raising awareness without preaching or putting folks to sleep.

Ellen Bravo, former director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She also coordinates a network of state coalitions working for paid leave. Her most recent book is Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation (Feminist Press, 2007). She's completed one (as yet unpublished) novel titled Standing Up, which was a finalist in the Barbara Kingsolver Bellwether Prize, and is working on a sequel. Ellen has been described as moving, witty and sometimes bawdy. Her website is www.ellenbravo.com

To register call (414) 263-5001

New Books!

2008-10-24T09:59:00.002-05:00

A Day at the Beach by Robert Grenier
(Roof Books) Paperback, 2nd printing, $10.95

Originally published in 1984, Robert Grenier's A Day at the Beach has come to be regarded as something of minimalist observational masterpiece. This second printing remains exceptionally true to the original, retaining Grenier's spacing and typewriter font.

Radical Vernacular:Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place Elizabeth Willis, editor (University of Iowa Press) Hardcover, $39.95

Containing seventeen essays, many of which grew out of the Lorine Niedecker Centenary Celebration, Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place is a major and long awaited addition to the critical appreciation of this Wisconsin native. Radical Vernacular, with contributions from diverse and respected poets and critics such as Anne Waldman, Lisa Robertson, Eliot Weinberger, and Rae Armantrout, serves as a wonderful companion to the Niedecker volume of the National Poetry Foundation's Woman and Poet series. Already a Woodland Pattern bestseller, call 414-263-5001 to reserve a copy.

Holy Smokes Look Who Is Reading!

2008-10-03T16:27:00.005-05:00

Saturday, October 11, 2008; 7pm $8/$7/$6

A leading poet of the Beat Movement, David Meltzer was raised in Brooklyn during the War years; performed on radio & early TV on the Horn & Hardart Children’s Hour. Was exiled to L.A. at 16 & at 17 enrolled in an ongoing academy w/ artists Wallace Berman, George Herms, Robert Alexander, Cameron; migrated to San Francisco in l957 for higher education w/ peers & maestros like Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Joanne Kyger, Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Jack Hirschman, a cast of thousands all living extraordinary ordinary lives. Beat Thing [La Alameda Press, 2004] won the Josephine Miles PEN Award, 2005. Was editor and interviewer for San Francisco Beat: Talking With The Poets [City Lights, 2001]. With Steve Dickison, co-edits Shuffle Boil, a magazine devoted to music in all its appearances & disappearances. 2005 saw the publication of David’s Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer by Viking/Penguin, a collection spanning over forty years of work that paints a vivid portrait of Meltzer’s life as a poet through poems taken from thirty of his previous books of poetry. With a versatile style and playful tone, Meltzer offers his unique vision of civilization with a range of juxtapositions from Jewish mysticism and everyday life to jazz and pop culture.

Michael Rothenberg is a poet, songwriter, and editor of Big Bridge magazine online at www.bigbridge.org. His poetry books include Man/Woman, a collaboration with Joanne Kyger, The Paris Journals (Fish Drum Press), Monk Daddy (Blue Press), and Unhurried Vision (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press). His poems have been published widely in small press publications including, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity, Fulcrum, Golden Handcuffs Review, House Organ, Prague Literary Review, Tricycle, Vanitas, Zyzzyva, JACK, and Jacket. He is also author of the novel Punk Rockwell. Rothenberg's 2005 CD collaboration with singer Elya Finn, was praised by poet David Meltzer as "fabulous-all [the] songs sound like Weimar Lenya & postwar Nico, lushly affirmative at the same time being edged w/ cosmic weltschmertz. An immensely tasty production." He is also editor for the Penguin Poet series, which includes selected works of Philip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer and Ed Dorn. He has recently completed the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen for Wesleyan University Press.

To read poems by the authors go to WP's website:
www.woodlandpattern.org

See you in the gallery!

NEW ON THE SHELVES

2008-10-03T16:16:00.005-05:00

George Stanley. Vancouver: A Poem. New Star Books. 125pg. $18.00

“Reading Paterson on the bus, back & forth. Across the city. The 210. A man & a city.”

George Stanley's Vancouver is a book length poem dedicated to his adopted hometown. Over the course of thirty-five years, much of the city becomes barely recognizable. Favorite cafés and bars have changed hands so many times that it's hard to remember what the appeal originally was. Each new reinvention seems less hospitable to those looking for conversation and enough light to read by. “C. reminds me that the Modern was also the Bavarian...We'll have to find some new place to drink.”

C.S. Giscombe. Prairie Style. Dalkey Archive Press. 81pg. $12.95

“Neighborhood? Proximities change on you sooner or later.”

It would be difficult to describe Prairie Style without using the phrase 'a meditation on place'. The places here are among those often neglected in the wider imagination,with the majority of the book devoted to two sections: Inland (a group of poems dedicated to downstate Illinois) and Indianapolis, Indiana. Also making an appearance is the poet's childhood home of West Dayton, Ohio. “Memory's ever-changing, it's the more peevish side of impulse.”

Huge Weekend! September 19th & 20th

2008-09-12T10:28:00.007-05:00

It all starts FRIDAY, the 19th at 7pm
WP's monthly Redletter Reading and Open Mic (Please come and share your new work at the Open Mic)
This month's Featured Reading is Anne-Marie Cusac!
cost:$3 listeners /$2 open mic participants

On SATURDAY the 20th there are TWO yes TWO events!

The day starts with a Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception 1-4 PM
Featuring the work of
Jane Dalrymple-Hollo, digital photography installation & Anselm Hollo, collage

At 7pm there will be a FEATURED READING among all of the beautiful artwork.

The reading will include writers
Elizabeth Arnold, Anselm Hollo & Tom Pickard
cost: $8 general/$7 students and seniors/ $6 members

FREE READING! Juan Felipe Herrera Sunday August 24th 2pm

2008-08-19T19:13:00.001-05:00

Hello Woody P Patrons! Check this out, a free and wonderful reading just for you. Please stop by and enjoy this special event.

Juan Felipe Herrera is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. His publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children, with over twenty books total.
During the last three decades Herrera has received numerous awards and fellowships including various National Endowment for the Arts Writers' Fellowships, four California Arts Council grants, the UC Berkeley Regent's Fellowship, the Breadloaf Fellowship in Poetry, and the Stanford Chicano Fellows Fellowship.

His literary endeavors have garnered the Ezra Jack Keats Award, the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Americas Award, and the Focal Award. Herrara is also a community arts leadership builder with youth-at-risk and migrant communities, and an actor with appearances on film and stage. The Upside Down Boy, a musical for young audiences based on his book, was well received in New York City in 2004.

2008-08-19T19:11:00.001-05:00

Here is a sampling of work by Juan Felipe Herrera:
El ángel de la guarda (The Guardian Angel)

I should have visited more often.
I should have taken the sour pudding they offered.
I should have danced that lousy beggar shuffle.
I should have painted their rooms in a brighter color.
I should have put a window in there, for the daughters.
I should have provided a decent mountain for a view.
I should have nudged them a little closer to the sky.
I should have guessed they would never come out to wave.
I should have cleaned up that mole, the abyss, in the back.
I should have touched them, that's it, it comes to me now.
I should have touched them.

from Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives
Linocuts by Artemil Rodrígues
City Lights, 1999

La Muerte (Death)

My word against theirs, my sickle humor
against their last glass of chianti. Simple,
Direct and compassionate—in a way, let us say,
it is in my nature to be generous: to remind
the passengers about the last stop in Anguish-
town, to spell integration with an X, to scrub
the word Prison with sneaky vastness inside.

