I see that Norman Mailer has died. I've never read a novel by him, don't think I've read any of his non-fiction work tho I know that in high school I read a collection of his poetry (sic). so I guess I'm in a perfect position to comment on his writing. and my comment boils down to: why did/do people read his work? talk about thingness, the thingly aspect of Mailer's work is what? being a celeb, he has this high impact presence, and that seems to be the igniting agent to people's imagination. I, personally, don't hear talk about the particular shimmer of his work, the vague lines of artistic extent that map into the plush dimensions, or whatever art does. what I hear is the Time Magazine jazziness of notoriety, in other words the prefab meaning that flies with this particular bird. just to repeat, I have read close to none of Mailer's work. what I am reading here, then, is the public imagination, or lack thereof. how reputations are onslaughts, and that sort of thing. in the sense that Allen Ginsberg can be replaced by or Madonna (or whoever you want to list), it's that stuff about the person before anything else. I think matters of criticism plunge often into Behlresques of thoughtfulness, punchy provocations instead of internal challenges. so a Norman Mailer becomes a battlefield, he and his work. like we will always need a dickweed to fuss over. maybe I've missed something in not reading his work. I never made a proud stand against his work, only selected other avenues to explore, as one must practically make such choices.

Geof Huth, not Jeff Booth, gives a clear appraisal of the Shively/Beckett reading here.in truth (rhymes with Huth), I cannot absorb the words in a reading, as Geof so obviously does, so I involve myself with the mechanics and surroundings. I sense the poet's work but not in a readerly way. Geof, I saw, took copious notes (I took random intersections), and he must have a better auditory memory than do I. perhaps the note-taking, or his particular responsiveness, caused Shively seemingly to direct his reading towards Geof. not that Shively didn't scan everyone, make eye contact. but his professor instincts perhaps were drawn to the one most obviously connecting. anyway, I did apologize, twice, for my numbness in introduction to Geof. I guess I don't even think of the power of the blog (any blog, I mean) because I am always surprised that people recognize my name. selah. I look forward to Jack Kimball's promised account.

Pats won, Sox still are champs, and a nifty reading at Demolicious today, featuring Charley Shively and Tom Beckett. nice weather too. I'll speak of the reading. Beth in NYC with her mother so I trained in. killing time I walked from Porter Square to Central, then rambled some more. finally, in front of the gallery, I saw a familiar, from photos, figure, and the clincher that he's tall: Tom Beckett. I introduced myself. I've 'known' Tom for more than 20 years, I imagine. his journal, The Difficulties, however I came to it, was integral to my development as a poem making type writer. I think Tom's contribution to poetry as an editor is worthy of whatever Hall of Fame that exists for poetry (none, I realize, but pretend one does), just as Babe Ruth's pitching stats could put him in Cooperstown, forget about the 714. Tom's poetry, as I discovered in the spare publications of his own works that I got, is a strong, definite statement. we have the further category of blogger, tho he's seen fit to shutter his latest blog. Tom was accompanied by his daughter and son in law, who live in Brookline, home town of Theo Epstein. as he and I were conversing, I'm an awesome converser, he told me that a friend of his was behind me. this friend, I heard his name as Jeff Booth. from NY, near Albany, I think. it wasn't till Tom read a poem dedicated to this Jeff Booth that I gleaned that Jeff Booth was in fact Geof Huth. Geof Huth is a wonderful, I'll even say cruciual, poet and, dare I say, scholar. his work is really avant in the visual context. I hope he can be persuaded to read locally. the reading, as usual, began with the local poet, Charley Shively. I only knew him by name. he was a friend of Wieners. he was also, and I'm sure still is, a legendary gay rights activist. he's a retired history professor. none of which did I know before he read. his reading was quirky and charming. think absentminded, if not dazed, professor. by dazed I am trying to describe an ephemeral quality. a very present and unencumbered attention. I mean, he wore unmatched shoes, and he said whatever sluiced into the main channel first. I can imagine he was a popular professor but drove a cetrtain few students crazy. such students would not just wonder what his last remark had to do with the Peloponnesian War but what the Peloponnisian War had to do with anything today. his observations and tangents were integral to his reading. given his general driftiness, which I do not present as a negative quality, his muscular sense of syllable was maybe a surprise. his poems appeareed to be short-lined affairs, and he read them with a careful syllable by syllablpe rhythm. he didn't exert much vocal dynamics, but the words came thru with a strong metric. he read for quite a while, timelessly, you might say. no way that I can replicate his performance. his 1st poem, which was to Wieners, and in fact was edited by him, included an aside about a dream he had in which Wieners was blowing Bob Dylan. I don't know what I can add to that. happily Jack Kimball attended and his reportage will no doubt supply a richer impression of the event than I can supply. from the small sampling I am willing to suggest that Shively is a great poet. Wieners class, that is. that was a hard act to follow but Tom gave a terrific reading too. he read entirely from Unprotecxted texts. which is a wonderful book, highly recommended. he read the entire Zombies series, which is funny, quirky and inviting. the lengthy, self-revelatory piece that followed, argh what's the title, was a tour de force, and solicited deserved applause even as he was starting his next set of poems. Tom read in a dry but involved way. his last reading was 7 years ago. you'd think the powers of NYC would be enlightened enough to invite someone of Tom's credentials to read. special thanks to John and Andrew for bringing Tom to town. let's get it straight: Tom isn't just sputum from an mfa program, he isn't just the newest vanilla to write a poem, he isn't just that friend of the friend of the friend, he isn't the latest advertising approach, he isn't the glory of sneer factor. no, Tom Beckett is a writer and editor of poetry, a poet living not on the cushy pulse but in the rugged definitions of the hinterland. do you see that the colostomy of networking is a failed sizzle, New York New York? the heroes aren't the ones who tell you they are heroes, okay? Beckett and Shively are clearly under-regarded. and Geof Huth, unexpected guest, should be given David Ortiz level praise as an innovator. as per, extra innings occurred at a pleasant Irish bar down the block (food's pretty good, tho I didn't partake today). where I sat didn't allow me to enter the conversation of Tom, Geof, Charley and Jack, but I had a good conversation with John Mercuri Dooley, who helped bring the event to fruition. I didn't start writing till I was 16, which is later than a number of writers I know. John didn't start till he was in his 40s. it is curious how we come to our expressions, how the necessities declare themselves. John and Andrew deserve commendation for the variety of readers that they've chosen for their series. that inclusion extends to the friendly nature of their events. the gatherings after the readings are as important as the readings themselves. alas that I had a train to catch. I scooted while things were still bubbling. great event, even so.

