Vampires

The other day I went to a reading, where one of the two featured poets did not vary his tone at all. In his half hour reading, he gave the same weight to nearly every word, the same pause, the same pitch. Every so often a word would jump out at me - vampires - - factory - - pastries -- and then I'd sink back into the effort of merely trying to make coherent what I was listening to. It was very disappointing. It made me feel good about my self-conscious effort to read well, to record myself before giving a reading. I don't much like to give readings, but as long as I'm giving one, I care about the audience, and our communication.

Speaking of communication, some kind journal has nominated me for the Best New Poets 2011 anthology. I was notified of the nomination, but not of the nominator, so it's all very sweetly mysterious. Thank you, mystery journal! (If you haven't been nominated, you can still enter the open competition for a small reading fee.)

My poetfriend John Sherer recently sent me a poem he liked by Zbigniew Herbert, which you can find here. John and I share the habit of occasionally handwriting or typing up poems of others, just to get a sense of their motion. A few years ago, I was fascinated with a poem by Raymond Carver called Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying To Get Back In, and typed it up many times. Here it is, in full :

Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In

by Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door

without thinking. And when you look back

at what you've done

it's too late. If this sounds

like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had

a key were away. I tried and tried

the lower windows. Stared

inside at the sofa, plants, the table

and chairs, the stereo set-up.

My coffee cup and ashtrays waited for me

on the glass-topped table, and my heart

went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,

or something like that. After all,

this wasn't so bad.

Worse things had happened. This

was even a little funny. I found the ladder.

Took that and leaned it against the house.

Then climbed in the rain to the deck,

swung myself over the railing

and tried the door. Which was locked,

of course. But I looked in just the same

at my desk, some papers, and my chair.

This was the window on the other side

of the desk where I'd raise my eyes

and stare out when I sat at that desk.

This is not like downstairs, I thought.

This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,

from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.

I don't even think I can talk about it.

I brought my face close to the glass

and imagined myself inside,

sitting at the desk. Looking up

from my work now and again.

Thinking about some other place

and some other time.

The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.

Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.

Even though a wave of grief passed through me.

Even though I felt violently ashamed

of the injury I'd done back then.

I bashed that beautiful window.

And stepped back in.

[artist friend spotlight] : Dorothy Hoover

My oldest friend, Dorothy Hoover, happens to be a crazy-talented artist. You are not surprised? Neither am I. Dorothy was my first introduction to all kinds of culture - I took ballet lessons because she was, got interested in theater because she took acting classes, started listening to music other than Seal & No Doubt (cringe) because one day she brought me an Ani DiFranco tape. We used to be mistaken for (and say we were) sisters. So now, she is a mega-artist living in Los Angeles, studying set design at CalArts. Being mainly a poet, I'm consistently amazed when artists put their imaginations into 3 dimensions. Dorothy's work has been seen in a number of venues in LA - most recently she designed the set for A Theatre@Boston Court's production of Camino Real and was a major player in the design of the wish-I'd-been-there art happening Sneaky Nietzsche. Dorothy's work is especially resonant with me because it's so literary. She's not just an "Oh, this play takes place in a field, so let me paint a backdrop with a field" set designer. She's sensitive to language, she doesn't leave it all up to the actors, but creates something like a visual language, letting the script itself resonate within the form of the set. Don't ask me to explain this further, just think about following her blog from now on, (which she runs with our friend Phil, also an artist & smarty) which I hope & pray she will fill with more pictures of her work. Or, better, check out her most current project, an adaptation of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red. Here's a peek:



Also, Dorothy is classy. She is classy cook and a classy dresser, & the last time I saw her, she was wearing gold sneakers. Now that's classy.

GIGANTIC SEQUINS KICKSTARTER : GO!

We have 30 days to raise AT LEAST $500,so please, spread the word about this thing! You will have our undying love.

flea in the river

My poetry reading/interview at Prosody airs tomorrow night 8 pm EST. Click the .mp3 (.pls) link to stream in Itunes i.e. tune in to see if I say anything coherent.

