Now Let Us Praise Genius Guy A Month In His Rearview Mirror, Part 2

A few more goodbyes to Adam Robinson from his writer friends in Baltimore.

ADIEU TO ADAM, BON JOUR TO ANOTHER BALTIMORE SUMMER (a rip-off of Frank O’Hara’s “Adieu to Normal, Bon jour to Joan and Jean-Paul”)

It is 8:50 in Baltimore and I am wondering
if I will finish this in time for the party for Adam who is leaving
ah parties! I think I am going crazy
what with my terrible commute and the weekend coming up
and Joan’s Swedish dance party for Bonnie who is coming back finally
I wish I were coming back from somewhere but I’m glad I’m here
I wish I could get some new writing to come out
for a new book by some new press somewhere
which they will probably not print
but it is good to be up in the study at night
wondering whether you are any good or not
and the only decision you can make is that Frank O’Hara did it so you’ll always have that

yesterday I looked up Oakhurst on a map
and was happy to find it like a bird
flying over Atlanta and its environs
which unfortunately did not include Decatur which I don’t know
as well as a number of other things
and Ian is back bitching about Baltimore a lot
and Bonnie is coming back and might be sad about it
and not everyone can come to Adam’s party
although everyone knows he is leaving
I suspect they are avoiding this fact
well, who isn’t

I wish I were reeling around Atlanta
instead of reeling around Baltimore
I wish I weren’t reeling at all
it is Spring the ice has melted the Yeungling is being poured
we are all happy and aging and counting our teeth
it is the same as old age
the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over Lake Montebello it continues
Greenmount continues
Club Charles stays open it hardly closes at all
Hampden continues to be aspirational
Stephanie Rawlings Blake continues to attempt to be inspirational as does Obama
and S. Barber continues to be Stephanie
and Mark Cugini continues to be Michael Kimball’s love child
and Jamie Gaughran-Perez continues to be Jamie Perez (I think!)
and Rupert Wondolowski continues to be the king of Baltimore
and so do we (sometimes I think I’m “in love” with Baltimore)
and surely the Harbor continues to have water in it
and Normals continues to have shelves of books and bins of records and people poring over them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible
Lauren Bender, Joe Young, Adam Robinson it is possible isn’t it
I love Adam for saying yes, though I don’t believe it

--Megan McShea

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ohnoidonotthinkicanwritesomethinghereinthiswaywitheveryonegonnareadanditbeingthoughtitlikeapoemandnotaheartbrokendeclarationofmytrueloveforyoumybestfriend

--Stephanie Barber

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Dear Adam Robinson,
Do you remember that night we played pool at Frazier’s while they broadcast a replay of the Orioles/Tigers game up on the big screen TV? We both knew the Orioles had lost to the Tigers 7-5 earlier that afternoon, but we couldn’t help rooting for the O’s anyway. In the bottom of the eighth inning, your favorite player JJ Hardy had a one-out single to left field and then the backup catcher Clevenger singled to left too. Schoop struck out swinging, but Lough drew a walk. So the bases were loaded and there were two outs when Markakis stepped into the batter’s box and we wanted to feel hopeful. It seemed like anything could happen even though we knew exactly what would happen. A single probably would have tied the game and an extra base hit probably would have put the O’s up, but Markakis ended the inning again by flying out to centerfield, just as he had earlier that afternoon. The Orioles didn’t even threaten in the ninth and the game was over for the second time for us. You can replay the baseball game as many times as you want, but the final score never changes. What I’m trying to say is exactly the opposite of that: Nothing will be the same after this and I’m hopeful for what that might be.
- - Michael Kimball

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Easter Robinson

Can you take me to the bus station? Yes. Put your bags down. I’m afraid I’ll be late. You will. Everyone is boarding group A.
- - Joseph Young

Megan McShea Rekindles The Fire of The Ancient Party

Long ago, when hairs gathered around heads, when more than five Baltimore poets would be home from touring or the madhouse at the same time, when Chris Toll and Blaster Al Ackerman still trod the earth like parallel universe Lenin and Marx respectively, when young Adam Robinson and Stephanie Barber still held partiers rapt with their wide-eyed tales of the fur trade in Milwaukee in the 1800's, when Amy Peterson still graced Normal's Books & Records on occasion before her step up into the rarefied world of modern New York and its tony celebrity filled co-ops, oxygen bars and petitions against mopery, before Ric Royer The Theater Lad, was thrown into the pee-stained trunk of a Dodge sedan by seedy barstool bard Gene Grigoritis, his fingers removed one by one over the course of nine days (Ric had already lost one as a child in Disneyland, bitten off by the Alexander Hamilton robot), each digit shearing videoed and posted to Youtube then sent to gadfly Tao Lin, with the thoughtful message "I bet this bitch's finger is bigger than your Johnson you poser" - before the writing scene spun out like the final crunchy tableau of "Fast & Furious XX" and toppled from its glorious peak, many disparate souls united by their weirdness and love of morphological word formation, jarring metaphors/contrasts and sometimes plain old oddball oddness scat goof met up every few weeks to become One Big Mind and Write As One With Many.

