(photos by Penelope Bloodworth)

I thoroughly enjoyed the launch event for the new kari edwards books at Dixon Place last night, and to the extent that one believes in such things I truly felt that kari’s molecules were vibrating in that space when Fran Blau began the event by asking us to pause for a moment of silence to recall our memory of hir and impressions of hir. Rob Halpern noted that this event is rewriting and altering our impressions of kari, and if this is the case I think it was sensitively done and there was a great deal of positive energy. I was struck by references throughout the evening to “kari people” which seemed to echo the kind of crisis of identification many of us were going through at the recent Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick memorial at CUNY Graduate Center, where a number of the speakers present referred fondly to a similar notion they had about “Eve people.” 

Belladonna and Litmus Press and Fran Blau have done us all a very important service by putting two beautiful books into print, the intense new volume of poetry by kari, Bharat Jiva, and also the book of critical writing about hir work, NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards. This latter book is simply a stunning achievement, and represents what editors Julian Brolaski and erica kaufman say (and what I’d reiterate) is “the start of what hopefully will be a much longer conversation” (In my reading for the evening I particularly thanked Julian who has been a superb, conscientious, and very creative editor and who was extremely easy to work with). When Julian and Erica began their intro yesterday with a quote from Ron Silliman, the palpable absence from the event of any “Language” writers could be felt in the room for a moment, highlighting the difference between what has happened in poetics between 2004 when kari was tearing around the internet as a lively, vital, and highly argumentative presence online and on the Buffalo List, and the more ad-hoc recent attempts to reverse-engineer avant-garde movements in 2009 that Eileen notes here. But I also very much appreciated the fact that Julian and erica quoted from kari's introduction written in 2006 for the Queering Language issue of EOAGH, because working on that journal issue with hir is one of my last and fondest memories of kari.

Some of the responses from the reading, which included many of kari’s friends and admirers, were drawn from the NO GENDER book and represented a variety of morphing critical objects, from essays to interviews to artwork to various other kinds of responses. Anne Waldman read from her piece to kari, “Secrets in a public ear” with explosively timed improvisations by Julie Patton (when she cited the relevance of Burroughs’ influence on kari, Julie  sang “there’s something in my eye”). Brenda Iijima gave a heartfelt talk on how her views about gender were enriched by her friendship with kari, and she read from some collages she had contributed to the book (“The Anus, We All Have One”). Bill Marsh gave a powerful reading from my favorite book of kari’s, the Heretical Texts / Factory School volume obedience. Cara Benson read a great poem that channeled certain aspects loosely in the spirit of kari’s style. Chris Martin read from his collaborations he did with hir, “try not to kill anything with your face.” CA Conrad’s lovely poem to kari, “kari7,” echoed O’Hara’s Lana Turner in its loving but fretting appeal to hir “WAKE UP AND UPDATE YOUR BLOG GODDAMIT!” leaving a stunned feeling, as we all were a little speechless at first, as if waiting. But as I said in my reading I think it is now necessary to move forward and figure out what’s next. I was delighted to meet Marcus Civin, an artist and friend of kari’s who lived in hir apartment building and whose reading channeled what Rob referred to as “kari’s rage.” And last but particularly memorable was Rob Halpern’s reading from his marvelous essay in the book, “Reading the Interval, Reading Remains,” which addresses a number of topics including a radical and complex view of the “I” in kari’s work: “the singular ‘I’ of kari’s late work is rendered tender by a broken heart the body can’t contain…kari’s ‘I’ finds its incoherent coherence by remaining faithful to an event on the far side of the present’s horizon: the end of gender’s regulatory regime of power.” Rob’s amazing and moving essay references some texts that kari was reading at the end of hir life and tries to extrapolate from this what the implications could be for a radical queer poetics. So in that case “I” was incredibly delighted to meet Rob for the first time, and was moved by his presence and his generosity and passion. Thanks to all the "kari people" present, and thanks to Julian, Tracy and erica for so much hard work and for producing two books that represent essential reading for everyone in contemporary poetry this year.

Comments

[Kevin Killian]

Hi Tim, thanks for the post about kari edwards' work and the recent books and the launch for them. Wish I was there but alas, stuck home here in San Francisco looking on with admiration for all concerned at Dixon Place.

I don't get it (however) about the palpable absence of the language poets (I guess at the event you describe)? Were they invited and refused to attend? Who organized this event? Do we need to have a language poet at every such ceremony? I know I'm missing some incredibly simple point here. Are the language poets in some sort of dialectical opposition to the "kari people"? And if so what about those in the audience who are members of neither group, what did they make of the event?

I guess the kari people reference has me chilled but I'm of a much earlier generation than yours, Tim, one raised to fear the concept of the pod people.

xxx Kevin K.

[ruth lepson]

love your poems in CUE, T. You are achieving a clarity that is hard won, as you describe yourself in the first poem.