Sigils and Signs Opening at the Observatory

I just arrived at the Sigils and Signs Exhibit, and it is wonderful. Here's one quick photo. It was difficult to take a shot--a lot of visitors already here.

So Long, Privacy!

Here's a screenshot of me coasting along on the Norristown High Speed Line--thanks to Google Latitude.

Anyone want to join Latitude with me? We can track each other! What fun!

For a day or so.

I like this book.

I know I should be using goodreads or pinterest or some other such thing to praise this book, but I don't feel like it this afternoon.

It was recommended to me by a dear friend, and it's become a crucial part of a composition course I teach. Edited by Molly Peacock, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World is a collection of essays about privacy by fiction writers, poets, and memoir writers. Graywolf Press published it (of course). Amazon will sell it to you, but so will Powells.com.

Making Plans for Next Friday Night? How about going to Brooklyn?

Pam Grossman curates what looks to be a very cool exhibit at the Observatory on Friday night: Sigils and Signs. The featured "artists explore what is means to be a magician in the modern age: to emblazon sigils upon the energy field; to make magic marks."
 
Grossman created Phantasmaphile, a visual and informational meal of art eerie and wonderful. Perhaps the site "specializes in art and culture with an esoteric or fantastical bent," but I like focusing on the eerie stuff.

Here's a teaser from the exhibit website:

. . . artists who, quite literally, created spells via drawings on the floor, scrawls in books, lines cut into wood or stone.  Though the featured players of this story are often English magicians from John Dee to Austin Osman Spare to Alan Moore, symbol-based magic can be traced back through the ages and across cultures.  Germanic runes were carved. . .

Fascinated? Me too. The exhibit runs through June 17th.

Plants Play Music at Philly Tech Week

I'm excited to check out Performing With Technology as part of Philly's Tech Week.

From Sam Cusumano:

Beginning at 5p Electricity for Progress will present a series of interactive exhibitions, each meant to educate and inspire the audience. For Philly Tech Week 2012, we will be deploying: Circuit Bent toys (Casio sk-1, Elmo Driver, Cookie Monster, Yodeling pickle, toot-a-loop am radio) and our latest display from Data Garden - an electronic duet between a philodendron and interacting guests .

An electronic duet between a philodendron and guests?!? Cool.


Where: .1714 North Mascher Street, Philadelphia PA.

When: 4/23/2012
5PM-6:30PM : Demo/Installation/Workshop (FREE)
6:30PM-8PM : Concert (FREE)

Adam Vidiksis - music with pots, pans, and computer
Gemini Wolf - electronic music with video
Coleman/Sato/Nakamura Trio - clarinet, show, no-input mixer
Mauri Walton - dance, video
Megan Bridge & Peter Price - dance, electronic music
Rolf LakaemPer - sound installation & music with kinect
Sam Cusumano - modified toys and synthesizers

There's more info on Facebook:

Begone, Worries!

This makes me feel better.

Hurried, Harried

I've felt a little bit like Fred this weekend.

 But what the web harms, the web can also cure.

The poem is "No One's in a Hurry" and it's by Michael Judge. Go. Enjoy the line breaks. Feel the serenity.

Thanks, World Wide Web. I needed that.

The Summer of 2011, with Battlestar Galactica and My Wife

Seriously. This is exactly how it happened:

Portlandia's strange access to my life.

Poetry Wins!

For this year, at least.

With fiction's rejection by Pulitzer this year, I will hold poetry as the superior genre. Fiction, you have to lump it--but only for a year. What separates those who write fiction from those who write poetry? Please enjoy the opening of this wonderful piece (click on the image):.

I love this essay--it gets ever funnier. The full piece can be read by subscribing to Harper's Magazine, a move I highly recommend. Or you can order the fall 1996 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review.

The Beauty of Student Literary Magazines

Rob Sieczkiewicz, University Archivist at Drexel University Libraries, coordinated a fascinating show on the history of Student Literary Magazines at Drexel University. With Prof. Rachel Wenrick, he gathered together a number of faculty and students to read and respond to poems, stories, and other pieces from student lit mags of decades past. It was a fascinating project, and I was all too happy to help. I published some thoughts about it at drexelpublishing.org. I hope to write more about it in the coming days.

Tracy K. Smith Wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (and defeats all fiction everywhere)

Huzzah! I know this development is a few days old, but I just found out this morning (been busy with a few things--here's one). Here's an article I penned last year about seeing Smith on the PBS Newshour.

Here's the NY Daily News's take on the situation. And this is information provided by the lovely folks who award the prizes (the book, the jury, etc.). Again, wonderful, wonderful news.

And, without a Pulitzer for fiction this year, I think it's clear that poetry has finally defeated fiction as the superior genre.

The Fine Art of Composing

I've been thinking about the art of composing things.

Does anyone remember Santo Gold, the late-night infomercial from the eighties? It aired in the Philadelphia region on WPHL 17 after midnight; I think I remember catching it while flipping through channels after Saturday Night Live. It may have aired other nights. Anyway.

I'm starting to understand that my brain is less of a library and more of a depository, and the workers are equal parts thrilled and dismayed to catalog its contents.

The infomercial that walks my nightmares is still here on YouTube. And you can learn more about Santo Gold and the man behind it on Wikipedia.

I must return to more literary endeavors, such as my work for Painted Bride Quarterly.