Usually within the comfort of Megan McShea's afghan-filled cottage where plump Sugar the cat would brush your ankles, yard sale Latin record finds would spin and Megan and Amy and Bonnie would quietly contend for "Most Raven Haired". Sometimes we would sit out on my ragged third floor balcony back when I lived in the Pego Mansion of St. Paul Street across from the Catholic High School.

(Ancient Party editor Megan McShea with author, artist and legend Al Ackerman in Austin in his post-Baltimore years)

Wherever we met, Blaster Al could be counted on to be there with beer and an anarchic spirit to keep the proceedings moving and not too academic and Megan would stir up the poetry machine gadgets to keep rust from forming.

Many nights after hours of scribbling, cutting up and jabbering the circle would fall briefly silent and someone would say "Hey, where's Lauren Bender? Did she take all the Hazelnut Breadstick Pop Tarts?" And there Lauren would be, stuck up in a ceiling corner, wide possum-eyed like a dollar store mylar valentines balloon temporarily forgotten as the young lovers moved into the love room to drop the needle on some Barry White.

(above - Lauren Bender mooshing Sugar the Cat)

But all things (almost all?) end. Or erode/evolve/mutate. Even though they feel natural as breath and just as rejuvenating as they are going on. Such be our writerly coven meetings. Oh they will still happen somewhere with some of us, but Blaster and Chris Toll are huffing ether and playing prepared harp with John Cage on the astral plane, Adam Robinson independent publishing pinup boy is off to Atlanta, Amy is in New York comforting Laurie Anderson and so on and so on, time marches on.

Luckily, though, Megan hung on to our sheaves of scribbles and pored over them, jiggling the ink until gold nuggets rose to the surface. Not only that, she assembled the best into an actual beautiful book and is throwing a Now Party for The Ancient Party at the Windup Space Sunday April 13, 3pm to 5. Come hear some reading from it, gaze upon it, pry greenbacks from your moneysock to buy for your very own. Here's the Your Face link:

The Ancient Party

Here are a few lines from "The Goofball Oracle" to whet your appetite. The Goofball Oracle exercise was everyone would write random questions and place them in one hat and random answers placed in a second hat. Questions would then be pulled from one hat and random answers from the other.

"Hey, what do you guys think of Pammy's new Bummer?" - "The sound of the louvre covered in mallo-mars."

"Was Lincoln a happy drunk?" - "A neon rose garden at the end of the world."

"How many of you are in there anyway?" - "Love is naturally pungent".

Or perhaps a "One Minute Story", s story written within 60 seconds, will win you over:

SKELETON
The way his skin sat on his frame, his skeleton, the whisper of ribs like an automatic round. I still see this sometimes and feel the recoil. Memory does that, transforming the banal into the fantastic.
- John Eaton

(John "Lucky Charms" Eaton, who has been trapped inside the Zoltar Fortune Teller booth on Coney Island since the last writers group gathering.)

SKELETON
The skeleton dancing across the lawn. The skeleton peeping out from behind the shower curtain. The skeleton in the bread box, smaller than the others, so obviously it was the baby.
- Blaster Al Ackerman

Here is one of the "Biographies". Each writer would write a false biography and then mouth the words to the other writers. Then each person would write down what they were lip reading.

"Mortimer Hadley" - by Megan McShea.

I am Mortimer Hadley. I was born in Challenger, Mississippi, along the shore of the Missouri River where seventeen dogs had recently died of exposure to second-hand smoke. No one really understood this at the time, but it would prove to be a fateful pre-episode to my life as an epidemiologist. I attended the Milton Military Pentecostal School for wayward boys until the 9th grade, when I ran off with my guardian angel and began practicing medicine on unsuspecting rural families. Some of my favorite and locally renowned diagnoses are Pale Ghost Disease, discovered in Fallow Holler in the Ozarks, Hollow Stem Fever, which overwhelmed a colony of rabbits in eastern Kansas, and Haddock Mouth, which infested a flock of tiny angels in my hometown of Challenger.

