Two great poetry readings occurred in April where the crush of business prevented my immediate commentation. On the 29th flarf meisters Kasey Mohammad and Rodney Koeneke plus Lindsey Boldt held forth at Calif Arts & Crafts in Oakland. K.C. and Rodney Koeneke are two very bright guys, and I can't think of either without remembering Roland Barthes' assertion that a text that aspires to the proper goal of literature and criticism makes the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text.
There's a good Wiki entitled "flarf" which mentions both poets. I blogged an unserious flarf experiment of my own here.
On April 27th Rich Tagett read from his new collection of poems entitled Demodulating Angel, published by Ithuriel's Spear. The launch was held at Modern Times bookstore on Valencia, possibly the last such event before the closing of the store and its removal elsewhere. For us this was indeed the end of an era, as I think we've now done a half-dozen book openings at Modern Times.
Rich's delivery was superb as always, and I had the great pleasure of introducing him. We've known each other since 1969 when we were both, along with Paul Mariah, starting up as small press publishers. I was also delighted to discover no less than six Ithurielite authors attending the reading.
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| Rich Tagett |
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| Moi with Rich |
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| Rich with Lew Ellingham . |
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