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.