Discrete Reading and Performance Series

2004-07-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Discrete is on hiatus for the month of July. Please join us for our next event, August 13, when we feature poets John Beer, Bill Allegrezza and Garin Cycholl.

2004-06-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

Mark Tardi is from Chicago, Illinois. His first book, Euclid Shudders, was a finalist for the 2002 National Poetry Series. A chapbook on Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin called Part First-------Chopin's Feet is forthcoming from G-O-N-G. Currently he is completing a new manuscript, as well as an adaptation of Stefan Themerson's story "Wooff Wooff or Who Killed Richard Wagner?" for the stage. He has also served as an editor at Dalkey Archive Press. Recent work can be found in Antennae, Aufgabe, Bird Dog, Conundrum, and Travers

2004-06-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Brenda Iijima's book AROUND SEA was published this year by O BOOKS. An essay titled COLOR AND ITS ANTECEDENTS, published as a chapbook was also released this year by Yen Agat Books. She is the editor of PORTABLE PRESS AT YO-YO LABS. As well Iijima is a painter and a photographer. She grew up on the highest mountain in Massachusetts, in the town of North Adams. Since the 90's she has lived in Brooklyn, New York.

The following poem is from the manuscript EARLY LINOLEUM forthcoming from Furniture Press.

RAPACIOUSNESS

Flounder flat
Bogus style
On these racks of totalitarian barbarity
Dacnomanian mania: earth dweller versus
Earth dweller between dips in surrounding rock strata
Igneous arrangements, loaded extemporaneousness
Gilded swans kimball in dives, ball up into verb
Butterfly as psyche can’t be quelled
Midden of myth and a harkening transmutation
Dark funereal beauty underscores this prophecy
In our garden’s ravens and ravenous fires. Ruse’s epic
Reflection scorched in Hiroshima, Castor and Pollux mock-up
Righteous patron saints vertiginous as interlocutors
Mystic borderland metal. Tint of torpor, wisteria, cosmic purple aura
Lost pink gentleness to white vice or excess yellow
Light brown practical mind
In fore a diorama discrete, built to live in the midst
Ideograms resembling secrets
Retrieving rosebuds for the drusy eye
Darkle a sarcoline scene
Corruption of generous moves
Racy subatomic particles collide steadily
Into non-existence
Like Tang, like hoedown
To die this way is
Softened into camp, a blue notebook of doves
Deepest regions of death
Life possesses me
Undulating hazard between chance

2004-06-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Friday June 11: poets Mark Tardi & Brenda Iijima and performance by composer Keumok Ho.

2004-05-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Judd Morrissey is a writer and programmer whose work in electronic literature has been widely and internationally received and exhibited. With his hypertext, The Jew's Daughter, he introduced his unique form of digital narrative, an unstable, self-evolving, virtual page that continuously re-writes itself in response to the reader. My Name is Captain, Captain., a digital 'night-flight' poem created in collaboration with Lori Talley, was published by Eastgate Systems in 2002. Judd is now concentrating on a new work in progress, The Error Engine, an experiment in writing and artificial intelligence that reflects his ongoing concerns with the relationship of literature and accident and the nature and future of the book. He teaches in the Art and Technology Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

from The Error Engine

A reading from The Error Engine, a system designed to create performances in language that are authored collaboratively by humans and machines. It is an attempt to write the book that writes itself, that becomes the continuous movement towards its own completion, a solution to the system of itself. A collaboration with Lori Talley and Lutz Hamel, the work takes the visual form of a digital page that undergoes fluid transformations, weaving and re-weaving itself together in response to the interactions of the reader.

Following the reading, visitors may communicate with the work by sending text messages from their cell phones. The messages will be interpreted by the engine as constraints for the evolution of the narrative.

2004-04-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins studied composition with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, worked for many years with David Tudor, and has collaborated with numerous soloist and ensembles around the world. He lived most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. Since 1997 he has been editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. He is currently Chair of the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent recordings are available on PlateLunch, Periplum and Apestaartje.

