The opening of the Boston Poetry Massacre last night was tremendous. Sean Cole opened the program with an invocation, a reading of John Wieners' "Poem for Painters", following it up with a 6 year old poem, that read something like a statement of poetics about radio, poetry, and meat. Totally fabulous. Other readers included John Mulrooney, Christopher Rizzo, Chad Parenteau, and David Kirschenbaum. Really enjoyed Chad's poems and David's reading of fragments from the April project which were a deeply personal day book. John M read a long poem called "If you see something, say something" and dedicated his reading to Homeland Security. Christopher read from a long piece called "zing". Keep an eye out for the newest Anchorite Press chapbooks and projects that Chris has been working on - projects by Noah Eli Gordon, Mark Lamoureux, and Chris, himself - and a beautiful unfolding poem of visual poet Geof Huth's work. Met Guillermo Juan Parra for the first time, visited briefly with Aaron who's headed to the hinterland of Northern New York, and had my first conversation with JC in about a year. Huge crowd, standing room only. Good energy starting off the 3 day fest. Jim's done a wonderful job of bringing together a diverse group of younger poets, from Boston and beyond.

Simmons Chinese Poetry Conference

Chinese poets and specialists convene in Boston from October 8-10th, 2004. The Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center at Simmons College with host a conference on Chinese poetry, with the Chinese Cultural Connection as co-sponsor. This event will bring prominent scholars, critics, and translators from all over the Chinese diaspora for a 3 day celebration and discussion of modern Chinese poetry and traditional Chinese poetry, one of the world's most remarkable literary achievements. Presentations by prominent poets and literary specialists will be woven with traditional music performances and panel discussions.

A gathering of some of the finest Chinese poets and most prominent literary specialists working today, including:

Zheng Chou Yu
Yu Kwang Chung
Wang Xiaoni
Wang Ping
Michelle Yeh
Shao Wei
Xue Di
Marilyn Chin
Frank Stewart
Chris Lupke
Perng Ching Hsi
Li Young Lee
Ha Jin
Bei Ling
Xue Di/Keith Waldrop
Meng Lang
Shin Yu Pai
Yu Xiang
Wang Shaoni
Kelly Tsai

Conference Fees: $60 faculty and general public, $35 students (all levels)

For further information contact Afaa Michael Weaver, Director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center at 617-525-2175 or weaver@simmons.edu.

I made my first attempt at cooking bhaingan bartha on my own last night. Turned out pretty well, though could use a little refining. Instead of grilling the eggplant under open flame, I opted to roast it in the oven at 500 degrees for about 40 minutes. For future reference, aerate fewer holes in the eggplant to avoid a mess! The eggplant came out the right consistency and than everything went into the pot with the tomato and onion and spices, though not necessarily in that order.

I had a weird eggplant moment in the supermarket before cooking. I am picking out the biggest eggplant I can find at Shaw's and this woman comes over to me and says, "Are those ASIAN eggplant?!" I look at her and say, "I don't know", although I did know, but was a bit annoyed by her question - like because I'm Asian, I'm going to know what an "ASIAN" eggplant looks like, or do I look like I work here? She continued, "Are JAPANESE eggplant the same color as regular eggplant?" Oh, I think, well, it could be that she's asking me these questions because I just happen to be hanging out by the eggplant section and obviously I'm going to do something with my eggplant, so from chef to chef, benefit of the doubt...? "Japanese eggplant are smaller than regular eggplant, but they are the same color," I offer. "My recipe calls for JAPANESE eggplant," she insists. Uh-huh. I keep on walking.

Wandering through the Nomad Store on Mass Ave this afternoon, I came across a Heedley Pecked me in the Eye doll which bears a surprising resemblance to some of these flat loveable characters. Now that I am no longer eating chicken (see PETA's KFC Cruelty site), developing a fascination for all things chicken.

Got my lease agreement from Texas yesterday. Moving forward...

10 reasons artists gravitate to Texas:

1. The Chinati Foundation aka Marfa
2. Dobie Paisano
3. The Nasher Sculpture Center
4. ArtPace
5. South by Southwest
6. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
7. The Dallas Museum of Art
8. Gemini Ink
9. The Houston Center for Photography
10. The Menil Collection

Not just ignorance, guns, and politics...