(Lip reading version by Bonnie Jones of "Mortimer Hadley"):
I am Putpott Riding. I was born in South Beach along the coast of whenever. It was heavenly and moldy. Although it was really strenuous for me in the formative years in Ecology I did my. It was wild but right after I was wasted in my family. Memory of an envelope water. Was a rabbit. Fine, back alley. Jaguar.

Well, to paraphrase Blaster, you don't want to sample too many of these deadly treats at one time. But I will leave you with a ritual, the rules of which were worked out in collaboration. This one was written by myself, Ric Royer, Bonnie Jones and Megan McShea.

How to March Into Jerusalem With Your Battle Dress On, Go On Girl!
1. Receive only the absence, not the presence.
2. Wave and pat pouch cloth. Form leg trumpet.
3. Make it ouchie in the Humvee.
4. Make sure that Kirk notices you by wearing so much makeup you look like a clown and appearing at his big gig at the MTV Music Awards with the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and tell him you're pregnant.
5. Buy a custom fitted mouth guard, the kind for teeth grinding not hockey. Put your head down, groan a little, channel Cormac McCarthy, bend at the knees, wipe that tiny bit of spittle. Rush.

Come join in on the festivities April 13th at the Windup and hoist a glass of something for friendship, collaborations and a Spring much deserved.

Mole Suit Choir's "Campfire Spacesuit" Hits The Streets and Ehse Airwaves!

Anyone who has stood within hearing distance of me the last year (yikes, it's been close to a year!), knows how excited I am about this project, The Mole Suit Choir, with the supernaturally talented and inspiring Liz Downing, who once stared down the horror of The Pig Boy of Booger Holler in Alabama. How is it that Alabama people have come to have such powerful influence on my life? Very weird.

This collaboration was first talked about at a wonderful Shakemore Festival and was given extra urgency by the passing of three close comrades. Singing again really gave me solace as some of the people who loomed largest in my personal vortex moved on to the next stage of this cosmic riddle. If not for Liz I might have become glued to the couch and just watched Breaking Bad over and over in a loop, the seasons spinning around me faster and faster.

Through a strange twist of Fate, Dr. Shugg Stew Mostofsky caught our second show at the Windup Space. From a languid sprawl on the leather couch he said he wanted to put an album out by us. The next thing we knew, Wee Ginger Lad Greg Hatem of Heart of Hearts and Mr. Mocassin was hopping about my living room with microphones and a portable recording deck. It was all very blissful and is now captured on glorious cds and cassettes.

Here is the link to Ehse headquarters where you can get a free download or order a cd or cassette:
www.ehserecords.com/ss009/

Or you can use your human legs to cruise on over to Normal's in Waverly, True Vine in Hampden or Soundgarden in Fells Point:

We've gotten some really nice words about the record already. Here is some beauty from scribe China Martens:
"Glen Burnie, Poland meets Extraterrestrial, Alabama in Outer Baltimore from Inner Space: somehow they found each other, on their porches (I think it was Liz that knocked on Rupert's door, incredulous he answered, and without fear bundled up all his fears. Together they struck the matches and watched them burn, aglow, like bread crumbs soaked in firecracker rock worms); and picked up old instruments to continue digging their way out of the spinning yarn and into the fire. Come sit and warm yourself".

And here are some kind words from David Beaudouin:
Think George Jones & Tammy Wynette just back from an unexpected interdimensional jaunt, bringing with them sweet melodies, brilliant songwriting and the secrets of the spaces behind the stars. That's Mole Suit Choir, currently the leading lights in Baltimore's burgeoning neo-folk scene. Created by poet Rupert Wondolowski and painter Elizabeth Downing (both as well accomplished musicians), Mole Suit Choir gets to the heart of things as the best music does, with two voices entwined in high, lonesome harmonies accompanied by guitar or banjo. And like the best music, their oddly familiar songs will echo in your thoughts long after the lights go out. Highly recommended.

Come check us out Sunday, November 3rd at the kindly Metro Gallery on Charles Street, 7:30, for the official release party. Joining us will be Nathan Bell and Liz Durrette, plus readings by Stephanie Barber and Megan McShea.

themetrogallery.net/events/

A Sunday At the Museum

Praise Vishnu and the overdose of Coca-Cola the night before - I awoke the late morning after the humongous pleasure filled Normal's night at the Golden West (early on in the evening Sir Tony said "follow me". He led me into the heart of the kitchen area, strong beautiful youth looked upon me with horror, and he stopped before the soda machine. "Drink as much as you want you goofy-assed old man". Taking me back to my childhood days of working the Friday Bingo nights for Holy Trinity Church. Explode that bladder! Sugar levels Rise!!) and immediately thought "Today is the day to check out the Sondheim Prize finalists at the BMA.

