Rodney Koeneke's Blog, page 15

Mayday

Loggernaut Is Five

Portland's Loggernaut Reading Series pivots on its first five years and turns to face its next with a group reading tomorrow, May 1. Congrats to Jesse Lichtenstein & Erin Ergenbright for keeping the log rolling that long.

SATURDAY, MAY 1
Loggernaut 5th Anniversary Party w/ readings by:
RODNEY KOENEKE, CHELSEY JOHNSON, BARRY SANDERS & MARY SZYBIST
7:30 PM, Urban Grind, 2214 NE Oregon St.
Portland, OR

Antidote For Janacek

"Dear Hubble,

Your telescope has been very, very successful. It has taken a lot of stunning pictures of space. Your telescope has been right in my heart. I love the way it's shaped. I love the way it's built. And, especially, I love how long it can transport pictures. Your telescope means a lot to me. I'm sure it took many years to build it, and it is very precious to you, and to me."

Dept. of Monday (Janacek Blogger Edit)

"We're like little carp in stagnant water. This stagnant water, this is just our correspondence. But one day we'll thrash so much in that water that it will froth up and we'll fling ourselves over the dam wall!"

—Leos Janacek to Kamila Stosslova, 13 November 1927 (trans. John Tyrrell)

Current Mood:

...Glagolitic.

David Young's Petrarch

Poets like Petrarch, who lived in times that savored technical virtuosity and skill at fulfilling strict formal rules more highly than our own does, can suffer badly in modern translations. They're often either brought over into contemporary blank verse, or straitjacketed into meters and rhyme schemes that are dead to modern ears.

David Young's translations of the Canzoniere —all 366 of 'em—are remarkable for the way they succeed at combing Petrarch's medieval Italian into direct demotic E...

Arnold J. Kemp & David Buuck in Portland, 5/10/10

I'm feeling a little like Nada's feeling about reportage these days; that if you don't say something, however inadequate, time's U-pipe gets the better of our fleeting ululations. I've fallen out of the habit of writing down lines at readings, so no anchor to my impression that the Kemp/Buuck reading for Tangent on Saturday was one of the best in recent memory. Kemp's delivery was as disarming as the poems, which were "about" friendship and affection and "double...

R (Romeo)

Laura Elrick and Rodrigo Toscano join the growing pageant of contributors to the online Previews & Supplements feature of the Kenning Poets Theater anthology with an interview about performing Hannah Weiner's "Romeo and Juliet."

Buuck in Portland

Oakland's own David Buuck reads for Tangent this Saturday with a pair of Portland area professors: Arnold J. Kemp, a former San Franciscan who arrived in July to helm the MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art, and Jennifer Hardacker (winningly rendered by a local weekly as "Hardpacker"), who teaches Media Arts at Pacific University Oregon. Click here for more.

For Those About to Pop

Introducing Bodega Pop (brought to you by the makers of Elsewhere).