Nicolas Collins
The Talking Cure
Chicago duo version, May 2004

For many years I’ve been using spoken texts in my music. The voice lends its own sonic qualities, and triggers or controls other sounds (usually electronic, often via computer mediation) to generate extensions and elaborations of the melody and rhythm of natural speech. Narrative content provides form and direction: the hypnotic, often soporific seduction of a good story became central to both life and music while I was raising my small children through the 1990s.

I scavenged and collaged found texts from a wide range of authors – neurologists, poets, mystery writers, historians – and penned a few myself, or in collaboration with my author-wife Susan Tallman. Until recently, however, the words were always fixed before I went on stage. The rest of my performance activities incorporate a fair degree of ad hoc decision making and improvisation, so a few years ago I decided to develop a musical strategy for “improvised talking.”

In “The Talking Cure” a computer follows the inflection and phoneme content of the voice and generates a piano accompaniment that, to my ear, sounds like Charles Ives working a cocktail lounge. The computer also records certain specific speech sounds, which can be played back later to overlay a vaguely instrumental solo line, inspired by the extraordinary trumpet style of Axel Dörner. Sometimes I begin the performance with a family letter or a newspaper article in hand as a conceptual point of departure; other times I prepare nothing. I hold forth for 15-25 minutes and the computer does the rest, making music off my cuff.

The title derives from an early euphemism for Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud advised the patient to “utter without obstruction the thoughts and ideas rising to his mind,” which is pretty much the advice I follow on stage.

For this performance I will be joined by Jonathan Chen in the triple role of fellow patient, analyst and violinist.

*********************************************************************************
Friday May 14, 9pm: Discrete Series features Nic Collins & Judd Morrissey.
*********************************************************************************

2004-04-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

John Tipton had an itinerant childhood in Indiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Illinois. After a three-year stint in the U.S. Army, he attended the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill where he earned an AB in philosophy. He currently lives in Chicago and curates the Chicago Poetry Project, a series of readings at the Chicago Public Library. Tipton is the author of Surfaces, just out from Flood Editions.

"pictures of snow"

pictures of snow
lapse at spots
to unhide ink

snow no darker
than the sky
grays a raven

bird calls banks
stirs fixed point
drifts into trees

will weigh slender
the raw chink
the rooted frame

the snow's joints
number the unique
ways to fall

or still branch
or dead leaves
or some rust

raven give us
what falls orthogonal
what aligns vision

photos of ravens
have a gloss
of their own

2004-03-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

Kent Johnson has edited Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada (Roof, 1998), as well as Also, with My Throat, I Shall Swallow Ten Thousand Swords: Araki Yasusada's Letters in English, forthcoming from Combo Books. He has also translated (with Alexandra Papaditsas) The Miseries of Poetry: Traductions from the Greek (Skanky Possum, 2003) and (with Forrest Gander) Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz (California UP, 2002), which was a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation selection. He was named Faculty Person of the Year for 2003 at Highland Community College, in Freeport, Illinois, where he teaches English Composition and Spanish.

2004-03-29T11:29:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who made our Discrete megaweekend a success: Stefan Grace, Jeff Weeter, Jen Karmin, the readers, Jesse for his mc'ing partnership, and Kim Hayes and Margaret Sloan for their post-reading hospitality.

Next reading is Friday April 9th:
John Tipton (celebrating the release of his book "Surfaces" just out from Flood Editions)
& Kent Johnson

Event starts at 9 p.m.

2004-03-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

Poet, translator & essayist Pierre Joris left Luxembourg at age 19 & has since lived in the U.S., Great Britain, North Africa, and France. Rain Taxi praised his most recent collection, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, for "its physical, philosophical delight in words and their reverberations." Just out from Wesleyan U.P. is his collection of essays A Nomad Poetics. His recent translations include 4x1: Work by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour and Abdelwahab Meddeb's The Malady of Islam. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthology Poems for the Millennium. In spring 2004 Green Integer will reissue three volumes of his translations of Paul Celan: Breathturn, Threadsuns and Lightduress. He often performs his work in collaboration with vocalist & visual artist Nicole Peyrafitte ( www.nicolepeyrafitte.com ), most recently touring their multimedia show SumericaBachbones throughout Europe & the US. He currently teaches poetry and poetics at SUNY-Albany. During the fall of 2003 he was Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Visit Pierre Joris's website at www.albany.edu/~joris/.

