Went to the CARVE reading at Wordsworth last night, the first big reading of the Fall season. Great turnout - folks from Gloucester, Western MA, and New York in attendance- very good to see all this support for Aaron's new magazine. Joe Torra read a Chinese translation and a great poem about his upcoming retirement from waiting tables. Dorothea Lasky, Christina Strong, and Noah Eli Gordon and company all also read striking work. Some nice Bill Corbett and Brenda Iijima poems too read by proxy. Wouldn't it be something if all poetry events were so well attended? Christopher Rizzo of Anchorite made some beautiful monographs for 4 of the poets to hand out and gave Aaron a framed copy of CARVE which was very touching. Afterwards hung out at Charleys and got to know Aaron's girlfriend, who is intelligent and lovely and funny. Missed Jimmy - where did you go? Walked home with John Mulrooney, Michael Carr, and Kat. Saw lots of grayish brown slugs on the sidewalk next to the cemetery on the way home. Ack!

It's Sunday afternoonish - just back from having Indian buffet at the Bombay Club at Harvard Square. Kort gone to the Apple store at the Galleria, me home to recover from cold and catch up on phone calls, writing, etc. It is quiet, just the way I like it and I almost feel rested.

From the good folks at Gumball Poetry in Portland, Oregon (www.gumballpoetry.com)

"MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE"
Come play with Gumball Poetry's newest experiment in publishing.
Each issue Gumball Poetry sends out thousands of poetry filled
capsules to be placed in our machines. We send them to New Orleans,
to Seattle, to Missoula, and so on.

Now you have the chance to put a message in one of those capsules,
just as if you were sending a message out to sea in its bottle-boat.
Send someone a wish, a request, a greeting. And do it slowly.
By complete chance. When -- 6 days from now or 6 months from now --
they receive your message, they'll have a chance to write back.

http://www.gumballpoetry.com/miab

Reading Schedule for Equivalence:

October 11, Wordsworth Bookstore, Cambridge, MA
October 29, Kaoshiung University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan
November 17, Saratoga Springs Library, Saratoga Springs, NY
January 8, Borders Bookstore, Boston, MA
February 21-22, Writers Garret, Dallas, TX
March 7, Forest Hills Trust, Jamaica Plain, MA

Auspicious Coincidence: I am looking at a postcard of the Dalai Lama which Kort found on the street as we were walking between Central to Harvard Square on Saturday. I was bummed that the D.L. talk at the Fleet Center was a) really expensive b)sold out - and right there on the sidewalk, as we were walking, K crouched down to pick up a postcard from the Kurukulla Buddhist Center bearing 6 images of DL. Thanks, universe!

I am shopping for a new gym with a pool and dropped into the Porter Square Bally's yesterday and spoke to a surly sales rep named Benito. I would have been quite pleased with a brochure breaking down membership rates and privileges to take home with me and compare against other gyms and plans- but the girl at the desk insisted that I speak to a sales rep as Bally's doesn't give out information on their membership or have any literature that they hand out to the general public. Weird. Benito show up at the desk and he is pissy. I tell Benito that I am interested in the swimming pool and hearing about the membership rates. Benito, who is a poor listener, proceeds to give me the grand tour of the facility, the pitch on taking classes, etc. etc., the whole script as it were. And while I was in the ladies locker room, he tried to chat up Kort about working out and got nowhere. Benito asked K something like, "So why don't you work out?" and K proceeded to share his philosophy on the notion of "health" and "fitness" and what sort of environment and culture that needs to occur in for him. It was about 15-20 minutes into the tour before I actually got to see the damn swimming pool, which was only 4 feet deep and 3 lanes wide and full of people at 2 p.m. in the afternoon on a Sunday. After seeing the pool, suffered further sales pitch until making it back to Benito's office to talk membership plans. Bally's memberships are 3 year commitments, although supposedly you can cancel anytime which is just plain weird, because, WHY would you contract for 3 years than and sign a contract up front that puts you in debt for $875? Benito asked the question, "So does this gym have everything you want?" - sales rhetoric - I mean duh, I said I wanted I a swimming pool and obviously you have one. (Sorry as it may be). GRRRR.. I think I will be looking at the Y.. Irritating as the whole exchange was, the incident in some way made my day - here was this angry, resentful person projecting all of his crap on to the world and we didn't play the game. Did we waste his time... well ichi go ichi-e, one meeting, one opportunity.

