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October 20th, 2013

10/20/2013

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The Paris Review Interviews
Philip Levine, The Art of Poetry No. 39


I was first introduced to Philip Levine through the mail in the summer of 1976. I was studying literature at Berkeley, and my friends and I, all college freshmen and sophomores, were ardent readers of Levine, W. S. Merwin, Donald Justice, Gary Snyder, and Hart Crane. A friend from the college literary magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, introduced me to Ernest Benck, a California poet, who kindly sent some of both of our poems to Levine.

Levine wrote back to us, marking our poems assiduously. Since then I have received many letters from him, always on yellow legal paper with comments like, “I’m not sure my remarks, which are fairly nasty at times, really indicate . . .” His comments, though never nasty, were always serious, as if he took the business of correspondence to be part of the education of a poet. I had the feeling he wrote many such letters to young poets around the country: poets driving trucks, picking oranges, poets who were waiters and acupuncturists’ assistants and college students. Levine takes his role as mentor with the responsibility of a sacred vocation. He has sometimes had trouble from the administrations of high-tuitioned writing programs for allowing auditors—poets who were a little older, talented and too broke to pay—into his classes.

Levine was born in Detroit in 1928, and left that city, as he puts it, after a succession of stupid jobs. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including 7 Years from Somewhere (which won the National Book Critics Circle Award), Ashes (the NBCC and National Book Awards), They Feed They Lion (inevitably mistitled in reference books), and, most recently, A Walk with Tom Jefferson.

The interview took place in my Upper West Side apartment. Levine arrived looking very much the same as he had when I met him ten years earlier in Berkeley: wiry, agile, with a mobile face, curly hair, a boyish habit of movement. He wore enormous running shoes, which seemed to emphasize his small frame, and he walked with a slight bounce, which made him seem an inch or two taller.

I told him that Paris Review interviews usually take place in the writer’s home and so I asked him to describe the place he lives and writes. He told me that in Fresno he lives in a small farmhouse in a district called The Fig Garden. Built in 1919, the house (“the oldest around here”) stands on an acre of land, fronted by a huge eucalyptus tree, fruit trees and cedars. In the backyard, amidst twenty orange trees, alders, Modesto ash, and more eucalyptus, his wife Franny plants a legendary garden of vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

“Our payments are 165 bucks,” he said. “We bought it fifteen years ago when anybody could buy a house. And people ask me why I live in Fresno!”

Levine works in a small study overlooking the back garden. The room is filled with bookshelves (“of course it’s cluttered because I’m something of a slob”) and a number of keepsakes, among them a black-and-white photograph of a drawing by the Italian anarchist painter Flavio Costantini, which in a smaller form is the cover of Levine’s volume Ashes; a Robert Capa photograph of Spanish Republican soldiers at a campfire cooking soup; a picture of Lemon Still Jr., a fellow grease shop worker and the subject of a poem in They Feed They Lion; and a poster of airplane drawings by Arshile Gorky.

“And there hangs from the ceiling a kind of mobile a friend gave me years and years ago. It’s made of thistles, thorns, dry weeds. I don’t know why it’s lasted but it just hangs there and turns around in the wind, hitting me in the eye . . .”

INTERVIEWER

In Twentieth Century Pleasures, Robert Hass says that rhythm in poetry provides revolutionary ground through its direct access to the unconscious . . .

 PHILIP LEVINE

We all agree with that. Rhythm is deep and it touches us in ways that we don’t understand. We know that language used rhythmically has some kind of power to delight, to upset, to exalt, and it was that kind of rhythmic language that first excited me. But I didn’t encounter it first in poetry . . . perhaps simply in speech, in prayer, preaching. That made me want to create it. My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself. I spoke them and I memorized them. I constantly changed them. I would go out and work on my rain poem and improve it.

Read more of this very substantial interview.......

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Professional Videographer for Nov. 6th!!

10/19/2013

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Kevin Austin, through his Hawkeye Video Productions, is donating time and expertise as a videographer to London Open Mic Poetry Night.

In the past, Austin has made promotional videos for companies and charities, as well as commercials for broadcast. And he has still found time to feed his voracious appetite for reading and his love of modern art. 

He found his way into the video world at Fanshawe College where he studied fine art, and at N.S.C.A.D. University in Halifax where he made a slew of short films and also work in other mediums.

Hawkeye is hungry for work. Anyone with any kind of need for high definition video production, or for any related technology would do well to contact Kevin. 

For businesses, Hawkeye produces videos for corporate events and promotional material, training videos, web streaming, trade show multimedia, and commercials. 