Too many years, too many shows, I've thought "I'll get around to that when I am a well-paid Hopkins surgeon or when all my back hair falls off, each curly brittle strand turning into a speaking serpent). Well, not this time hombre! One of my favorite Baltimore multi-media power hitters - and softball team comrade - Stephanie Barber, was a finalist and had an ongoing installation.


I have to say that I felt funky fresh and invigorated to be back in the BMA, and not just because of their superior air conditioning, but the first room of the exhibit underwhelmed me like a sluggish whisperer in the kitchen at a family party.


The front room was all wood sculpture by Rachel Rotenburg. There were some spots with color stain/painting on the pieces and beautiful vines intertwining, like in the piece "Sacred". The artist is obviously a handy craftsperson and the wood was beautiful, especially for a late in life tree huncher such as myself. But I couldn't help thinking "Gosh if I was wealthy and I had a wealthy aunt this kind of thing would be great to buy her for her back patio".


Sort of like if Red Tree in Hampden handled larger scale arts and crafts. Not a bad thing, by any means, but there were no butterflies in my swollen belly and my aged knees were nowhere near buckling or even bending with the shock of the new or the mystery of the resonant. Especially in a city like Baltimore that is exploding with great art, music and writing now, more than ever, ruled over by the firm mystical hand of Madame Drogoul, High Priestess of Art.

Also, the pieces had such kind of shopworn, or we could be generous and say archetypical, titles as "Sacred", "Memories" and "Dream". If you're going to go with titles like that you really have to pack a punch on the Jungian level.


(picture below is not from show but lifted randomly from internet)



The second room contained powerful graphic photo pigment prints of the war in Afghanistan by
Louie Palu who is Washington based. These photos had titles like "Standing In Dust From Improvised Explosive Device Blast, .....Kandahar, Afghanistan", "A Soldier Asleep In The Morning Before a Combat Operation" and "Horse Killed By Improvised Explosive Device". These three photos were the most effective for me.

Being too young at the time for the Vietnam War, the last war with a draft, and too old and not at all interested in signing up to shoot down folks like Saddam who we propped up for years and gave weapons to so he could whoop up on Iran, I can't imagine what it's like to fight in modern war. As if wasn't bad enough that a near silent bullet could come out of nowhere and take out your windpipe or eye or a lobbed hand grenade plop in your lap like a sea turtle's malignant tumor, now the smiling teen walking beside you and your troop buddies could have a fairly sophisticated explosive device lodged up his ass and one second you could be doing air guitar (or rifle guitar) to a Tool song and in a blinding instant you are flying tartar, clam dip and chunky salsa.

The one photograph, "A Soldier Asleep", actually captures what appears to be a moment of serenity for a soldier. You see him chest up peaceful in bed, the lighting mild and velvety, beside an endtable with a miniature Christmas tree, a very large piece of flatbread of some kind and a glass of what seems to be tea. A moment of humanity in the middle of unimaginable hellishness.

The hellish part of modern war is depicted graphically and starkly in "Horse Killed....". All that's left of a majestic creature is a flattened skull and one charred curving side of ribcage. Everything else has been smeared flat black and charred into the equally grim charred landscape.

Beyond just for being the escape from the horrors of endless modern war, entering Stephanie Barber's laboratory portion of the exhibit was exhilarating and refreshing. She had a mini-studio set up within her exhibit room and was having museum visitors stop and read from scripts she had written. Then she would process these recordings and use them in a new video for the exhibit. While I was there two different sets of guinea pigs were emoting and the electricity was crackling. A group of teenagers read and it was as if this was what they were born to do. Meanwhile people floated around checking out her walls and the videos that were already showing on the monitor.


(Image of Lady Stephanie borrowed from Human Pyramid blog):




As it has already been widely reported in the tabloids, Dr. Barber is not only a hyper creative being pulled in many directions, she also never sleeps. After a few days of non-stop writing, videotaping and sculpting, she merely hangs upside down from a simple acrobat bar from the back of her knees and swings loosely with her fingernails grazing the surface of the floor. Watching her calm attentive treatment of these random art lovers, it is difficult to think of her diet as being strictly the stardust shaken from comets when they strike the Earth.

Stephanie's piece was called "Jhana and the Rats of James Olds". On little standing scraps of paper atop the video monitor is printed "Every day I make a new video and add it to these. They are between one and five minutes long.......they are like poems." Indeed. As a testament to the blurring of poetry and film in her work, Publishing Genius Press published these here separated to see how they standing alone, which is film narration and a dvd of her actual films.


