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.