It is my own penchant for skull symphonies
my embossed headdress, especially, that brings
me to your carpeted doom-time; this flowery intro
serves a purpose; every spirit strand is an exit,
a cash & carry star of exits and entrances.

A Redletter Reading and Open Mic Featuring...You!

2008-07-25T11:18:00.005-05:00

August 15, 7pm-9pm 2008 hosted by Melissa Czarnik $3/$2 for open mic readers.

As a thanks to all of our open mic frequenters, The August Redletter Reading is dedicated to you.

The entire open reading will be devoted to your words and expression.

Bring your notebook, chapbook, memory, and/or a friend. We appreciate your support!

AND! If you don't have a chapbook and would like to make one learn some bookmaking techniques/ideas on the following Saturday & Sunday at, The Language of Pop-Ups with Shawn Sheehy August 16-17, 12-5pm $75 / $70 members

The Hysterical Alphabet: July 27 - August 24

2008-07-17T09:58:00.005-05:00

New in Woody P's art gallery is
The Hysterical Alphabet
Opening Reception -
Sunday, July 27, 1-4pm
Performance on Saturday, August 2, 7pm

The Hysterical Alphabet exhibition features Gina Litherland's original drawings including the cover art and the hysterical alphabet from A to Z.

The Hysterical Alphabet (WhiteWalls), written by Terri Kapsalis and illustrated by Gina Litherland, is an abecedary offering a condensed history of hysteria with levity, playfulness, and critical insight, drawn from medical writings and images ranging from ancient Egypt to the present. Each letter in The Hysterical Alphaabet introduces an episode direct from the annals of medical lore, tracking centuries of female malady, heartily disproving the theory that time heals all wombs.

www.woodlandpattern.org/gallery/exhibits_jul08.shtml

Summer Time

2008-07-03T11:21:00.003-05:00

Summer is sometimes considered the slow season for Woodland Pattern; however, it is anything but. WP just finished offering two week-long poetry camps for kids and is currently doing inventory, or in other words, counting ALL of the books in the store, and re-alphabetizing them for your convenience. Oy!

The store will reopen on July 15th. Can you all make it? We know that your poetry needs are many so we will be ready for you all to bust down the doors at 11:00am on the 15th.

The New Gallery Exhibition is..... Devotion to Thread curated by Faythe Levine

2008-05-22T18:10:00.002-05:00

www.devotiontothread.blogspot.com

When Devotion to Thread guest curator, Faythe Levine received her February/March edition of American Craft Magazine there was a statement in reference to fiber artist Lenore Tawney talking about her "Devotion To Thread." It struck Levine as the perfect title for her upcoming exhibition at Woodland Pattern that will focus on artists working with components of "handcraft." Faythe has invited 15 artists from Milwaukee to New York, Alabama to California, to work in a variety of mediums and methods, with the common "thread" of Devotion to Thread in their work. Levine's hope for this show is that the viewer will not only walk away with a new appreciation of handmade crafts made with methods such as sewing, needlework, hand and machine embroidery, but will also feel inspired to go home and create crafts.

The Show Features:
Chris Niver, Diem Chau, Emily Eibel, Jenny Hart, Kate Bingman-Burt, Kristin Loffer Theiss, Lisa Solomon, Merrliee Challis, Orly Cogan, Pippi Zornoza, Rebecca Schoenecker, Shannon Rankin, Steve Macdonald, Xander Marro, Melissa Woods

Limited Edition Catalog Available:
A complimentary limited edition, hand assembled (paper, wooden spool, hand stamped) catalog (edition of 300 pieces) will be available (while they last) to the viewer at the gallery. The catalog will be designed and assembled by curator Faythe Levine as a way to commemorate this show and Woodland Pattern's commitment to bringing new work to Milwaukee.

Events to go with your visit to the gallery...

Exhibit Reception: Saturday, May 31, 5-9pm
-
Gallery Talk with Garth Johnson, www.extremecraft.com
Saturday, May 31, 2008; 7pm

Garth Johnson is an artist, writer and educator who lives in Huntington Beach, California. His website, Extreme Craft (www.extremecraft.com) is a compendium of art masquerading as craft, craft masquerading as art and craft extending its middle finger. Garth is also the host of the upcoming DVD ReVision: Recycled Crafts for Earth-Friendly Living from Eyekiss Films.
-
Decal-O-Mania! A Workshop with Garth Johnson Sunday, June 1, 1-3pm $30 / $25 members

Garth Johnson All you need to create beautiful works of decal art is an inkjet printer, (or a Kinko's), and your own creativity. In this workshop we will create decals and explore their uses on all types of material.

Decals work great on a ceramic surfaces, (like a found plate from a thrift store), tile, wood, and plastic. We'll be working with a great brand of decal paper called "Lazertran" that you can put on just about any surface. During class time we will also talk about other cheap ways to make your own decals with "water slide" decal paper and spray paint.

As a bonus, Garth Johnson will show you how to make your own cut vinyl stickers. Please bring a .jpg image saved on a jump drive or send it to us prior to the workshop.

To register call (414) 263-5001.

The Verdict of Kevin Thurston

2008-04-20T16:01:00.005-05:00

The verdict is in!

After hours of contemplation, Kevin Thurston's latest visit to Woodland Pattern concluded with the purchase of Hannah Weiner's Page and Charles Reznikoff's Holocaust.

The third book of determination, Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day, was adopted by Gina Myers.

Both, Gina Myers and Kevin Thurston will be reading tonight at 7pm in the Salacious Banter Reading Series, 900 S. 5th St., Milwaukee

http://salaciousbanter.blogspot.com/

Today in the Store Homage

2008-04-20T14:15:00.001-05:00

inspired by "Today in the Store," September 5th 2007 & Mike Hauser

Today in the store Melissa Czarnik, WP's Marketing Director, weighs Amaud Jamaul Johnson's Red Summer and Martín Espada's A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen. Both authors will be featured readers at Woodland Pattern in May.

a LINE is a BREATH is a POEM...

2008-01-29T15:40:00.000-06:00

I am often excited about workshops. I seem to be extra excited about this one. It is probably because I enjoy Jennifer's poems and energy so much. Please consider signing up.

-j

a LINE is a BREATH is a POEM with Jennifer Karmin
Saturday, February 23, 1-4pm $35 / $30 members

How does the line impact our writing and reading of contemporary poetry? As our starting point, we'll discuss a few sections of Charles Olson's Projective Verse and its relevancy (or not) 58 years later. Then, we'll read and create writing in response to poets who actively play with the line such as Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Robert Creeley, Susan Howe, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Hannah Weiner, and others you bring to share. In the spirit of experimentation, we'll write together as a group and as individuals. Writers of all genres and levels of experience are welcome. Bring one page of your writing, plus one poem by a favorite contemporary poet.

Jennifer Karmin curates the Red Rover Series with fiction writer Amina Cain and is a founding member of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at a number of festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets. She teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Public Schools. During 2008, Jennifer will be a guest writer in Kenya with the Summer Literary Seminars and in California with the Djerassi Program. Recent poems are published in Bird Dog, MoonLit, Womb, Seven Corners, Milk Magazine, and the anthologies A Sing Economy, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, and The Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets.

To register call (414) 263-5001.