The company can capture the excitement of live events, and preserve the emotion of weddings, for wwhich it offers three different packages of professional videography.

In the world of movies, Hawkeye is happy to collaborate with larger production firms and film crews on independent films and large video contracts, or to just fill the need for an extra camera man, “just in case”.

For audio performances, Hawkeye uses the very best microphones, as well as booms where required. 

Hawkeye can also replicate DVDs in large quantities.  And it can convert old-format videos to digital form on DVDs, and any number of them, as few as one.

For more info: www.hawkeyevp.com 
Kevin Austin at: 
videoinfo@hawkeyevp.com
office: 519-290-1491    
mobile: 519-532-2242

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BROUHAHAHAHA

10/18/2013

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There's a lot of hullabaloo going on over at Lemon Hound about a poem by Josef Kaplan called Kill List. It's published by CARSAREREAL.COM in Baltimore, in 58 pages. The book is a very quick read, or scan, I guess you could say. Each page has a small list of four items. Four contemporary poets who are described either as 'a rich poet' or 'comfortable'. In alphabetical order through the book. Under the title 'Kill List', which I guess gets everyone's attention. So of course you have poets who have found themselves in the list being angry about being essentially accused of selling out for money. And you have commenters who are supportive of the poets on the list and those who are supportive of Kaplan's stance and lots who refer to each other as trolls. And of course there are the extreme comments about Kaplan himself. Not least of all that Kill List is not a poem. A bit of humour that went unnoticed by many is that on the back cover the book is priced: $15.00. This is a book for sale, hopefully to make the author if not rich then at least comfortable. It's kind of like, this guy is so tired of working infinitely hard for a big ZERO in the pocket book, that he is going to bloody well give in and go the opposite extreme, do what the rich and comfortable do, just make money. And by putting in the absolute minimum amount of work per page, just extending the list until the book is filled (which has to be 50 pages at least to earn a government ISBN number and yes there it is right in the next line under the $15.00 in exactly the same font and size). But, as you can see in the link here, the book is in any case actually free. Why? Because, for one thing, who would pay $15.00 for it?

Kill list
Lemon Hound

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Thinking about publishing your poetry as an ebook?

10/6/2013

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Mike O'Connor, publisher of Toronto's Insomniac Press, and prof at York (and, online, at Western), has put together this ongoing collection about ebook publication and the technology involved. Poets are increasingly more interested in going this way.  There's a lot here that will inform you and could help you make up your mind what to do:  Ebook and ebook technology.

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THE HESLOP EVENT SUMMARY for Oct. 2nd, 2013

10/5/2013

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There was a little Greek restaurant just south of Oxford east and Adelaide of flat white sign hanging above the stout four-step-set of stairs reads Mykonos in blue letters. 

Open Mic poetry night in there Wednesday featured Jan Figurski who tread jazz, blues and radio-friendlies through the laughing air of wine-pouring and food coming or having arrived and hot before the readings began. 

Jan’s musical accompaniment consisted of Geoff Johnson of Big Picture, who battered the electric keys with a shootist’s decisiveness and the rhythmical integrity of a skilled carpenter, and I, who intended to keep drum kit rhythm under the current of Jan under siege and telling us, blowing blues through harmonica and the music happening and on. 

Time infringed, though, as it does, and with characteristic gentleness, Dawna, our host and the seamstress of these monthly evenings, took the podium and told us so, handing the mic to David Paul, sincere friend of Mr. Figurski, and we were under way. 

Jan began with the sensitive poet’s promise of intimacy; he took the audience to a vulnerable place with all the emotional momentum of a man of the blues, giving the audience a frock and his personal truths, an emotion-laden reel of raw images, his the harmonica resonating still, before ruddying his demeanor and loosening his face and ours with good humor and a few final poignant words. 

Following hearty applause, Dawna seamed either side of the fifteen minute intermission into the evening and we were into the open mic.

The readers ranged from first time readers to familiar participants, future featured readers and past and the communal act of our sharing was a pleasure to take part in.

With a final seam and some just applause, Big Picture took the stage, the dancing began and a joyful group raised arms in OPA to celebrate the victory of yet another open mic at that little Greek restaurant we know as Mykonos. 

Kevin Heslop

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BIG TURNOUT LAST NIGHT!!

10/3/2013

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Our biggest audience to date, 55 poetry fans showed up to hear Jan Figurski read. He also played and sang with three others before the event (including our own Kevin Hesop on drums). There were very few empty chairs in the large terrace at Mykonos Restaurant. 

Stay tuned to read Kevin Heslop's summary, and to see the photo gallery of the event, AND to view the videos of most of the 17 readers!
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