Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe
Tonight, July 27, 6:30 PM.
free to the public.
Tonight, July 27, 6:30 PM.
free to the public.
Blind Date with Poetry with host Matt Moon.
Courtyard Gallery Open Mic
Courtyard Gallery & Studio Open Mike
Thursday nights
9 PM-12 midnight
Downtown Asheville
Thursday nights
9 PM-12 midnight
Downtown Asheville
Free to Public
Pure Energy: bells, bowls and didge
Okay, is it “open mic” or “open mike”? I’ve seen the term represented both ways.
If you’ve missed the Beanstreet open mic events of previous years, then head on down to Walnut Street for a free-for-all of lyrics and poetry and eclectic vibes at Courtyard Gallery & Studio. Can’t find the gallery? Find your way to Scully’s and follow the steps downstairs or take a walk down Carolina Lane and look for the sign pointing you to a weekly event featuring singer/songwriters, poets and writers. The open mic is hosted by Jarrett Leone (pictured playing the didge). Also, check out their podcasts, “True Home,” on Apple iTunes.
Write Stuff: taking notes
This week’s Write Stuff piece is directly related to the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival: Notes from a Poetry Workshop.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Carolina Mountains Literary Festival
Write Stuff: Short story subject matter in the news
Weird. I wrote a first draft fictional story for Write Stuff based on actual events. The working title is Career Mistake and relates a story about a civil rights attorney defending Native Americans in the 1970s.
So this morning I just heard Daniel Kraker’s report on NPR’s Morning Edition: Navajos Protest Violence Against Tribe.
September 12, 2006 · The Navajo Nation is concerned about three recent incidences of violence against Navajos in Farmington, N.M. The Navajo community is rallying to draw attention to the problem.
Woah. I thought I had picked an obscure subject matter; you know, not like newspaper headline story.
Write Stuff: First draft short fiction
This week Write Stuff is publishing posts based on the writing prompt: making a mistake. I sat down and spent an hour and a half writing the following short short story: Career Mistake. It is a first draft fictional account of actual events.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Overheard on the bus
The write dream
Karen asks two good questions, here at Write Stuff, regarding writing career aspirations:
“What did you first want from your writing career when you began? What is your writing dream today?”
Fill in the blank:
In my personal writing career dream, I see myself …
The least it would take for me to feel successful is …
Overheard on the bus route
Here’s some overheard conversations from Friday afternoon.
Man talking to another man: “What is real? What is truth? What is this? You know what I’m talking about?”
Waiting at the bus stop.
Man 1: “I’ve been runnin’ all day… getting a beer here… a beer there… s___ I’m tired.”
Man 2: “I hear that.”
Man 1: “Alcohol will make you go places you don’t want to go… killed my brother… I get shakes, you know… s___, my heart stopped in Virginia… ah, hell.”
Overheard on ATS
I posted overheard bus conversations and comments back in June. Here’s some more from the other day:
After mentioning something about the police, a man says into his cellphone: “You can’t just sell something that isn’t yours.”
Man and woman talking across the aisle inside the bus.
Man: “Where you going this early in the morning?”
Woman: “Social Services.”
Man: “What for?”
Woman: “None of your damn business. Where you going?”
Man turns toward the window and looks at his cellphone.Man at a bus stop mopping his face with a handkerchief after racing up a hill to wait for the bus: “Hot has hell out here … but a lot nicer than Columbus … no drive-by shooting … Asheville’s a nice place … “
Coffeehouse Junkie: “Columbus, Ohio?”
Man lighting a cigarette: “Yeah … had to leave Columbus ’cause all the f__ing Mexicans taking all the jobs … heard ’bout Asheville … sure is damn hot but a whole lot nicer than Columbus.”
Coffeehouse Junkie refrained from saying: Welcome to Asheville amigo.
Write Stuff: A Greek Tragedy
This week Write Stuff’s regular contributors are to write about “premonition.” The assignment was handed out a week or two ago.
For the last week I’ve been engaged in a lecture series on “Introduction to Greek Philosophy” from Boston University (via The Teaching Company). I was able to rent the 4 DVD set from the local library. That has lead me to examine texts on Alexander the Great as well as explore The Theogony.
With the writing prompt being premonition, my mind turned to the tragic Greek tale of Cassandra. I started out to write a formal sonnet with a twist. The twist being that I did not want to use a rhyming pattern nor did I want to use iambic pentameter; rather, I wanted to write iambic dimeter verse.
When I completed the initial drafts I realized it lacked the urgency and tragedy that I want to communicate. So I departed from the initial hybrid sonnet I attempted and completed the poem as four strophes of four lines each — total of sixteen lines. Let me know what you think of Cassandra’s Gift.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Hot off the press!