Orange Girl

2007-09-09T15:35:00.001-05:00

Orange Girl, a new chapbook by Simone Muench, was just put on the Woody P shelves last week and many of them have gone to staff homes already. (Don’t worry there are still more left). I am another woman that, "is laughing, is lost" in this book. I loved its poetic study of a specific type of girl and the ways that the world has altered her. Simone read a poem from this series back when she last read at Woodland Pattern as part of the Switchback Books event. It was intriguing on its own with lovely latticed images, but now that the orange girl poems are together in a family, I need to go back and sift through the images again, start pulling them out one by one and examining them like a dedicated archaeologist on a dig for dinosaurs. I think I will.

Orange Girl by Simone Muench, dancing girl press, 2007 $6

Today in the Store

2007-09-05T18:06:00.000-05:00

Mike Hauser stops in to weigh his poetic future with The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Politics and Tony Trigilio's Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics. (Both available now.)

From Mike Hauser:
crets crets crets
Dirty Movies Late at Night
Featured in The Tiny #3

Joel Felix - Regional Noir

2007-09-04T20:58:00.000-05:00

“Never was this far before” is a thought found throughout Ron Silliman's BART. And although that poem and Joel Felix's Regional Noir (new from Roberto Harrison's Bronze Skull series) have much in common, Silliman is alone in offering this sensation. For Felix, the train ride from Chicago to Detroit is all too familiar. The pollution, economic desolation, and architectural decay are nothing new, nor should they be for anyone that has traveled this or any other route through what was once the heart of American Industry. Felix attempts some of the playfulness found in Silliman's exercise: “I mime the discovery that I don't have another pen when this one runs out” in order to get a fresh one from the woman across the aisle. But when he gets it, his thoughts have already drifted back to the landscape outside. “Of course I worry that I am an absence of an absence as I sit in this train, one eye out the window.” Even a drunk, slightly rowdy woman a few rows up can't keep his attention, as their “eyes meet among reflections of the baby blue corporate trademark of the US Steel refineries, bituminous coal-burning stacks issuing a yellow haze looking stricken.”

"Detroit is the metaphor for how completely we can abandon each other," writes Felix and while abandonment is certainly a theme that runs throughout Regional Noir, a perhaps more apt summation comes slightly earlier. "Writing acts as if it has never seen the world before. The soda pop in a tall glass on the counter claims a life over the soda pop in a tall glass on the counter." That there is creativity in destruction is apparent to every photography student who has taken pictures of half demolished buildings or crumbled overpasses. The necessarily equal destruction found in creation is much harder to see, "with abandoned properties surviving only as long as the pavement will resist plants."

Available now. $3

Also newly available from Bronze Skull:
Failure in the Imagination by Borzutzky
Dear Cyclops by Ariana Hamidi
Err-Residence by Jennifer Scappettone
Flags and Banners by Chuck Stebelton

Also available by Joel Felix:
Catch & Release
Monaural

Model Homes #1 (Summer 2007)

2007-08-15T23:23:00.000-05:00

Travis Nichols
Johanna Drucker
Seth Parker
Diana Magallón
Patrick Lovelace
Lesley Yalen
Brian Kim Stefans
Natalie Lyalin
Ted Greenwald
Matina Stamatakis
Ray Hsu
Anne Tardos
Jules Boykoff
The Prize Budget For Boys

Model Homes is edited by Brad Flis and Marie Buck, who have just moved themselves from Northampton, MA to Detroit. It's not surprising, then, that this new journal is looking for a challenge. Though not officially stated, as far as I can tell, Model Homes seems to be a project about projects. The work of three of the fourteen contributors featured here comes from larger pieces, including samplings of work-in-progress/work-awaiting-publication from Johanna Drucker and Anne Tardos. Several others, such as Diana Magallón's 'Percentage Poems'(“80% Adult and a Paw”, “45% Pond”, “Centuries %”) are very obviously parts of larger series.

This holds true for Seth Parker's "Per Capita", portions of which you may have seen in Octopus magazine and elsewhere. The poems, all sharing the same title, feature a name followed by quotes of dubious origin. Here, the people 'quoted' (the CEO of Wal-Mart and the former CEO of Exxon) and what is being said create a surreal and building contrast:

H. LEE SCOTT 'In the Huddle House, a swamp
is almost snow' 'When a body disappears, rooms
light up the the house' 'Palace of trees' LEE
RAYMOND 'Portals are real' 'Doves, the sound
of chains' 'In the center of my chest' 'Wine, op-
ulence' 'I won't even call you Darkness'...

Yet the standout may very well be Ted Greenwald's “Airquote Fingerlings”, composed of 26 small, four line stanzas, understandably presented here over 5 pages. While the arrangement certainly doesn't have a negative affect, it would be nice to someday see the poem reissued in a roomier edition, allowing stanzas like “Both sides of / The mouth / A second face/ An about” the breathing room they deserve.

'behold the offering of tacos / if I offer a taco to you you should take it'

-Seth Parker “Gate of Hell”

Model Homes #1 (Summer 2007) 62pg. $5. Available Now.

New June.

2007-05-31T13:25:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen this yet, oh boy -- you don't know what you're missin'.

The Agriculture Reader Edited by Jeremy Schmall, Erik Schmall, Tom Huffman, Jessica Douglas, $10

The Agriculture Reader is an arts journal, featuring poetry, prose, and visual art; it is accompanied by an audio disc comprised, mainly, of music. Features work by Edmund Berrigan, Noelle Kocot, Amy Lawless, Anthony McCann, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, the ubiquitous Noah Eli Gordon, and longtime Woodland Creature Jen Benka, among others.

We're getting it to you cheap, thanks to Jeremy Schmall, who was very concerned that we were happy with the product. We are, to say the least.

Michael Cross, in the mourning city of Buffalo, NY has a press that absolutely slays. It's called Atticus / Finch. The newest title is:

Unveiling / Marianne Moore by John Taggart, $8

Available in two colors to choose from while supplies last!

Atticus / Finch makes it Atticus / Finch's business to provide great new poetry, beautifully rendered, at an affordable price. When you see this book, you'll wonder how it's so cheap.

Mr. Cross' contemporary in making beautiful books at an affordable price is Chicago-based nice guy, David Pavelich, who does Answer Tag Press. The latest:

Monaural by Joel Felix, illustrated by Wallace Whitney, $12
Ellemental Song by Roberto Harrison, $5

Newly arrived from Kristy Bowen's Chicago-based dancing girl press:

The Traffic In Women by Kristina Marie Darling
Sugraing by Ann Cefola
See Also Electric Light by Jen Tynes
Failed Star Spawns Planet / Star by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
Two Kinds of Arson by Brandi Homan
Parapherna by Donora Hillard
How to Study Birds by Sarah Gardner
The Animal Husband by Christine Hamm
Vestigial Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Robyn Art

And the newest:

No Isla Encanta by Khadijah Queen

All chapbooks are $5.

Kristy promises to get new titles here right away from now on. Thanks Kristy.

For all you book arts fans, all you book makers you, we did a complete restock of Keith Smith Books(all books by Keith A. Smith):

200 Books, an Annotated Bibliography, $35
Bookbinding for Book Artists (w/ Fred Jordan), $35
Volume I Non-Adhesive Binding: Books Without Paste or Glue, $30
Volume II Non-Adhesive Binding: 1-2- & 3-Section Sewings, $30
Volume III Non-Adhesive Binding: Exposed Spine Sewings, $30
Volume IV Non-Adhesive Binding: Smith's Sewing Single Sheets, $30
Volume V Non-Adhesive Binding: Quick Leather Bindings (new!), $30
Structure of the Visual Book (new edition), $35
Text in the Book Format (new edition), $25

Also in, shadowbox press' first single-author chappie:

Flood by Woody Loverude, $5

Thanks to editor E.M. Bertram

Catherine Daly started i.e. Press, and we got the first title in recently:

The Book of Ocean by Maryrose Larkin, $12.95

Andrew Joron says of it:

… Larkin has pulsed the pattern of her words with poised delays & intervals, with the understanding that poetry is an art of passage, powered by surgence & pause: “ life lined blue words deep / sea of circumstance.” This work is informed by a counterpoint of time & vision … a poetry of arabesque, which presents a perfect, & perhaps paradoxical, synthesis of enthusiasm & irony.

