Beat Generation, Art & Literary Community News

BIG MIX: Michael McClure, Ray Manzarek, George Brooks, Rob Wasserman, & Jay Lane Wednesday, May 7, 2008 2 shows - 8pm & 10pm YOSHI'S San Francisco 1330 Fillmore Street San Francisco, CA 94115 sf.yoshis.com/sf/jazzclub 415.655.5600

Original Beat icon Michael McClure, who penned Janis Joplin’s immortal “Mercedes Benz,” and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who created one of rock’s most memorable instrumental lines (think “Light My Fire”), join forces with saxophonist George Brooks (Summit, Bombay Jazz, Etta James), bassist Rob Wasserman (Lou Reed, Aaron Neville, Rickey Lee Jones), and drummer Jay Lane (Charlie Hunter, Bob Weir) for a evening of sophisticated anti-politics, elegant improvisation, American haiku, and jazz-drenched dharma boogie. (This past summer BIG MIX took the stage in Golden Gate Park for the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, thrilling the crowd of 80,000 with their performance of "The God I Worship Is a Lion," which was first performed at the Human Be-In in 1967.) Download the flyer for this event.

Call and Response: The Ekphrastic Impulse in Poetry
Workshop with Nate Pritts

We all have a natural tendency to react to the happenings around us. Poets work to distill this reaction and use it to motivate their own work. This inspiration can sometimes take the form of ekphrastic writing -- a fancy Greek term that is used today to indicate a work of art that has been generated in response to another work of art.

In this intensive workshop, participants will interpret that term a little more broadly, to mean a poem that is generated in direct response to something (anything) where those traces are still pronounced in the finished piece.

Through studying models (poems generated in response to paintings, other poems, songs, etc.), exercises (aimed at firing the transmitters in your brain to create riffs of all kinds), and direct pairing with visual artists as they produce, participants will find themselves more open to the varied impulses that surround all of us, while encouraging a more open receptivity to all forms of "art."

Nate has his M.F.A. in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and his PhD in Creative Writing and British Romanticism from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His first full length book of poems was Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX) and his second book, Honorary Astronaut, is forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2008.

His poems and essays have appeared in many journals, both print and online, including The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, Court Green, and Rain Taxi. The editor and sole shareholder of H_NGM_N, an online journal of poetry, poetics and etcetera. Nate lives in Natchitoches, Louisiana with his family, where he works in advertising.

For more information about this workshop, please see: Ekphrastic Impulse

Celebration of WAY MORE WEST:
Selected Poems of Edward Dorn

17 Poets! Literary & Performance Series, www.17poets.com
701 Dauphine St., corner of Dauphine and St. Peter
New Orleans, Louisiana
Call 504-568-9125

Readers include: Jennifer Dorn, Michael Rothenberg, Andrei Codrescu, Terri Carrion, Dave Brinks, Bill Lavender, Joel Daily, Nancy Dixon, and Kelly Mathews.

Click the book photo above to buy the book at Amazon.

Release Celebration:
The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen

A reading of Whalen's works by prominent poets including David Meltzer, Aram Saroyan, Paul Vangelisti, Terri Carrion, Neeli Cherkovski, Phoebe Ozuna, and Michael Rothenberg.

$7 admission; $5 for members

Click the book photo above to buy the book at Amazon.

CELEBRATION OF PHILIP WHALEN:
The Beat Tradition at Reed College

Introduction by Pancho Savery and overview of library archives by Gay Walker. A reading of Whalen's work by prominent poets including David Meltzer, David Abel, Hammond Guthrie, Stanworth Beckler, Mose Lenske, Rodney Koeneke, Jules Boykoff, Kaia Sand, and Lindsay Hill.

There will also be an exhibit of Whalen-related archives in the Reed College Library.

Max Douglas - Poet: Information Sought

Rik Lina

P.S. Want to know what you missed? Check out the past happenings page.