The Chax Press Reading in New York, held on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the esteemed Tucson-based small press, happened on February 3, 2004. We heard readings by Jackson Mac Low, Hank Lazer, Allison Cobb, Charles Bernstein, Heather Thomas, Charles Alexander, Nick Piombino, Mark Weiss, Bob Perelman, myself, and others. A shadow had been cast over the event by the death earlier that afternoon of the wonderful poet Gil Ott, who was a close friend of many in attendance. Perelman and a number of others dedicated their readings that evening to Gil and read poems in honor of him. I had the sense of an occasion bounded by time and mortality, whose participants were a kind of community.
The event was curated by David Kirschenbaum as part of the Boog City small press series. After some music by the Drew Gardner Orchestra, the readings began with Mac Low, who read some of his characteristic Stein-esque works that had been generated via chance procedures. He read very quietly, and I had to sit at the front of the room to hear him. (Jackson and I have a weird connection -- he published his first poems in a high school literary magazine that my grandfather edited. He sent me the poems two years ago, and I was struck by how similar these early narratives were in style and syntax to his later ones created from chance operations). Hank Lazer was next up, and read a series of wryly funny, philosophical, heteroglossaic poems. These seemed less kinetic than his jazz-influenced work and instead a little more distanced, an effect heightened by the droll way in which he read them.
I don't remember the order after that, though another reader I recall was Allison Cobb, who read from "J Poems" in her new Chax book Born2, a series of accomplished, Stein-like love letter poems which had been produced by crossing out parts of what appears to be doggerel verse. The resulting effect bordered at times on the edge between the whimsical and the slightly obscene (many lines in which nothing but the letter "o" had been deleted), but foregrounding sound in order to prevent the language turning into speech gestures that were too easily characterizable or recognizable. Heather Thomas gave a potent rendition of poems from her newest Chax book Resurrection Papers. I have no idea what I sounded like when I read. Nick Piombino was charming and funny as usual when he read his wonderful series of "haiku" ("too many roses / no bouquet") that had been created by a rather free interpretation. "I swear, I didn't know about 5-7-5 when I wrote these...I thought the rule was just 17 syllables." Nick said.
Another particularly memorable reader was Charles Bernstein, who read his poem "The Bricklayer's Hands." I had never heard Bernstein read before (though I have memorized a number of his poems), and I knew his work had energy, but did not anticipate such a riveting performance. He swayed backward and forwards dramatically, pivoting at the waist, his bodily movements punctuating the movements of the language. He really put a lot of "oomph" into that particular work, and the performance had momentum and power. Mark Weiss gave a terrific reading as usual. Perelman (who seemed quite upset about Ott's death) read a poem in honor of Gil. Charles Alexander read from the second half of his new book Near or Random Acts, recently published by Ott's Singing Horse Press, and read a series of Zukofsky-esque pieces with formal limitations (five words per line, seven lines per stanza) which because of these limitations sounded oddly like Creeley. I enjoyed these poems and Charles' dynamic reading of them, especially their simultaneous engagement with war and family through the medium of word as object (the sense of words as palpable things with physical presence whose arrangement creates real political consequences). I have heard Charles read a number of times now, and I also have come to admire his odd mixture of Olson's "push" with a gentler, more feminine quality that perhaps derives from his interest in Duncan's tone-leading.
Aside from the fact that I developed a severe set of hiccups on the way to the restaurant after the reading (I drink a lot of water before reading), which made me a humorous figure in the eyes of some, this was a wonderful night, and I enjoyed meeting a number of New York characters including Charles Borkhuis, Matvei Yankelevich, Bernstein's wife Susan Bee, Drew Gardner, and Gary Sullivan. Brenda Iijima was there selling her terrific Portable Press books, and it was also good to see my aunt and some cousins who attended.
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