New. April. Titles.

2007-04-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

Book Thug (Toronto)

Book Thug is associated with our Canadian counterpart in small press stock, Apollinaire's Bookshoppe in Toronto, Ontario. Jay Millar does a very nice job with these chaps and mats. Thanks Jay!

Recently stocked Books Thug:

The Apothecary by Lisa Robertson, $12 -- Everyone's favorite contemporary Canadian poet get a reprint of a 1991 title first done by Tsunami Editions. Tasty as ever.

Lack Lyric by Jay Millar, $10 -- Jay himself chimes!

If Language by Gregory Betts, $16.95

All Boy by Natalie Stephens, $10

Species: Ex (hib) it by Natalie Stephens, $8

CURIO: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age by Elizabeth Bachinsky,
$18.95

Compression Sonnets by Alfred Noyes, $10

Wolves (lone.ly) by Jonathan Ball, $8

Crows in the Wind by George Bowering, $12 (I never got to have a catch with George Bowering, but I did bowl with Ted Enslin -- actually, I bowled, and he drank wine and smoked a pipe while watching)

News of the Universe

2007-03-29T16:41:00.000-05:00

The scene: Anne is cleaning her office.

Chuck: "Who gave you a Big Mouth Billy Bass?"

Anne: "Robin Blaser!"

New Stuff for Late March in the Bookstore.

2007-03-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

I've been really into Wave Books (formerly Verse Press) lately. I don't know why for sure, but I know that when their books come into the store I feel like the younger poets of the world are communing with their predecessors. This isn't even based in any sort of extensive research or knowledge base, but I can't say that it's wrong to irrationally enjoy things aesthetically, so I won't apologize for pushing these books, which are all beautiful and worthy reads to boot:

Citizen of by Christian Hawkey, $14
Rise Up by Matthew Rohrer, $14
Sorry, Tree by Eileen Myles, $14

Also back in stock from Verse Press is Christian Hawkey's first book, The Book of Funnels (2004, $13), which is presently making me cry. Seriously, I hope this keyboard doesn't short out.

One other receipt of note:

Sightings: Selected Works (2000-2005) by Shin Yu Pai, 1913 Press, $16

--robert j baumann

Staff Picks

2006-07-15T12:27:00.000-05:00

Staff Picks in the Riverwest Currents. And a staff pic! Check 'em out in their ties.

An Interview with Charles P. Ries

2006-05-20T13:04:00.000-05:00

The Foundation of Poetry
an interview with Charles P. Ries

By Brian Morrisey

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and twenty print and electronic publications. He has received three Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing and most recently read his poetry on National Public Radio's Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast over seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of The Fathers We Find, a novel based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry - the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot and on the board of the Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most recently he has been appointed to the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/.

I wanted to interview you because I feel you have been a staple of the small press now for quite some time. Your name pops up everywhere. Your poetry is more than interesting and speaks the voice of the small press, the true and authentic one, without the distraction of an Oxford vocabulary. One of the reasons I find poetry is not active in the lifestyles of Americans is because it is not immediate enough for the average reader to grasp any satisfaction. I am not saying that we should cater to the downfall of society's deteriorating attention span, but I wish there was a way we could put the right books into classrooms and prevail poetry as an interesting and exciting expression. The only time poetry gains media attention is if a poet dies or a tiny non-profit organization devoted to poetry inherits hundreds of millions of dollars, like the Poetry Foundation did three years ago. The Poetry Foundation could do a lot of good in promoting groundbreaking poetry that could be brought into the schools as required reading. They have a “large-scale plan,” I noticed you have seen some flaws in their plan to bring poetry back into the mainstream. Can you elaborate on that anymore?

I agree Brian. I have a diverse circle of friends. When I give them a copy of my chapbooks or invite them to attend a reading, some will resist with the same reaction many have about poetry; it's dull, ponderous, inaccessible and rhymes. I am sure their dislike was planted in grade school and high school when all of us had to read a lot of poetry by stiff, dead folks. It didn't live, and certainly wasn't written in the language of this time. The Poetry Foundation has been given a rare opportunity with the transformative gift by Ms. Ruth Lilly. My concern is that the Board of Directors of the Poetry Foundation who set policy and strategic direction before Ms. Lilly laid her $100+ million golden egg on them is no longer the board to lead them into the future. Things have changed. A gift of this size changes things.

In John Barr's, President of the Poetry Foundation, open letter posted to their web site (find link below) he says, “One way to expand the presence of good poetry in our culture is to place more of it in the mainstream media.” And again later in his letter he says, “Speaking of children, our initiatives in education includes a multi-pronged plan to place good poetry before children and young adults.” Bravo! But did you notice in both these excerpts he uses the words good poetry. Hmmm? Now what kind of poetry do you suppose he's talking about? Could it be the same sleepy, overstuffed writing they publish each month in their magazine? Could it be the same kind of poetry their board, which is made up of at least one-third academics, now favors? I think so. It's not surprising that a board primarily filled by academics would like academic poetry. But we all agree that we want to promote good poetry. It's just that we might come to some different conclusions about what good is.

I didn't get to read what guidance Ms. Lilly gave the Foundation when she made her gift to them, but I'll bet she wanted her gift to support her people. That's us, HER people. We, the lost tribe who wander listlessly in the valley of the small press, coffee shops, high school writing classes - the great unwashed poetry nation. Included in this tribe we are happy to include academics, scholars and historians. After all this is a big tent; lots of room in here for everyone who loves poetry.

The central responsibility of any non-profit governing board is to advance and safe guard the mission of the organization they have been invited to lead. To do this, the board must constantly ask itself, "Are we properly structured to accomplish our mission?" I believe that with the Lilly gift they no longer need corporate heavyweights who now represent another one-third of their board. They no longer need members who can give or get them money. Generally non-profit boards want directors who can give them time, talent, and treasury, but things have changed. A $100 million endowment will do that. The Poetry Foundation has a stated goal of wanting to bring “good poetry” to the masses, yet their board lacks voices from that very market. I am not suggesting they put a bunch of crazed street poets on the board, but how about some small press editors, how about a high school English teacher, what about a few 20-somethings or a few minorities? Come on; let's get some diversity on this board.

While I wasn't able to get specific information about how the Poetry Foundation is composed, I did find out from Anne Halsay, Media Coordinator at the The Poetry Foundation (via an e-mail exchange) that approximately one-third of their board members are scholars or writers, and one-third are from the business sector. The remaining third is comprised of individuals from a wide array of professions including architecture, public policy, arts and cultural administration, law and philanthropy.

I asked her about minority and youth representation, and she told me that since the establishment of the Foundation in 2003, there have been two openings on the Board of Directors. Of those openings, one is now occupied by a woman of color. She told me that the Foundation has developed multiple programs intended to engage young people with poetry; there are, however, no recent college graduates serving on the Board of Directors.