Like poets whose voices are so distinctive that certain words are almost trademarked by them once they've utilized them, like "sheet" or "spit" in the work of John M. Bennet or "goodies" and "bigtime" in the writings of Al Ackerman, certain images, though they may be appropriated or "neutral", have become associated in my brain with the work of Stephanie Barber.

For example, her video which I think is called "Puppet Television", at least I wrote that down in my notebook with quotes around it, features a still photo that looks like it came out of a '60s era House Beautiful or Modern Home type magazine. A TV screen sized area has been cut out of the living room picture and in that area two sockpuppets are communicating in indistinguishable burbling. There are then cut away shots, closeup, of a young girl's face with various emotions crossing it, in apparent reaction to the sockpuppets. There is something about the still photo and the other similar pictures of home interiors that she had delicately pinned sparsely to an area of the museum wall that is as distinctly "Barber" as the high pitched violin strained sound "wheep wheep wheep" is Bernard Herrmann's.

"Say It With Writing" At Barber's Salon Lafeyette

Yowzah, yowzah, yowzah what a weekend last weekend was. Great old favorite friends dropping from the skies like paratroopers with chocolates and well-trained French can-can dancers. First got word that Courtney "Camel" McCullough was flying in for a "Baltimore bachelor weekend" (thanks Sabra! Although it would have been great to see you, also. Reggie can man the helm), then got word that Nancy from Groovy Like a Pig and one of the co-founders of Shattered Wig Review was also popping in from Detroit.

As if all those sweet surprises weren't enough for one weekend Chris Mason, one of Baltimore's most seasoned and open-hearted experimental poets was reading at Stephanie Barber's Salon and he asked me to be his date. It is a neighborhood that sports about as many pieces of plywood as windows and Chris was afraid it might send him spiraling back to his early dark days of alley crawling in search for a long moist piece of jimson weed. I would be his puritan escort, leaving my thong at home and bringing along my King James.

Other than Chris, the lineup was comprised of well-credentialed New York folks, who were very sharp, fresh and accessible. My one criticism is that I wish the multi-media trio would have closed the show. My own personal prejudice with shows is that the acts should be layered by volume. That once the sound barrier has been pierced by drums and electronics it's hard to get back to a lone human voice. But then again I still like to watch "The Andy Griffith Show".

Part of it might also be that for me the trio was so successful. Often with that kind of setup it can feel like three disparate parts kind of working on their own at the same time, but these guys really enhanced each other. The story at its core was great and would love to read more by its author, which I think was Michael Barron. The lineup is posted below as Stephanie wrote it up.

Stephanie was a great host, crackling electricity as always, and the space left plenty room for psychic expansion despite local marauders The Smelling Salts from the Northside being there, yelling "Time for a beatdown" between each set.


Michael Barron, James Copeland and William Rahilly will be presenting “Hot Face,” a new performance of video, music, and text by the same arrangement of people that brought you “The Pigeon” (Poetry Time at Space Space, 2010) and “Horn One” (Bowery Poetry Club, 2010). See Aa description of their work at the Poetry Project website. Michael is an editor at New Directions and a member of Supermachine and Holy Spirits. James is Managing Director of Ugly Duckling Presse and the author of misc chapbooks, most recently Fax II, and he collaborated with Will on Fade to Fax, the first 7″ from Unicorn Evil Records. Will is a video maker and musician. Trailer for Hot Face.

Nicole Trigg lives in Brooklyn, binds and repairs books, and co-curates the CROWD reading series. Writing is (was or will be) featured in Flying Fish, Cap Gun, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Love Among the Ruins, and on the website Ink Node. View recent work at http://www.loveamongtheruins.com/nicole-trigg.html

Chris Mason has lived in Baltimore for 40 years, is the author of several books, and plays music with The Tinklers and Old Songs.

No finer backdrop for a reading than this Claus Oldenburg-like piece behind the saintly and brilliant Chris Mason.

