various texts re’d at the conceptual poetry shindig

In addition to the symposium program and my notes, I came home with numerous other texts.

NYC to Tucson transplant Barbara Henning gifted me with her 2005 novel You, Me, and the Insects, which details the experience and transformation of an American mother who travels to India to study yoga for an extended period. She also gifted me with her conceptual poetry book, My Autobiography (which uses 999 fragments from books in her collection), and her chapbooks, “Hari Om,” “Cities and Memory” and “An Arc Falling into the Bouganvillea.” We shared lunch one day and began what I hope will be a lengthy conversation!

Insert Press publisher Ara Shirinyan and I had a lengthy conversation, (starting with the absence of women in th UBU web anthology which he will be publishing) over a fine tequila he brought to the final reception. He gifted me with his book, Handsome Fish Offices which grafts a office supplies text onto one about African cichlids with amusing and moving results. I also found out that he will be publishing Mathew Timmons 2007 3:15am Experiment! (Maybe I will convince him to do my 3:15am Experiment mss!)

Chax Press’s table, staffed by Charles Alexander, lured lots of money out of many pockets with their beautiful letterpress works, unusual titles, and $10 symposium pricing (except for a few astonishingly wonderful fineart books). I picked up Charles Bernstein’s Let’s Just Say (2003) with its curious letterpress cover of a man in striped red pants floating skyward; inside are four poems, “In particular,” “Thank You for Saying Thank You” ( a totally accessible poem–must be why I like it), “Let’s Just Say,” and an untitled poem. I also bought Charles Alexander’s arc of light:dark matter (1992), and on his recommendation, two books by up and coming women poets, Allison Cobb ‘s Born 2 (2004) and Elizabeth Treadwell’s Chantry (2004).

I’d intended to buy more books, in particular by Cole Swenson and Christian Bok from the table staffed by the University bookstore (at 10-25% off!) but they never showed the last day of the conference, so I saved my $60 of my $100 book budget for another day.

(I may add more to this post after I take the boy to a birthday party at Pump It Up which starts in a few minutes…oh joy.)

Next post: tracking down various and sundry video & audio clips from the conference and posting them here…as well as blog posts by others including Kenneth Goldsmith and Vanessa Place and whoever else I track down!