They arrived yesterday–thousands of them. Last night I received copies of the debut issue of D’licious Magazine. There’s something special–magical–about holding months of hard work, long hours and gallons of coffee in the final form of the printed product. Join me Saturday night for the d’licious magazine release party!
Here’s the details:
Saturday, August 5, 2006 from 7:00pm– until
Contact: D’licious Magazine at info@dliciousmag.com
D’licious Magazine will debut its premier issue. Come experience a taste of Asheville’s cuisine, entertainment, breweries and wineries at the Haywood Park Ballroom (1 Battery Park Ave., Asheville, NC 28801) underneath the Haywood Park Hotel in the heart of downtown Asheville.
Food and beverages provided by: Belly of Buddha Catering, the Flying Frog Cafe, the Frog Bar and Deli, Biltmore Estate Stable Café, Thai Basil, Hannah Flannigans, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, Digable Pizza, Greenlife Grocery, Sweet Monkey Bakery & Catering, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Zuma Too: Chef Oso’s Culinary Passport, Haywood Road Market, Sclafani Distributors, the Biltmore Estate Winery, Hanover Park Winery, the French Broad Brewing Company, Highlands Brewery and the Pisgah Brewery.
Additional sponsors: The Westville Pub, Kabloom, 96.5 WOXL, and the Art of Microbrewing by Stephen Patrick Boland and Kevin Marino.
Entertainment by: David Stevenson, Cabo Verde, Free Planet Radio and Jen and the Juice.
Purchase tickets today: The Haywood Park Hotel, The French Broad Brewery, Greenlife, Hannah Flannigans, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, The Haywood Road Market, Orbit DVD and Diggin Art.
Tickets are $25 in advance and $35 at the door.
Write Stuff: ‘Cause that’s what poets do
Proof positive that I can write under pressure with many children under the age of six (no, they are not all mine). Before you click the link and read this week’s Write Stuff post, here is the backstory.
My wife and I invited a friend and her children to join us for a Bele Chere excursion. My children were very excited to have guests and were acting accordingly by running from one end of our small cottage to the other end while loudly proclaiming their enthusiasm. I started writing the piece around 11 AM amid the din of my progeny, and guests arrived around 11:30 AM for an early lunch before we headed to Bele Chere. With double the children the beautiful chaos did increase. By 12:30 PM I had posted this week’s column while everyone else ate lunch.
For more than I month I had been reading and pondering the essence of this piece but had not committed it to paper. Inspired by the lyrics from the Steve Brooks’ song Dead Poets Society (from his Purgatory Road album), I chose the title — “‘Cause that’s what poets do.” My outline for the piece was simple and I offered the question, “Why should I write poems if people are more interested in my activism?” Realizing the piece ended darker than I anticipated I added a sarcastic spin at the end àl a George Thorogood’s “One bourbon, one scotch, one beer.”
So here’s this week’s, ‘Cause that’s what poets do.
By the way, Bele Chere was a hoot! The kids enjoyed it because they all received balloons that they could fight over and the parents enjoyed it because the children were very tired from all the walking and went to bed early. And that is what parents do.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Blind Date with Poetry
Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe
Tonight, July 27, 6:30 PM.
free to the public.
Tonight, July 27, 6:30 PM.
free to the public.
Blind Date with Poetry with host Matt Moon and featuring poet is Michael White.
Tags: [writing, poems, writers, poetry, Malaprop’s, Asheville, reading]
It is official — d’licious magazine release party!
d’licious debut: magazine release party!
Saturday, August 5, 2006 from 7:00pm– until
Haywood Park Hotel Ballroom, 1 Battery Park Ave., Asheville, NC 28801
Contact: Cody Stokes at cody@dliciousmag.com
On Saturday August 5th D’licious Magazine will debut its premier issue as Asheville’s one and only food and beverage magazine. Come experience a taste of Asheville’s cuisine, entertainment, breweries and wineries from 7:00pm until after midnight at the Haywood Park Ballroom underneath the Haywood Park Hotel in the heart of downtown Asheville.
Participating will be: Belly of Buddha Catering, the Flying Frog Cafe, the Frog Bar and Deli, Biltmore Estate Stable Café, Thai Basil, Hannah Flannigans, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, Digable Pizza, Greenlife Grocery, Sweet Monkey Bakery & Catering, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Zuma Too: Chef Oso’s Culinary Passport, Haywood Road Market, Sclafani Distributors, the Biltmore Estate Winery, Hanover Park Winery, the French Broad Brewing Company, Highlands Brewery and the Pisgah Brewery.
Additional sponsors will be: The Westville Pub, Kabloom, 96.5 WOXL, and the Art of Microbrewing by Stephen Patrick Boland and Kevin Marino.