watched Blades of Glory yestreen. Will Farrell now identified as a go to guy. neither of the WF star vehicles that I've seen are perfect but they have a consistent artistic demeanour, let us say. I don't think that Farrell is a one trick pony. it seems like he has a vision of his work. but my experience of his work is slight so I wouldn't want to press this opinion too far. this one is about competitive skating, which is as likely as a subject, because of its local weirdness, as NASCAR. Farrell is paired with ugh I can't recall the actor's name, as rival skaters. the other skater, Jimmy, is fey (1st time I ever used that word) and sensitive, stereotypical skater type. Farrell's Chazz is bumptiously macho, rowdy rock star. our 1st encounter with the adult Jimmy, he wears peacock feathers on his rump and is a study of ridiculous skaterly grace. the movie captures the obsequious patter of skating announcers, and the crowd as suckers for the show. near the end, famous Jim Lampley gets to tell his announcing partner (Scott Hamilton, in fact) that he just wet his pants. Chazz comes on like a pro wrestler, strutting and emblazoned sex. it's such a toot to see. naturally the 2 get into a fight during the awards ceremony, naturally they are banned for life from competition. after a quick 3 years of dark night of the soul for them, they are brought together as a pair, since it isn't specified in the rules that they can't. that's all de rigueur stuff. fire and ice. I'm not capturing the good parts of the movie with this recount. the two actors work well together. Farrell, the star, looks comfortable sharing the screen. his characters need something to bounce against, anyway. his swagger arrives from the moon or somewhere, just as in Talledega Nights. Jon Heder, who must be someone but he's new to me, looks properly whippet-like to suggest a skater but Farrell looks like sitting on the front porch with a beer. the movie sneaks past campiness, just barely I think. for all the grace and athleticism of the sport, it has a high density of schlockiness. the whole play to the crowd aspect is what undermines it as a sport. so the target is rich. the skating routines are great, combining piss ant drama and physical impossibility. the movie tails off when the plot becomes needy. I know plot and denouement are integral to such a spoofy approach but plot really becomes dead air so often, a linear express to the next set piece. it's time, friends, that we review our need for plot. the resolutions seem mostly sham or incomplete. the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been criticized for their confusing plot. I think the confusion comes from a need to make plot sense. if Johnny Depp et al weren't bound by that necessity, the play could be more adventurous. poetry is far from cured of that narrative need, that sort of storytelling completion, but at least the issue is on the table. we're totally inured to the auto pilot in artworks, it's hard to break thru to the mechanics. in the finale of Lord of the Rings, movie version, there's a smirky grand depletion of plot points amongst the survivours. Tolkien did the work at a respectful pace. in the movie, clock running, it's a nod to all. which particularly gives the scene with Viggo at marrying point with Liv an odd scantness. the movie's so homoerotic, another word I've never used before, that this ceremonious inclusion of a female jostles the mind. where'd she come from, basically. from a need to tie loose ends. a satisfaction exists in that, but girls are so rare in the movie that we really aren't prepared for this normative streak. it almost happens in Blades. you can see the bond between the guys, similar drives and interests. when the girl comes along, the attraction is mostly that she's kinda pretty. well gee whiz, if you want to make plots work, you have to cut out a lot of interesting stuff. if you want Viggo and Liv to look right together, you'll have to cut out monsters and sword play. in Blades, if you really need to tie Jimmy to the sweetheart, you'd have to sacrifice the good stuff on the ice. ah well. it was a fun movie, anyway. I'll take Farrell over Jack Black, who seems like a 2nd rate Lou Costello or even Curly Howard.

