Feb 2 LINH DINH at THIS AIN's THE ROSEDALE PUBLIC LIBRARY

I wish I could see LINH DINH in Toronto, on Thursday, Feb 2, at This Ain't the Rosedale Library, 86 Nassau St in Kensington (a lovely neighborhood), in the store at 7pm. If you're in the area, don't miss it! Also featuring a. rawlings and Angela Sczczepaniak. And check out Linh Dinh's new book there, SOME KIND OF CHEESE ORGY!

Maurice

It was always good to see Maurice Grossman. He was everywhere in the arts: at lots of POG readings over the years, and once, giving one himself while throwing a pot on his portable wheel. If you frequented art openings, musical events, etc., you also frequently ran into Maurice. He always had a smile and a hug, a piece of wit, and always was genuinely glad to see you. He was also one of the great artists of this community, a renowned ceramist who taught and influenced many, in his years as a teacher, at the university, and beyond. He was also a brave activist on behalf of LGBT issues. He was a terrific guy. He is already terribly missed.

Maurice Grossman died this morning.

charles


Here is a message sent widely:

The world is full of cheerful, unsung heroes. One of them passed away this morning and Tucson is a bit less cheerful for his passing.

Maurice Grossman, a former University of Arizona art professor, died this morning following heart valve replacement surgery. He was 82.

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1927, he became an educator and ceramic artist in Arizona. He studied at Wayne State University and earned an MFA at Ohio State University. From 1955 to 1988, he was Professor of Ceramics at the University of Arizona in Tucson after founding their ceramics program. I came to know him during the campaign to try to defeat Arizona’s Prop 102. He was just one of those guys who seemed to know just about everyone, and no one he knew could ever be an enemy.

Last October, he was selected to be the Grand Marshal for Tucson’s Pride parade. (Tucson holds its parade in October as a concession to the typically scorching 105+ degree summer temperatures.) The UofA’s Arizona Daily Wildcat featured Maurice’s honor with a good description of his journey:

Grossman was a UA professor from 1955 to 1989 and started the three-dimensional arts program in the Art Department during that time. “I’m very proud of what I accomplished and am still acknowledged when I’m on campus,” Grossman said. “I loved my students; I love teaching. In a way I’m still teaching.”

Grossman said he lived the first part of his life trying to determine who he was. He got married in his 20s, and had two children with his wife, who died in 1978.

“Like most gay men, I was trying to understand more about myself,” Grossman said. “At that time, in my 20s, I met a very beautiful and lovely woman and we fell in love.”

Though he was married and in love with his wife until she died, Grossman said he knew he was gay before then. In 1978 Grossman became more politically active in the gay community. He volunteered with Wingspan and Stonewall Democrats in Tucson. He waited a few years before he told anyone he was gay.

“When I told (my children), they knew; they said, ‘we’ve known for years,’” Grossman said.

Grossman said there was no real fallout or loss of friendships because of his revelation.

If you had the pleasure of knowing Maurice, you’d understand why.

The thing that impressed me about him is that he didn’t think to bother about slowing down. Age was an occasional nuisance but never a hindrance. And nothing was going to get in the way of his good cheer. He remained very active in the LGBT community and in the local arts scene. The Dinnerware Gallery in 2007 threw a fifty-year retrospective for him to coincide with Maurice’s 80th birthday.

There are a lot of sad people here in Tucson today.

wild orchids, good friends, and wine

Wild Orchids is a terrific journal, received in the mail today, from Buffalo, edited by Sean Reynolds and Robert Dewhurst. It concerns itself with Herman Melville, and ranges from poetic responses to Melville's poem, "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight," to Geraldine Monk's marvelous likening of Ahab's obsession with the whale to her own quest to see the elusive raccoon, to considerations of Clarel, of the undervoiced crew of the Melville through C.L.R. James, to Benjamin Friedlander's consideration of Clarel and the ground of the Holy Land, and a lot more. It is a marvel.

