C.J. Martin's Blog, page 43
February 23, 2014
mblek:
Craig Jensen, one of the world’s greatest living...
Craig Jensen, one of the world’s greatest living bookmakers.
And a cameo by Bennie—one of the best shop dogs around! Craig taught me everything I know about binding. Glad to see this tribute.
February 21, 2014
Just in time for AWP! Stop by our tables (K19 & K20) and get...
Just in time for AWP! Stop by our tables (K19 & K20) and get a copy of FOBW’s newest: Sarah Campbell’s WE USED TO BE GENERALS. And come out for the SPD Presents event on 2/27 to hear Campbell and Paul Klinger read from their FOBW titles.
February 19, 2014
compline:
If you happen to be in Seattle for AWP this year,...
If you happen to be in Seattle for AWP this year, maybe we’ll have a chance to see each other? This is my first (and probably last!) time attending, so I’m trying to get a lifetime of AWP activities into a single weekend (which is the M.O., I guess!):
• I’m giving a talk on the work of Leslie Scalapino for a tribute panel including contributions from Alicia Cohen, Carla Harryman, Judith Goldman, and Maryrose Larkin, probably on Leslie’s use of the image and her interest in hand-drawn African movie posters. The event takes place on Thursday, Feb. 27 from 3-4 pm in Room 606 of the Washington State Convention Center.
• Compline will “table” at the book fair with some of our favorite presses: Kyle Schlesinger’s Cuneiform, Julia Drescher and C.J. Martin’s Further Other Book Works, and Dawn Pendergast’s LRL Textile Series. We’re located at K19 + K20 if you’re wandering around. I’ll probably give away goodies for folks who stop by and show some love, along with (maybe)some new postcards for your refrigerator!
• Finally, I’m participating in a pretty great off-site reading (one of, like, a million!) sponsored by our friends at Small Press Distribution. Anna Moschovakis, Alan Bernheimer, John Sakkis, Jen Hofer, Ji Yoon Lee and Brent Cunningham will share recent translations during the first hour, and a roster of readers from Compline, Cuneiform, FOBW, and the Textile Series will hold it down during the second. Scheduled readers include Charles Alexander, Sarah Campbell, myself, Julia Drescher, Paul Klinger, C.J. Martin, and Eleni Stecopoulos. The event takes place on Thursday, Feb. 27 from 4-6 pm in the “Makani Room” at the Seattle Hilton (1301 6th Ave.). I know there’s tons to do (like 4 distinct off-site readings every hour) and the icky promotional machinery / smarminess of the conference makes me a bit nauseous, but this one should be super low-key: friends reading poems to friends. We hope you’ll stop by and be our friend!
February 16, 2014
NO NAMES, by Thom Donovan
—with Arnold Kemp,
[after Julie Ault’s Macho Man, Tell It To My Heart]
The winter sun making
All the books yellow, pale
Lit up in praise of just
How they look seeing their
Spines, reading them, is like
Having them, like I am
Having you, no names only
The way things are, how they
Sit there in a different sun
Light is all I see
We are all wall, who
Among the makers do you
Mourn, who you have known,
How could I miss those
Two light bulbs, Arnold points
Them out, why don’t people
Hang bags of marbles
On walls like that more often
Mystical like all object-hood
Holds us in a kind of sorcery,
You explain how glass makes
The rich black of the original
Photograph more bluish and
I swear whoever collected
All these things is a Taurus
Maybe a Scorpio, Julie Ault rolling
Into Portland and after having
Dinner at a local bar claims she
Will come there every
Night for the rest of her visit,
Everything beautiful comes
About through habit, friendship,
And the grace we cultivate
In ritual, and daily awareness
When memory no longer
Pains us, when we arrange
The things we have loved
Only then do the dead
Dwell in us, the walls enclose
This feeling so there can be love—
O, to recognize things
Without their names, to
Recall a flux
We were born into.
February 13, 2014
Clemente's Images by Robert Creeley
1)
Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me
inside this black room,
back of the white moon.
In the dark night
sight frightens me.
2)
Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?
Who, perched on the skin,
body’s float, is holding on?
What other one stares still,
plays still,…
February 11, 2014
Julia says I’m a warlock, because I wrote Shirley Temple...
Julia says I’m a warlock, because I wrote Shirley Temple into a poem a couple of days ago and then she died. My grandmother, who died last May in the tornado, looked so much like the child star that her mother used to dress her up like ST to play it up. (I’m sure lots of kids got that treatment.) My grandmother thought the same of her youngest daughter, so did the same, but by then it was a little anachronistic, which I kind of love.
publicartfund:
via The Andy Warhol Museum:
"Shirley Temple...
"Shirley Temple Black, iconic former child star died this morning. This autographed photo of her was in Warhol’s childhood scrapbook along with other photos he collected - indications of his early interest in celebrity and fame. Read more about the photo here.”
Jay DeFeo (1929 - 1989 ), Female Beat Artist, San Francisco,...
Jay DeFeo (1929 - 1989 ), Female Beat Artist, San Francisco, 1950s
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