This weekend I learned to cook traditional Indian food with the help of Anurag who hosted a dinner party over at his apartment. We cooked bindi masala and bhaigan bhartha. Both used essentially the same base of oil, cumin seed, tomato and onion. Add vegetable to simmer, add spices - garam masala, pepper, salt, ground chili pepper... I think I'm leaving out one... add chunk masala also in the case of the bindi. The okra should be individually washed and dried and than prepped for cooking. The eggplant is an interesting affair. Anurag had gotten that one started before we arrived - on a metal grill like device that fits over the gas stove burner, place a mid-size/large eggplant over the flame and rotate occasionally turning the stem. If the stem was cut off at the grocery store, stick a spoon thru the eggplant and use as your handle. Cook each surface until the skin starts to peel off. When the whole eggplant is peeling, remove from flame and peel off the blackened skin. Then rinse and mash eggplant interior. It is this mash that goes into making the bhaingan bhartha. Now a days, the eggplant could actually be prepped in the microwave - if you zapped it on baked potato setting, you might get similar results, but something really ritual and enjoyable about doing it the old-fashioned way gets lost. At the same time, open flames and hot metal do create a certain anxiety in me... perhaps I will never be a chef. Pappadam, the lentil wafer, served in Indian restaurants has the consistency of something like a wonton skin before heated over flame and crisped. The heat bubbles quickly come to the surface and the wafers blacken - again this could be done more evenly in the microwave, but what gets compromised is that earthy, smoky taste. Lentils for daal are cooked in a pressure cooker and than mixed with tharka - a blend of onion tomato and spices. Getting just the right amount of water in your daal is crucial - too much and your pressure cooker explodes everywhere!

Over dinner, Amy, Michaela, and I had an interesting conversation about the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. Both Jeff Buckley, then Rufus Wainwright covered this song. When Jeff covered it, he ADDED lyrics that were not in the original. (Michaela grew up in Ireland with parents who made her listen to Leonard Cohen and as a result she knows most of his lyrics..). Than Rufus covered it, and he may have added even more lyrics. To me, the modern versions seem seamless in their lyrics, and I think it would be interesting to keep this song a living tradition, to keep adding lyrics to it in its reinterpretation. Everybody should write a verse!

The Boston Poetry Massacre is this coming weekend at Wordsworth Books. I am scheduled to read on Friday at 7:48 p.m. This will be my last reading in the Boston area for some time and I will be reading from my new manuscript "Nutritional Feed". Please drop by and say hello. Highlights of the weekend that I am particulary looking forward to are readings by Tina Celona, Rachel Levitsky, Christina Strong, and Matvei Yankelevich.

The Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize

Sponsored by Kundiman & Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

On June 19, 1982, in Detroit, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat by a man and his stepson. The two laid-off autoworkers mistook Chin for Japanese — an Asian group they blamed for the ailing U.S. auto industry. The assailants never served jail time, and later federal civil-rights courts acquitted them entirely of the crime. For many today, this is a rarely remembered footnote in American history. However, the tragedy of Vincent Chin marked an important change in how Asian Americans viewed themselves. It was the first time, according to APA advocates and academics, that people who traced their ancestry to different countries in Asia and the Pacific Islands crossed ethnic and socioeconomic lines to fight [politically] as a united group of Asian Pacific Americans. They were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino; they were waiters, lawyers, and grandmothers who were moved to action by what happened to Vincent Chin. For the first time, Asian Americans banded together against the discrimination and racism directed toward the APA community.* Decades later, the need for Asian Americans to unite as a population and to project a voice into the cultural mainstream is as urgent as ever. In honor of Vincent Chin and this watershed moment in Asian American history, Kundiman and Manoa have established The Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize. This annual prize is an opportunity for both Kundiman and Manoa to support and spotlight the talent of an emerging Asian American poet, a new voice in the landscape of Asian American expression and power.

Please note: Chapbooks for submission can be on any subject.

Prize Winner will receive: $1,000 cash prize
Chapbook publication in Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Full scholarship to the 2005 Kundiman Summer Retreat

Applicant Eligibility
Asian American poets who have not published more than one book of forty-eight pages or more.

Entry Fee
Check for $15.00 payable to The New York Foundation for the Arts

Judge
Award-winning poet Mong-Lan

Chapbook Guidelines
Submit 3 copies of a 15 to 20 page chapbook on any subject and in any style
All chapbooks will be judged anonymously. Your name should not appear any place on the manuscript except for the on the first cover page.

