last two weeks

I spent the last two weeks mostly in Seattle, as artist/writer in residence at U of Washington at Bothell, with a musical world premiere of a song cycle in 10 parts, by composer Tim Risher, that featured my poem "Aviary Corridor" as text. The title of the musical work is also Aviary Corridor. That premiered April 25 and was featured at UW-Bothell and was featured in a subsequent performance in the Subtext series at the Richard Hugo House on May 2. I also gave readings for the Spare Room series in Portland, with the incomparable and marvelous David Abel, and at Evergreen State College, with Glenn Mott (who I heard twice on this trip, reading primarily from Analects on a Chinese Screen; he was tremendous) and Shin Yu Pai, who I just met before the reading, and I hope to know better. Her reading was fascinating, and included a great sequence on so-called Japanese "love hotels" that considered them as an anthropological phenomenom, i.e. did not see them through lenses of various kinds of value judgments (negative OR positive). I also taught a workshop, presented on two panels — on visual poetry and an artists' book exhibition, read and spoke to a class, and more. A whirlwind trip I'm very glad to have been able to undertake. While there or traveling I also visited the studio of the sculptor Cris Bruch, who I have known for some 25 years now, and whose work is a revelation as always; and I read a variety of work, including the first volume of Cao Xue Qin's The Story of the Stone, Shin Yu Pai's Sightings: Selected Works 2000-2005, and two fine works in manuscript: Jeanne Heuving's Transducer, and Robert Mittenthal's Wax World. And of course, while staying one (far too short) night with David Abel, pulled down books by and about Jack Spicer and H.D. from his library, among others. Any bookstore, including Powell's (at least in poetry), pales in comparison to David's terrific library, and that is with a good number of his books still in storage.

I plan blog entries in more detail on various of these activities and perusals during the next week or so.