Hurricanes, Detroit, Treme & NYC

The Wire is my all time favorite TV show (followed by Twin Peaks), so once I heard about David Simon's next project, Treme, I became instantly interested. For my birthday, N. bought me the first season of Treme on DVD. We've managed to fit six episodes into our week so far, and I am really enjoying watching it. After watching the first two episodes, I was drawing comparisons between Detroit and New Orleans. Of course the circumstances are much different and things are much more intense in New Orleans, but the cities faced (and continue to face) a lot of the same problems: the mass exodus of residents, outside media coming in to cover the devastation, the questions of whether the cities can be (or should be) saved, the feelings of helplessness, etc. When Katrina hit, I was living in Brooklyn and dating someone from New Orleans whose family still lived there. It was a difficult time, to say the least. To watch Treme now brings back the devastations, and there were many, small and large. On the show we see a character searching for a missing family member, people wanting to return but unable to, a musician who loses his livelihood, an elderly woman whose pharmacy has not reopened, failing businesses, disconnected families, depression, desperation, and escapes into drug use. It's a strange feeling to be watching this now too, with reports of Hurricane Irene heading to the east coast. In the way that New York City makes everything about New York City, right after Katrina there were numerous stories about what would happen to New York if it were hit by a major hurricane. I am hoping the threatening headlines of the past two days are hype & that the storm will lose power or bounce off shore. But I also remember thinking that the warnings before Katrina hit New Orleans were just hype.

Panic on the Streets of London

This is a very well-done post on the events in London right now: "Panic on the Streets of London" by Laurie Penny. Also, check out the video here.

Two Friends, Two Chapbooks

Yesterday in the mail I received the two latest chapbooks from horse less press, Nathan Hauke's S E W N and Kirsten Jorgenson's Deseret. I've been a fan of Nathan's work since I first met him in 2000 when we were both undergrads at Central Michigan, and I've long admired his ability to render description and tension. S E W N is one long poem that is well-crafted. Dated December 11-January 11, 2009-2010, the poem captures solitude around the holidays where the speaker "In the sudden wildness of a clean morning / Sat watching a grill cover dissolve into static," among other things. It is a thoughtful collection, where the speaker considers not just his own environment, but also has thoughts of family, connection/disconnection ("Pane of glass between us between one circumstance and the next"), and change, and puts himself in conversation with other writers through using direct quotes from Mary Rowlandson and Stanley Cavell.

I'm not as familiar with Kirsten's work as I am with Nathan's, but she did come & read in the series I hosted in Saginaw, and I've enjoyed what I heard from her then and what I've read of hers online. Like S E W N, Deseret is also a single long poem. I admit that before reading it, I had to look up "Deseret" to see what it means--it turns out it is the original name for Utah. The poem is minimalistic--the words concise and fitting of the desolate environment ("Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water") they describe. There is a strangeness to this environment, also violence--three-limbed babies, retinas detaching, "ovaries gone bad in the gut." There is a visual element to the work, incorporating what I am assuming are seismic images of Utah--their spiraling images perhaps related to Robert Smithson's essay "The Spiral Jetty," which Kirsten acknowledges having borrowed language from.

The chapbooks are $7 dollars each. However, horse less press is offering a deal where you can get them both for $12. Click here for more information.

Two Night, Two Readings

Tomorrow, Thursday, August 4, I'll be reading at the SKEIN launch party at the Abernathy Arts Center (254 Johnson Ferry Road, NW Atlanta, 30328). Readers include Lindsey Cohen, Zac Cohen, Bruce Covey, Laurel Denham, Walker Jernigan, and Laura Solomon. The event starts at 7PM.

Then on Friday I will be reading at the Emory Bookstore with Jennifer Denrow and Michael Ogletree for the "What's New in Poetry?" series. Event starts at 8PM.

I'm looking forward to hanging out & meeting more Atlanta folks.

Two Reviews

The August book reviews are now up at NewPages, and they include my review of Brian Oliu's So You Know It's Me and the Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Collection They Could No Longer Contain Themselves. There are also a number of other excellent books reviewed in this batch, including Arousing Notoriety/Your Trouble is Ballooning by A. Minetta Gould and Amber Nelson, Field Work by David Hadbawnik, Big Bright Sun by Nate Pritts, and The Twelve Wives of Citizen Jane by Daniela Olszewska, to name a few. You can check all the reviews out here.