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Friday, February 22, 2013

MAJOR POETS IN NORTH PARK

North Park Poetry reading venue, Art Produce Gallery, 3139 University Avenue, adjacent to Swoon
READING TONIGHT—If you’re having trouble landing sold-out tickets to “Chicago,” the musical at the North Park Birch Theatre—don’t fret.  You didn’t out on culture because tonight-- Friday, February 22 at 6 pm—there are two poetry readings by two giants of American poetry.  This is a remarkable event and North Park is fortunate to have such a first rate poetry reading booked at the revamped Art Produce Gallery, 3139 University Ave. at Herman., west of CVS drug store.  How nice it is to have a sold-out American musical at one end of North Park and a reading of American poetry at the other.  Enter through the brand new Swoon, North Park’s newest high end food and dessert establishment.

Rod Smith
Rod Smith is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry, most recently, Deed (University of Iowa Press, 2007). He is editor, publisher of Edge Books and is also co-editing The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley (University of California Press). Manager of the famed Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC and curator of its renowned reading series, Smith is a central member of the vibrant DC poetry community. With an MFA from George Mason University, Smith has taught in the MFA programs at Bard College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Mel Nichols
Mel Nichols’s most recent books are Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (Edge, 2009) and Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha, 2008). Other recent work can be found in Poetry, New Ohio Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. She teaches at George Mason University, where she received her MFA, and at the Corcoran School of Arts and lives in Washington, DC. Her Flarf poem “I Google Myself” was recently featured on Huffington Post.

Poetry event is Free and open to the public. (Donations accepted!)

Bill Collins
MORE POETRY: Although his event is sold out, U.S, poet laureate (2001-2003) Billy Collins, is coming to San Diego to appear at Point Loma Nazerene College’s annual Writers Symposium by the Sea.

Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal.  His work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar.  He is a Guggenheim fellow and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.” His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry.  His reading are usually standing room only, and his audiences, enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio, include people of all backgrounds and age groups. 


THREE POEMS BY THREE POETS



Rod Smith:

From Deed:
…the egret says
the house, it is something to eat or sunlight, the egret
thinks, the house, it wills, is a subcanvas I can scribble, the egret moves
or is awake, loving the familiar solution of loving, this explains
the egret to the egret in the house
to the house & sunlight, we become intelligible because the egret
says elliptical,
in beckettland or geography, in small mammals & planets
no egret never not says elliptical, no elliptical egret mechanism
well under a love, today, or today,
does not increase elliptical, covered stand of egret then,
the sunflower freezing in the egret's reason
is spilling nutria, is an idea
&
affiliative, monthly, in egret pajamas, lolling, to
merge with the sunflower, frozen in not freezing, but flashing.

Mel Nichols:
I Google Myself

I Google myself
I want you to love me
When I feel down
I want you to Google me
I search myself
I want you to find me
I Google myself
I want you to remind me

I don’t Google anybody else
When I think about you
I Google myself
Ooh
I don’t Google anybody else
At home alone in the middle of the night
I Google myself

I Google myself
And see you before me
Any fool could see
Just how much I Google myself
Get down on your knees &
Friend me and Poke me

I don’t Google anybody else
When I think about you
I Google myself
Ooh I don’t Google anybody else
At home alone in the middle of the night
I Google myself
and I like what I see
Oh oh oh oh I can’t stop Googling myself
1,690,000 results for Googling myself
When I haven’t Googled myself for a while
You’re the sun who makes me shine
I’m one of millions who constantly Google themselves
I want to make you mine
I don’t Google anybody else
And when I think about you I Google myself
Ooh, ooh, oo, oo ahh

Billy Collins:
Introduction to Poetry:

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means. 

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