Photo courtesy of Alan Del Rio Ortiz

I have finally finished The Lazarus Project, Aleksander Hemon’s new novel. All those comparisons to Nabokov? Accurate. No, really.  I’ve read all his books, and although The Question of Bruno will always be my favorite, this came very close. 

Last week, I had the privilege to attend his event at the Stop Smiling storefront, and it was really charming. After thirty minutes’ worth of reading, Hemon talked about Europe and how old isn’t necessarily good, since old grudges sometimes lead to acts of genocide. The evening ended with a slide show by Velibor Bozovik, Hemon’s best friend and the photographer responsible for many of the images in the novel.  (There’s a really good interview with Bozovik here.)

Hemon himself is very tall, and there were several other very tall Eastern Europeans in attendance who did not get misty-eyed when confronted with the projected images of their homeland. Additionally, there were somewhere around 50 (?) others who gathered for the event, someone from WBEZ recorded it, and this guy was there.  If you missed it, there should be photos and audio available that we’ll link to once they’re up.

Michael Robins and Kate Greenstreet
Columbia College, Music Center Concert Hall
March 5, 2008

Two surefire ways to light up a literary reading: give out candy, or play to your audience. The benefit to the first is obvious (liquorice!); the second is that everyone will have a better time. As Olena Kalytiak Davis told Cranky magazine, “A reading is usually a first reaction . . . You fall very quickly away from being a ‘poet,’ like maybe a day or two after you’ve written something, and if you’re not a poet, what the hell are you doing up there in front of an audience?” This is especially true when your pockets are without candy.

Luckily, poets Michael Robins and Kate Greenstreet are from Davis’ home planet, and read dynamically and daringly. Robins, author of The Next Settlement (University of North Texas), went first. His delivery is a bit mechanical, but fits the work, which is precisely sad and prismatically beautiful. It’s the sort of thing you replay like a favorite record, and understand differently each time (“A summer better known for storm chasers, / some recalled home as the shape of corn”). Robins also read a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, (billed to read but stuck in a Buffalo snowstorm), plus bits from a new manuscript featuring circuses and the letter ‘Q.’

(After Robins’s last poem, a student towards the front started scratching his head. Backlit by stagelights, his hand and hair looked like a peacock, or else that shadow puppet kids make where the snake eats all the branches from the tree. Anyway.)

Next read Kate Greenstreet, in a charmingly chewy voice that you can hear here. Greenstreet treats poems like crazy friends or still-evolving things, stopping often to give context or crack jokes. When reading from “Great Women of Science,” the first cycle in case sensitive (Ahsahta Press), Greensteet tripped on a line about a fortune teller wearing hot pink. It reminded her of a friend in the audience, and afterwards, she said so. There’s a double-art there: one in writing a good poem, and another in performing it well, then gauging the response. Right then, I ducked into the lobby to buy Greenstreet’s book, which has water on the cover and other cycles inside, cycles on love, the body, and salt. It hasn’t left my bedside since.

Finally, someone in the audience asked Proverbial Question #3: “What poems do you like?” Both poets rattled off quick lists and a few caveats, then talked about structure. “What I really like,” Robins said, “are poems where the whole thing is in past tense, then suddenly one line switches to the present.” It’s a lovely metaphor, and works for process and product both (Davis too). At this point, the audience was so engaged that they clearly didn’t mind the lack of sweets.

Mairead Case writes for, and curates, Fabulous Color. She lives in Pilsen.

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at Black Rock Bar

We can’t claim impartiality, but we think our reading was great! Thanks to Michael Bolsinga for the lovely photos, and thanks to the Rec Room for letting us do our thing.

the crowd

Gretchen Kalwinski

Eugenia Williamson

Jeb Gleason Allured

Lauren Weinberg

cast of The End of Days of Our Lives

more End of Days

catfight!

Julie Shapiro

Richard Fox

Elaine and Eugene Williamson, Rebekah Holmes

the crowd in black and white, Zach Dodson’s moustache

Saturday, July 128th, 2007; Washington Square Park
Written by: Maren Robinson

Those rare times when I have unfettered access to cable television I like to find CSPAN2 and watch coverage of the British parliament. I enjoy the unveiled insults between MPs, and I delight especially in watching the Prime Minister respond to unscreened questions that range from sheep ranching, to nuclear power, to congested motorways. The Bughouse Square Debates, held Saturday at the Newberry Library, offered that same variety of subject matter and (relatively) good-natured heckling.