Just went over the proofs for the long-ass poem of mine that will appear in the first issue of OH NO magazine. Excitement. Next week is AWP in D.C. Traveling into the ridiculous cold = not thrilling. Seeing poet-friends I only see once a year = THRILLSVILLE. Even though AWP can be sort of a really intense mindfuck, it's also a great way of connecting & reconnecting & buying way too many books. Every time I go I get a sort of literary/social networking blackout, where I realize that I have no idea what's happened in the last 3 days, then shut down & eat some peanut butter & then very very gently begin to unfold the piles of scrambled notes & papers I've slung back to wherever home is at the moment. A little more about that soon, as I have something to tell you about Gigantic Sequins whose submission deadline, by the by, is at the end of the week.


Here below are links to people using the internet / technology to bring beautiful, interesting, joyful things into the world.

1) girl walk // all day. Dancing in the streets, or rather, on a boat, & then in the streets. Brilliant. Anne Marsen is the most naturally investigative & invested dancer I've seen in a long time.
2) Sleepover Shows: sweet online project of intimate shows shot in interesting places. I am particularly enamored with Emily Hope Price, but you knew that.


Happy Birthday tomorrow to two of my favorite people, this one's for you, the beauty that comes with age:

Acceptances, fall & shining

There's been a lot of lovely acceptances in my world lately - I'm just quiet about them. Here's some poems of mine forthcoming in Winter/Spring 2011:

~ long poem (5 pages!!) called River-heart, Radio in OH NO Magazine

~ in Lo-Ball Magazine, my poem For Derek, Missing for 8 Months

~ in The Normal School, look for two poems - The Closest I Come To Prayer These Days and The Night Life.


Also, not sure when this will air but, while visiting Pittsburgh, I'll be taping an episode of Prosody down at 91.3 WYEP, with guest host Renee Alberts, a woman who I think is fast becoming one of Pittsburgh's poetry saints, who, among so much else, curates a free poetry reading at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, each Sunday afternoon.

Speaking of Pittsburgh and kind stars, a holler of congratulations to dear mentor Terrance Hayes, who tonight won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry . Not just a mentor but a gracious, funny, generous guy and a good dad to boot. Hell yes, Terrance! Well-deserved, to put it mildly.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

This past weekend, very suddenly, I found myself in Boston -- Chickadees, I cannot tell you how giddy I was, when I stepped out of the airport, to have that Northern chill hit me. More awake than I'd been in months. So, I went because my dear dear friend Tom Johnston curated a really great event to tie up the Boston Book Festival titled The Book Revue, a great mix of writers who rock & rockers who write - but wait, first I should tell you about the concert we went to on Friday night, where Dean & Britta opened for Belle & Sebastian. Chris Colbourn (Buffalo Tom) was so kind as to give me one of his comp tickets (THANK YOU), which happened to be in something like the 10th row, center. AND he shared his junior mints. Belle & Sebastian were fabulous, but what's in my head is this song from Dean & Britta.



By the way, if you think you don't know who Buffalo Tom is, you do, maybe you just don't know that you know:



Belle & Sebastian put on a ridiculously fun show - I never would've guessed that B&S fans are...how shall I put it... headbangers? But apparently they are. Everybody dances like crazy.

Saturday was spent zipping around, Mike's Diner in the South End for breakfast, then to the Boston Public Library where our friend Nick Flynn was on a memoir panel along with Marianne Leone, and Jerald Walker. Afternoon, again, a flurry of running, and eventually getting over to John Hancock Hall in Back Bay, to basically hang around while some of the performers - Dean Wareham, Kristen Hersh, Joe Pernice, Steve Almond - got ready. Fast forward to Au Bon Pain, split pea soup, a nice BU professor whose name I forget reciting Hopkins, Steve Almond vaguely discussing truth through a story about Steven Elliot's expression of love. Spent half of the show backstage, watching next to Nick Zinner (guitarist of YYYs) and his book friends, and half in the audience.

