Thursday, April 29, 2010

Wax Wroth Reading and Music Series, #2

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--SPREAD FAR AND WIDE

What:
The Wax Wroth Reading and Music Series, #2:
RALEIGH INVADES DURHAM Edition

Who:
poetry by Chris Salerno, Chris Tonelli, Jon Leon, Joe Fletcher
electro-acoustic music by Brian and Ashley
organized by Brian Howe (brian.g.howe@gmail.com)

When:
Sunday, May 9, 8. p.m.

Where:
715 Washington in Durham (just off the intersection of Washington and Trinity, very close to the old baseball field)

Why:
All four of these rad Raleigh-based poets have new books coming out, and the Chrises are launching their book tour. It’s the second installment of my new reading series, the first of which featured Heather Christle, Joe Donahue, and Josh Moore. It’ll be fun. Nobody is going to read for a drainingly long time. I’ll provide some booze which will vanish almost immediately, so please bring some. Ashley and I will perform a brief musical piece to wind down the night. Contact me for directions or more info. Support local art in a non-commercial  environment. Make merry. Bring yr mom.

Bios:

CHRIS SALERNO is the author of Whirligig, and a new book, Minimum Heroic, selected by Dara Wier for the 2009 Mississippi Review Poetry Award. His poems can be found in journals such as: Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Jubilat, American Letters and Commentary, Black Warrior Review, Octopus, and elsewhere. He is co-curator of Raleigh’s So and So Series, and co-editor of So and So Magazine. Currently, he teaches Writing at North Carolina State University. He occasionally blogs at http://christophersalerno.blogspot.com/

CHRIS TONELLI founded and co-curates the So and So Series and co-edits  the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming). His first full-length collection is The Trees Around (Birds, LLC), and new work can be found in upcoming issues of The Laurel Review and Fou. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their son Miles.

JON LEON is an American poet and vignettist, the author of, most recently, The Hot Tub (mal-o-mar editions, 2009), Hit Wave (Kitchen Press, 2008), and Alexandra (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008). Additionally, he has released a voluminous set of limited-run artists editions, including: Tract (Dusie Press Kollectiv, 2006), Right Now the Music and the Life Rule (Hathaway, 2006), Drain You (High Street Originals, 2009), Mankind  (Foreign Court Artists Editions, 2009), Kasmir (High Street Books Los Angeles, 2010), and finally The Painting Show (Legacy Pictures, 2010). In 2008, La Camera Verde in Conjunction with The Felix Series in Rome brought out a bilingual edition of his Diphasic Rumors. From 2005-2006 he edited and published the short-run poetry magazine Wherever We Put Our Hats, publishing excerpts from the most lauded poetry books of that year. His poetry and criticism have appeared widely in periodicals such as Fence, The New Review of Literature, Soft Targets, Octopus, LIT, Vanitas, and Art in America.

JOE FLETCHER's chapbook, Sleigh Ride, was published by Factory Hollow Press. Other work can be found in Jubilat, Octopus, Slope, Poetry International, Hoboeye, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.

Organizer BRIAN HOWE is a Durham-based poet, journalist, performer, and multimedia artist. His arts and entertainment journalism appears regularly in Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, The Independent Weekly, and The Fanzine. He is the author of three chapbooks, and his poems and sound art have appeared in many print and online journals. His video work (with Ashley Howe) has screened at various festivals and showcases, like the Asheville Fringe Festival and the Minor American series. He maintains his multimedia project Glossolalia at http://glossolalia-blacksail.blogspot.com/, and blogs at http://waxwroth.blogspot.com/




Monday, April 26, 2010

On Joanna Newsom

If you're in the mood to read something long and fraught about Joanna Newsom's long, fraught album, Have One on Me, you're in luck: My article for TheFanzine.com went up today.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

So and So #38

A couple friends of mine are reading in the So and So series in Raleigh on Saturday night--a fun series!

Details:

Michael Carr * Guillermo Parra * Ken Rumble

Saturday * April 24th * 8pm * Morning Times * 10 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC


Michael Carr is the author of the Out Another, Softer White, and Platinum Blonde. Necco Face, a chapbook co-written with Jess Mynes and Aaron Tieger, came out from Editions Louis Wain last year, and a collaborative chapbook with Micah Ballard called Poems from the New Winter Palace is forthcoming from House Press this summer. He lives in Cambridge, MA.
 
Poet and translator Guillermo Parra is the author of Caracas Notebook (Cy Gist Press, 2006) and Phantasmal Repeats (Petrichord Books, 2009). His poems, essays and translations have been published in 6x6, The Can, Fascicle, Effing, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He lives in Durham, NC where he writes the blog Venepoetics and is translating the poetry of Juan Sánchez Peláez and José Antonio Ramos Sucre into English.

Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press, 2007) and an installation artist and musician based in Durham, North Carolina. 

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Coming soon: Raleigh invades Durham

Please save the date of Sunday, May 9, for the second installment of the Wax Wroth poetry and music series. (The first installment featured Heather Christle, Joseph Donahue, and Josh Moore.) The theme of this reading is "Raleigh invades Durham," as it features four Raleigh-based poets: Chris Salerno, Chris Tonelli, Jon Leon, and Joe Fletcher. A special musical guest will be announced soon. The reading begins at 8 p.m., at 715 Washington in Durham, a space familiar to those of you who've attended installations by Ken Rumble and Megan Stein or the Minor/American reading series. Please watch this space for more details, and plan to come help the Chrises celebrate the start of their reading tour!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Virginia Woolf is still contemporary

Woolf's mandate for contemporary criticism (in 1925):

As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgment upon the books of the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and fade, and make the wearers, in six months' time, look a little ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic--whether Byron married his sister--and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth from the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their memory that gaunt aristocrat, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way for masterpieces to come.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

April Fools

Brian and Ashley's April Fools Day trick at the most recent installment of the 919 Noise Showcase. Sneaky tidbits!



Sha la la la la la la.