In Place of Placing

Hotel 71, Room 2812, Chicago, Illinois

I am in Chicago for the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists. This year is the 75th anniversary of the association, so the celebrations are a little more enhanced than in the past. Still, I will be missing the giant all-attendees reception tonight because I'll be giving a poetry performance ("reading" doesn't seem to be the right term for what I do) with Steve Roggenbuck as part of the Red Rover reading series. Our joint performances will constitute Red Rover Experiment # 49: Full-Body Poetics, and I'll try to live up to that title even though I'll be working with a back I twisted out of whack by gently rotating my torso while in the opening plenary session yesterday morning.

A hurricane by the name of Irene is moving in a continuing gyre up the east coast at the moment, one of apparently some significance, though my connection to current events has been diminished since my arrival in Chicago. I have been meeting with poets, archivists, and college friends (with more to come), and I've been talking too much, performing with my voice (which seems at least part of the charge of the poet), and proving the extent of the inappropriateness of my near-constant humor.

Although my airlines will allow me to change my flight for free to avoid the onslaught of Irene, and even though the hurricane seems intent on affecting Albany, New York, which is my eventual destination, Albany is not on their list, so I will be staying in Chicago until my flight takes off at around 7:00 pm on Sunday evening, if it leaves at all.

While I've been in Chicago (though, truthfully, even before that), I've not posted to this site because my busyness and late nights have kept me from finding the time for even a few words. But I slept in this morning to prepare myself for the reading tonight, so I've taking some time to write these words.
Also, I have a little digital poem to point people to. It uses lines from my long poem in continuing progress, One Million Footnotes, as well as the work of many other people.

Entitled "Notes Noir," its credits are as follows: concept and roadwork by runran, visualization and code by crissxross, based loosely on animations by babel, photograph of Ailsa Dyson by Gordie Agar (Winnipeg), texts adapted from One Million Footnotes by poet Geof Huth, and music loop from "Palais de Glace" by media artist Talan Memmott. It's a beautiful haunting little accumulation of esthetic inputs, and my text even adds to, rather than detracts from, the whole. It's worth at least a couple of minutes of contemplation. It even requires it of the reader/listener/viewer. 

ecr. l'inf.