"We Are Different Here In The Present" - Stephanie Barber & Megan McShea at The Benevolent Armchair

It was a glorious sunny, breezy Spring day after a Saturday of Biblical proportion flooding and howling winds. I had been to the Benevolent Armchair readings, hosted by Chris Toll in Baltimore and Barbara DeCesare in Pennsylvana, many times when it was called The Upward Spiral and was held at the El Rancho Grande coffeehouse on Falls Road, but I hadn't made it to their spot at the Bromo Seltzer Building. Mostly because Sunday afternoons are my time to haunt the dog parks with Max. And today being so beautiful it was tough to cut our jaunt short, but it was well worth it for the refreshing word craft provided by Megan McShea and Stephanie Barber and for perusing the various "dirt soaps" down in the first floor gift shop. Love the smell of dirt and the ironic thought of cleaning with it, but if I am paying a whole $15 for something to feverishly rub against my unclean body it must be something over the age of 18 and wearing either a nun's habit or a sailor's cap. Sadly, I crept in a little late, having to stop for a cold caffeine fix on the way and being overwhelmed by the old grandeur of the Bromo Seltzer building and the refurbished Hippodrome. I missed the open mic portion of the reading and the very beginning of Megan's reading, but luckily she did one of the longest most generous readings I've seen her do. Usually she pulls a Kool Keith and whips through one or two of her evocative micro-tales and then beats it to her trailer to feast on all the riders in her contract. There was a funny moment when she was flipping through pages, obviously reading a portion to herself and deciding to edit it from the afternoon, when an audience member encouraged her: "Why don't you read them out loud."

(Above is audience member and publishing mogul Adam Robinson sporting a handsome Normal's Books & Records 20th Anniversary t-shirt). Megan's reading was followed by a brief question and answer period and then Stephanie Barber joined Megan for a reading of some great collaborations they had done. Hopefully at the bottom of this post is a working video of this portion of the reading. (It has now been about an hour and the video hasn't loaded so I'll try a separate post for it tomorrow).

Stephanie read about twenty short pieces which were all descriptions of photographs. This was a great concept that Stephanie really brought a lot of life to - the evocative, mysterious nature of life being frozen for that split second. During her Q&A, Adam asked if the photographs were real (I like a chucklehead laughed at first, thinking he'd jokingly asked if the poems were real). "Some of them," Stephanie answered. The oldest piece had been written four years ago, the most recent was written yesterday when she was compiling what she was going to read for today and she received a photograph of her nephew.

Below is host Chris Toll engaged with the sweet Lynchian retro microphone. Co-host Barbara DeCesare was occupied peering in the window of a wedding reception in Red Lion, PA that the Elvis impersonator she is stalking was performing at. The day was somewhat bittersweet because now that I'd finally caught a reading at the nice new space it turned out to be the last one of the season until September or October.

I Am Almost Weeping - The Most Comprehensive Write-up Of Shattered Wig Night & Review

Photo by James Hodges Shattered Wig Review 15 December 2010 (What Weekly) http://www.whatweekly.com/2010/12/15/shattered-wig-review/ Rupert Wondolowski Frequently, literary performances are confined to coffee shops, libraries or the odd gallery so it’s refreshing to see an event where the words were given a stage and an interesting venue in which to breath. Last Friday the 14 Karat Cabaret hosted the release party for one of Baltimore’s best literary magazines, The Shattered Wig Review. The event was hosted by the publication’s editor, Rupert Wondolowski. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by James Hodges Ryan Walker featured in the current issue of Shattered Wig Review. Shattered Wig has been around for a remarkably long time, judging from its issue number, 28, and the editorial, which alludes to a recent two year hiatus. As it turns out, the publication has been in print for 22 years. That’s an impressive run for an independent venture of any sort. The first performer was R.M. O’Brien, an editor of the interactive literary magazine WORMS, which occurs monthly at the Bell Foundry. O’Brien’s stage presence is comfortable, casual and ideal for a first reading. His work is often an amusing and intelligent commentary on contemporary pop culture but he also reads the works of others. Tonight, he read a poem by Gregory Corso. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Books, Live Music, Art Gallery and more! Same block as Windup Space, across from Joe Squared. Plenty of room inside for your bike; FREE street parking for your car (well plug your meter before 6, after that its free anyway) come on over… 30 West North Ave. Baltimore, MD, 21201