I have been feeling somewhat down on academia and MFA/MA creative writing programs since Saturday. Spoke at a panel event this weekend which was billed as an insider's guide to MFA programs. My fellow panelists were 2 academics (Emerson and Lesley U) and a recent grad of the BU writing program. I feel like the problem with panels is that sometimes the people who speak on them have very clear agendas and something to sell. The Lesley rep made a huge push for the new low-residency program which doesn't seem that radically different than Goddard or Bennington programs, except that it is the local Boston option for some - I mean basically the faculty for Bennington repeats itself here. I felt like the token female and minority on the panel, was overshadowed by my counterparts, and was the only representative of a more non-mainstream outsider tradition, representing my own experience in non-traditional programs at Naropa and ARTIC. Lesley is billing itself as "interdisciplinary" a hot buzz word in academic circles which I think usually translates as a load of gray and nebulous crap. Even programs in environments like CCAC which bill themselves as truly I.D. have been known to disappoint expectation. Basically, my feeling was that this panel was not there to serve an audience or community so much as it was there to serve itself and the advancement of a certain academic agenda and power structure, and for that reason, I had issues. It also made me think more about the sort of people that you have to deal with when you work in academia - and I think take it or leave it, leaving it is a healthy option. There was no one on the panel to argue why one should NOT get a grad degree on creative writing and I think that would have presented a very important perspective. It was divulged that MFA programs are basically cash cows for universities - and I imagine especially for universities with small endowments. Poets, be wary!

The CARVE gathering on Saturday was low-key and easy going - not a whole lot of poetry talk and highly enjoyable. Met Aaron's girlfriend, Bibliogal, who is getting a PhD in Renaissance literature. Interesting conversation on teaching and plagiarism. Thanks, Michael Carr, for hosting!

Chris Rizzo, I'll be your Hope Sandoval if you'll be my William Reid. More fun than tennis!

Listening to Roxy Music's Street Life.... Lost in Translation is a beautiful and bittersweet movie covering all of my favorite topics: unrequited love, kindred spirits and cultural displacement. Bill Murray sings a rendition of Roxy Music's "More than this" in the movie, tender and heartfelt enough to prompt any girl to fall head over heels in love. This love story is "Just Like Honey"...

Get your sushi purses here by a very special Seattle-based artist and be the envy of everyone!

Also received: Aaron Tieger's CARVE.

Brenda Iijima just sent me Shadow Dragging Like a Photographer's Cloth (I may be leaving some words out of the title there...) with Elliza McGrand. Brenda shot the B & W photos for this 80 + page collection. The poems and the images are fantastic - published under Brenda's imprint Portable Press at yo-yo Labs. Superb!

Walker Buckner is my Bob Harris.

The trailer for Lost in Translation makes me happy and sad. This looks like a really wonderful movie..

David Kirschenbaum is killing his blog.

Interesting conversation going on around the Boston Comment vs. innovative poetry thing on the Skanky Possum and Monkee blogs.

Shaktipat.

Billy Corgan is doing a fundraiser for the Poetry Center of Chicago. I find this ridiculous and fantastic at the same time. The Center has come a long way since Kenneth Clarke took its helm in 2000. From Billy Collins to Billy Corgan. Wild... an innovative attempt at audience building and creating diversity.

For my upcoming birthday, my mother gave me a photo album which collects together all these pictures from my childhood - school, family vacations, spelling bees, our 1st house ever in California which I have absolutely no memory of. I am struck when I look back at the pictures of my elementary school classes - all the brown faces, and no Asians. My Dad quotes a statistic of something like 150,000 Taiwanese living in Southern California. That seems like a lot, but when asked how many live in Riverside, its more like 500. And that's today. How many did that make when we were growing up?

Trying to send someone a bottle of wine for a special occasion and discovering that Massachusetts state law prohibits sending wine beyond say Boston. Apparently, most folks buy their own bottles, package and ship thru FedEx - but than you have to lie about what you're shipping or they won't take it. Thankfully there are a few internet wine purchasing sites, but I know nothing about wine. Maybe this would be a good question for Eileen Tabios.