U Cal Press sent this link: Mark Twain. I like Twain, judiciously (H Finn). more wowzer is just the idea of a chugging press offering what do they call it content fer free. I haven't run the metrics to say that the thing works (sells hard copy books) but I'm thinking as how it does. anyway, when he aint all a-gloom, morbid, self-pitying, and that, Mark Twain is the berries.

poetry, haw! I don't write it. I write sentences, and I sometimes jiggle them. and that satisfies my writin' urge. I've done my study of poetry, learned to like some of it. for the 1st time in my life, I'm writing rarely. this isn't a bad thing, just different. my writing rhythm has been jostled, no biggie. and the dog that is not here describes a space that I haven't figured how to fill. ANYWAY, I'll be tuning in Tom Beckett and Charley Shively at Demolicious on sunday. I only know of Shively, local writer, so this will swell my local awareness (a likable tactic for the series: one local, one foreigner in each reading). Tom Beckett is one of the undersung heroes of the poetry landscape. most definitely wrangling with his journal The Difficulties greatly changed my writing arc, as did having Grenier as a teacher for a year. elsewise I'd be lyricking some false motive or another, romantic view of the poet as confessional claptrap and heroic bum out. I like Tom's spareness, antipodal to my wordy way. and just to finish this ramble, a house didst I see hereabouts, decorated for Halloween, with ghosts and Jack o' lanterns all a-glow. plus a sign: We Support Our Troops. so the ectoplasmic crowd support the reaper man, quel surprise!!!

not sure why but Erin brought home a tape of Phantom of the Opera, and he watched it last night. I didn't intend to watch but got sucked in. I think Erin wanted the musical, at any rate, he didn't mean to watch the silent version. which, in a better world, would be b&w, not colourized. yet it was intriguing, me talking. it starred Lon Chaney, pere. I have a feeling that Lon Chaney jr was only a junior in the sense of playing on name rep, that his 1st name was probably Carlton or Clell or whatever. I also get the feeling that Jr wasn't a fully willing Hollywood entity, that dad's occupation kinda became his in that relentless family business way. thus Junior as Larry Talbot/Wolfman, tragic. anyhoo, I'd seen the Herbert Lom version of P of the O years ago (Lon, Lom, hmmm...), which was pretty good in a crisp 60s way. I heard somewhere, can't give reference, that Lon Chaney was pretty intense about his makeup, that he, for intense, used fish hooks to make his face look as it did in Phantom. owie! I believe, as well, that he did something drastic to twist his body for Quasimodo. I do not know why I retain such info (if it is info): I'm not that cinematically tuned. the Phantom is downright crazy in this film, rather than a bit toasted as he seems in the Lom vehicle. the movie was not all that cinematic, yet this staginess gave an otherworldliness to the proceedings. and there were some lovely, theatrical tableaux involved. the acting was of a grand dimension, full of extended gestures and statuary poses, you know, back of the hand to the forehead while the other arm extends in fainting weakness. both Christine and her noble salty dog managed that one several times each. Phantom was more like a mage or televangelist in his sweeping gestures. I wasn't paying full attention when the Phantom swam in the sewer, sneaking into the opera house, I think. steps out of the water wearing his cape, puts his hat on. kinda weird. you see the actors as loci for strange forces. they hadn't gotten the intimacy possible with movie cameras back then. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I wasn't following the plot at all, just looking up now and then to witness some inscrutable strangeness. at one point Christine's lover and a friend tried to raid the Phantom's lair. he catches on to their sneak attack and implements a sudden heating of the chamber where they are. no explanation how this heating works, or why he'd be so prepared. suddenly the room is deathly hot and our hopeful heroes are in extremis. they get the idea eventually to remove their waistcoats and ties--mon dieu!!!-- but even that wouldn't save them. suddenly, tho, they discover a trap door, and they escape into a tunnel or sewer. but further suddenly, the Phantom unleashes a flood and it looks like they're a goner. luckily, or tragically, Christine agrees to do whatever the Phantom says if he will save they. he proceeds to throw the carpet aside and open the trapdoor in that room, and there the sad victims are, this close to death's grim maw. well okay, that's about all I saw. I reiterate that the Phantom was quite the loony. to the degree, I mean, that he proves unsettling. I don't know what any of this has to do with Martin Heidegger. er, I really am reading Heidegger, on poetry. I am certain that the thingliness of Chaney somehow...er...

