Infinite Jest! That's entertainment! Infinite Summer begins today!

That’s entertainment: Infinite Summer begins today!

This blog was started almost a year ago to train my brain to regularly post for Delmarva Quarterly, an arts & humanities magazine (that’s going glossy) for which I freelance regularly for, and though DMQ hasn’t started the blog sites yet, still in the works, and I’m cool with that, though I feel posting anxiety for not regularly updating this blog as I promised.

So to posting I go…on Father’s Day, between playing the dragon game with Thor and making cheese sandwiches….

For those uninitiated who have not tested David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The challenge begins today, and so far there are an impressive number of creative projects occurring as readers tackle the challenge. There are some famous readers, including the Decemberists Colin Meloy, and others. Some readers are making FLICKR boards, plus the usual discussion boards and other literary discussion detritus.

I’ve read IJ twice, and more than any other book, the images and words are slam fixed in my brain. It’s gothic, it’s funny, it’s challenging, it’s satirical, it’s wonderful, it’s grotesque. And the work itself is a testament to the American Imagination. Where else can pot smokers, alcoholics, socio-paths, independent film, pro sports, wheelchair assassins, drug rehab counselors, drug addicted transvestites, child prodigies, and entertainment so good it will kill you, come together to marvel, question, and enlighten. It is entertainment.

You can visit the site here.

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Summer Poetry Reading in Rehoboth

If anyone's interested in a mid-summer run to Rehoboth's outlet malls, consider Tuesday, July 27th, and stop by the Rehoboth Beach Librar y for the summer poetry series. Besides moi, Denise Clemmons, poet and food critic for the Cape Gazette, and Sherry Chapplle, poet and professor. Excellent company. Books will be for sale afterwards. It's a quality series, and full of surprises. Garry Hanna has done a bang-up job organizing the summer series. Bring a few quarters to ward off the meter maid. Reading starts at 7:00 PM.

Out this week: Thirty Days: Best of the 30/30 Project. Featuring my poem "Love in Reverse"

Marie Gauthier of Tupelo Press selected one of my poems, "Love in Reverse" for Thirty Days : The best of the 30/30 Project Year One. It's one of a few anthologies to feature my work (cue haughty accent, spotlight, espresso, and French cigarettes). Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me over the next few months as projects near completion. Thanks for the support.

Vittorio Carli's work is punk rock #poetry

A Passion for Apathy: The Collected and Rejected Poems of Vittorio Carl i, a small press gem of punk rock poetry, carries poetic traditions in its teeth. Punk rock because of the in-your-face-anti-establishment irony and earnestness in Carli's presentation of his verse, traditional in the homage and muse tradition of poetry. He writes to and for those and that which enlarges his voice. Carli's work reads like a cross between cultural commentary/homage to persons as varied as Lawrence Welk to Woody Allen, to snapshots of socio-political unrest, which are flags of protest. My favorite is the “The Trouble with Librarians (for Andrea)” where Librarians are cast as the progenitors of closed information; they are “all closed books/with a couple of pages missing.” He's a poet, and I imagine him in some stacked room typing madly, or in transit, to and fro Chicago, scribbling on the back of brown paper bags. He works it. He's out there living poetry. Proof. My copy of t...

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