Photo by James Hodges Becky Hunter - “I like the venue. I come to whatever I can, here.” The evening continued with a reading by Ryan Walker, whose untitled poetry is published in the new issue. He commanded the audience’s rapt attention with his playful series of stream-of-consciousness observations. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by James Hodges Chris Toll In the latest issue of Shattered Wig Review author Chris Toll describes a magical encounter between Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson, involving a time machine. Exploring this notion, by itself, is worth the price of admission. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by James Hodges Justin Miller There’s something uniquely independent about this publication. In an age when computerized desktop publishing has yet to reach the legal drinking age, the Shattered Wig Review holds true to a print sensibility that is rapidly fading. Its pages look and feel like those of a good ol’ zine, the kind we loved before blogs, with staples on the spine and strange drawings in the margins. Also reading this evening was Emily Peterson Crespo who had been a regular performer at the now-defunct “Speak Your Piece” series in Mount Vernon. Her performance this evening was an intricate blend of poetry and prose with all of the deliberate diction of the former coupled with the scenic detail of the latter. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Photo by James Hodges Ed Foster of The Baltimore String Felons. It wasn’t all words at the 14 Karat Cabaret during this event. The music began with a performance by former members of the band, Madagascar. The new band, called Nests took their current project out for a test drive for this, their first ever performance. The lineup retains much of the minimalist qualities of the original band though the new sound has more in common with contemporary ambient electronic music. The evening concluded with musical a set by The Baltimore String Felons. The Felon Family are a unique group of contemporary folk musicians who are making a strong case for music made with hand tools. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Books, Live Music, Art Gallery and more! Same block as Windup Space, across from Joe Squared. Plenty of room inside for your bike; FREE street parking for your car (well plug your meter before 6, after that its free anyway) come on over… 30 West North Ave. Baltimore, MD, 21201

Photo by James Hodges Geffery Sof’ Serve of The Baltimore String Felons. Don’t let the DIY look of the publication mislead you. Here, you’ll find sophisticated literature, with allusions to the visual poets, surrealist, automatic writing and stunning poetic lines like Stephanie Barber’s “one conducts electricity or symphonies, big bands or / trains or themselves with restraint.” There is plenty of worthwhile reading material in here all for only six dollars. The new issue, as well as a subscription, is available for purchase from Normal’s Books.. Full details are available on their website. Photo by James Hodges, story by Dylan Kinnett.

Shattered Wig 28 Sneak Preview #7 - "Conductivity" by Stephanie Barber

CONDUCTIVITY

one conducts electricity or symphonies, big bands or
trains or themselves with restraint.
some imagine the molecules of their body dissolving,
feet first and half greek,
into beams of light and being sucked up into
the myriad wires that criss cross cities.

they find solace in the sensation of their electro
magnetic ray feet lifting them
up off the earth and scattering flugel horn like through the city.

some find solace in the winning of bingo--
i heard that a woman named mary won at bingo last night.
i heard larry took her out for breakfast this
morning and sheila bought her a piece
of cake for her birthday which isn't until wednesday
but from what i gather sheila won't see her on wednesday.

that goddamned mary has all the luck in the world.
what do you bet me she'll wake up on wednesday
morning and at the foot of her glorious four post bed
with the delicate floral duvet
will be lying a white, baby tiger
who is house broken and will never grow up.

he will always be a 30 pound white baby tiger!

and probably he can talk too.
and listen--oh what a great and empathic listener that
eternally adorable talking baby tiger is.

women like mary have no time for imagined dissolvings.
that sort of nonsense is simply banal to a woman like mary.

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Stephanie Barber has had screenings of her film and video work at MoMA, NY, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center, Chicago Filmmakers and The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Her performances have been featured at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Milwaukee Museum of Art, The Haggerty Museum of Art and galleries and artspaces around the world.


Her book these here separated to see how they standing alone or the soundtracks of six films by stephanie barber was first printed in 2008 by Publishing Genius Press and a second, revised edition of it was just issued.
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Delicious First Worms of Season & Making Wicked Cash off Celebrity Poems

I am so very glad I fought my inner nature and nasty allergies or chest cold or Nazgul bite to leave my nest shortly after a hard lone day of laboring in the bittersweet fields of cultural retail to catch the first WORMS reading of the new fall season.

How I love that phrase "new fall season". As a kid it meant the sharp crisp terror of a new year of school, but that terror also brought exciting adrenaline, new faces, transformations of old faces and maybe a couple of cool shirts (except for that unfortunate year when my dad was assigned to taking me shopping and he outfitted me like a '20s Chicago pimp - including a white belt!!! And two-toned shoes). And yes, the new television season, bringing new "Green Hornet", new "Batman", my tiny brain sizzling up like an egg pan in a Sunday morning Waffle House.

Now it means a thick Sunday edition of the New York Times with a peak at all the upcoming films, music, theater and art. Of course that doesn't cover the tasty crepuscular items creeping from the underground and trying to seep into public consciousness, but it's such a refreshing moment to hold that massive amount of print telling you of things to come after a summer of bad action movies.