Jumping into Tom's life is always wildly energizing, or, really, simply full of a crazed energy. It's so out of my hermetic, interior life, all that banging around, meeting rockers, running from venue to venue, staying up too late, eating meals in groups of eight or nine. There's more to tell, Chickadees, (about a great, great play called The Method Gun.. about how excited I am for New Year's Eve) but I have to go read some Wordsworth. More later perhaps...

Venti Latte vs. A Chance to Win a 2010 Wave Books subscription?

Gigantic Sequins (the literary magazine I'm the poetry editor for) is holding a fund-raising raffle (that's right, I said RAFFLE!) to fund our future adventures in publishing.

And what can I win from this raffle? you ask. Well, says I, a lot of neat stuff. And, unlike a venti Starbucks latte, which probably costs around $5, your $5 raffle ticket might win you more lasting treats from places like Wave Books and ModCloth. Check out the link below to purchase a raffle ticket, find out more information on the drawing, and to see a more complete list of our prizes from musicians, small presses, etc. So so so much better than a latte!

Raffle Me, Baffle Me !

For more about Gigantic Sequins : we live here : http://giganticmagazine.wordpress.com/

More about Gigantic Sequins:
We're in the middle of our second season - issue 2.1 will be coming out towards the end of October, & 2.2 will be published likely in late winter. I'm excited to be publishing writers like Leigh Phillips, Jim Daniels, James Wagner, Jeremy Schmall, Anne Marie Rooney, and F. Daniel Rzicznek in our second season, and hope that some of you will send in work when we re-open submissions in the spring! If you are interested in submitting poetry, prose, or artwork in the future, look for our new submission guidelines within next month. Queries may be directed to giganticmagazine@gmail.com

Dancing through life

Some of you chickadees know that I was a musical theater kid a million years ago. Well, I think that kid was just sleeping somewhere in my heart, curled up sweet in her little pink tutu & tap shoes, but I listened to "Next to Normal" all night the other night, and now she's wide awake, discovering new musicals, dancing up a little storm.

Here are two clips from the original cast of "The Last Five Years," a musical where the two characters tell the story of their relationship - one from the beginning, one from the end, and almost never appear in the same moment. It's a profound telling - the mismatch of timing, which is ultimately what always kills relationships...

Anyway, Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz are ridiculously talented.






Also, in "Next to Normal," there was guy my age named Aaron Tviet and well, I unabashedly have a crush on him. He's a natural. A NATURAL. I'm sold. And I just discovered "Wicked." Late on the uptake, I know, but it's so amazingly cheesy, it makes me gleeful.

how this longing grabs me

Chickadees, good news! I got into the Tinhouse Summer Writer's Workshop with a full scholarship! I had given up thinking about it, because I just assumed I'd hear by May 1 if there was a scholarship for me or not. But, then today came good news. I was at the gym, in the locker room, when I got the call, and hopped up & down in my too small white towel like a maniac. So excited. Wouldn't have applied if it weren't for my darling Tom Johnston, who believes in me like some weird little moon, and always has the best advice. Going to be taking a workshop with D.A. Powell:

corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion
the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself and grows in clusters

oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself
how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as god's own ribs



what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches
yearning for that vernal beau. for don't birds covet the seeds of the honey locust
and doesn't the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats foraged in the meadow
kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me by the nape



guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out
dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs and brush

what was his name? I'd ask myself, that guy with the sideburns and charming smile
the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I'd expire with him on my tongue



silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided preacher
as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our sleepy eyes

LIke a sky I was speckled with distance

It is National Poetry Month, by the way. Have you found a way to recognize the poetry in your life?

HOLY WHAT!