Here now two recent poems:

POEM UPON RETURNING TO THESE STATES AFTER A 6-MONTHS ABSENCE

yes, this is the Titanic
yes, these are icebergs,
no, it is pointless to ask for a
better cabin or to switch
to a stateroom

* * *

This afternoon Dante
will be ex-
pelled from Florence —
a good thing as how could he
have written so well
on the far-away imaginary ex-
ile of the comically divine
realms had he not known
what it meant to walk
over a cold January day’s
ground frost, clod-
breaking, heart beating,
from one city to another
— to come to
this: that exile
is but the next step you take
the unknown there
where your foot comes
down
next, in
heaven or on earth
exile is when you can still
lift a foot
exile is when you are not
yet dead.

2004-03-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

Jen Hofer edited and translated Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women (University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003). Her recent books of poetry include the chapbook lawless (Seeing Eye Books, 2003), slide rule (subpress, 2002), and The 3:15 Experiment (with Lee Ann Brown, Danika Dinsmore, and Bernadette Mayer, The Owl Press, 2001). She is co-editor, with Rod Smith, of Aerial #10, a forthcoming critical volume on the work of the poet Lyn Hejinian. Her writings against the war in Iraq and the war on terror can be found in the special anti-war issue of A.BACUS, and in the anthology Enough (O Books, 2003); other poems, prose texts and translations appear in recent issues of 26, Aufgabe, Circumference, Conundrum, kenning, kiosk, NO: A Magazine of the Arts, and in the book Surface Tension: The Problematics of Site (Errant Bodies Press, 2003). She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches and translates.

(a poem from the book-length sequence one)

less then more then less again then (then again) none
not one (the absence of (necessary) silence)

“Looking out of the window of a hotel (at the bombing
of Baghdad) is like looking through a soda straw.”
— Doug Erlenbosch

“How do you experience something you’re not experiencing?”
— Scott Pound

crashing upon the shore nothing is (nothing)
is too coordinated (complex) complex of
designed to prevent congregation overly
to shush demurely resolutely unnoticed
we will continue until there is no need

necessarily alone participatory transit
the self looks out from (the self) and is
known public (a red line in outline) built
too late as what was being before is not known
exactly (so as) so as through a participatory
process to console (beauty crabapples nicely
not largely) we had made plans but so what

to be being is birdsong
in the blue blue of having been

having is wrinkled, pocked against the marked canvas (the marketed power)
folds in the former floor shush refusal (what is not heard) all terrain excess
convoy rebuttal obeys no drafted cartography in a rising wind or bounty
(not acknowledged) plainly a case of terrifically bad luck (clearcut) fledgling
those glints aren’t birds they’re answers that never asked like the green green
grass grinning thirstily sweet grown thinner with no effort if it can be said
that lack is not effort or exceptions obey brittle memoranda escalating
in the realm of the predictable register sight (preparation for preparation) measured
actions (sights) thousands and thousands the familiar smell the unrecognizable view
(thousands and thousands) someone made this bed, now lie in it

at some not prescribed point all of us
having been and not being and not being birds
also not sudden nonetheless breathless airborne
or never the more breathing in the grounded precision
of activity which (buried) bears no resemblance to bombing
which bears no resemblance to freedom which is a conglomerate (word)
and bears no resemblance and resemblance endures beyond understanding
which (wordless) is many migratory words (scarcely) (resourceful) and which like archeology bears no end of exploration

the threads of not listening wrap diligently
the having changed by the being changed
or spool in looks unwelcome easily explained
if not so easily avoided outrage
falls livid on the man-made prepared surface
which otherwise would be inaccessible, very quiet

mostly we export products and feelings
products being trends, bents or belligerence
or being unable to accept the being otherwise
engaged and so less likely to appreciate that many
birds happen in filaments or slices against a gradual
forming the alternate daybreak tilted and mercurial
but who’s counting faltering faulting in grid-like
formation canisters at the ready or gridlock
on purpose so as to be hemmed in