Chapbook must include 2 cover pages
Title of Chapbook, author's name, address, telephone number and email address. (This should be the only page with author's identification.)
Title of Chapbook only

Chapbooks must be:
Typed in a font of at least 12 pts.
Typed on standard white paper, on one side of the page only.
Paginated consecutively with a table of content.
Bound only by a binder clip.

Submission Guidelines
Along with 3 copies of Chapbook, submit an official Application Form (downloadable at www.kundiman.org),
Envelope must be received by at below address by December 15th
Enclose an SAS Postcard for confirmation of receipt of Chapbook
Enclose an SASE for notification of winner
All Chapbooks will recycled at the end of contest term
Mail 3 copies of Chapbook, Application Form and entry fee to:

Editors
Kundiman
245 Eighth Ave, #151
New York, NY 10011

Save the Date: September 18 (Saturday), 2004. Farewell to Boston party. E-vites with full details to follow in August.

New review for Equivalence here.

The Dalai Lama successfully blocks KFC from entering Tibet.

Oh, crap.

RESCHEDULED DUE TO WEATHER
Forest Hills Educational Trust's
6th annual Lantern Festival
NEW DATE:
Thursday, July 22
from 6-9 pm
at Forest Hills Cemetery
95 Forest Hills Avenue, Boston
Thundershowers are predicted for tomorrow... so we have rescheduled the Lantern Festival to next week.
Help us spread the word!
Come make a lantern to remember loved ones passed away, and float it on Lake Hibiscus at sunset.
Enjoy music and dance by Tsuji Daiko, Chu Ling Dance Academy, and the New England Gospel Ensemble (the VariAsians can't come - they'll be here next year).

Admission free. $10 donation requested per lantern.

Take the T! Orange line to Forest Hills, shortcut via Tower Street Gate.

Volunteers still needed! Contact anorman@foresthillstrust.org to sign on

The Blackbox summer gallery is now complete and online. New
work by Donna Kuhn, Vernon Frazer, John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy, Carlos Luis, Igor Satanovsky, Skip Fox, Shin Yu Pai, david-baptiste chirot, and Derek White.

Go to WilliamJamesAustin.com and follow the Blackbox link. Then scroll through the galleries until you reach the summer edition.

Congrats to Israel Wilkinson on the birth of Soriah Nicole Wilkinson on Saturday, July 10, 2004.

Pedro Meyer's new editorial up on ZoneZero.

from Cirrelda Snider-Bryan in New Mexico:

Dear friend,

Congress is about to vote on amending the U.S. Constitution to deny marriage equality to same-sex couples. Never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's rights. Yet our Senators will vote on this amendment in the next 48 hours.  It's urgent that we speak up now. This hateful divisiveness has no place in America.

Please join me in saying so, at:
http://www.moveon.org/unitednotdivided/

Equality in marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation.

We can't let anyone, or any group, be singled out for discrimination based on who they are or who they love.

Thank you.

-Cirrelda

Ran into John twice on Saturday, leaving Watertown on the 73 bus and coming back in on the 71 bus. He had on his new glasses, to replace the pair that he lost while swimming in Senegal. Out of his blazer pocket he produced a dental kit complete with Benzocaine mouthwash and tooth filling mix. Apparently in the dental section of your local CVS, you can buy your own quick repair kit for temporary fillings! I find this at once fascinating and depressing - the creative choices that uninsured poets and artists are relegated to in order to deal with minor medical ailments that get worse over time. Let's see, will it be a root canal at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine's undergraduate clinic which is booked thru early September, or next week at my regular dentist which runs about 3 times the cost? Kort tells me that researchers have developed a new bacteria that actually competes with the existing bacteria in the human mouth and destroys the bacteria that causes tooth decay. Currently in its testing stages, let's hope they roll out that one out soon!

Saw Orson Wells' Citizen Kane this weekend at The Brattle. This is a film that I've always wanted to see, but have always had a little resistance towards. Kort expressed a similar lukewarm interest in the film initially - i.e. "there's something about rosebud and a sled". I remember as a child too Bugs Bunny cartoons spoofing Citizen Kane. The film far exceeded my expectations. A story about the loss of childhood, love, and innocence - great scenes include an opera teacher terrorizing his student, (Charles Foster Kane's 2nd wife Susan Alexander), and the audience at her operatic debut in Chicago.