I have worked in the non-profit sector as a fundraiser and management consultant for over twenty-five years. I have worked with over two hundred non-profit boards; many of them cultural organizations. That said, most non-profit boards, like the Poetry Foundation will change very slowly, and they may never change. I just hope they would be open to looking at themselves and how they are composed. In this regard, I would ask the Foundation to consider these two recommendations:

1. Hire a non-profit management consultant to perform a board audit to determine if the current board is properly composed to serve the mission they seek to achieve.
2. Create an advisory board that reflects the market they wish to serve and have at least two to three of those advisory members have a seat on the governing board.

If Chris Wiman, Editor of Poetry Magazine, wants to publish good poets, great. But I'd like to see him publish some other good poets. In a taste test conducted at my local Pic'n'Save Store, I'll bet more shoppers will relate to my good poetry more than Mr. Wiman's good poetry. There is a lot of good poetry out there - I just don't see it being championed by the Poetry Foundation - yet.

Interesting... Back to what you first said about Barr's comment about “One way to expand the presence of good poetry in our culture is to place more of it in the mainstream media.” It seems to me that this statement might be passing the buck off to the media as the culprit as the reason why American poetry is ignored in our culture. There is so much energy and passion in the small press. Maybe out of all this bureaucracy of governing and advisory boards they could actually do something about this detrimental fact and take action with allocating some of this money toward hiring a media specialist to do some active Public Relations work. The board could choose some of the biggest names in the small press and give them the extra exposure to boost them out of the small press and up there to swim with the larger academic sharks. They should back these individuals with support and enough funding to gain the exposure needed for this elevation to the masses. The problem with small press poets making waves in society is that most of us cannot compete with the academics. Think about it, The Poetry Foundation could reach out to your neighborhood garbage-man who just so happens to write brilliant and exciting poetry, but doesn't know the right people in the major magazines to connect with or cannot afford to send out his manuscripts to the major publishing houses. A guided fellowship could change the face of poetry in society. I wonder what The Poetry Foundation has in mind for grants and fellowships?

Actually Brian, I think small press poets do successfully compete with academics in terms of what Barr calls “good poetry,” or later in his letter, what he characterizes as, “the best poetry.” Where the Foundation has not succeeded is in its stated promise to “place it [good poetry] before the largest possible audience.”

There are barriers to enter on both sides (academic and small press). These barriers are not so much about what Barr calls “good poetry” but rather tribal loyalties. I am not an academic, and I don't know many writers who are. If I were an academic I am sure many of my writing friends would be too. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the vast majority of work appearing in academically funded journals is by MFA students and/or established academic writers. We can call it cronyism, or like-minded people like the same stuff. I believe two things are at play here. First, academics are trained to write in generally the same style; usually one that uses heightened language which loses contact with the ground and common expression. As a result, most casual readers of poetry find such work irrelevant and inaccessible — say boring. Second, the editors of most Academic Journals are English Professors and/or the students they teach. So what would you expect their editorial tastes to be? I agree with you Brian, the Poetry Foundation could and should help establish a balance and a dialogue between the small press and the academic press. There are many more aspects to the poetry machine than just these two sectors, but for the sake of this discussion, let's just stay focused on closing this yawing divide.

From what I can gather the Poetry Foundation has hired Barr, a former Wall Street Executive who was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, and a published poet, to implement a strategic vision. In the January 5, 2006, Boston Globe article entitled Poets, Inc. (find link below) Barr says, “We believe that the golden age for any art happens when that art is written for and derives its energy from the general audience of its time.” He goes on to say, '”And if and when an art form becomes a more closeted and insular affair, it's going to lose some of that energy.” Right on John! We all agree and remain flabbergasted that you and the board you lead allow Chris Wiman to publish a magazine that puts the vast majority of people who read and write poetry to sleep.

The Foundation deserves credit for hiring John Barr; someone who didn't grow up in the middle of a college literature department. This should give all of us hope that he will see what we see; a need for a broader and more representative governing board. A Board that resembles the market they say they want to awaken to good poetry.

Finally, you mention funding. Funding isn't on the table. Here is another quote from Barr's letter, “Nor will the Foundation be primarily a grant-making or check-writing organization. As an operating Foundation it will inaugurate and manage its own programs.” I don't argue with the Foundation not wanting the headaches and administrative costs of also becoming a grant making organization, but I also view this decision as a tactic which further advances the interests of their board and its present ideology around what's good. If you take a look at what they are funding (find link below) you will quickly see it's more of the same. No outsiders here. They are all members of the academic tribe. Where are the great small press publications or poets in this list of funding priorities? Nowhere. Where is the outsider who honed his or her writing in the small press? Nowhere. Again, this imbalance will not change unless the board that governs the Foundation is altered to reflect the market they say they want to reach.

I don't care if it is a headache to pick five influential poets and five influential publications to give grants to and create an unsolicited annual application process. They don't want to become a check-writing company... Why not? They have the money to allocate these responsibilities and support the poetic endeavors the NEA and state art councils can no longer afford to grant. I admire the efforts and goals stated in the open letter, I just want every poet, publication or organization to be given the chance to reach out for help and explain their situation or reasons why funding their efforts will change the face of poetry. The letter states they don't have all the answers on how to allocate this money... So why not accept unsolicited applications from all over America? It might broaden their palette as to what classifies as “good poetry.” The letter also states in so many words how poets feed off of being down in the dirt. Yes, poets will still grow without your help and we know that your goal is to change the readership of poetry. The Foundation has a unique opportunity to change the readership of poetry, but yet, they aren't reaching for too many different herbs in the garden of poetry. We would like to ask John Barr for an interview based on the development of an open application process for the awards and fellowships listed on their website.

I see you Charles, as a connoisseur of poetry. You have written countless reviews, published hundreds of poems, and really taken the art to heart. This interview was originally inspired by your interest in the Poetry Foundation and your open letter to POETRY. You are a crusader of poetry. How do you find the time to juggle everything? What do you find are some of your personal struggles with succeeding as a poet? A lot of poets go to Europe where poetry is taken more seriously and you can actually live off being a poet. I wonder how America could reach this state? I wonder if it would take more than the Poetry Foundation's manpower and $100 million budget to significantly change the face of poetry.

That's why it's called the Golden Rule Brian, those who have the gold rule. Everyone who loves poetry and is active in it shares your sentiments, but most will remain on the sideline and keep their opinions to themselves. Poets are a pretty passive bunch. As for our academic and serious overachieving brothers and sisters, they don't want to bite the hand that may feed them a publication credit. It's a pity, and I hope this interview, the Boston Globe article (find link below), Michael Kriesel's recent editorial in Small Press Review, and other voices will slowly encourage the Poetry Foundation to come out of its shell. Hey Brian, I'll even buy John Barr and a few of his buddies a free lunch in Chicago. It's just down the road from Milwaukee; we'd have a great time.