mostly a demise in manners as designated patterns
organically lift toward an outer limit not defined in
sights peripherally trained fields empty tirades empty

as there is no stated location
we are everywhere or we are nowhere
as there is no stated location

that obsessive thought (sky) (sparrow) (winding streets) (a plan)
like a crow like a door (not a call to arms) a cement block
not unlike servitude in a long pink dress tethered
there are ways not to forget
aids colors places homes
withers every night on the vine
and every day reconstitutes (at attention)
constituent parts in vehicles no destination
in the absence of color a tangible
color a loud noise
a loud unpleasant noise

if a wall is a river
a bit of interference
flowing past the checkpoint
makes the image accurate
made by the maker of rivers
if a wall can be beautiful
why is it not made beautiful

2004-03-04T06:17:00.000-08:00

Dan Machlin is the author of "This Side Facing You" (Heart Hammer), "In Rem" (@ Press), "Sevenths" (Oasia Pamphlet Series) and a recent limited edition broadside from The Center for Book Arts. He has also
collaborated with singer/composer Serena Jost on a full length Audio CD "Above Islands" (Immanent Audio) and set several poems by the poet HD to music. He is a current curator at The Segue Series at Bowery Poetry Club in New York and is Founder and Editor of Futurepoem Books, a Brooklyn-based publishing collaborative.

(from "White Buildings Mix")
TRAIL MIX / HOME-DYED UNIFORMS

It was pitch black
and clap so loud the

sea unbuttoned
as those making wind

a frame coughed--also
blocked a man of breaks

--tell me
is this, Primo, a man?

this hollow chest
a man whose almost is himself

a cabinet of curiosities
a man of bones, a lonely

cloister of noh-masculinity
a living skeleton

an insignificant self--
I’m just lucky

I survived I think--
So all cells are superfluous

this bent up will
the will of flowers

Don’t want to think of "it"
just give me money

paper scissors

2004-03-02T17:05:00.000-08:00

Chuck Stebelton's work has appeared or is soon to appear in Antennae, Bridge, Can we have our ball back?, Conundrum, Near South, Pom2, and Shampoo. He organizes the weekly poetry series at Myopic Books in Chicago.

The following poem is forthcoming in the next issue of Antennae.

YPSO BYSMAL

Backward prancing Thoth off a cliff

The utopian relieved over solo & ensemble

No trees cherry blossoming alone

ritual indecency on a flip diagnosis

That in everyone's heart there is a slumbering

squirrel. There a cold, ferocious lurks

Giants your size are sexy

Garden plants like automatic writing

Music will cradle some into talking

Chronic become in time as paraquat

A quick shot of silver still

recently wooded, still convivial bay

2004-03-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

Chris Stroffolino is the author of 3 full-length books of poetry, including Speculative Primitive (Tougher Disguises, 2004 forthcoming), Stealer's Wheel (1999, Hard Press), and Oops (1994, Pavement Saw) as well as four chapbooks, Scratch Vocals (Potato Clock, 2003), Light as a Fetter (Situations, 1997) and Cusps (Aerial/Edge,1995) and Incidents (Vendetta, 1991). His collection of essays on mostly contemporary poetry, Spin Cycle, was published in 2001 and he also co-edited with Dave Rosenthal an edition of Shakespeare's 12th Night. He currently lives in Oakland or San Francisco and teaches English at St. Mary's College of California and is a member in good standing of the rock band Continuous Peasant (www.continuouspeasant.com), whose album, Exile in Babyville, was released in Fall of 2003. Other than that, he needs to catch up on some sleep and probably quit cigarettes (but he's kind of waiting for the non-smokers to give up their SUVS first).

The following poem was published in Conundrum issue 1:

from Fire Log Suite

1.

If you get a shark on its back I hear it's very mellow

And that which lives within me
(whose strong persuasions
to stay inside and tend the fire
I heed despite the protestations
of sidewalks and feet
longing to gather more logs)
Is tyrant today

Not so much that my slight
Writhings on the floor
Are source for any punishment
But discrepancy

So many logs
And no enough floor space.

