Wittgenstein's Daughters Think in Ink and the Mind Follows Apace: Moschovakis & Carter @ the PRB, Sat 4:30pm

Remember the days when Mallarmé was king and every poem was an archipelago of scattered force where the vehicle of the mind might enter at random and leave roger dodger at will?

Remember when poetry was ambient and sneaky ambiguous and jangled at the touch like mechanical tears on the blushing imago of the "novel form"?

Remember the faux finish, the "new elliptical", the liberation of the "open work", the clouds in the coffee of the post-language reverie gang?

Well, you'll get none of that here.

Not this weekend.

This weekend, proposition in poetry is back. Argument is alright. The didactic is generative. One frank sentence pops into place after another.

And why not? Anna Moschovakis is in town.

Screw the blurb gumbo about both of her parents being logicians and her first book containing sectionals like "The Blue Book", etc. The point is: when her mind pivots at the putative ground truths her notional stylus leads before it, your own mind pivots too, and cumulative pivots mean ice rink fantasia in your cognitive cluster.

You won't forget that action.

Joining her is Northeast LA's very own minister of clean design whose prosodic stumbling blocks stage explanations and illustrations of prototype theory on the robot clover of an inherited typeface ("of the world," she says, "of the world!"). She calls her new book "A Fixed, Formal Arrangement", but you'll be repositioned, I guarantee you. This poetry plays fidget rock.

Is it just me, or are all the boys flarfing in the backroom, fussing with collectible captchas and calling it "vis-po" or stealing pixels from the video fireplace like bantamweight prometheans busing data from one bottlenecked formal genre into another to make a claim for "sample culture" and the now sound?

Well, call me stumped. The gals are on it in this weather. The boys better get back to bureau.

***

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS & ALLISON CARTER

Saturday, July 19 2008 at 5:00pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau

3702 San Fernando Blvd

Glendale, CA 91206

FEEL THE FUNCTION: PRB |---> ULLA

***

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.

***

Doors open at 4:30pm

Reading starts at 5:00pm

$5 donation requested

***

The PRB: Your frontline against poetry snacks.

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS & ALLISON CARTER

Saturday, July 19 2008 at 5:00pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau

3702 San Fernando Blvd

Glendale, CA 91206

***

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS works with the Ugly Duckling Presse collective as an editor, book and web designer, and letterpress printer. She also translates from French, and has published translations of Gautier, Michaux and Cendrars, among others. Her first full length collection, I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2006. Anna is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at CUNY's Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

ALLISON CARTER is an LA-based writer, teacher and designer. Her first book, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, is forthcoming next month from Les Figues Press. Her chapbook, Shadows Are Weather, will soon be out from Horse Less Press. Her work has otherwise been published in P-Queue, 5_Trope, Fence, and other journals. She currently teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts and co-edits P S Books with Joe Potts.

***

Doors open at 4:30pm

Reading starts at 5:00pm

$5 donation requested

Triple Canopy Does the PRB

There's a tricky new online magazine that works some of the conceptual digs that magazines like Soft Targets, Cabinet and the Paul Ford-wing of Harper's Online have been staking out this century (in fact, a few of the editors have had gigs at those kindred publications). The joint is called Triple Canopy, dark nod to the private defense contractor of the same name. They've had a few recent coups, including an interview with foreign policy provacateuse Samantha Power and the first complete English translation of the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño's 1999 speech accepting the Rómulo Gallegos Prize.

This month in Issue #2 they feature the Poetic Research Bureau extensively, focusing on the Bureau's concern with derivate poetries and unoriginal literature. This includes contributions from the three directors (Mosconi, Shirinyan and Maxwell), and the summer issue of the quarterly PRB's Directors' Dispatch.

Triple Canopy editors will be visiting LA next weekend, June 27th - 29th, and have an Issue #2 launch at SiteLA on Friday night, plus a reading at Family Bookstore on Fairfax Sunday evening. PRB co-director Andrew Maxwell (c'est moi) will be reading from the Literary Product Trials on Sunday at the bookstore event.

