Once again Tremont proves that it IS the center of Cleveland poetry and the proto-renaissance soon to be named the Tremont School of Poetics...

...okay okay it's a bit overstated. There is plenty of poetry venues, poetry workshops, poetry writing all oer the city, county, and countryside, all outstanding in their own way.....wait...that sounds like sucking up.

The point being is this point.

Last Tuesday, Russell Salamon, a founder of the last Cleveland poetry renaissance and close compadre of d.a. levy, read in a special night at Art House in honor of his reprinting the tribute to levy originally published in 1968, ukanhavyrfuckincitibak. A great event with the focus on the mimeograph revolution and levy-philia (meant in positive way).If you missed it, don't despair, you have not only one, but TWO opportunities to hear and meet this extraordinary individual.

Tuesday August 28th at 7:00pm
Visible Voices Books will have Russell Salamon read his poetry. The focus is on Russ's work which has been published in eleven books and has appeared in Passager, Sunstone, Uncommon Ground, Daybreak, The Listening Eye, Saint Petersburg Russian-American Anthology, Peckerwood, Puckerbrush Review, Retooling for the Renaissance in the Third Millenium, Riverside Quarterly, Trace, Dare, among others. An open mic will follow so BYOP(oetry) with your BYOB. Visible Voices Books is located at 1023 Kenilworth Ave. in Tremont.

Thurday August 30th at 9:00pm (SHARP!)
A special Literary Cafe Poetry Nite Extravaganza hosts Russell Salamon for his first videotaped live performance reading. The Lit is famous for its creation and archiving live performances of established and arising poets (thanks Andy). Russell has never been video'd during a reading before, so come be a part of this historic event. To quench Russ' thirst for new poetry by poets that are sharing the modern version of the same Cleveland struggle he had, Open mic with penpad spontaneity will follow. Drinks will be provided, provided you have cash.

So Tremont strikes twice in having a major force in Cleveland's cultural development share his wisdom. In case, you didn't know, Russell Salamon was born on December 6, 1941 in Berkasovo, Yugoslavia, as it was then, about sixty miles west of Belgrade in a hamlet of about 200 people near the Orient Express Line. Huge steam locomotives thundered through without stopping at Sid (pronounced, Sheed), a town of about 2,000. This life up to age twelve is recounted in Breakfast in the Twelfth Century, a book of poems. In October 1953 he came to Kent, Ohio, and soon after to Cleveland. This part is summarized in Descent into Cleveland, a poetic novel about events in the 1960's.

Yeah, I've been going nuts during travel for indentured servitude. Makes me go into uncontrollable alliteration, but a bright note surprised me when I opened this month's flight magazine on my Continental plane ride to Maryland (got crabs---the good kind.)

My newest pal, Lois Moss, has been cranking on getting MLK Blvd closed on Sundays so folks can enjoy the beautiful Rockefeller Park. It has been a bureaucratic nightmare on elm st for her with the city, museums, and Univ Circle dragging their feet in spite of the success she showed whenshe did it before LAST YEAR.

Dubbed Walk + Roll Cleveland, the gatherings promote community connections, healthy living, and vibrant public places.

At least Continental Airlines recognizes a good thing and shares it with the rest of the nation. Click here for the whole blurb. Nice job, Lois.

Check this out! My name was mentioned in this month's Northern Ohio Live, thanks to Patsy Kline and her Gallery U-Haul extravaganza. (That's me down on the bottom....circled in yellow).

The Plain Dealer was also there during my read, snapping pix all over the place. I'm going to be out of town for the rest of the week. So if an article comes out and I'm in it, hold the paper for me and my hyper-inflated ego.

UPDATE
Saw the PD article at Grumpy's during breakfast before running to the airport. I AM in the article.
"Poets would read later"=>THAT WAS ME!

Thanks to all that came out on a VERY HOT early afternoon yesterday to hear me read some poems.

Since the theme of Gallery U Haul's Mix:24 hr of Art was moving/moving-on, and the idea was to explore the creative process together, I had the audience write a line or or two about moving/moving-on and read some nouns and verbs that Dannee of Grumpy's, Pat of Lago, and I came up with at breakfast. Here is the collaberative poem

I move to the song of poetry.
I'm moving Danielle to Dayton next week.
Lots of Chaos thrown into boxes
+ loaded into the car.
Life goes on ---wife goes on.
Tiptoeing through
a maze of corrigated
brown---I wonder if
I will ever get my
life back. Where
are my socks anyway?
Another "*!$&#" flood.
Movin storm sludge
AGAIN!
life--moved on,
leaving me ---behind
In those days when all rest & all patience
has been wiped from the slate of your face,
when it seems that just plain conversations
are like prayers in our secular place.
Motion doesn't mean moving on.
It's just something I do everyday.
Shove your way
out of my world.
Closing doors opening windows
U-HAUL GOOD; PENSKE BAD
He grabs it the umbrella
sucks.
No looking back one step in
front of the other onward
to a strange new future.
Drive faster so we can see the
Aurora Borealis.

.

Also on Artwalk Nite (tho not part of artwalk), my dear friend Ujjin-la will be at Jewel Heart with his annual Tibetan Rug sale. I have always wanted to get one and now with my ratty hardwood floors in the new flat and my regular paycheck, I'm in the market for a least two of these beauties.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JEWEL HEART CLEVELAND
TIBETAN RUG SALE!
TWO DAYS ONLY!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday August 10, 5-9 PM (during Tremont Art Walk)

Saturday August 11, 10AM-5PM

Beautiful, affordable 100% wool carpets made by adult Tibetan refugees in Nepal.