The ribs pressed against the rug
Know the faster the fire
The more the room will be
Mellow and writhe

Even with the window wide
The battle burning
The tyrant kindling
They'll want to greet the cold
The first log catches

2004-03-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Cole Swensen's ninth collection of poetry, Goest, just came out from Alice James Books. Her work has been awarded a National Poetry Series selection, Sun & Moon's New American Writing Award, the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She also translates contemporary French fiction, art criticism, and poetry; recent books include Jean Frémon's The Island of the Dead and Olivier Cadiot's Future, Former, Fugitive. She teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

2004-03-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

Kaia Sand’s first book of poetry, Interval, was just published by Edge Books. She lives in Southern Maryland where she teaches at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her poetry currently can be found in Antennae, ecopoetics , www.dcpoetry.com, and d u s i e : www.dusie.org. A poetry collaboration with Jules Boykoff is in the latest issue of Lungfull! Magazine, and a recent conversation with Carol Mirakove appears in Banjo: www.banjopoets.blogspot.com. Jules and Kaia also edit the Tangent: http://www.thetangentpress.org/.
The following poem has appeared in the periodical Bivouac and can also be found in Kaia's book, Interval:

Obsolescence

let’s tell the V.P. to quit
his shell games

quit your shell games V.P.

but now is not the time to talk about this

we like our SUVs organic and
our shuteyes jammed with jingoism
our doldrums shaped like chevrons

but now is not the time to talk about our loudmouthed supply

our painted cake pie
in the sky

now is not not the time now is not the time

the V.P. saw pinwheel
when he heard windmill

this abundance a decimation
this unstoppable as we

this loudmouthed supply
yellowcake pie
in the sky

2004-03-01T05:51:00.000-08:00

Raymond L Bianchi
chicagopostmodernpoetrycalendar.blogspot.com/
collagepoetchicago.blogspot.com/

Walked over in Times Square

Touching her sleeping breasts they suddenly opened like sharp spikes of a
railroad bridge ripped in two. The trees filled with a silver light growing
with contaminants far from the river. A cluster of barbed wire riddled with
pieces of fur and flesh. The Artist died in 1916 in a ditch filled with
water and rot.

Lacerations colored her white raw nakedness . I won't repeat the things she
said to me smeared with sand and kisses I took her away from the river. I
behaved like what I am; a thick fingered faux man asking the wrong questions
at the wrong time in loud bleats like a pig being cut and dressed for the
first time.

A porous border sits between the colors that matter and the colors that don't .
Nothing here is profoundly American but a collection of nuts and bolts
and colors and old shoes that have no more use for us except to take up
space in the back seat of an old Chevy. Europe has assembled an American
place of extreme and dangerous sensuality.

They model are painted with big fleshy posteriors and large breasts. They
don't seem to fit into the stereotype of high-heeled nudes. Dancers and
circus acrobats; pensive girls who seem so aware of being looked at and are
used to the spotlight that they ignore any direction. The laid back bohemian
life is not possible since smoking is now illegal; thinking is regulated
and we are not allowed to wear black anymore. The twists and distortions of
life are a kind of energized mental jar bouncing and causing your brain to
slosh around and hit the sides of your skull.

2004-02-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

In March we celebrate Discrete's 1-year anniversary with marathon events on Friday 3/26 and Saturday 3/27 in conjunction with the Associated Writers Project's annual conference being held in Chicago.

*Please note that both events will start at 7 p.m.*

Friday 3/26: Paul Hoover / Maxine Chernoff / Chris Stroffolino / Chuck Stebelton / Kaia Sand

Saturday 3/27: Cole Swensen / Pierre Joris / Jen Hofer / Dan Machlin / Ray Bianchi

(check back here for samples of their work)

2004-02-23T19:28:00.000-08:00

Discrete Series in the news... we're thrilled for the attention, but please read on for a few clarifications.

The pulpit of poetry
Getting cultured--and wasted--at church

by Michael Workman

Crowds mill amongst the wooden church pews, the din of voices rising and falling with the excitement of the conversation. The pulpit has been converted into a stage, with tripod-mounted speakers on either side, backdropped by black curtains draped from metal rods. Everybody here's looking and listening, talking. Meeting new people. One scenester hoists a PBR "fan can," another a Heineken mini-keg. What does this congregation sing the praises of at this particular house of worship? Poetry, of course. Or jazz. Take your pick.