HOLY CRAP HOW DID I NOT KNOW THERE IS A NEW BOOK BY ANNE CARSON CALLED NOX AND I'M SO EXCITED I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHA- JUST BOUGHT THE BOOK ON AMAZON HERE'S A REVIEW-ISH THING OH SWEET PICKLED JESUS WHAT A LOVELY DAY ITS BEEN

A Story About Movement

2000: When I applied to colleges in high school, I chose somewhere from eight to ten schools with strong musical theater programs. I fumbled through my essays, stressed out over my SAT scores, and traveled to audition in rooms full of other jittery teenagers, all trying to dance more perfectly than the next, all wanting to belt like Bernadette Peters, all hoping their image seemed smooth and professional and unique. We all believed, or were trying to believe, that we had "IT," the thing directors would sense as we walked into the room, the thing that poured from stars. Why else would we be waiting in those long New York hallways, practicing our breath, practicing how to say our names, listening to the piano vamp & stutter, watching as kids emerged from the audition room attempting neutrality but obvious in their glee or shame.
And so, and so, out of 10 or so schools, I got into, what - two programs? My academic records were blatantly awful, and the Syracuse drama department said they'd fought for the University to accept me, that I'd have to keep my grades up....

And so, and so, fast forward nine years. I expected to be accepted to maybe, maaaybe, forty percent of the schools I applied to for graduate study. The numbers, however, are nothing like that. I was accepted to NYU, Columbia, New Mexico State University, CalArts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Houston. I still haven't heard from Oregon, and was rejected from the Michner Center in Austin. What's the difference? Superficially, the difference is that I was a crappy student in high school, having skipped most of my senior year, and done things like escaped from detention out of windows, thereby receiving more detentions. On another level, the acceptances have to do with a shift of focus and lifestyle. When I started to try to stop drinking, in 2004, I was at Emerson College, and it was the first time I'd ever been consistent about schoolwork. Not only consistent, but, dare I say, dedicated. I still fucked up on a regular basis - received embarrassingly bad grades in history classes and a class on Judaism - but I was dedicated to work surrounding writing and literature. And I guess, the other important thing is that I have been out of school since 2006 - this period of time has been important for actually seeing how motivated I am towards self-education, separate from Academia. I'm grateful for the time that I've been out of school, it just makes the prospect of the fall that much more exciting.
Hi Ho Houston!

Fracture & Gauze / Two Dogs

1. Riding the bus through Allston this past weekend, I began to think that there are two defining qualities to the memories I have of living in Boston: fracture and gauze. The fractured memories are recollections of hangovers - mornings afternoons nights - the feeling of hundreds of small pieces of glass embedded in my chest, weighing on the edges of my throat, along with smoke, maybe cum, maybe the drip of cocaine, maybe juice (if I were lucky, and had money left for the morning.) Then, gauze: Blanchard’s liquor store, its neon sign 20 feet high in the style of Fifties advertisements, dull in the afternoon light; Davis Square subway stop at night,the entire scene viewed with a dirty filter, all actions somehow separated from the present moment. I fell into all my old routes like playing the piano. It was as if I'd been gone for only a month, slipped into a long sleep like Ichabod Crane to awake and find that nearly everything was the same, only the city was emptier, and the people I loved were older, they had survived things.

2. Part of the timing of my trip to Boston was due to the fact that my dear friend Tom Johnston had set up a reading for Nick Flynn, as a part of his book tour in promotion of his new book, which I swallowed in two days, and am about to read again (there's a reading tonight in NYC, then readings in L.A. & SF later this week). Nick is a lovely person to be around socially - he gives you a sense of possibility. He's expansive and odd in a way that's deeply familiar. There was some music at the readings - my friend the heart-breaking/warming Drew O'Doherty played a set. The whole evening was inspired & inspiring. I got to hang out a bit with my young & talented buddy Brendan Little, who is in The Painted Lights, a great band whose full-length album I eagerly await. Anyway, anyway, I'm getting carried away because I love and miss Boston & so many of the people in it.