The event opened on the steps of the venerable Newberry, with music from the Black Bear Combo Marching Band (think New Orleans brass band meets Klezmer meets Tom Waits’ instrumentals). This was followed by an appropriately grand reading of Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” by three area high school winners of the Poetry Foundation’s National Poetry Recitation Contest.

Jorge Múica, immigrant’s rights activist, and organizer of the 2006 and 2007 Chicago immigration rallies was awarded the John Peter Altgeld Award. The award is named for the Illinois governor who ruined his political career by pardoning men convicted of inciting the Haymarket Riot. Múica accepted the award in the name of those who don’t have a name because they lose their identity when they come to the United States.

The soapbox sessions began with different speakers at three separate locations speaking on matters as diverse as free public transportation, to the benefits of neighborhood sex shops, to food from farm to table and, fittingly, free speech. Attendees were free to wander between soapbox speeches and heckle at will. Indeed, some appeared to come just for the heckling. There was an awkward moment listening to surrealist Gale Ahrens discuss the a future society without bosses and alarm clocks that was interrupted by an equally loud debate by several homeless men who were quietly ejected from the park by police officers for testing the limits of their right to assembly and free speech.

What the soapbox speakers lacked in polish they made up for in sincerity, which is a refreshing change from the current model of political debates where all candidates wait for the ideal moment to drop a carefully preplanned sound bite. The winner of the Dil Pickle award for the soapbox debates, who, indeed, was presented three foot-long pickle effigy, was Edwin Yohnka who spoke on the importance of free speech and kept his cool when one heckler joined him on stage for some loud opposition accompanied by much gesticulation.

This year the usual Bughouse festivities were being filmed by a crew from the Discovery channel who was shooting a new series called “Wright Across America”, with Ian Wright, a Brit, former footballer, and former “Globe Trekker” correspondent. Wright took the soapbox himself and, with tongue firmly in cheek, remarked on loudness of Americans and suggested we could benefit from the British method of conflict resolution: silence, a stiff upper lip, hiding under a duvet, and drinking tea, ending with, “Thank you very much, now clear out.”

The day ended with a voter slam debate on immigration reform. Each speaker had ninety seconds to voice an opinion and move from the platform. The hosting ministrations of Second City members, who offered gentle mockery of each speaker, diffused any tension that might have developed between participants.

For a day of Chicago free speech I highly recommend first fortifying oneself with a breakfast of brie stuffed French toast and coffee at The Third Coast on the corner of Dearborn and Goethe. Now if I can get on my soapbox a minute about how Chicagoans pronounce that street name.…

Maren Robinson is a reader, writer, dramaturg, and avid bookshelf voyeur. You can check out the 1,176 books (entered to date) from her bookshelves at www.librarything.com/catalog/Marensr.

Friday, July 20, 2007, Printers’ Ball; Zhou B. Art Center (1029 West 35th Street, Chicago).

Yes folks, last Friday’s much lauded and highly-anticipated Printers’ Ball got raided by the cops and busted up after only about 2 1/2 hours. Chicagoist and the Reader both covered the bust-up, and THE2NDHAND posted a story about it.

The issue, apparently, was that the Zhou B. Art Center lacked some of the permits and licenses to hold event of this size. Per the Reader’s article, the “venue lacked a special-event license and adequate exit signs and routes for the upper floors.” My former employer and host of this event, the Poetry Foundation, was not at fault on this issue: their understanding was that all licenses and permits were squared away. It’s too bad that all their efforts for the Ball only came halfway to fruition.

There’s a theory (maybe a conspiracy one) going around that the city used this event as an “example” of sorts, since a hearing was held two days before the event to discuss (per Time Out Chicago) “Chapter 4-157, an ordinance that would require club and event promoters to be licensed every two years. We’ve examined the document, and frankly, we’re frightened by the barriers it introduces to the party-promoting business. It would require a license applicant to carry $1 million in liability insurance, be fingerprinted, undergo background checks and pay a fee. In short, it sounds potentially devastating to small venues and events.” The Chicago Reader also posted about this, noting, “RECENTLY THE DALEY administration proposed an ordinance that would require independent event promoters to get licenses, and the definition of “event” was broad: the rules covered everything from boxing matches to circuses.” The ordinance isn’t set in stone yet, but will likely happen, sez the Reader, “Expect to see a new version hit the table in the next few months — I’m sure it’ll only target promoters who don’t have the pull to get a closed-door meeting at City Hall.”

Literago doesn’t speak legalese, so if anyone cares to weigh in on this and give an interpretation, we’d welcome it.

