Entries published at 08/07/2016

DREAM

Broken headline column:
“YOU ARE GO
IN TO END”
Allen Ginsberg dives through the space hatch.
I watch him from the rim, hear his voice
trail a statement “MAN ISSSSSSSSSS . . . . . . . . ”
as he disappears into dot-hood.
The Poets—Anne Waldman, me, “all The Poets”—float
in interstellar space—a substance I
can touch, a fine sheen. & then I’m up against the sun,
its soft orange neon glow. “THE SUN,” I say, “IS BIG!”
Pause, a chair sails silent past me & into solar radiance.
“CHAIR INTO SUN!” I remark (a parody of big
poetical remark).
Then I am back on Earth,
speed-skating on the “Power-Cones.”

—from This 8 (1977); see also Portrait and Dream, p. 154

I had come to New York with a purpose—to visit Ted Greenwald, whose health had been failing (see here), and to make contact with people and see art (see here). I was not expecting to see Bill, whom I knew had been living partly in New York but whom I had not seen for some time (not since we read at MOCAD in Detroit, an event so poorly framed and executed—not by Bill, of course, who sounded great—that I only remember it with displeasure). One of my contacts mentioned that Bill would be reading with Kyle Schlesinger at a gallery in Chelsea, and sent an email with time and place, to begin at 5:30. … More

I was in New York for a purpose—for one thing, I had not been for a while and it was time to catch up. At a conference in Boston, I received a phone call from Kit Robinson, in the middle of a session on surrealism no less, that Ted Greenwald’s health was failing. I made plans to visit as soon as the semester was over; a day was arranged, a plane flight, a hotel booking, and other appointments fell into place. I’ve outlined what I did over the four-day weekend here. The time was specified for 2 P.M. Ted was chipper over the phone: “I have an earlier appointment, but I can see you then.” He books his time like a New Yorker, I noted; I don’t, in some unstated way assuming every event is its own uniqueness, even if that has long since become unworkable as a way to manage time. (So it came to pass that I work the day shift on the assembly line of Modernity Inc., headquarters in Detroit. But what’s the difference? Differing cultural styles of time management all depend on the same passage of time.) I was nervous about the event; he had not overprepared it. … More

920x920

Bill Berkson Memorial
San Francisco Art Institute
24 July 2016

Moses Berkson
Nathaniel Dorsky
Duncan McNaughton
Mac McGinnes
Clark Coolidge
Norma Cole
Doug Hall
Joanne Kyger
… More

          Bavarian-American Academy
          Summer Academy
          Florida International University
          Miami Beach, 5–11 June 2016

Martha Schoolman
Heike Paul
Meike Zwingenberger
Margarethe Schweiger-Wilhelm
John Landreville
… More

          Berlin (23–30 May 2016)

Scott DeGregoris
Donna Stonecipher
Manfred Uhlitz
Shane Anderson
Ulf Stolterfoht
Christian Hawkey
Uljana Wolf
Florian Werner
Josepha Conrad
Dorothee Haffner
Susanne Reumschüssel

          Paris (30 May–1 June 2016)

Linda Watten
Hélène Aji

… More