At this refurbished old Pentecostal church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, poets read their words and jazz musicians such as Ken Vandermark play the night away. It's an inviting setup, with BYOB encouraged. Even better, admission's free.

The space is run by Elastic Revolution Productions, a group formed by poets Kerri Sonnenberg and Jesse Seldess to provide "recording, rehearsal and performance space" for artists of any stripe. On the night in question, Seldess reads from a rhythmically repetitive group of works, with the crowd perceptibly swaying from alcohol and sleepiness. Dead silence fills the room. After him, Lewis Warsh, an associate professor at Long Island University in Brooklyn, takes the stage to read from his poetry collection "Touch of the Whip." If it's like this every night--and word is, the series never fails to satisfy--then it's a worthy gospel, indeed.

(2004-02-18)

Dear Mr. Workman:
We were interested to learn that the February 13th event at the 3030 space was the subject of your article "THE PULPIT OF POETRY Getting Cultured --And Wasted -- At Church" in last week's New City. There were, however, some significant inaccuracies in the article we feel are of great importance to
clarify to your readers. First, the 3030 space is run by the Elastic Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization with which Jesse Seldess and Kerri Sonnenberg are affiliated through presenting the Discrete Series - a monthly reading series. Seldess and Sonnenberg had no part in forming the
organization; Rather, the Discrete Series is part of EAF?s mission to build bridges with other area artists, and it began hosting the monthly Discrete events in the space one year ago. The Elastic Arts Foundation is a nine member collective of artists, informally working together since 1998, programming free public performances out of a refurbished Humboldt Park church, at 3030 W. Cortland. In addition to the Discrete Series, EAF produces an Improvised Music Series (where Ken Vandermark does often
perform); a series of Hip-Hop/Spoken Word performances; the Cucaracha Cabaret, which is a series devoted to presenting live puppetry and physical theatre/art pieces; and Elastro, an electroacoustic music series.

We value very highly the audiences who come to 3030 for their commitment to the experimental, hybrid or otherwise non-traditional creative work that is showcased there. It is a space that honors close
listening, where artists enjoy an engaged and attentive audience. While individuals may bring in their own refreshments, 3030's events are hardly the bacchanal the article suggests. We'd like to emphasize that no liquor is sold on the premises and that the environment portrayed in the article is counter to the actual mission of the organization: to provide performance opportunities for independent artists of all disciplines and media; to provide coordination, outreach, and creative leadership within the performing arts communities of Chicago; to facilitate collaboration among artists of diverse aesthetic, social, and cultural backgrounds, while presenting free performances to varied audiences; and, to foster interest and support for new and under-exposed artists and art forms, providing the public with unique aesthetic and cultural events in an alternative environment.

On a final note, there is always a suggested donation for 3030 events. The Discrete Series requests a $5 donation that supports the operational expenses of the space and supplies an honorarium to the readers, many of whom travel to Chicago from afar at their own expense.

We certainly appreciate your having chosen to publicly support the Discrete Series and EAF through your article in the New City. We hope, however, that our clarification of 3030's mission and intent will prompt you to pass such clarification onto your readers in the next New City. We would appreciate it. Further questions about the Elastic Arts Foundation can be directed to: Paul Giallorenzo, Elastic Arts Foundation, 3030 W. Cortland, Chicago IL, 60647. paul@elasticrevolution.com.

Best Regards,

THE ELASTIC ARTS FOUNDATION:
ALISON CHESLEY
STEVE GAEDE
PAUL GIALLORENZO
STEFAN GRACE
DAVIS KRIEG
SAM LEWIS
MARK ROCHON
DAN SCHWARZLOSE
LIENA VAYZMAN

THE ORGANIZERS OF THE DISCRETE SERIES:
KERRI SONNENBERG
JESSE SELDESS

2004-02-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Discrete blog. This is a space to sample the work of readers and performers featured in the monthly Humboldt Park series. If you enjoy what you read here, come over to the 3030 space at 3030 W. Cortland to hear poets and artists from Chicago and beyond present their work.

