Here is the opening day schedule for Litquake 10:

LQ – X

Please contact 415 706-9128 for more information.

Many thanks to Scot Young for including this older piece that’s been kicking around in my archives that I’ve never had the guts to break out till now:

Closer, by PCR @ Rusty Truck

Plus this fine piece of work from my friend Joie Cook who I’m going to see on Wednesday night:

Above the Cement by Joie C

My first published fiction:

Double Lanes at 42opus:

Thank you Brian!

…because I should:

I am very honored to be reading with San Francisco Poet Laureate, and full on legend Diane Di Prima at the seismic poets session on Litquake’s opening day (Day of Days to follow Night of Nights?)

Our reading is at the Koret Auditorium at SF Public Library main branch at 1 PM, Saturday October 17th.

I know the irony/hypocrisy of reading at Koret while writing a blog loosely called Escape for SF Public Library is a little strong, but good lord if I really wanted to escape the library I wouldn’t write about it!

MAIN STREET RAG
Sunday August 16, 2009 – 7:00 pm
Hosted by Shawn Pavey with guests

Paul Corman Roberts / Jose Faus / Lea Eliot

The Writers Place
3607 Pennsylvania
Kansas City, MO 64111-2820
816-753-1090

Now appearing in Gloom Cupboard # 102:

PALM DUSK

Don’t be fooled by the thick humidity. The day grows darker than you imagine in a twilight vaguely illuminated by the burning tops of the palm trees; forty-four fronds blazing away, swaying in the gentle East Bay winds.

All beneath the particulate marine layer with an eye for a local mortgage; weather drawn by the density of bodies. Elements are as the blank slate of wills of you and I with our pretensions to an immortal phantasmagoria.

For a time there had been a growing sun, as if Orion had thrown out his arms to embrace the Earth as his lover.

Full of Crow Press’ Prate Interview Series has just published my first interview (as an interviewer) right here:

http://fullofcrow.com/prate/2009/08/lenore-weiss/#more-68

ELEVEN : ELEVEN
By Liz Worth
Trainwreck Press, 2008
24 pages, www.ditchpoetry.com

Don’t be fooled by the title. Eleven : Eleven by seminal Toronto artist Liz Worth isn’t about numerology, or “the opening of the cosmic gates” or any other blather propagated by Uri Geller.

It is about the mirroring of the individual sets of “one” and there is, naturally, a countdown of sorts, in the thread of this stark prose poem, and in the verse:

“It’s these numbered streets. They’re counting down our
days:

It’s only theatre.”

Maxine is the exotic other “Eleven” to Worth’s narrator in the chap, and depending on your view of similar writer/nihilist type relationships in the past (think Rimbaud/Verlaine for the 21st Century) an enabler, a guru of the dark secular, a BFF, a leach, a sibling or all of the above:

“By the way she looked at me I could tell she was staring at her reflection in my sunglasses. She’d just been caught stealing underwear again.

She asked if wanted to come over and see it all, her stolen underwear that is. She is a Warholian prophecy paraphrased: Everything about her is beauty sleep to cure her sleeping problems and all the boys say she is a problem beauty. I’d heard of a girl with a kaleidoscope between her thighs and thought, This must be her.”

Worth follows this set up with a gorgeous rendering of a post-punk season in hell, using a very natural and accessible surrealism that never sounds contrived. The ensuing dance, and finale, between Worth’s narrator and Maxine follows in the great tradition of Ahab and the White Whale, or Kerouac and Cassidy: a series of lost and broken drifters substituting for the crew of the Pequod or the Beats, as they drain inexorably toward the same whirlpool:

“Maxine brings guests of flesh and blood danger. One is gaunt, the colour of forgetting. Two has Phoenix hair and a sharp face, canine teeth that show when he talks.

I tell One that something’s inside of me. The more I drink the more I see it, the more I feel it, a heaving parasite below my breasts. He’s drunk and leans in. The top of his lip is moist. It holds the same humidity I once found between a girl’s thighs.”

The glory of it is that the epic journey down the path of ill intent and its consequent flam contained in 24 pages instead of 240 or 1000.

Worth’s talent and vision give lie to the notion of Toronto as some moribund outpost of watered down multi-culturalism. That city now boasts strong indie writers like Worth , Robert Chrysler, Goth goddess Alexis Child, as well as endeavors such as Trainwreck Press, Ditch Poetry, and Darryl Salach’s Toronto Quarterly. Perhaps not quite the literary rep of Vancouver or several other pretentious North American cities…yet.

But Worth would be an incredible writer anywhere she decided to write from. (She is also the author of Treat Me Like Dirt, a non-fiction account of early Toronto punk, available @ http://www.bongobeat.com/bongoindex.php). The final scene of Eleven : Eleven, while not unexpected, is satisfying and honest as any can be for such a naked plunge into self-abnegation. Pound for Pound, Eleven : Eleven gets my vote for best complete prose poem released in 2008. You have a lot of choices out there, but this is guaranteed GOOD writing folks.

MELISSA HANSEN AND PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS

Release party for “Little Beasts” by Melissa Hansen
&
“NeoCommuter” by Paul Corman-Roberts

Two of the Bay Area’s most promising young poets will sign & read from their recent collections of gritty, hard lived poems, Wine & Snacks served free…donations appreciated.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
7:00pm – 8:15pm
Laurel Book Store
4100 MacArthur Blvd.
Oakland, CA

Phone: 4157069128
Email: heinouspablo@gmail.com

new poems & flash fiction from Paul Corman-Roberts

To my lovely loyal fans,

Thanks for sticking with me through thick and thin. My new collection of poems & flash fiction is available for $6 here from Tainted Coffee Press:

I hope to have the Paypal option up very soon, but in the meantime, if you’d like a signed copy, you can send me $8 at:

2929 Nicol Ave
Oakland CA 94602

I hope to see you soon!
Hastas
pabs