This is another painting from the Portland Series. Portland #3.

Because you bought so many of our copies of The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle, we had to go make more of them. It's ok. Don't worry about it. But you should know, that if you'd like to get another one, a slightly smaller more compact version, one with a white bunny this time, or maybe even a very special one with a blue cover, then we would sell it to you. We'd even put it in a package and send it to your front door, free of charge. Let me know. 

Also, Heather and her Octopus Books press-mate, Matvei Yankelevich, will be a part of a reading alongside Wave Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Canarium Books offsite at the AWP conference in Denver. It'll be on the Thursday night of the conference. I'll tell you more about it soon.

Thank you, Oakland. Good night!

This is my second painting in that Portland series I was telling you about a few months ago. I call this one Portland #2.

Wednesday night, thanks to Poor Claudia and Typhoon, I got to act out one of my very favorite day dreams. I got to front a band. Poor Claudia's latest project was to release my first collection of poem-films, Little Blind Thing, on dvd. To promote it, I got to be a part of an event that was part art installation, part local rock show, part poetry reading. When Typhoon played, I yelled/sang/read my poems while the eight of them played this building, brooding, crashing orchestral piece behind me. As I read I kept thinking about how this doesn't happen to poets too often. I didn't want to stop reading. I wanted to just stay up there and talk, tell all those people about my dreams, read my grocery lists, have a conversation with myself, all while Typhoon played loudly behind me. It doesn't matter the poem, everything sounds good when you have a killer band backing you. I'm pretty sure they enjoyed it too--they asked me to do it again at one of their shows. Typhoon is rad. They melted my face. The have a brand new album coming out on Tender Loving Empire this spring. If you know what is good for you, you'd buy it then, and you'd buy Little Blind Thing now for $10. You would buy it here. Actually, what you'd do is you'd get a subscription.

This has been a good few months for new poetry books (I'm thinking about MacGregor Card's Duties for an English Foreign Secretary, Mathias Svalina's Descruction Myth, Brandon Downing's Lake Antiquity, Hiromi Ito's Killing Kanoko, and many others) and I am equally excited about the coming months. There are a lot of books to anticipate. The one I'm most excited about is Julie Doxsee's Objects for a Fog Death, which will come out from Black Ocean soon. I wanted to tell you this, but the cover isn't yet online. Because I am impatient, and because I don't want to grade this stack of essays in front of me, I played around with making a cover. This is my vision of Julie's black metal cover of her book. Let me be clear: this is NOT Julie's cover, just my fandom getting the better of me. And here are some other books, with actual covers, that I'm anticipating:

 

  

  

On Wednesday, February 10th, Poor Claudia is going to hold an event called Very Nice Night at Holocene (see the ad on the Holocene calendar here). Wednesday will be Poor Claudia's chance to curate an evening of literature, film, art, music and potatoes for Holocene's monthly series called "My Favorite Things." In addition to the bands Typhoon, Breakfast Mountain, Guantanamo Baywatch, and Nolan Foster, and the DJs Sexy Cousin and Magic Impact, and the potato cart, Spudnik, and other artists showing off their latest creations, Poor Claudia will release my first dvd collection of poem-films called Little Blind Thing. The poem-films will play in a loop on one of the walls. I've already started doing my stretches and my sit-ups. I hope you have too. Ok, see you there.