How to do things with words

Saw Joan Retallack last night as part of the Contemporary Writers Series at Mills. They get some first-rate writers in that series.

It was interesting to see Retallack read. She's friendlier than I expected, almost chatty. And she made an effort to explain what she was doing in the poems she read, which made them a bit more accessible. Even still, for me, I felt more in the layering of sound and metonymy than I actually understood. At one point, and I'm not even sure why, I had tears running down my face.

One thing she mentioned at the outset, which troubled me, was that her book How to Do Things with Words has gone out of print. I was saddened to think that it would now be difficult for more people to find and read that book, and I started thinking about how it might be possible to start up a press devoted to helping authors keep books in print. It might be pretty doable for cases where the author retained copyright. Some sort of print-on-demand system might make the project feasible, though print-on-demand has promised a lot more than it has delivered in the last decade or so.

crawling on Valencia

Tired but a little bit giddy from a very enjoyable evening at the Lit Crawl on Valencia in the Mission. This is an annual event that caps off the end of Lit Quake's week-plus of literary events in San Francisco. The Lit Crawl is a marathon of poetry and prose: three hour-long phases, ten simultaneous venues during each phase, four to six readers at each venue.

I don't usually go in for the Lit Quake thing — it's all a bit Official Literary Scene — but my friend Hoa (not to be confused with that other poetess Hoa Nguyen) was reading in the second phase and I wanted to show my support. She put on a great performance, taking the podium with confidence and giant can of Sapporo. She connected with the audience so well, in fact, that when she and I and a couple other friends headed off to the next venue, we had managed to attract a couple hangers-on. Very fun meeting new people, barhopping, getting home at midnight.

schizophrenia and cyborgs, oh my!

Bhanu Kapil's reading was not quite what I expected; better, perhaps, and I found her steadier and sweeter than I expected. She read from three works that intertwined Indian immigrants, schizophrenia, and cyborgs. And it worked.

Must-see reading: Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu Kapil is reading at the Mills Contemporary Writers' Series this week. See her Tuesday, October 10 at 5:30 pm in the Mills Hall Living Room. From the press kit:

Bhanu Kapil was born in England in 1968, to Indian parents, and grew up in a working-class, South-Asian community in Greater London. She came to the U.S. in 1990 and currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she teaches at Naropa University. A writer forged by this history of migration, and who has come to understand the border as a site of both transformation and loss, her work crosses genre and subject borders in the prose chapbook Autobiography of a Cyborg (Leroy Press, 2000) and a full-length collection of prose/poetry, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001). She has recently completed a long prose work, Humanimal: a project for future children, a creative non-fiction account of the Wolfgirls of Midnapure, two children found living with wolves in 1920s Bengal. Other forthcoming prose works include Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works) and Water-Damage: A Map of Three Black Days (Corollary Press).

things that go boom

North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, and I'm worried about lettuce gone bad.

lodging a protest

I've lost my faith in protests. There seems to be something ineffectual about several dozen middle-class, white liberals holding placards (STOP THE WAR; IMPEACH BUSH) and chanting "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. The Bush Administration has got to go!" while walking up and down a street populated with other middle-class, white liberals who, while not disagreeing with the first group, are really more interested in their dinners of organic greens and Niman Ranch pork.

Maybe I'm just being cynical.

Plastique

Went to Plastique: A Gallery of Poetics last night for Sequence 1 at The Willowbrook Creamery, an artists' live/work/performance space in a very dodgy part of West Oakland.. It was an installation of various poetry-related projects, with book sculptures, wall hangings, audio files, projection screens, and other stuff to poke around. I knew most of the artists involved, so spent most of the time doing the chat routine. There will be a second installment from 6-10 p.m. on October 20 at Mills College.

if they're doing it over at the moon

So if a certain well-nourished blogger can try for 80 posts in September (matching her best-ever month of posting), then maybe I can try for 29 posts in October (matching my best-ever month of posting. Officially, this is #3 (and there's a new site design to inaugurate the promotion; it's kind of like pledge week).

A confession

If I'm flipping through the channels and I come across Sleeping with the Enemy I find it nearly impossible to drag myself away. I just saw Julia Roberts knock out the streetlamp with a rock. Such a movie of the week.

Crema-Lita, I Barely Knew Ya

I once read that people who would never ordinarily consider running a retail outfit often entertain thoughts of owning a cafe. There's a sign in the window of the former Crema-Lita on Piedmont Avenue advertising the sale of the business. And, naturally, I've been entertaining thoughts of what I'd do to make it over.

The original business was a coffee & ice cream sweetshop on a street that already had a half-dozen cafes and an ice cream parlor/institution. It differentiated itself by offering low-fat, low-carb sweets (just as the low-carb craze was fizzling). Unfortunately, the food didn't taste very good; I had one of the worst mochas of my life there. Plus, the decor had a decidedly 31-flavors vibe.

But it's got potential. First, I'd paint the walls a moss or wasabi green. I'd put in picture rails and I'd exhibit local artists. The windows face south-west, so I'd get some heavy curtains, maybe in dark gold. I'd get new tables and chairs, and put a big couch and couple of comfy chairs in one corner. I'd spend a lot on a really good espresso machine. The cafe would have free wireless, and I'd put a lot of outlets around the room at table height. And then I'd give it some vaguely dark and mythological name, like The Serpent's Den or Charybdis.