The Bureau presents...

David Buuck & Harold Abramowitz

Saturday, June 28 2008 at 5:00pm

***

DAVID BUUCK is a contributing editor at Artweek, and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute & the Language & Thinking program at Bard College. Recent booklets include Ruts, Runts, Between Above & Below, Paranoia Agent, and SITE/CITE/CITY. Full-length books are forthcoming from Palm Press and Tangent. He is the founder of BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics, which this summer will present Buried Treasure Island at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' "Bay Area Now" triennial. He lives in Oakland with his two dogs.

HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ is a writer and teacher from Los Angeles, author of a book, Dear Dearly Departed, forthcoming from Palm Press, a micro-book, Sunday, or a Summer's Day, forthcoming from PS Books, and a chapbook, Three Column Table, from Insert Press. Harold's writing, alone and collaboratively, has appeared in various publications. With Amanda Ackerman, he co-edits the literary project eohippus labs.

***

Five dollar donation requested (for traveling poets).

Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm

Magazines That Work

1. No magazine should include more than 50pp of work. It should be able to be consumed in one concentrated sitting.

2. No magazine should have a run longer than three years. Magazines should be understood to be ephemeral.

3. A magazine should be the stage for one rather focused idea, or a handful of related themes, rather than a synthetic pulp absorbing everything it touches.

4. A magazine should be issued at least quarterly, to keep its conversation alive.

5. A magazine should be portable, and tend toward smaller formats. Ideally its distribution will be hand-to-hand.

6. A magazine's print runs should be small: no more than 500 copies, and no reprints for at least five years after publication.

7. A magazine is still a fetish object, but its borders needn't necessarily end at the page. It can be germinated publicly in the laboratory of a blog, for example, and pruned at an arbitrary moment when the concentration is right, to maximize the effect or arrival (however accidental) of an idea.

San Fernando Will Not Forget This Moment

Our previous reminder just didn't cut it––

Even a butcher needs to butt in with the meat.

San Fernando Rd is alive and we don't want to kill it!

So we plant our flunky banner in the street:

Ahem.

Come see Gabriela Jauregui collect herself for the very first time,

in a book no less!

Why would she do it? The narrator puts his monocle on: "by gum, what a strange affair!"

At least 23 artists have cordoned off 23 miles of San Fernando to make the point:

This lady needs a witness!

Or... that's where you come in.

(sound of mental camera a-rolling, crickety-crank)

... ... ...

Walk hard, Starstruck Troopers, and do it our way, cuz as Teddy Bear Berrigan had it:

"My heart Your heart

That's the American Way

& so,

FUCK OR WALK!

It's the American Way"

Which is why all the 'art guerillas' get out

or get out of the way

to make a day of our post-pedestrianism.

What's the sound of 23 Angelenos walking? Can you hear it?!

That's what we've come to find out.

Perloff sez Gabriela has "perfect pitch". But we don't buy it!

The sneakiest poets are sharpies or flat-footed, and make a music of the accidentals.

(Here's a perfect pitch, btw!)

R. Duncan: If you haven't entered the dance / you've misunderstood the event.

Did I paraphrase? Well, fuck or walk, maybe I did: This event is new!

Come tell Gabriela to sing off key!

Unlock that responsibility!

& thusly examine: Controlled Decay.

Published by Black Goat / Akashic Books

A Book Release Party for Gabriela Jauregui

Sunday, June 8 2008, 4:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau

3702 San Fernando Rd.

Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:30pm

Reading starts at 5:00pm

& San Fernando Road Concert events from 5-9pm.

This gig is free. Save your bucks, and buy a book:

It's yr future:

The PRB Vortex. b/c

We've earned it.

The Bureau presents...

A Book Release Party for Gabriela Jauregui

Controlled Decay published by Black Goat/Akashic Books

Sunday, June 8 2008, 4:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Rd.
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:30pm
Reading starts at 5:00pm