we might've headed east this evening, to Somerville, where the book party for the Wieners book Prophecies was held. I like the excitement of this, and Wieners being honoured. there's a part of me, however, that hesitates at the Wieners adulation. only in the sense that he is not 'our' only poet. the identification here with Wieners seems a little desperate, I sometimes think. I mean the need to have a Wieners as a Boston poet. it's part of what makes Boston so small. but I digress. we went west instead, to a party that would likely be Erin's and our last among the homeschool/Shakespeare crowd. it was rainy today, grey, but as we headed to the party, the sun started to find a way thru the clouds. this gave a captivating golden tinge to the sky, and electrified the autumnal colour of the trees. the wind was swift, driving clouds east. then we saw a rainbow. a very strongly coloured one, the spectral segments were clearly defined. and the arc was a full 180 degrees. on top of that, there was a 2nd one, paler but still vibrant. this was enough to get us to pull over. Erin, luckily, had his phone i. e. camera, and I hope the pictures he took come out okay. a compelling necessity exists in writers to describe. this can manifest as the crummy novelistic descriptions that occur in stories and poems, where adjectives are plastered on the thing in vividly pointless excess. I aint talking that kind of description. I mean the internal interplay of feeling and thing. a nod, serious nod to the thingness of the thing, if I may gingerly bring Heidegger to the fire [I meant to type to the fore but I like my accidental image]. description in an active and processual sense. be not afraid to picture the thing and bring it to mind with a colloquy of wondering words. the excitement of any poetry is the excitement of thingness. the dynamic visual experience and excitement of the rainbow is not fulfilled in the adjectival delineation that I wrote above. I hint at the experience. a poem is the experience. not of the rainbow or whatever thing, but of the language of thingness, or the thingness of language. today's rainbows would make a lot of people look, remark. they are a stirring phenomenon, hard to believe. any phenomenon is thus, but our blighted eyes refuse to stir, most times. this fabulous sight awakens a primordial need to wonder, feel awe. and there is a language that wants to accommodate that wonder...

Richard Lopez comments below on Signs. he's more knowledgeable about movies, more thougtfully prepared to discuss them. still, I have a keyboard and fingers, and an urge to process publicly. I don't really disagree with his view of the movie, except that I liked the thing a lot. saying that uncovers the limitations of my movie aesthetic. I almost never accept a movie's serious face value. I dislike the practiced resolutions of fiction in general and specific. I'm really taken by the interplay of the 4 main characters in Signs. the boy is mopey, the girl eccentric, the brother goofy, and all 3 are charming. the father, the minister who has lost his faith--Mel Gibson, that is (and it won't be easy to ignore Mel the anti-semitic drunk, just as I'll never watch Seinfeld again without thinking of Kramer drowning in flop sweat)--maintains a dry humour, especially with his kids. Shyamalian plays them together superbly. I'll go to the mat on that point. at several places the plot seems rushed, which it probably is. Shyamalian spent quite a bit of time letting the family develope before our eyes, thus he had to shorthand the story. I'll accept that. I find the implicative rush of plot the downfall of movies and novels. the pale, frail imitation of life that plot entails so often distracts from the characters and the words they speak. and the gravy train lessons that one must take from the plot's purposeful striding is often malarkey. when you watch a movie again, or reread a novel, you no longer have the surprise of plot to pull you. the way the characters present themselves, and how the narration stands on the structure: these are what attracts the imagination. so I'm fine with the holes in plot and the nervy necessity of a fine resolution in Signs. my interest is elsewhere.

mosaic

mosaic, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

sidewalk

sidewalk, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

poet in mud

poet in mud, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

saw the movie Signs last night. saw it before but I think on commercial tv, not that much if anything would have been cut. we bought the thing because we knew we liked it. the store offered Saw II for 5 bucks with a regular-priced purchase but I politely said no thanks. the movie begins with plenty of tension, tho it isn't readily explicable. 1st, there's something slightly exalted about the colour of the movie, a trifle surreal. 2nd, a note of desperation rings out without clear explanation. Mel Gibson wakes suddenly and rushes from bed. Joachim Phoenix does likewise and they rush out to find the children, who are yelling, and the dogs are barking. they find Gibson's children in the cornfield and the reason for the ruckus: a crop circle. okay, so it's about an alien invasion, part Independence Day, part War of the Worlds and part Childhood's End. M Night Shyamalian wrote and directed. there's a terrific rapport amongst the 4 leads. the children (one's a Culkin, the other was in Little Miss Sunshine) were sparkling, the boy glum and dour, the girl cutely eccentric. Gibson bears the dramatic weight. he plays a former minister who gave up the cloth when his wife was killed in a car accident. that's a bit heavy-handed but it works in context. and tho Gibson has to pull out the stops at times, the role is still played with lightness. Phoenix is hilarious as the supportive, slightly goofy younger brother. in real life he must be more than 20 years younger than Gibson. ominous signs become a real invasion, which we hear about only thru news reports that the family hears. at one point, the man who hit Gibson's wife (fell asleep at the wheel) meets with Gibson to apologize. Shaymalian himself plays the role. Gibson gets to emote big time and Shyamalian rather clumsily slips a key plot point in. his character says that he's going to the lake because it appears the aliens don't like water. he took this assumption from the fact that the crop circles weren't near water. a leap. his last line to Gibson is, don't open the door to my cupboard, I caught one of the aliens and put it in there. then he drove off. nice surprise line. Gibson tries to get a peek at the creature by using a large knife to reflect under the door. the alien grabs at him so Gibson wields the knife and slices off fingers. then the big scene in which the 4 hole up in the farmhouse, windows boarded, and await the aliens. so there's a nod to of the Living Dead. the aliens don't quite get into the basement where the family made their final stand. the boy, however, has an asthmatic attack, and his meds are upstairs. in the morning the news, rather too precipitously for my taste, reveals that the aliens left because water was found to be anathema to them. that's a little like War of the Worlds, but it also smacked of a director who looked at his watch. anyway, they go upstairs looking for the meds and, yow, an alien gets hold of the boy. we've already learned that they have poisonous breath. and we see that the alien is missing some digits: a vindictive alien!!! the boy gets a whiff of the poison, the alien drops him when the girl screams. Phoenix wields the baseball bat that he used to hit a ball 507' in the minors to battle the alien while Gibson tries to resuscitate his son. water gets on the alien and we can think of the wicked witch of the west. and guess what, asthma closed the boy's lungs to the poison. and Gibson returns to the cloth. the humour and the tension of the movie pair nicely. I think it is the onloy Shyamalian movie that I've seen but I'd watch more willingly.

below are a couple of shots I took at Fairyland Pond in Concord. it's a short distance from Walden, on the other side of rt 2. autumn is right about at its acme of colour and thrill. yestreen was possibly frosty and we'll be rolling now to the spareness of late fall here.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

noticed haply and happily that Alli Warren has a new e-chapbook from Duration Press called No Can Do. tho she certainly can, and does. I notice that she eschews punctuation somewhat, which gives a fluid reading, or maybe I mean a more wobbly, less entrenched, sense of syntax. her poetry asserts positions then undermines these positions with a booming albeit underlying political impression. doing so illustrates an essential quality of poetry, of the political impact of our language. this is superficially belied by her playfulness, which allows her work to dance in corners. I should shut up and just leave this post as a recommendation for you to download the pdf. find out for yourself, that is.