Our efforts to get Poetry Foundation's attention will take time. They will not adjust their programmatic outreach to our world quickly. Nor will Mr. Wiman's editorial tastes migrate to more diverse voices overnight. Non-profit boards are slow moving bodies of deliberation. But such boards must eventually bend to the will of the clients they serve. So if we really do love poetry - good poetry - then we must take action. If there is a contact sport for poets (other than submitting work) then this is it. I encourage everyone who reads this interview to send or e-mail John Barr a letter. I know he'd love to hear from all of us who are active and devoted to poetry:

Mr. John Barr
President / The Poetry Foundation
1030 North Clark Street, Suite 420
Chicago, IL 60610-5412
Send e-mail to: mail@poetryfoundation.org

As for me making a living off being a poet? I guess that would mean I'd have to start teaching at a University. I think I'll pass on that. Besides, it might have a debilitating effect on my writing. Brian, it has never paid to be a poet. We don't do it for the money. We do it because we have to. And if we work hard, and we're good and lucky - maybe our ship will come in. But I don't spend much time thinking much about that. I just try to write as much as I can: reviews, short stories, poems, interviews, essays; even an open letter to the Poetry Foundation when I have to. I just completed my second novel while commemorating my 140th rejection letter by a literary agent. It's all part of the work, and for me, the privilege of having found true love. What a break! I just woke up eight years ago and discovered writing. I have never looked back. I juggle my writing like we all do. I fit it in between work and sleep, between taking my daughters to school and running errands, between grocery shopping and doing my laundry. I jam as much writing into the time I have been given to put words on paper.

We will continue our quest to work with the Poetry Foundation to begin to look at the relevance of becoming an unbiased foreman in the revolution to bring poetry into mainstream American culture. Your poems are interesting and well crafted. Do you have any advice for aspiring poets? What works best for you when approaching the poem? How do you know when you've nailed the poem? For me it is a deep internal feeling so strong, it knocks the pen out of my hand.

Brian, I think this is an effort worth everyone's time; especially in the small press where most don't have university budgets to rely on. There are so many active, talented poets, editors and publishers in our small press world; we all need to send a short note to Mr. Barr and the Poetry Foundation Board, and vote with our pen. But it is equally important this not be a one-and-done gesture. Check their web site. Take an interest in how their board is composed. Hold them accountable to the objectives they have stated they want to achieve. Add their e-mail address (mail@poetryfoundation.org) to your list serves so they can become part of our poetry community. So much is happening in the small press. They need to know about it. I am sure they are well informed about what's going on within the academic side of poetry. We need to help them find their way to our small town.

My poetry! Right, that too. It's a little hard for me to switch from fighting the good fight to talking about my creative writing. So I'll keep this short because I want to keep this interview focused on helping the Poetry Foundation do the right thing.

For me, it is themes. They are the creative triggers for my poetry. I have a list of them in my notebook. I view poetry as compressed story telling. Since my work is largely narrative, I want to be clear what it is I am trying to say. So when I'm ready to write poetry, I review my themes and go for it. I usually draft three to four poems in one sitting and very quickly; I then rework them over a few weeks until the poems tell me they are done. I find it interesting, and informative that a poem I love can receive a poor response from editors, while a poem I thought wasn't quite there can be accepted all over the place. The market is one way to measure the quality of our work. The market loves you and punishes you, but it always informs you.

As to my advice to aspiring poets; well Brian, I hate to disappoint you, but I am an aspiring poet. Remember, I've only been at this for eight years. I have a feeling I will never feel like anything but an aspiring poet. Writing is so complex, so endless, how does one ever really master it? Nevertheless, I would say there are two sides to this game: talent and persistence. You must actively develop both. Become good at the forms and good at advancing your career. Not much will be given to you. Just write and write and write, and submit. And thank every editor, publisher and poet who lends you a hand of support. Treat everyone with respect knowing they are part of your growing writing family. Do this because it's the right thing to do, and because at some point the break you've been waiting for will be an act of kindness returned. To me, poetry is both an art and a game. For it to remain fun, I must view it this way. Great writing counts, publication credits count, and having fun counts too.

Thank you for sharing with us your concern for necessary future collaboration between academia and street poets. We can only make a change if we unite and use our power to bring poetry to every coffee table in America. If we lose this dream, we lose our sole purpose of roaming this earth.

Brian this is not an academic poet vs. street poet issue; this is only about getting “good poetry” before the largest audience possible. We all want good poetry to flourish. We agree The Poetry Foundation should use the Lilly Endowment to accomplish this end and light a flame across all socio-economic sectors. I know we enjoy tossing word-bombs over the imaginary fence that separates the academic tribe from ours, but the fact is, we all love the same thing — poetry. I have read academic poets whose work I like and street poets who I greatly enjoy. What I cannot figure out is why the Poetry Foundation has not been willing to advocate for both? I hope they will decide to invite us all into their big tent; not just as readers and writers, but as representatives on their governing board. Representation is the only way this balance can be created and maintained. When this happens, then we might have a chance of putting good poetry on every coffee table in America.
___________________________________________________
To Read the full Boston.com article, Poets, Inc.

To Read John Barr's Open Letter

To Read about what the Poetry Foundation funds

Brian Morrisey has been noted as “sensitive bastard” and other ironies that denote his affliction for hopeless romanticism. His words derive from the solid foundation of Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. More recent inspirations include Todd Moore and the Café Babar poets (Babarians). He has dedicated over half of his mere existence to POESY, a journal for poetry and photography aimed at boosting the esteem of American Poetry. He has interviewed such celebrities as: Diane DiPrima, Jack Hirschman, A.D. Winans and Todd Moore. He lives by the beach in Santa Cruz and spends his days talking about the physical properties of glass.

Broadside Catalogue

2006-05-19T13:00:00.000-05:00

Abiade, Folami
Pre September Poem
1985, signed, 18"/11.5", WP*
15.00

Adam, Helen
Dirge for a Dazzling Star
Black Mesa Press, signed, 14"/16", WP
75.00

Ashberry, John
Ignornace of the Law Is No Excuse
2004, Empyrean Press, David Tallitsch illus., signed by both, 18"/11.5"
35.00

Bell, Marvin
Around Us
2005, Empyrean Press, signed, John Dilg illus., 13"/10"
35.00

Bergland, Martha
Birds Not Only Mean But Be
1985, signed, 11.5"/17.5", WP
15.00

Berry, Wendell
From the Distance
1982, Black Mesa Press, signed, 14.5"/11.5, WP
25.00

Berssenbrugge, MeiMei
Tan Tein
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, 14.5"/11.5", WP
25.00

Brown, MacCanon
Explanation of Pearls
1989, Penstemon Press, 7"/13", WP
15.00

Bruchac, Joseph
Walking At Night With My Son James
1985, Landlocked Press, signed, 12"/18", WP
20.00

Caddel, Richard
Two Poems on Hunger
1985, Landlocked Press, signed, 12"/18", WP
20.00

Clark, Thomas A.
I Love Those Clean Bright Rooms
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, irregular shape, WP
25.00

Collins, Farrell
Refinement of Form
1989, Ram’s Horn Press, signed, edition of 50, 13"/9"
15.00

Coolidge, Clark
Mammoth Night
1987, Chax Press, signed, 7"/16", WP
25.00

Davis, Thulani
Playing Solitaire
1985, Chax Press, signed, 13.5"/8", WP
20.00

Dhompa, Tsering Wangmo
Endings
2001, Tundra Press, 8.5"/11
1.00

Dorn, Ed
Maximum Ostentation
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, 10.5"/14", WP
35.00

Doubiago, Sharon
Fatal Accident
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, folded, WP
30.00

Duncan, Robert
Passages / In Blood’s Domain
1982, Black Mesa Press, signed and numbered, 13"/20", WP
75.00

DuPlessis, Rachel Blau
Selvedge
1988, Potes & Poets Press/Silver Buckle Press, signed, 8"/15"
20.00

Enslin, Theodore
from "Markings"
1981, Black Mesa Press, 11"/14", WP
25.00

Goldblatt, Eli
So Wet
1985, Salient Seedling Press, 6"/13"
15.00

Hawkins, Bobbie Louise
Why Does Anyone . . .
1983, Black Mesa Press, signed, folded/sewn, 9’/9.5", WP
20.00