The lineup for the WORMS premiere was a siren call that I could not resist - Stephanie Barber, Justin Sirois, Adam Robinson, Chuck Green and Donna Sellinger. Last year WORMS rotated its facilities after a few were held at the Zodiac. This year it has moved to a new space in the Bell Foundry where pioneer humans have just set up sterno stoves and laid their bindlestiffs in a few days before. The actual reading space was in a heavily spraypainted basement with a parking garage vibe and to get there you had to go through a Beirut corridor. This addled old man was aided by elvin folk cooking at the end of the hall who told me to grab a chair, take a right and go down the stairs. "He will never make it and the stink of his corpse will sadly be for many who visit here a bookmark of their sense memory," one of them said while sprinkling cumin on a seiten fish stick.


When I got downstairs there were already five great old friends sitting scattered among the vast concrete. Our hellos echoed grandly and messed with my allergy clogged hearing. The space quickly filled, Stephanie Barber came bounding in with her dad who seemed a day or two older than her and WORMS host Bob O'Brien genially took the "stage". Abandoning the format of last year of opening with fake letters written to WORMS, Bob read from an actual internet site devoted to making a fortune off writing celebrity poetry. It included such inane advice as "write about celebrities that you actually like." "You can post every day or once a week."

Inspired by this I think I will write James Franco celebrity poetry.

"No Flatness No More"


There was a moment

late in the one cherished season

of "Freaks and Geeks" where Muttonchops

got angry at you, thinking you'd spread

the word about his hermaphrodite

girlfriend. There was only a response

of tender pain in your eyes that

was deep and moving. You also were

impassive as crazy Kim beat Hell

out of you for something you

didn't do. I also almost wept

when you played Dungeons & Dragons

with the geeks. Your lonesomeness

and fear of an empty future

were palpable as a cafeteria

hairnet lying in cold gravy.

Then you

were in Spiderman and Hollywood

had pithed you. You were placed around

the sets like a cardboard cut-out

and cameramen placed their coffee cups

on top of you. But going back to

Muttonchops. Do you ever run into

that foul hobgoblin that is like an

evil munchkin young brother of him

who sprang from his 'fro & id?

He is poison come to life without

a neck and no court would convict

you if you put a bullet in him.

And how did Judd Apatow go from

making a television series with

classic film values to making

films with hollow sitcom tv values

plus the freedom to flame out in

foul new teen boy misogyny.

But I am keeping you up,

you must rest for all your classes

and art shows. You wore

sweaters well in "Milk",

once again kind of inert, but

comfy smiley inert, exuding a

a Golden Lab smell. I would like

to take a nap with you.

I don't think

you can summon the spirit of

Ginsberg, but I will enjoy

watching you try.


Hmmmnnn, not so good. I will have to work on that.

At most readings, even one like this where the quality across the board was stellar, there is one reader that penetrates my psychic fog the most to glisten with pure word joy and this night it was lead-off writer Stephanie Barber. I've heard her a few times and enjoyed it, but this batch and her performance of it was entertaining as hell and also gave the listener a real good insight into the writer's process.

Chuck Green gave me a feeling of a Mod kid approach with his t-shirt that had his name printed on it and a tale of yachting with Oprah Winfrey, but the story was well-crafted and the simple performance device of a mini-megaphone was effective and refreshing.

Donna Sellinger had some killer lines and descriptions, but cough syrup memory prevents me from sharing them here.

I think it was after Donna's story that a short break was taken for folks to grab free "throwback" Pepsis and Mountain Dews and to peruse the various small press literary offerings on view.

After the tumultuous echo-laden break the leading small press giants of Baltimore right now, Justin Sirois of Narrowhouse and Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius performed to a large attentive audience who were eating them up. Justin read some of the pieces I had heard him read a few nights before at Normal's and he read with a very different spirit that gave a few of the pieces an almost entirely different feel. Last Saturday they felt ebullient almost to the point of cocky, where this night the words held a lot of wistfulness and melancholy. At one point Justn held the bust of Thor that had been placed on a small bookshelf behind the readers for atomosphere for comfort and solace as he read his last pieces.

Adam went last and seemed to be having a good time. His usual fairly long comic pauses were slowed even more to almost a Beckett length, as if - and perhaps he was -he was still considering the thoughts he was sharing as he shared them. At the rate of change in publishing these days, most likely in a year or so you will be able to converse with Adam and his thoughts through a DNA chip in his book.

In the meantime, Adam has two new old school printed paperbacks just out on his press, by Mike Young and Rachel Glasser, that I need to check out. Plus Narrow House is publishing a collection of longtime experimental and populist poet Chris Mason of The Tinklers and Coo Coo Rockin' Time and Old Songs in November. How will I find time to drive my new bride insane when there is so much good reading to do???