P
   O
      G
 

November 17

poets

Maureen Owen

&

Tenney Nathanson

saturday november 17, 7pm

poetry center, university of arizona

in the poetry center library

1508 e. helen street

(at helen & vine, one block north of speedway, one block west of cherry)

admission $5, students $3

Maureen Owen is the author of ten poetry titles, most recently Erosion’s Pull from Coffee House Press. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. Other books include Imaginary Income, Zombie Notes, a brass choir approaches the burial ground, The No-Travels Journal, and Untapped Maps. Her work has been included in several anthologies including Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing By Women. She has taught numerous workshops and classes in poetry and book production and her awards include grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Fund for Poetry and a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served as program coordinator at The St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York.  She teaches courses in Creative Writing and literary studies at Naropa University. She is also editor for Naropa's on-line zine not enough night.

Tenney Nathanson is the author of the book-length poem Home on the Range (The Night Sky with Stars in My Mouth) (O Books, 2005) and the collection Erased Art (Chax Press, 2005).  His poems and essays have appeared in such journals as Raritan, Contemporary Literature, Jacket, Kenning, Social Text, Antennae, Kiosk, EOAGH, RIF/T, The Los Angeles Review, Ironwood, and Caterpillar.  He’s also the author of the critical study Whitman’s Presence: Body, Voice, and Writing in Leaves of Grass¸ (NYU, 1992, rpt. 1994).  Nathanson is currently at work on a book-length poem, Ghost Snow Falls through the Void (Globalization), and a critical study of the contemporary poets John Ashbery, Leslie Scalapino, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Norman Fischer, and David Shapiro.  He lives in Tucson, where he teaches American poetry and, from time to time, creative writing in the English Department at the University of Arizona.
 
 
NOW THIS VAGUE MELANCHOLY      by Maureen Owen


        Now this vague melancholy adores    me
        of hours spent in your façade
        it’s best described as she can
        if she could      likewise bitterly
        since the forecast dented
        with     our diner window cut in two
            , as if her life

        her life dissolving
        in what had been agreed
        not to tell to one another
        what was   is the danger
        the story of the stories
        And    this melancholy.

        if then we couldn’t stretch the seams
        of our need    while being chatty
        we could discuss

                                              long into noted

        all else
        sweet melancholy    dished
        each by itself   into a darker  ness
        where the hangover begins before midnight
        & I could talk to you forever
        for no good reasons science could explain
        for we are two of repelling cogs
        set in their motion fast by some diligent
        terrain rising flat as the prairie

 

    as a word      I fell in love with you    then
 

    with a word    can such a thing be done
 

    because of a word   you said    Nebraska
 

    & all the chairs drew back their doors
 

    & all the floors burst into flame
 

    & in the night a single fire swept
 

    swept through it all   &  I woke kneeling on
 

    charred ground  & it was as the saint
 

 

 

       proclaimed

 

from GHOST SNOW FALLS THROUGH THE VOID        by Tenney Nathanson

now the birdcalls get tiny & everything glides away from dawn toward the business of day, variously intense tense funny lascivious slack cherubic or boinged

or else dawn rolls away like a stage set behind or under it, disrobing the busier backdrop

russet mantle clad etc.

before it was I dunno like the immense rattle of a diffuse genius loci snake who meant no menace like Leslie says the comic book is calm because anyway everything was snake

not the feeling David had when stepping on the dark snake in Brazil in sandals he said it felt like a baggie containing shit then it kind of whirred then bit that round bump on the ankle bone I don’t know what it’s called like he said an electric drill, then flopped off hard onto the dirt road and slithered off his leg then an intensely magnified stop that temple bell reverberator, receptacle or maybe powerstation

it didn’t stop for days

he didn’t die

but whenever it rains his leg gets whacked by the cosmic densho cop

hose slurs water into the mysteriously emptied spa

hard not to mean the attendant air of privilege which is actually a whole lot more minimal than it sounds

land of a thousand dependents

matte green scrub up the hills toward the serious mountain goes washier green in the slanting down light

but the oppresses like the heft of cathedral tunes has absconded

leaving you face to face with save a ghost

someplace on the other side the mountain is gleaming its gouche red rockface back at the sun, Catalina Glintorama being the proper term

 hi

who I guess you ok gentle reader I initiate you into the diffusely bonging body

boinging into roadside rabbit poised down now scampering stealthily into the brush

now you’re a cactus pad feeling your spines

because I said so

apparently it’s allowed to be Whitmanian

it’s all happening at the zoo

intense dark green of the well-watered lady banksia climbing rose devouring entire

         west-facing plate glass pseudo second story window you’re blocking all my light

good morning     and it is

not the light to the south where a single bird heads north in a liquid hurry picking up

        altitude then sliding from view

I dedicate this morning business

to the people of Iraq

and to you whoever you are now I take your hand that you be my poem

bong

into the general only apparently intermittent vibration

bzzzzzzz zzzzz zzzzz

says other shore this shore for sure

GA!

Poetry in Action 2007-08:

September 23

Michael Kelleher and Tyrone Williams

October 27
David Gitin and Frank Parker
 
November 17
Maureen Owen and Tenney Nathanson
 
February 2  Pierre Joris and Cynthia Miller

(co-sponsored by Chax Press)
 
February 16 Rodrigo Toscano and TC Tolbert

March 15
Beverly Dahlen and Charles Alexander
 
April 12
Lewis Warsh and Paul Klinger
 
May 3
Leslie Scalapino and Matt Rotando
 
 

and:
 
November 2-5 2008
Norman Fischer (poetry reading, talk, meditation workshop)

        

 

POG events are sponsored in part by grants from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. POG also benefits from the continuing support of The University of Arizona Poetry Center, the Arizona Quarterly, Chax Press, and The University of Arizona Department of English. 

POG is also grateful to 2007-2008 donors and programming partners:

We're also grateful to hosts and programming partners

and (still) to 2006-2007 donors: