literary – Page 4 – panache, perhaps

Sideyard success. Serious joy.

Published on 05/14/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

The sideyard was so much fun. I was this happy:

Except I was wearing a blue crown with curled ribbons longer than my hair, a patterned poncho, and wings made out of leaves (made by Jen), and not a clown costume. As Frankie puts it,

best thing about the sideyard poetry readings:

the folks walking past on the other side of the hedge

on their way to friday-night-party

catching clips of outloud poetry

and the quick image of

a writer in the light

as they pass

What was also wonderful was how many people there were (estimates are in the high 90s), and the flower bouquets with artichokes in them (made by Ellie of course):

and how everyone got so drunk that no one bought books like these:

and perhaps the greatest miracle of the whole event is that not a single neighbor yelled at us. And people bought Misha’s photographs! And I didn’t even have a hangover the next morning! And the next morning was Saturday, and Ellie and I split a mushroom and bacon fritatta covered with blue cheese with whole wheat toast and raspberry jam. The end.

Advice from Robert Frost (hand-lettered image).

Published on 04/26/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

(via illustrator Lisa Congdon’s lovely blog “Today is going to be awesome.” She’s doing a project where she hand-letters 365 days in a row, and she uploads what she’s drawn. This is day 115.)

James Baldwin wrote it; Heather Garner sewed it (image).

Published on 04/23/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

-James Baldwin, from “Giovanni’s Room”

Thank you, Heather, for the beautiful present.

(You can buy Heather’s handcrafts on her etsy site. She might even take embroidery requests!)

And here’s a painting of Baldwin, by Beauford Delaney, that I especially love.

Have you read “Giovanni’s Room” yet? Please do.

Springtime in the sideyard (EVENT)!

Published on 04/10/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

This Friday is the Spring Sideyard! All the info is on the gorgeous 70s poster below, designed by Misha. The only thing about this event is that you must now, right this minute, please I am asking you nicely, do a No Rain on Friday dance. Please just do a little shimmy for no rain on Friday. Normally I shimmy FOR rain, but this week my shoulders are aligned with the sunshine.

I hope to see you there! I will be thinking of all my friends and loved ones who live far away who I know would love to be there! I miss you all!

“Cutting Bread” (poem by a woman I just wrote fan mail to).

Published on 03/11/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

The poet’s name is Shannon Burns. I searched all over the internet for her and finally found her on goodreads of all places. I wrote her a message because I bought her little book in Chicago and I love it. The look of it, the size, the poems. But whoever checks their goodreads messages? I didn’t even know there was such a thing until this week. But I hope she reads it and thinks I’m crazy-in-a-good-way. I like her poems. Here’s one:

Cutting Bread

I could be cutting bread. All the sharp knives

are dirty, ragged edges, sesame seeds on my hands,

on the sticky counter, on the cool floor. They could bloom.

But I am swinging, feeling the slight curve of my back

against the wood, feeling my face flush and numb,

watching movement in windows. People are cutting bread.

Their sticky hands live in cabinets. Mine are hot and full

of blood, melting watermelon candy in my pockets.

I am making noise. People cut bread to the rhythm

of my creak and whine. Weeks ago the wind blew

a child’s pool in the shape of an elephant over the wood

fence. You can see it from the road. Some day

it will be warm again, I think. I think: joints, gums, children,

knowing where to go. I remember this swing overturned

in the yard, my father painting it green. I remember standing

at the kitchen counter with my mother, cutting bread.

***

click to hear her reading her sweet little poem “What’s the Scoop?” on the jubilat site!

I dreamt of Chicago (recap) (mine).

Published on 03/05/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

I went to Chicago last weekend, or at least I think I did. I got a cold pretty soon after arriving and as the days went on I got foggier and foggier. It felt like I was peering out of two small telescopes from inside my body. And now that I’m back in San Diego, where it’s 75 degrees…the whole thing feels even more like a dream. A dream where

I flew on an airplane with writers from San Diego and drank bloody Marys

then ate a pizza so thick it reminded me why they’re called pizza pies

then got picked up outside the pizza restaurant by Eric Suffoletto in a blue Lexus

and we drove to a bar with thick curtains attached to the ten-foot ceilings and drank cocktails fit for a princess at a picnic

and afterwards we drove through a scene from “The Dark Night”

then Katie Conway arrived and we ate green curry with scallops and bought tights and tissues at CVS

and I heard Nikki Giovanni talk in a big room with chandeliers and she reminded me about surrounding myself only with people who love me

and there were a lot of hip people selling books with confusing poems inside

and I ate French fries with brie and mushrooms on top

and it was my birthday

and everyone was calling me but I couldn’t talk

and Ilya Kaminsky sang happy birthday to me and it was a hilarious treasure

and I rode the el and took a taxi cab and wore a turtleneck and various hats

and named Katie’s boyfriend “the maestro of love” and drank wine in the hotel room

and it was flurrying and freezing and the wind was coming from every direction

and I met the woman who wrote the poem about herpes in the Beloit Poetry Journal and I told her she was doing an important thing for the world

and I bought books and journals or took them off tables

and Kate Gale was there and we sat in taupe armchairs and talked and she said hello to a dozen famous people whose names I knew but not the faces

and there was a secret present from Misha snuck into my bag

and on the train it was snowing and Dean was hungover and Jen had so many bags she looked like a vagabond Amazon with fancy belts

and the guy at security took my lotion away

and outside the airport San Diego was hot and over-bright as if lit by bulbs stolen from the rest of the country and there’s Misha in our car waving like he does with one hand raised up, not moving, just raised in hello

***

“You’re a Genius all the time” (list) (Kerouac).

Published on 02/06/2012 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

Here’s a list that Jack Kerouac titled “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” He enclosed it in a letter to Don Allen, written in 1958. Here are his essentials, each of them so very Kerouac, each of them reminding me to be just as wild as I want to.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You’re a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

(list via a great new site I just began loving, lists of note. photo of jack kerouac, lucien carr, and allen ginsberg, in the middle of being geniuses all the time, via tumbling dice.)

New mini chapbook (mine)!

Published on 01/30/2012 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

I am in the middle of making a new lil chapbook. As always, formatting and photocopying are more traumatic than expected. But it WILL be ready by Saturday. About 5 people in the world are as excited about this as I am.

If you want one you should come to Agitprop on Saturday at 7pm. Or you can knock on my sideporch door any time after Sunday. Or, I can send one to you in a sort of delicious correspondence barter (you’d have to write me back). I’d do that. I have a lot of stamps.

($2 each, or traded for $2 worth of what you got. Photograph & cover design by my farmer, Misha J.)

My Saturday (song) & next Saturday (I’m reading!).

Published on 01/28/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Listening to Fleet Foxes, working hard all day on readings & poems & projects so that when Sam & Caity arrive on Tuesday I will do nothing but be with them.

Oh and San Diegans–I’m reading next Saturday night at a gallery called Agitprop, at 7pm. It’s not happening in my yard and it’s not related to SDSU–it’s like, a real reading! Please come if you live here. I’ll be selling mini chapbooks (one of the aforementioned projects getting finished today in preparation for my visitors).