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Come to the Tazza Caffe for two special poetry reading events hosted by Michael Gizzi.
Saturdays, 3pm.
March 19: Tim Davis, Robert Fitterman, Brian Kim Stefans
April 2: Miles Champion, Jacqueline Waters, Aaron Kunin
Tim Davis
http://www.davistim.com/writing/hairclub.html
http://www.cultureport.com/newhp/lingo/authors/davis2.html
Robert Fitterman
http://bostonreview.net/BR26.5/fitterman.html
http://www.ubu.com/ubu/fitterman_window.html
Brian Kim Stefans
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/04/pellett.html
http://bostonreview.net/BR28.3/stefans.html
Miles Champion
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/26/ra-champion.html
http://www.wildhoneypress.com/Audio/Miles_Champion.htm
Jacqueline Waters
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.1/waters.html
http://www.speakeasy.org/~subtext/poetry/jwaters/index.html
Aaron Kunin
http://www.ubu.com/ubu/kunin_mauberley.html
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.1/sampler.html
Hot! Hot! Hot! Please come!
Tazze Caffe
250 Westminster St., Providence, RI 02903
http://www.tazzacaffe.com/
“The midgets stand on giants who stand on midgets
in Palookaville
that day of storm notwithstanding and it still takes one
on out to the “farther reaches” where boys play and maids bay
at the moon
in my Palookaville
where the stench of farts drenches outside irony with the dust of snow
where all is served up right
to blond kids in history books on the gothic outskirts
where everything gets unraveled just right
where you can see a coincidence coming for miles down the valley..."
-- from "From Palookaville," John Ashbery
(translated from Guillaume Apollinaire)
You tire in the end of this ancient world
Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower your flocks your bridges bleat on this
morning
You have had it with the antique living of the Greek and Roman
Even the cars here have an air of the ancient
Religion alone has remained new religion
Has remained simple like the hangers at Port Aviation
You alone Christianity in Europe have avoided becoming ancient
Most modern European it is you Pope Pius the tenth
You whom the windows watch whom shame makes reticent
So you do not enter the church this morning you will not be confessing
So you read the posters the catalogues and the pamphlets that loudly
sing
Here there is poetry this morning
For prose the journals and magazines
You read the nickel installments of the adventures of the Crime Police
The portraits of famous men in a thousand diverse titles
This morning I see a pretty street whose name I forget
Fresh and proper the sun is its dawn trumpet
The workers the directors the beautiful stenographers
From Monday morning to Friday four times a day they must pass here
In morning the sirens cry three times
A raging clock barks around noontime
The murals the lettering of the signs
The plaques the notices like a parrot crying
This industrial street how I love its returns
Situated as it is in Paris between the Rue Thieville and the Avenue
des Ternes
There is the young street you are nothing but a child
Your mother dresses you in her blue and white style
You are very pious and with your best friend Rene Dalize
You love nothing more than the ecclesiastic pomposities
It is nine o’clock the gas burns low
And blue you leave the dormitory by a way that you only know
You pray all night in the chapel of the school
For there lies the amethyst adorable and eternal
Turning forever the flaming glory of Jesus Christ It is
The lily we all cultivate
It is the torch of light red hair which is never laid out by a wind
It is the son pale and vermeil of the sad mother
It is the tree always blooming in all your prayers
It is the two-fold potency of integrity and eternity
It is the star of six branchings
It is the God who dies on Friday God resuscitated on Saturday
It is Christ who climbs the sky higher than all the aviators
He holds the world altitude record
Pupil Christ of the eye
Twentieth pupil of the centuries it knows why
Becoming a bird this century like Jesus climbing the air
The devils down in the pit are raising their heads to see what is there
They say he imitates Simon Magus of Judea
They say that he is a flier but he is hardly a frequent flier
The angels hover around this pretty hoverer
Icarus Enoch Elie Appolonius of Tyana
Floating around this primitive plane
They swerve to let pass sometimes the transports of the Eucharist of
Saints
The priests who climb eternally are raising the host
Without even folding its wings the plane comes down
The atmosphere is buzzing with the flight of a million swallows
Coming in on the side are the falcons ravens owls
From Africa the flaming marabous and flamingos
The roc bird celebrated by story teller and poet
Soars by and holding in its talons the skull of Adam le premiere tete
The eagle sinks with a shriek from the horizon
The small hummingbird from America is sent