Events start at 9 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Suggested donation is $5. BYOB.

2004-02-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Jesse Seldess works in social services for the elderly, edits Antennae magazine, and co-curates the Discrete Series. Recent poems have appeared or are soon to appear in Crayon, Conundrum, Kiosk, Traverse, Kenning, and First Intensity, and a chapbook, Who Opens, was just printed by Milwaukee's Bronze Skull Press. He read for the series on February 13, 2004. The following poem will appear in the forthcoming issue of Conundrum.

PROMPT

Who you have continually overheard
Knotted up small movements
And mumbling to you hear
And hats
Which you wear really
As what you headed toward you
Saturate through in vision
Lifting up unvocalized to you hear in
The scene rips through
And overhead
And sew

2004-02-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

Bob Harrison moved to this country from Panama at the age of seven, at which point he first began learning English. After having lived in various places throughout the country, including Boston and San Fransisco, he now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He edits Crayon, a journal of arts and poetry, with Andrew Levy and edits the chapbook series Bronze Skull Eights. He read for the Discrete Series on July 11, 2003.

string batch song gash

FOR run, mountain evergreen
cases: hand, plain, engine...
solvent news in the back heels
of rain packets... signals feed young
in the hidden river, CHOOSE goes
to cloud (bend trees, rails unravel
a mine shaft rolls inside
the seed. PUSH knees, bird
heads crack below a polished
desert... shine on highway frost,
Red holes hang every nail – e v i l
born dog, fingering teeth, the small
cut – lights a hooded cock
its Circle bleeds. call borderlines
unravel kite string, head hooks
placed there by black & white
brick knots, foil puts words
to BLANK balls. street place, past
counts on a skewed LINE hutch –
the black feather burns. conch
slabs holes in air to a meat
sacking boat... mouths lay
their retrieval on what remains: Open

2004-02-03T16:47:00.000-08:00

Stacy Szymaszek is coeditor of Traverse with Drew Kunz and editor of Gam: A Survey of Great Lakes Writing. She works at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her long poem "Some Mariners" will appear on EtherDome Press sometime this summer. She read for the Discrete Series on April 11, 2003.

manifest

defunct
list of
common
names
proxy
for the
bearer

nor’wester
buffets
gear
reach
into our
canisters

“Cassirer”
drawn and
sewn into
my lapels
assembly of
illegal men
peril will
not know

two
Roman
slaves
gulp
rain
till
rage
passes
through
teeth into
interior
pneumatic
doors

my evening
of moniker
stamped
upon boxes
of envelopes

blank
ledger
for you
“Macquin”
with tin
and amber
stockpiled
you prince

2004-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Dawn Michelle Baude's recent books include egypt, Sunday and The Beirut Poems. She is also the author of reConnaitre: Curt Asker, an art catalogue published by Les Reunions des Musees Nationaux in Paris. She read for the series on April 11, 2003.

Above the rock shelter

Above the rock shelter
(ancestors in wolf skin)

an aperture
to look there

the "I" pronoun
in history

exists: I'm climbing
above the shelter

I look in the hole
I have light

I see tendrils
lichen algae snails

rock & stone
and it's enough

the pronoun's abandoned
among first conditions

the shell remarks
the sound of the sea

2004-02-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Mark Salerno’s books of poetry include Hate, For Revery, and Method. He is the former editor of Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts. “Matters” is from his new book, entitled So One Could Have (Red Hen Press, 2004). Mark read as part of Discrete's first event on March 14, 2003.

Matters

Whatever flares up in our mental precincts
a picture of how we were a photo booth I.D.
so what if I cried at ‘80s Big Hair Night
that was me adrift in the ensuing brouhaha
twenty years later I got a knack for glowy
for bits of stardust it’s what we came here for
this straining after lost light I admit
I got a little hammy a little foreign sounding
as kinsman Sgt. Bilko but how was I to know
simple longing or some kind of human grief
like in a shipwreck a shipwrecked way of saying
if nothing is lost if nothing is lost a day
of quandary of “soda pills” and fuely heads
or the way she held her hands in the picture.