Chicago reading

I will take part in the New England College Tenth Anniversary reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago on Thursday March 1st, along with Ilya Kaminsky, Katie Farris, Malena Mörling, James Harms, J. Hope Stein, Maria Garcia Teutsch, Steve Halle, and Francesco Levato.  


Here are the event details: 
AWP Conference Off-Site Event: Poetry from New England College Thursday, March 1, 2012 - 5:00pm

Poetry Center of Chicago Office, 78 E Washington St., Pedway East, Chicago, IL

Evening Reading - Take the Cultural Center elevator to the Pedway level, and turn left. Poetry Center office is on the left.


Reader bios are here.    

Early collaboration

The Age of Wonders

(by Todd Colby and Joanna Penn Cooper)

Well, I guess I'm abject or whatever, waking up at night to study my leg
in the mirror. Telling myself there are no great storm flags, only cloth
and dye. Only impersonal wind and small electric feelings in the spine
and skull, where a body can get some work done and then sleep.
One of us would go, "Do you know how many years I've been hearing
you say that?" Like almost as mysterious as not saying it anymore
which is when you curled into a ball and bloomed. In our spare time when we're done terrifying ourselves we cultivate our breath in separate rib cages, triangulating birdsong from our locations across town. But what is such math and theory in the face of extinction? I'll have the food from a tube a bath with salt and some rapid release narcotic wipe for my brain. I'm trying my best with this figurative gardenia in my hair, these earplugs nesting like shrimp in my canals and all the likely moods that pertain to my enigmas. No one will ever figure me out.

[published in Lungfull in 2009]

Recently and soon

Here are some recent goings-on:

Last week, I read in the Earshot reading series, along with my friend J. Hope Stein, whose poems are truly mesmerizing.  (Here is a lovely and intriguing interview with JHS herself.)

Also last week, Clif and I hosted a small potluck/informal salon.  One highlight was a mini-concert in my house by the band Whispering Tree (or most of the band), who Clif is now playing with.  We cleared out the bedroom and people presented their work in there.  How delightful.  How strange.

I have a few ongoing projects that I've been working on, including a collaborative artist's book with my friend John Fleischer, a Minneapolis-based visual artist.  There is also some poeming and prosing going on.  And some development/procurement, one hopes, of more freelance opportunities.  It's a time of many changes and (more and less) subtle shifts over here.  But then, I guess it always is?

And today-- today was oddly warm, and I left the house and went into "the city."  (Sometimes I don't leave Brooklyn for a while, and then I do and have this realization: "Oh, yeah.  The rest of New York . . .")  In the city, I got my bangs trimmed at Mudhoney by my cool stylist Ray-- with whom I've had some great conversations-- while listening to a rather intense haircutting soundtrack.  I believe Rob Zombie was involved.

What else?  Oh, I dearly needed clothes, so I went shopping.  Ugh.  I am sorry to report that shopping pains me.  But I found a few things, including this half-off coat, which I am calling (in my head) my Downton Abbey coat.  Do I need another coat for this winter that only sort of happened?  I'm not sure.

Next week, I'll go to Chicago for the AWP conference.  I'll participate in this reading, and I will also catch up with some dear friends.

Wow, February is almost over.  Strange, warm February.

Dorothea Tanning, 1910-2012

Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012

I have written a short appreciation of Szymborska for the site poetrycrush.

Here is her poem "A Few Words on the Soul."