Hejinian, Lyn
Guard
1983, Black Mesa Press, signed, Ruth Lingen illustrations, 9"/18", WP
25.00

Johnson, Ronald
Ark 44, The Rod of Aaron
1985, Landlocked Press, signed, 9"/18", WP
35.00

Mackey, Nathaniel
School of Udhra
1986, Landlocked Press, signed, 7"/14", WP
25.00

Marmon Silko, Leslie
from "Essay on Rain"
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, irregular shape, WP
30.00

Metcalf, Paul
from "1-57"
1983, Black Mesa Press, signed, 16.5"/6.5", WP
35.00

Morley, Hilda
Not Tristan & Isolde
1986, Salient Seedling Press, signed, 9"/5", WP
15.00

Napora, Joe
The Adena Serpent Mound: Adams County, Ohio
1983, Landlocked Press, signed, 15.5"/10", WP
25.00

Napora, Joe
One Day It Happened
1987, Poote Press, Timothy Ely illus., edition of 51, 16"/11", WP
25.00

Oliveros, Pauline
Horse Sings From Cloud
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, 19.5"/6.5", WP
25.00

Ondaatje, Michael
Two Poems
1986, Perishable Press, signed, quad-fold, WP
50.00

Oppenheimer, Joel
For Max / Ted Berrigan
1984, Black Mesa Press, signed, 18"/7", WP
25.00

Rakosi, Carl
Meditation
1985, Chax Press, signed, folded, WP
20.00

Ramke, Bin
Social Conscience (Well Meant)
2005, Empyrean Press, signed, edition of 100, 14.5"/8.5"
25.00

Randall, Margaret
Talk to Me
1986, Salient Seedling Press, 9.5"/4"
10.00

Raworth, Tom
from "Juice"
1985, Poote Press, signed, edition of 25, 19"/7.5"
50.00
unsigned larger edition
25.00

Raworth, Tom
Six Poems
1985, multifold, WP
8.00

Rothenberg, Jerome
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma: Two States
1986, folded, signed, 10.5"/7", WP
25.00

Silliman, Ron
Albany
1989, Chax Press, signed, 16"/11.5", WP
30.00

Snider, Karen
Because You Asked For It
1985, signed, 17.5"/11.5", WP
15.00

Sonnenberg, Kerri
Termini Calve
2002, Brass Door Press, signed, edition of 30, 9"/9"
10.00

Stebelton, Chuck
The Nineties
2005, Answer Tag/Dexterity Press, 13.5"/6.5"
5.00

Swenson, Cole
The Garden and the History of a Queen
2004, Empyrean Press, signed, edition of 100, 18.5"/7"
25.00

Szymaszek, Stacy
3 Poems
2000, Heavy Duty Press, trifold, signed and numbered, edition of 100
10.00

Szymaszek, Stacy
mummified arm
2003, Cuneiform Press, 9.5"/6.5"
5.00

Szymaszek, Stacy
loomings, a bosom friend
2001, Heavy Duty Press, trifold, numbered edition of 100
10.00

Tardi, Mark
from "Part First", Chopin’s Feet
2002, Brass Door Press, signed, edition of 30, 11"/10"
10.00

Tysh, George & Chris
Human Tunnel / Coat of Arms
1985, Chax Press, signed by both, 14"/7", WP
25.00

Whitney, J.D.
Six Poems
1987, Perishable Press, signed, trifold, 5"/10", WP
25.00

Williams, Jonathon
Week No. 5, from the Book of Days, an Enrichment of Asps
1987, Chax Press, signed, 8"/17", WP
25.00

Young, Karl
Milestones
1987, Friends of Typography, signed, 10"/14", WP
25.00

A Very Palpable Strike!

2006-05-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

When I was a boy I was very confused about the concept of the "first pitch." I believed that the person receiving said honor would actually face a batter from the opposing team. I wasn't sure why, exactly, any Major League team would allow a lay person to compromise the teams chances for the sake of a gimmic. (I'm not sure if this was the poet of the anti-poet in me, think that words had a fixed meaning and a degree of importance that did not change with context or usage.) Instead of being such a dramatic event, the ceremony places a person on empty field, usually involves a lobbed ball that archs and lands about ten feet in front of home plate. It is, generally, a good thing that they don't face live hitters.

On Friday, April 21, ringing in the game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cincinnati Reds, George Bowering, poet, small press guru, baseball obsessor, threw out the first pitch thanks to the doings of some very good people in the UWM English Department, who witnessed the event en masse. Bowering is a long time fan of the greatest sport on earth. You'd be hard pressed to find a book of his that doesn't contain some reference to the game, and his latest book, Baseball Love (Talonbooks, 2006), documents (sort of) some of his many tours of minor league ball parks. Later this year, Bowering will take a honeymoon in Italy, where he and new bride get a taste of Italian baseball. During his reading the following evening at Woodland Pattern, George started off with some tales about his various baseball injuries, the blood of which remains on his cleats to this day. He has, for some time, played in secret leagues comprised of writers. I was surprised that baseball was so popular in Canada (George is from Vancouver, B.C.) as to have such secret games. Later, at Anne and Karl's deliciously catered reception, George revealed his love for the visual nature of the game: he seems to be an obsessive hat and jersey collector, and more than once expressed his chagrin at not being able to find minor league hats in his size (a very large size 8 -- which he said is up a whole half size in the last several years: his head is swelling with baseball knowledge?). He described in detail his favorite logos and colors. He also revealed that he's read poetry at a SABR convention, which any baseball+poetry nerd like myself would drool over. (Anne might have thought I was drooling over her deserts.) My only regret is not being able to return to Woodland Pattern the next day to have a catch with George. I could have then boasted that I am the only person to have played ball with George Bowering and bowled with Ted Enslin.

To keep with the theme, Woodland Pattern brought in fellow baseball enthusiast (read: nerd), Ammiel Alcalay, to read with Bowering. A fine poet in his own right, Alcalay is also a translator (most recently the poetry of Semezdin Mehmedinovic) and activist targeted by your fair and balanced Right Wing rag, The American Thinker (check out this shit). Alcalay shares my propensity for baseball statistics: when I sat down behind him at the Brewers-Reds game at Miller park on the 21st, we somehow immediately got to talking about APBA baseball, another staple of baseball nerdom. Ammiel plays/simulates seasons with his son every year; I got the game when I was twelve and somehow never opened it, but vowed to go back to when Ammiel told me how accurate it was in reflecting actual results. At Anne & Karl's poetry feast, Ammiel and I talked about how the APBA people project stats and outcomes for their game, and eventually a bit of synchronicity occurred:

In 2003, George Bowering's poem Baseball: A Poem in the Magic Number Nine was released, and I choose it for my portion the Woodie P Staff Picks page (the review is still up there). In my blip, I asked, "Why do so many poets write about baseball?" Nearly three years later, after Bowering had just read at Woodland, Ammiel Alcalay drops the names of a number of great writers who all write about or at least enjoy the game to a great degree -- people I never would have suspected, just like I never would have suspected Ammiel himself. I asked him the same question I asked myself three years ago. He didn't really know either, but suggested that it might have something to do with the mysticism of the game -- the flux of the thing. I suggested its pace: leisurely and pastoral -- but that describes the old, lazy poet, not people like Ammiel Alcalay. Lately, I have been trying to quatify it more and more, to describe the game numerically, to divide the vast mythology of Baseball into meaningful little derivatives. And the more I do this, the more I get between the numbers and get at the language of the game, the more myth I see, the deeper it goes -- it takes a poet, not a statitician.