Entertainment for the evening will be: David Stevenson, Cabo Verde, Free Planet Radio and Jen and the Juice.
Tickets can be purchased at the following locations: The Haywood Park Hotel, The French Broad Brewery, Greenlife, Hannah Flannigans, Clingman Ave. Coffee and Catering, Skully’s Signature Dine & Drink, The Haywood Road Market, Orbit DVD and Diggin Art.
Come and support D’licious Magazine for its debut in Asheville.
Tickets are $25 in advance and $35 at the door. Hors’ Doeuvres and beverages will be included in the ticket price.
Write Stuff response
This week’s Write Stuff piece brought the following comments.
“Wow! Something to think about . . .”–Michèle
“I love the taste and feel of words on my tongue and in my head. I love it when they come out when I am writing with feeling and I come “out of it” to read what I have written and I can’t believe that I have written what is on the screen or paper. It is a passion, a deep feeling of love for writing and the written word. I am only half way following my calling half way. I needed this kick in the butt, thank you very much.”–Shelli
“This is beautiful … I am twisting and turning but I’m afraid that my student loan payment has tasted more of my writing efforts than I have.”–Tammi
The column begins: “I used to think I needed a job that allows me to be a poet and writer. I think a lot of people believe this. I don’t think much of it anymore.”
After making that statement I explore, in brief, some practices of distinguished poets like Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Ezra Pound and John Ashbery. It was meant to be a challenge more to myself than readers. However, if it got Michèle to “think about” it and gave Shelli a “kick in the butt” then I would consider that a bonus.
Write Stuff: So you think you have something to say?
This week’s Write Stuff column is So you think you have something to say?.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Notes and Quotes: Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
It challenges me to read about poets and their work. I read with notebook in hand. Here are notes and quotes from Ezra Pound: The Voice of Silence by Alan Levy
Pound was a “political prisoner” of the U.S. from 1945 to 1958 for comments made “on his wartime broadcasts for the fascist radio in Rome.” Interesting in light of current events and policies. I doubt he’d even be noticed.
Peter Russell on Pound’s silence: “He can say yes and no with so many shades of inflection that it becomes a language in itself. The rest … is that he’s entered a period of meditation and contemplation.”
Pound’s “official” wife was Dorothy Shakespear though his companion was Olga Rudge. Olga, who remained with him until his death, explained why she was so protective of Pound: “We get hippies … They have embraced the wisdom of Ezra Pound, but they haven’t read him.”
Further she said: “Others come to read him their poetry. They don’t know his poetry, but they want him to praise theirs. And their craftsmanship is so poor. There is no oral tradition anymore. It’s all publicity.”
Among the hippies was Allen Ginsberg whose ‘first question to Pound was … bourgeois: “Do you people need any money?'”
“Olga Rudge was appalled to read an interview in which Ginsberg chided Pound for his bourgeois background and values–and told of his own good deeds, including buying Pound $75 to $85 worth of Dylan records. ‘It was all about money, not about time or poetry,’ Olga Rudge observed.”
Ezra “didn’t enjoy” the Bob Dylan recordings.
Pound’s stay in Venice in 1908 allowed him to “publish, at his own expense, his first collection of poems, A Lume Spento.”
From Thomas Lask’s obit.: “‘Make it new’ was his cry as he went into battle. He sought tautness, compactness, the hard image that both conveyed and, in a sense, was the meaning the poet was after. Every word that was not functional in the line was eliminated. His poetry … had a lyrical and delicate talent, a skillful sense of rhythm and music and a nervous energy that give the poetry a propulsive vigor.”
Pound from P’atria Mia: “With the real artist there is always a residue, there is always something in the man which does not get into his work. There is always some reason why the man is always more worth knowing than his books are. In the long run nothing else counts.”
Pound in a letter to William Carlos Williams he lists his creative goals:
“1 To paint the thing as I see it.
“2 Beauty
“3 Freedom from didacticism
“4 It is only good manners if you repeat a few other men to at least do it better or more briefly.”
Richard H. Rovere: “He believed with Whitman that American experience was fit and even glorious material for poetry, and what he was at war with when he left this country was that spirit that denied this … ‘Make it new’ Pound kept saying, from his colloquial rendering of Confucius, and ‘Make it American,’ as if he were a booster of home manufactures at a trade fair.”
Pound on Walt Whitman from Selected Prose: “I see him America’s poet….
“He is America. His crudity is an exceeding great stench, but it is America. He is the hollow place in the rock that echoes with his time….
“Mentally I am a Walt Whitman who has learned to wear a collar and a dress shirt … Whitman is to my fatherland … what Dante is to Italy …”
“Tching prayed on the mountain and
wrote MAKE IT NEW
on his bath tub
Day by day make it new.”