Also saw The Terminal this weekend, starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Hanks shines in his role as Victor Navorski, a Krakhozian who travels to New York City with a secret promise made to his dying father, kept in a Planter's peanut can.

Watch the new Cure video here. Robert Smith is looking as pasty, yet lovely as ever.

Get well, David Bowie!

My friend Dunja Marton is having her thesis show. If you are in New York, go check out this exhibition which highlights the work of talented folk in the Bard College MFA program. Includes poetry readings by Paolo Javier and Genya Turkovsy.

the warm weather is holding
Thursday, July 8, 2004 - Friday, July 23, 2004
Thesis Exhibition The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Exhibition: July 11-July 22, 2004 UBS, 7401 South Broadway, Red Hook, NY 12571 Opening Reception: Sunday, July 11, 2-5 pm Gallery Hours: M-F, 11am-5pm; Sat-Sun, 1-5pm

Kort and I went on our very first date six years ago in Boulder, Colorado. It was a rainy day, not unlike today, and we went to the wine bar Cafe Mars (now defunct) down a back alley off of Pearl Street to hear the bossanova guitarist Mitchell Long who'd lived in Bahia. The Summer Writing Program was just coming to a close and I was getting ready to move to Chicago for art school. It was raining and thundering like mad and I remember Kort wearing a pair of wide wale corduroy pants which he still has, which didn't do any better job of funneling the rainwater off of him and neither one of us owned an umbrella.

How we got together is quite a story. It involves in part, a Japanese tea house, and a yentl. When I first got to Naropa in 1997, I noticed a tea house on the campus and after several months of deliberating went in search of the tea teacher. The first time I went to the tea house, the door slid open and I was greeted by an incredibly attractive stranger with very blue eyes and a silver hoop in each ear, who would turn out to be my future lovely boyfriend of 6 years. I asked for the teacher, the stranger said she's not here. I said ok, like the shy, broken-hearted girl I was and left. I went back to the tea house 2 months later, in November, once again looking for a teacher, and knocked on the door. It slid open and I was greeted by 2 extremely masculine and good-looking men who said the teacher was again out, but would I like to come in. I crawled into the space - and found myself in a secret world. Tatami mats, hearth, altar, a basket full of white socks, and a kitchen. My host introduced himself as Chip, and his brother Kort. These Boulder people have some strange names I thought. How do you spell that I asked? He spelled it. Very soon after I got flustered and left.

I wouldn't have another conversation with Kort until almost 6 months later. I found a tea teacher, but not the one at Naropa. I went to Hiromi Weiner, a Japanese woman who had helped to build the tea house in Trungpa's day and was his student. She taught tea out of her home in North Boulder, in a basement space where she set up a makeshift tea room. I studied alongside 2 grey haired ladies with arthritic knees while Hiromi's daughters ran around the basement and the phone from her office occasionally interrupted us. I decided to go back to the Naropa tea house for teachings and finally met the teacher, Shoshana Cooper, who agreed to be my teacher. And we jumped right into it. Receiving a lesson didn't mean watching, it meant doing, so I found myself in the unfamiliar space of the tea house kitchen throwing together the components of a rakubon, or tray ceremony. The prep space which was really just a small space behind sliding doors, was very well organized, several shelves of tea bowls, tea spoons, bamboo wisks, water basins and everything you'd need to prepare tea, except a funnel like tool that I had grown accustomed to at Hiromi's. After you sift green tea powder, you transfer it into the tea caddy. But you don't simply put it in the container, you build a mountain of green tea with the powder -like Mount Fuji. During the part of the ceremony when the guest and host do haiken, or a viewing of the tea implements, your guest will have the opportunity to view the tea caddy and its contents. The mountain of tea is meant to communicate a certain abundance and fullness. So to make the mountain, there is a funnel like tool that makes it easy, does the work for you in essence. This tea house did not seem to have this tool and I found my uncontemplative self freaking out and thinking what am I going to do here...Kort had in the mean time followed me into the kitchen and was observing the situation quietly. He took over making the tea mountain for me, while our teacher was out in the tea room waiting. Eventually I got started, and Kort may have even served as first guest at that first lesson..