I've been pokily reading the wild piece by Ted Berrigan and Harris Schiff, a transcription of the 2 of them at a Yankees/Red Sox game, 1977. it's a hilarious performance, tho gruesome to think of these guys hyped on pills, which they pop thru out the game. I like it as a historical document, with names like Reggie Jackson, Yaz, Bernie Carbo, Billy Martin. I also have a similar piece done by Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman, a basketball game. in each, that New Yorkish sense of now, that must be transcribed. of course there is nothing more self-conscious than such performances, just like reality tv, so they must be read in that light. the drug use brings to mind some issues. we know the physical harm of that, but that's outside my concern. disordering the senses: there is a truth to that, I mean a functional one. one may discover, however, that that disordering becomes an attempt to repeat earlier experiences. that is, I think the trick works only for a while. at least, I think one should be wary of a mechanical method, in any sense, in the creation of work. there have been several times in my life when the very last thing I would do before sleep was to write. the idea being that my defenses might be down. one can seek out distractions, whether it be drugs or alcohol, or writing in busy circs, like on a bus. et cetera. whatever one does, one needs enough self-awareness to acknowledge the workings of the methodology. if you use writing procedures, you have to observe if they become rote. Whitman so often pronounced grandly, but sometimes it was just imitation of earlier work. when people rail against NY poetry or LANGUAGE, they probably (when the critic is being fair) detect a rote quality, that the writer isn't being surprised by the work. the Berrigan/Schiff thing consists of them in babbling improv, boozy shenanigans. The Sonnets sticks out in Berrigan's work, his only extended use of cut ups (so far as I know). I know he lifts from here and transposes there elsewhere, but only in The Sonnets did he take that as the route itself. which is a wisdom. the life and liveliness of his work depends, I think, on his own sense of surprise. Jonathan Mayhew speaks of "O'Hara's negotations [sic] between gregariousness and introspection", a nifty encapsulation. it's that negotiation (sic does not mean 'wake up, stupid', no matter how full of oneself the user of the term may feel) that keeps the poetry (and the poet) interested. O'Hara caught between sharing and self-revelation. which is where the low wattage NY stuff trails off, where the imbalance between gregariousness and introspection produces a stiff, self-conscious construct of 'ideas'. so, in sum, let's get rid of crappy NY School poetry, tip our hats to those who lift the surprise, and let's move on.

lazily, I point you to the bio notes for Daniel Bouchard and Cathy Hong Park, which informatively lists their publications. it's okay to buy poetry books, even mine.

Demolicious reading yesterday, featuring Daniel Bouchard as the local poet and Cathy Hong Park from Brooklyn. DB read 1st, thanking those who chose poetry over Red Sox playoff (and Patriots juggernaut). as he typically does, he read someone else's work 1st: After Apple Picking by Frost. I saw him read WCW once and it was terrifically powerful; he clearly connected with the work. seemed less so with Frost. the highlight was perhaps the 2nd poem he read, "Rackline" from his 1st book. which is (still) in a box around here somewhere. the poem twines memories of a friend's funeral, depiction of his job collecting trash on Cape Cod, and observance of local birds. Silliman has claimed that he feels close to Bouchard's poetics, which I can only guess means the notation of dry, unembellished detail. dry is the word, as Bouchard read without much inflection or speaking to the audience. a more recent and more pointedly political poem also rang well. he read extensively. Cathy Hong Park read from a single book and... here I should mench the work that Jack Kimball does at readings. he takes notes, he asks for copies of poems read and otherwise performs a solid reportage effort. Jack being absent, I can only offer that which sticks in my brain 15 hours later. Hong said that in some mention of her, she was referred to as a South Korean dissident. I guess dissident just naturally attaches to South Korean. anyway, her book is a tour of an imaginary city. I just flashed on St John Perse and the kind of evocation he produced. Hong Park didn't use description so much as soliloquy to render this city, but still, there's a similar homage to the imagination. in style the work recalled Stacy Doris for me. a dashing, lively chatter of voices. her language, that of her characters, was a transformation of English, or pidgin, tho she never used that word. familiar phrases were shifted or punned upon, in a swelter of hilarity and speed. she read extremely well, channeling easily. it was a good reading, and the after-reading as always was fun. next month Tom Beckett and Chris Tonelli, to which I look forward.