From China come the pihi long and supple
Who have but one wing each who fly in couples
Then there comes the dove immaculate soul
They escort the bird-lyre and they lead the oscellate peacock
The phoenix the funeral pyre which it bore from a self-same wedlock
In an instant spreads its burning ash
The sirens leave behind their infamous canals
All three arrive and all three singing beautifully
And all the eagles phoenixes and the pihis of the Chinese
Convene around the flying machine
Now you are in Paris in the crowds all alone
The herd of busses low at you around they roll
Anguish and love press at your throat
As though never again could you be loved
If you were to be living in ancient times you would probably enter a
cloister
You frighten yourself quickly you find you’re whispering a pater
noster
You scold yourself your laughter rings like a fire from hell
The flashings of your laughter inform the base of your life’s well
It is a painting hung in a somber museum
Sometimes you look at it close that you may see clear
Today you walk in Paris the women have all been bloodied
It was and could I forget I would it was the decline of beauty
Surrounded by high flames Our Lady noodled me at Chartre
The blood of our sacred heart devoured me at Montmartre
I am sick of having to hear the blessed words
The malady I suffer is a handful of singed nerves
The image that possesses you that you survive insomnia and anguish
It is always near you that imagery that passes
You are on board ship now on the Mediterranean Sea
There are flowers the entire year in every lemon tree
With your friends you make a journey in a barque
One is from Nice one from Menton and two are Turbiasque
You examine with fear the octopi in deep waters
Through the algae swim the fish the emblems of our Savior
You’re in the garden of an inn on the outskirts of Prague
You sense a great happiness a rose is on the table
So you observe instead of writing your prosy fables
The rose-chafer asleep in the heart of that rose
Horrified you see yourself depicted in the Saint Vitus agates
You were sad enough the day you saw them to maybe take your own life
You resembled Lazarus maddened by the light of day
The hands of the clocks in the Jewish Quarter are going the other way
Slowly you retreat back into your life
To climb up the steps of the Hradcany to hear the night
In the taverns they sing Czech songs
You are now in Marseilles amongst a milieu of melons
You are now in Coblence at the Hotel du Geant
You are now in Rome in a medlar tree from Japan
You are in Amsterdam with a young girl you find pretty she is ugly
She wants to marry her lover now a student in Leyden
One can rent rooms in latin Cubicula concorda I remember
I was there for three days already and spent just as many in Gouda
You are in Paris with the examining judge
Like a criminal he hands you an arresting sentence
You have made the sad and joyous voyages
Before you were familiar with falsehood and the age
You suffered love in your twentieth and thirtieth years
I have lived like a fool and squandered my days
You dare not look at your hands and I always feel like crying
For you for her that I love for all I find terrifying
You look your eyes full of tears at the poor emigrants
They believe in a God they pray the women nurse their infants
They fill the halls of the Gare Saint-Lazare with a horrible stench
They have faith in their star the sage-kings
They hope to earn money in Argentina
To return to their home country to live there like kings
A family transports a red eiderdown quilt like you carry your heart
The eiderdown and our dreams seem like irreal arts
Some of these immigrants remain here and abide
In the Rue de Rosiers or the Rue des Ecouffe in a pig sty
I often see them stealing night air from the streets
They move themselves but with the sanguinity of chess pieces
Most of all there are the Jews and their women wigged
They rest in chairs deep in the bowels of their boutiques
You are standing at the counter at a skeevy bar
Drinking cheap coffee surrounded by the down-and-out
The night you spend in a spacious restaurant
These women are not wretched they have their cares
Even and the ugliest one makes her lover suffer
That one is the daughter of a constable from the town of Jersey
Her hands which I don’t see are chapped and gritty
I cannot evade the sadness of her scarred womb
I humble my mouth to the laughter of another girl entombed
You are alone the morning has come
Milkmen place their bottles on the road
Night departs like a beautiful Metive
It is Ferdine the false or Lea the attentive
And you drink the alcohol boiling like a life
You drink the eau-de-vie that is your life
You are walking to Auteuil you want to go on foot
To sleep among the fetishes of Guinea and the Ocean
Another form of Christ they are an entire other credence
It is the Christ inferior Christ of obscure expectations
Farewell farewell
Sun severed neck