The following is an excerpt from The Ticking is the Bomb.

Two Dogs

Two dogs live inside me, a woman in Texas tells me, and the one I feed is the one that will grow. She tells me this as a way to explain why she won't have coffee with me, ever--married, kids, happy, but sometimes her mind wanders, sometimes she thinks that another man, one that looks at her with kindness, one that seems to listen, is the answer, though she is unsure of the question. The thing is, her husband does all these things for her-- he listens, he's kind, there's desire, everything's fine.
But still, still, these two hungry dogs.
Wait--this woman didn't say her dogs were hungry, did she? But aren't all dogs hungry? Here Shadow, here Eros. Here Thanatos, here Light. The one she feeds is the one that will grow, but does that mean that the other one will grow smaller? Will it grow so small as to vanish? Do the dogs that live inside her come from some Alice-in-Wonderland world? Are they fighting inside her, does she love them both, does she sometimes think if one died it would be easier? But then she'll have one dog inside her and the corpse of another dog-- what good will that do, in the long run, what with all the other corpses we eventually end up dragging around inside us?

First Interview!

Here is a little interview that I did for Person Person, a weekly interview series post that will go up (almost) every Sunday on Once Upon A Book Blog / Fourteen Years. The blog is written by Robby, who is fourteen years old and lives in Massachusetts. He may be the most precocious fourteen year old I've ever encountered; his enthusiasm about creativity gives me hope for the next generation of poets & writers & thinkers...

(Thank you, Robby! You're my favorite chickadee of the month.)

all is bright

It's raining a cold rain here in Pittsburgh. This Jew has adopted at least the smell of Christmas, an orange stuck full of cloves like tiny fragrant stars. Whatever you celebrate, wherever you are, stay warm.

edit: My ex-boyfriend, the inimitable Tait Johnson, has garnered national attention for a project he completed this last semester for a course in Narrative and Technology at the University of Pittsburgh. You can now read about The Unlimited Story Deck at the LA Times Book Review. Congratulations, Tait!

tiny planets

My friend Kimberlyannjosephine Southwick, the editor-in-chief of Gigantic Sequins has asked me to be on staff as a poetry reader. Dear reader, do submit your work.

Late afternoon sun shines through something, throws tiny planets of light against the door frame. I choose not to know what the light catches.

Exactly how this afternoon feels:

I've been accepted to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute!

Couldn't be more excited. Taking a little trip afterward to Boston to see dear Thomas F Johnston & tumble around the favorite haunts. Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get into a workshop with Mark Doty, who has been one of my favorite poets since high school. Actually, I'm quite star-struck around him, having seen him at AWP & mumbled something incoherent about his book "My Alexandria."

update, 6/5: will have workshop with Doty. !!!

here's Terrance Hayes( an invaluable critic, excellent poet & an all around interesting person) on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, reading his work in the neighborhood I grew up in. The coffee shop he's filmed in, and outside of, is the The Union Project, which used to offer a weirdly delicious sandwich called something self-explanatory like 'The Cheesy Pickle,' but now also offers things like yoga classes, ceramics classes & a reading series...

________ Versus Recovery

My debut chapbook, "_______ Versus Recovery" is now available for purchase from Pilot Books!

What's being said about the book:

"The poetry of Sophie Klahr is both restless and arresting. Setting experiment versus convention, nearness versus distance, doom versus redemption, she tests the meanings/margins of the psyche as fearlessly as she does the margins/meanings of the poem itself. These poems don’t just glow, they illuminate."

- Terrance Hayes

"Sophie Klahr’s _________Versus Recovery is a startlingly original debut. Klahr digs deep—the raw, honest emotion and drama of this long poem explode out from the electric images, the vibrant incantations. There’s sparks flying all over the place here. "

- Jim Daniels

...& in the Pittsburgh City Paper.