Custom orders in all colors and sizes, with numerous traditional and contemporary design choices.

A few antique Tibetan carpets also available.

A portion of the sale proceeds go to support both Tibetan refugees in Nepal and the monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India.

Actually, it is a 24 hour art mix extravaganza that starts during artwalk. My slot is at 2:00 pm on Saturday. I'll be doing some new pieces and an audience participation bit that is a twist on the Penpad Spontaneous Open. Come see me.

Just noticed Ginley is participating as well, but just like those hot art-chicks that ignored me in high school, she only listed the friday line up and neglected us saturday folk, like we're a bunch of geeks. If only she wasn't so cool, I'd be pissed.

I didn't just create a hoopla about being back to blogging, just to go back to ignoring WITB. I have just been concentrating on the poetry is all. I have a reading this weekend to prepare for. I'll post an announcement soon enough.

Just an aside, I loved the rainy day yesterday. It was beautiful. I sat on my porch, drank fresh roast/fresh brew Brazilian yellow Bourbon, read Rilke, got inspired, and wrote some poems. Yep, poems about the rain. Great way to kill a few hours.

The new poems are what I'm working on now, refining-revising, and hopefully ready for this weekend. Sometimes it's nice not to blog.

Amazing that our government can do such a good job at selecting laureates when the head of it all can barely read....(snark). Charles Simic is one of the few contemporary poets I have read something from, not cause I'm stuck in the Beats,but cuz I'm trying to educate myself past the evil that was Mrs. Koski, embodiment of 10th grade English teacher incompetence. Simic was a name that came up in a random google I did looking for modern poets. Congrats to him.

Hey Bilgere, how bout getting him to John Carroll for a reading? He's Yugoslav so he probably will have a drink with us.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American poet Charles Simic was named on Thursday as the United States' 15th poet laureate by the Library of Congress which described his poetry as accessible with some flashes of ironic humor.

Simic, 69, who was born in Yugoslavia but immigrated to the United States when he was 16, will take up his duties in the fall, opening the Library's annual literary series, the Librarian of Congress James Billington said in a statement.

The position was created 70 years ago to raise national awareness and appreciation of reading and writing of poetry.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet succeeds Donald Hall and joins a list of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Ted Kooser, Louise Gluck, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove and Robert Penn Warren.

"The range of Charles Simic's imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising," said Billington.

"He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor."

Simic has written 18 books of poetry and is also an essayist and translator. He taught at the University of New Hampshire for 34 years.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for his book of prose poems "The World Doesn't End" and has a list of other awards and fellowships to his name.

Simic, who lives in Strafford, New Hampshire, arrived in the United States in 1954 and said he started writing poetry in high school to get girls' attention.

"I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn't speak English until I was 15," said Simic who will publish a new book of poetry, "That Little Something," in February next year.

The post of poet laureate dates back to 1937 when the position was called "consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress." The name was changed by an act of Congress in 1985.

Laureates receive a $35,000 annual award with the term lasting one or two years. The Library said it tries to minimize specific duties so laureates can work on their own projects.

I know that you have all missed the pithy, clever promos for the Literary Cafe monthly poetry while I've been screwing around pretending to know how to do web coding and database queries. Well, be ready to be disappointed again. I got nothing but the facts.

So the fact is that for a change we are going to have a poetry reading at the Literary Cafe (1031 Literary Road Cleveland) next Thursday August 9 It also just so happens to be the second thursday of the month. That would make for a good regular day for a poetry reading. We will start at 9:30 PM, yes, really 9:30 pm. Do not listen to the rumors of our lax promptness even if they come from poet laureates (yeah, you Loren Weiss! You too, Jack McGuane!).

Speaking of Poet Laureates, one of our feature readers is the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Mary Weems. Mary is an accomplished poet, playwright, author, performer, motivational speaker, and imagination-intellect theorist. Her work has been widely published in journals including the African American Review and xcp:Cultural Poetics, anthologies including Spirit & Flame: An Anthology of African American Poetry and Boomer Girls, and several books including Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth (Lang, 2003), which argues for imagination-intellectual development as the primary goal of public education. She won the Wick Chapbook Award for her collection white in 1996, and in 1997 her play "Another Way to Dance" won the Chilcote award for The Most Innovative Play by an Ohio Playwright. Her most recent collection of poems Tampon Class (Pavement Saw Press, 2005) is in its second printing. Mary Weems currently teaches in the English and Education departments at John Carroll University. More importantly, she give great hugs.

Our other feature is JS Makkos. It has been said that Joseph have traveled all over the country, meeting poets, reading in eclectic venues, and managed to get an MFA from some well respected university. I, however, have never seen his passport or visas. I did witness him sleeping facedown in the dust next to a dead campfire that he stoked to Bessemer proportions all night. I have seen him eschew the somnambulant urge in exchange for mental masturbation. He is the founder of the Language Foundry, sponsored a 24 hour poetry marathon, a publisher, and, of course, a poet.

So dems da facts. All you have to do is show up and have a good time. Bring some poems to share on the open mike after the features, or write some after you show up and had a couple drinks.

Its all good.

Once in a while, I'm taken back when somebody tells me that I wasn't what they thought I was. Not an easy thing to respond to, however Charles Baudelaire (a goddamn genius for sure) in his essay "Crowds" in "Spleen of Paris" wrote:

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being at will himself and someone else. Like those wandering souls looking for a body, he enters, when he wishes to, the personality of each man. For him alone, everything is opened; if certain places seem closed to him, that is because for him they are not worth the trouble of being visited.