Ah, well, the first 3 hours of Printers’ Ball were a blast, and I know for a fact that thousands of copies of publications were snatched up by the 400+ partygoers almost immediately. Here are some Flickr photos, by the way. Success was had–it just should’ve gone on longer…

Sunday, July 15th, 2007; Myopic Bookstore; Featuring Brandi Homan, Becca Klaver, Mark Tardi, Daniel Borzutsky

Photos by: Danielle Scruggs
Written by: Maren Robinson

Myopic is one of those cozy independents with a long history, a loyal following, and a series of paintings of the storefront hanging on the wall behind the register to prove it. I found the store cat, Lenny, sleeping on the squishy balcony (which may be held up by books from the floor below) beneath titles by Robertson Davies. It is one of those homey bookshops to blow into on a cold day and find a 1930s garden book you want in spite of not having a garden.

Myopic also provided the warm-weather venue for the Printer’s Ball Poetry magazine reading. Larry Sawyer started off the reading with game show-like task of having local poets Brandi Homan, Becca Klaver, Mark Tardi, and Michael Robins (filling in for Daniel Borzutsky) choose numbers which were keyed to poems, pre-selected by Sawyer, from the Poetry archives. The unique premise of the reading placed local poets in the potentially awkward yet gratifying position of being the readers of other poets’ works. This layering of poets was most striking when Klaver and Homan read Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Ode to Walt Whitman” and again when Robins had to read Anne Sexton’s “Sylvia’s Death.” Poets reading other poets’ poems about poets is difficult – perhaps that is why Robins grumbled “no pressure here” when he drew Sexton’s poem in the lottery. It was respect for Sexton that made him reread a stanza to do the poem justice.

Because no one was reading her own work, the room took on the feel of a group of friends discussing an absent, mutual friend with general good humor and an occasional wink. Klaver tackled the verbal gymnastics of reading Gertrude Stein’s “Stanzas in Meditation” while Tardi moved his head in rhythm with the words behind her. When she reached the end of the stanzas with the line “these stanzas are done,” she spoke with genuine relief, and the laughter that followed was not at the expense of the poem, but rather with the enjoyment of having heard its trickiness. Tardi complained he was drawing all the love poems after reading Karen Volkman’s “Casanova in Love” and Ted Berrigan’s “Words of Love” in rapid succession. Homan’s face had the look of greeting an old friend each time she drew a new poem.

The additional benefit of hearing poets read other people’s poems is the instant interpretation, the way they linger over the language. Tardi read three short poems by Edwin Denby with a lightness that danced over the potentially heavy rhymes. Robins read Denise Levertov’s “Life at War” with a quiet deliberateness that allowed any current war parallels to resonate with (not clobber) the listeners.

Other poets read included: Louis Aragon, John Ashbery, Andrei Codrescu, John Tranter, Diane Wakoski, Lewis Warsh (who, we were told by Tardi, “looks like Crispin Glover’s Dad”), and many others whose names got lost in the shuffle.

At the end of the evening, nine unread poems remained on the table next to Robins’ book The Next Settlement, which he plugged delicately. Tardi thanked the nearly thirty listeners, or “perverts of the city” as he called them (alluding to the Lorca poem) for attending. The room was a little stuffy but people lingered to chat and drink wine. Larry was dozing on a bookshelf and I patted him as I made my way down the stairs. I walked out into the evening, but not before buying H. M. Tomlinson’s Out of Soundings, whose leaf-green binding had been calling to me from the one of the nature bookshelves.

Maren Robinson is a reader, writer, dramaturg, and avid bookshelf voyeur. You can check out the 1,170 books (entered to date) from her bookshelves at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Marensr

Thursday, July 11th; Danny’s; Featuring Cathy Park Hong, Arda Collins, John Beer, Claire McMahon

Photos by Danielle Scruggs

We may not have been there in person, but we were lucky enough to get these photos from the generous Danielle Scruggs. Doesn’t this reading look glamorous? You can see the larger versions of these beauties on our Flickr page.

Saturday, July 7th, 7:00 PM, Quimby’s Books,

THE2NDHAND: INSTALLMENT 24 and readings by: C.T. Ballentine, who wrote a story about Friedrick Nietzsche living in Schaumburg, THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills, and LBJ (writer behind the zines “So Midwest” and “Truckface”), Patrick Somerville (author of Issue #24’s story “Friends from Cincinnati”), and hosted by THE2NDHAND designer Rob Funderburk.

Photos below; no write-up for this one though, kids. It’s hot!

Friday, July 7, 2007; Hideout

Readers: The Dollar Store’s own Jonathan Messinger, Todd Dills of THE2NDHAND and Susan Karp of Uptown Writer’s Space.