–From Canto LIII
Blind Date with Poetry
Tonight Blind Date with Poetry, hosted by Matt Moon featured poets published by Rapid River magazine. Featured poets included: Jillian Foster Knight, Corrie Woods, Britt Kaufmann, Joanna Knowles, Dahn Shaulis, Cheri L. Jones Wendy Kochenthal and myself.
Without exception, the poets presented over an hour of well crafted material from diverse perspectives. The open mic that followed was equally inspiring though a few of the regular open mic poets seemed absent.
My wife accompanied me tonight which is a special occasion for both of us. She enjoyed the night’s poetry and we were able to meet new friends, kindred spirits after the event.
The only regret I recall is that one open mic poet seemed to hang back from the congregation of poets. I caught her figure out of the corner of my eye as she stared at a book shelf. I’ve experienced that glazed look myself. Not sure how to introduce myself to other poets and equally intimidated by them. I think she said she was a student from ABTech. She wore a pink camisole and read a couple poems during the open mic portion of the event. I wanted to thank her for bravely sharing her work, but I got caught up in a discussion about Ezra Pound’s poetry and essays that I neglected such an important opportunity to include and encourage a young poet. My wife noticed her as well and advised me to encourage her if I see her again at another open mic. It is such a small gesture, but also so important.
Tags: [writing, poems, writers, poetry, Malaprop’s, Asheville, reading]
Overheard at Everyday Gourmet
As I prepared for tonight’s poetry reading, I thought I’d try to organize my thoughts at a downtown cafe.
One woman tells a guy: “Yeah, when I used to do illegal drugs I used to really look down on people who didn’t. That was so immature–don’t you know. Now I’m into herbal teas.”
One woman says to second woman: “I am like so not into teaching any more. I used to be like into the teaching thing but I’ve beyond that now. You know what I’m saying?”
A man at a table behind me throws a newspaper on a table and says: “I wish someone would just kill [name withheld].”
I withheld the name from the last quote because the person is an elected government official and I’m not sure if the man in the cafe was simply expressing an opinion or an intent. After hearing the man’s comment I was shaken by the violence of it and could not concentrate on my goal of preparing for tonight’s reading. So I left.
Strider
This week’s Write Stuff column is Stride.
The First Annual BlogAsheville Awards–plus nominations
The First Annual BlogAsheville Awards
Nominate up to three BlogAsheville blogs in each category … Anyone may nominate blogs in this competition, so please post about it at your blogs and email me the results. Only bloggers on the BlogAsheville blogroll are eligible for nominations. Nominations will close Friday, June 15 at 11:59 pm.
1000 Black Lines has been nominated for:
– Best Writing (twice)
– Best Design (twice)
– Best Local Happenings
1000 Black Lines has NOT been nominated for:
– Blogger you’d most like to see naked
– Blogger I’d Most Like to Have a Beer With
So, take a look at the categories and email your NOMINATIONS to: scrutinyhooligans[AT]yahoo[DOT]com
Nominate 1000 Black Lines before midnight tonight!
Overheard on the ATS
If you haven’t used the Asheville Transit System (i.e. the bus), you don’t know what you’re missing. Here’s what I overheard today on the bus.
First man: “There’s a Chevrolet truck for sale for five hundred dollars. I told the man I’d give him two hundred dollars cash right there on the spot. He wouldn’t have it.”
Second man: “Damn motherf___er.”One guy tells another guy: “I left California because there’s too many damn Mexicans.”
(At least a half dozen people of Hispanic descent sit near him.)One African-American woman trying to get the attention of second African-American woman who is on a cell phone and moves away from the first woman: “I hate blacks trying to act white.”
(This is said in front of me, a person of Dutch/Irish descent, to a third African-American woman.)One woman says to second woman: “I’m so stressed I smoked two packs today.”
A young woman says into her cell phone: “No, he’s Irish and speaks English.”
(She speaks with a distinct Romanian accent.)
Two African-American women seated next to me on the bus overhear this and speak.
First woman: “Am I like that?”
Second woman: “Nah. You ain’t that loud.”
Imagine what I’ll overhear on the way home tonight.
Measurable, meaningful, attainable
For this week’s Write Stuff column I cannibalized this post in order to offer Go Deep. It is something I have been considering all week.
If you are not familiar with Write Stuff, Karen offers a great column on the importance of establishing writing goals. For accountability, she lists Write Stuff contributors’ goals here.
I scanned the goals of the other writers and I am amazed with their organization. I’m a little jealous too. I submitted one item in my own ambiguous fashion but also to provide a “measurable, meaningful, and attainable” goal. I wish I could offer more goals, but simply have limited time and resources.
Tags: [writing, creative, writers, Write Stuff]
Coffeehouse Junkie 