Weeks later, I receive another lesson from the tea teacher. Kort is again first guest. I have been studying with 2 teachers now and am becoming more aware of the reasons for not doing that - you get things confused - 1 person likes to do things one way, another likes to do it another way, and things inevitably get mixed up. I make tea. Kort makes a curious comment about a small detail that he notices - on the bamboo wisk used for shipping the tea into a green froth, I have left the knotted cord standing up, instead of lying flat against the handle. Apparently, Kort had heard a story of a gay tea teacher in San Francisco who had served tea to a guest with the knot standing up, a deliberate erotic suggestion. How 7th century, I think! He thinks I (who never flirt) am flirting!

The next Wednesday, I find myself again in the tea house, with the teacher, and several other female students. Kort and his friend Seth are absent from the group, and one of the students takes the opportunity to talk about the two. "Tea Nazis" they are known as - perfectionists about their practice. This girl is going on and on and I interrupt her and tell her how lovely I think Kort really is. Hmmmm, the tea teacher thinks to herself. Next thing I know, the teacher, who is the wife of a well-known rabbi, pays Kort a visit at Sushi Tora, and next thing I know, we're out on a date at Cafe Mars on a rainy night.

The rest is more or less history. We have survived living in different countries, my first move to Dallas in 2000, and living together in very small spaces. It is a rare thing to find someone with whom you can grow and change with. It has at times felt like one of us is always trying to catch up to the other in some way. You grow apart, or you grow together, you grow. You renegotiate, you make choices, you choose love.

Kort finishes acupuncture school in 4 weeks and a month a half later, we will finally start our lives, or maybe we started a long time ago, but it only felt like practice for the real thing. But isn't it all practice. And haven't we always lived.

"She was a wonton slut" is going to be the title of my new poetic project.

Next Thursday at Forest Hills Cemetery:


Sixth Annual Lantern Festival
A moving and magical memorial ceremony inspired by Buddhist ritual. Enjoy music by the Samurai drummers of Tsuji Daiko and traditional Chinese folk dances presented by students from Chu Ling Dance Academy. Inscribe a lantern with your own personal messages to friends and family, and float it across Lake Hibiscus at sunset.

Thursday, July 15, 6 to 9 pm
$10 donation for each lantern supports the event
Rain date: July 22

If you have never been to a ritual "bon" festival, I highly recommend it. This is a ceremony to let go of those lost, both literally and figuratively.

Tomorrow is my 6 year anniversary with Kort. Look forward to a mushy rehash and reflection on how we met and fell in love in the Naropa tea house.

My friend Mei runs the Chinese Culture Connection here in Boston (Malden). This is a wonderful organization that promotes education and cultural preservation. In addition to their arts programming, they also sponsor a wonderful program for families who adopt children from China - a program that supports cultural education and works with issues surrounding assimilation and acculturation of adoptees.

They are having a summer fundraiser. Here are the details:

Chinese Culture Connection will be holding its 11th Annual Charity Golf Tournament at Trull Brook Golf Club (170 River Road, Tewksbury, MA) on July 24.

Proceeds from the tournament will support our on-going educational and cultural activities.

Entry form for the Tournament can be found here. Please fill in the information and send it back to 238 Highland Ave, Malden, MA 02148.

Please help support this wonderful organization.

Tanabata poems from Kort:

bagpipes
ridging
milkyways

to herd cows
weaving girls
roving ignited

Saturday, JULY 10
STAR FESTIVAL 7 - 9:30 pm
The opening reception for a group exhibition of paintings, drawings, and ceramics will feature poetry readings and new music performances inspired by the theme of the Japanese legend "Tanabata" and Star Festival. Performances and
readings begin at 8 p.m. In the tradition of the Tanabata Celebration, guests can write wishes and hang them on trees in the garden The event is free; wishes are $1. The art exhibition continues through August 15. KAJI ASO STUDIO Gallery Nature & Temptation 40 Saint Stephen Street, Boston, MA. 617-247-1719 / kajiasostudio@rcn.com
www.kajiasostudio.com

Tomorrow begins the season of the Tanabata. Tanabata, which is something of an Asian Valentine's Day, is celebrated in on both July 7 or August 7. In commemoration of the holiday, I challenge you to write a Tanabata poem and email it to me. I will post any poems I receive between July 7 to August 7 to the Makura no Soshi. Here are 2 by Izumi Shikibu to get us started:

Don't look up
by yourself
at the sky where stars meet--
the wind from the Milky Way
blows cold.



How I envy the Tanabata Stars
their once-yearly lovemaking tonight--
in this world,
there is a woman who doesn't know what love's future may be.

Happy birthday, your Holiness Dalai Lama!