Later on at the Brewers-Reds game that Friday, Woodland's own Karl Gartung would make quite an athletic catch of a foul ball down the leftfield line. Between Bowering and Gartung, the Poet Players had a bully showing. Huzzah! I proved more suited to analysis, describing how new Red and long-time unsung hero Scott Hatteberg was still one of the games best pure hitters to my frauline (even the Cincinnati fan next to us seemed baffled as to who Hatteberg was or from whence he came). When Hatteberg doubled in the fourth inning I was vindicated once; when he drove in a run with a single in the eighth, I was dreaming of a job in the Brewers front office. The game was pitchers duel between Milwaukee ace Ben Sheets (7IP, 6H, 2ER, 0BB, 10K) and frat-rocker Bronson Arroyo, and the Brewers' only run can from a first pitch homer by CF Gabe Gross. Nonetheless, fun was had by all: from Bowering's first pitch to Anne's suculent turkey, it was a very palpable strike.

-Robert J. Baumann

Book Review: Schablone Berlin

2006-05-02T18:45:00.000-05:00

Schablone Berlin

Caroline Koebel, Kyle Schlesinger, eds.
Chax Press ($16.95)

Schablone Berlin, a recent book on Berlin stencil art is a welcome addition to the increasingly widespread genre of street art. The book focuses its attention on the stencils themselves and features over 100 color images that sample the dynamic political and street art scene of Berlin. The colorful and thought provoking stencil designs that adorn the often cold and sterile buildings are instantly appreciable and it becomes easy to side with the artists, rather than the law that labels this type of art a criminal act. A book such as this reminds us that street art is, at its core, a political act, a means of asserting ones voice, and an alternative perspective into the urban landscape that is largely dominated by corporate advertisements and state-enforced regulations. Street art also allows artists to communicate to anyone who happens to walk by the art. With this in mind, the editors of the book take us on a rambling journey through the streets of Berlin to view the walls, sidewalks and other painted surfaces throughout the German city. It comes as little surprise that the images found in Schablone Berlin are often far more interesting than the much of the art one would ever find within the confines of a gallery or museum. By documenting the city walls, the editors of the book have provided a window into Berlin’s streets, its culture, its influences, and the concerns of its artistic community. Some of the stencil images speak of resistance to war and U.S.-led imperialism. Others focus on popular culture and its influence throughout the world. Other designs are more surprising in their approach, appearing at first less socially critical and apolitical but in reality call for deeper consideration. For example, one of the more stunning images is a stencil design of a wolf; the juxtaposition of a wild animal in an urban setting allows one to consider the implications of a modern, industrial world where non-human animals, outside of domestic pets, have become an afterthought.

The true importance of this book, however, is not simply its documentation of Berlin street art culture, but its ability to inspire others to participate and advance street art within their own communities. This book provides one with a number of ideas to create ones own stencils. Not only does it survey a wide range of themes, but the range of photographs exhibit multiple examples of placement for an artist to consider within the urban landscape. By doing so, Schablone Berlin provides a basis from which to critique one’s own community, and calls one to consider the proliferation of street art or the lack of it in their communities, and the reasons for this absence in certain cities.

Personally, I have always felt a sense of comfort and relief while in a city that is covered in street art. Cities such as Berlin, Montreal, New York City, Barcelona, and Melbourne are incredibly enhanced by the street art and become more vibrant and exciting. On the other side, cities that lack this form of public expression seem to be hiding something. These places, with their sanitized walls and false sense of order always feel repressive to me, if not politically, then certainly culturally. More often than not, a city devoid of street art is the result of draconian laws that criminalize street art; at the same time, a city devoid of street art makes one question the public’s willingness to be politically and artistically vocal. This book attests that many artists and activists in Berlin are not willing to hide their opinions, even in the face of increasing efforts to restrain and punish the purveyors of street art: the editors relay in their postscript that in April, 2005 Berlin hosted the first International Anti-Graffiti Conference, which called for harsher penalties for street artists and explored tactics to stop graffiti.

If indeed government sentiment against street art is becoming globalized, the medium itself has long since done the same. Very few modern cities in the world are free of street art and one of the fascinating aspects of Schablone Berlin is its international, globalized context. Many of the designs are not specific to German culture; rather they belong to an international visual language of dissent. If I was to glance at Schablone Berlin without prior knowledge its focus on documenting Berlin street art, I could easily mistake the stencil images for those of New York, Melbourne, Rome, or any other metropolis with prolific stencil art. We can attribute this to a number of reasons: the pop culture icons displayed in many of the designs, the fact that text of the designs that is often in English, the inclusion of recognizable political figures. The availability of designs on the Internet and other stencil books has influenced artists and helped to create a more universal stencil language. Stencil artists themselves have traveled to different cities around the world to spread their art. Even the simplicity of stencil art is universal and the very aesthetics make it a common language rather than one that is often specific to one region of the world. In many regards, stencil art is similar to punk rock where the structure is relatively the same no matter what corner of the world it comes from. The visual portion of Schablone Berlin emphasizes these commonalities, documenting the styles and political content of stencil art in a global context, rather than illustrating Berlin as a unique case study.

If I have any criticism of Schablone Berlin, it is the text, which merely discusses radical street art and activism in a very abstract and general sense. Other stencil art books such as Hasta La Victoria, Stencil! (Guido Indij, La Marca Editora, 2004), which documents stencils in Argentina, focuses the text on the history of street art within that society, and how the art affected and was affected by the recent popular uprising there. The editors of Schablone Berlin could have learned something from such an approach. With the relatively recent unification of East and West Berlin (Communist and Capitalist), Berlin is one of the most interesting cities in recent history, and the book could have explored more of its unique political and artistic past. For instance, the editors do not differentiate between the stencils located in the former East Berlin as compared to the former West, and the book lacks any reference to or images of the Berlin Wall, arguably one of the most important public surfaces for political art in the second half of the Twentieth Century. The writing in the book even could have explored the history of radical art in Berlin that stood in opposition to Hitler’s rise to power, such as the collage art of John Heartfield. In the 1930s, Heartfield’s anti-fascist images covered the walls of the city, causing him to flee for his life to Praque, where he continued his graphic campaign against Hitler. It would have been interesting to hear more of the editors’ take on how today’s stencil art in Berlin responds to the current climate within the city and country, or how a city like Berlin, with such a unique and potent political and artistic history now blends with the global phenomenon of street art, or why a street art culture specific to Berlin’s current environment and history is lacking in many of the selected images. The stencil designs within Schablone Berlin imply that Germany, like many nation-states is becoming more a part of the global mono-culture that dulls the differences between individual countries. In this regard, the documentation of the Berlin street art scene today becomes all that more important in addressing this point. Still the editors would have done better by using the text to place the documented art within historical and contemporary contexts.

However, this criticism on the text aside, Schablone Berlin is a very commendable effort and the book is sure to inspire simply by the power of the images. Digital cameras allow many photographers to take thousands of pictures without worrying about the cost of film. Artists and activists can now easily archive the street art that emerges every day. The choice that the editors made in documenting the walls of Berlin is vital and they have thankfully sought out a press to share these important images of resistance with the rest of us. The end result will be a deeper appreciation for street art and an inspiration for many to stencil the streets of the cities that they live in.

-Nicolas Lampert

Nicolas Lampert is co-editor of “Peace Signs: the Anti-War Movement Illustrated” (Edition Olms) and works on the collaborative stencil zine project “Cut and Paint."