I interrupted my reading of Marie de France's Lais, which had interrupted my reading of Badiou's Being and Event, which had interrupted my reading of Walter Benjamin essays (vol. 4 of the collected writings), to read Wild Orchids. Life is interruption if it is anything. I interrupted my reading of Wild Orchids to receive a phone call, while at a coffee shop, telling me that my best friend in Tucson is in the hospital awaiting heart surgery.

Now I am home having a glass of La Crema, a Pinot Noir well worth drinking. My friend would approve, as would Melville, as probably would Benjamin and Badiou and Marie de France.

This is my world today.

(note: can I blog again? I haven't in months and months, it seems. I'll try.)

chax press needs YOU!

Dear Friend: We hope you can help us at this time. Please read the attached note, and consider what we do, and what you can do! Thank you -- Charles

We at Chax Press believe that the present tumultuous time, like all times, requires a strength of vision, which is our strength. This is not a time to do less, but to continue to do all that we can.

In almost 25 years, Chax Press has become one of the important small presses of our time and place. It is now time to step up to a new level of performance, and we are preparing for the challenge. In the next five years, we intend to triple our budget and to become a press that, through its reach, artistic imagination, and professional strength, has lasting impact on the future of American literature as well as innovative world writing.

The first steps we must take this year are to secure the full-time attention and salary of the Executive Director and hire an assistant. As we begin our work toward our new goals, we are being assisted by an experienced, successful organizational development consultant. One of our important commitments to an enduring future is to fund such a consultant to help us grow in a sustainable manner. As our activities become more regular and the Executive Director’s time is devoted to artistic direction, fine art book production, and long-range vision, we will also add a marketing/book sales and fundraising coordinator. In addition, we plan to expand our current Youth Education Programs (school projects in our studio, residencies in schools) and hire a Youth Programs Coordinator.

At this important time in our history, we are seeking financial support, to sustain programs, from all who have given in the past, and from new donors. We ask that you, specifically, consider a gift in an amount ranging from $25 to $500. But the important thing is to give, in any amount you can. Your generosity will support the kind of press that will give our authors — such writers as Steve McCaffery, Leslie Scalapino, Karen Mac Cormack, Linh Dinh, Myung Mi Kim, Will Alexander, Bruce Andrews, Kass Fleisher, Joe Amato, Gil Ott, Hank Lazer, Nathaniel Mackey, Jerome Rothenberg, Nick Piombino, Elizabeth Treadwell, Sarah Riggs, Beverly Dahlen, and more — the support they deserve, and the boost that will help them reach more readers and new readers. A stronger Chax Press will allow us to profoundly impact the present and future of literature in America and around the world.

While Chax Press is preeminently a publisher of innovative writing and a creator of inventive book arts editions, we also provide literary and artistic education about our field of activities. Your gift will support stronger and more frequent youth and adult educational programs, including internships for college students, book making and creative workshops for youth and adults, literary arts/literacy learning programs, and literary residencies in schools.

In addition, public presentations are important to what we do. Your gift supports readings and lectures by writers and artists in Tucson, readings by groups of Chax Press writers in locations around the country, lectures and presentations about Chax Press works in locations including Seattle, Tuscaloosa, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, Buffalo, and London.

Exhibitions of book arts by Chax Press have been displayed in locations ranging from the Victoria & Albert Museum Library to the J. Paul Getty Center Library, from London and Paris to Toronto and Seattle, from museums to libraries to community art centers. Currently, our fine arts book, Witness, by Kathleen Fraser and Nancy Tokar Miller, is featured in a retrospective exhibit at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, with framed, handprinted pages as well as the complete book on display.

We are not only one of the most diverse and visionary presses in America; we are also one of the liveliest. Now you can help us to build for the future, too, and help our authors, books, and programs have an impact that will continue for decades and leave a permanent mark on the state of literature and the book arts. We are stepping up; we ask you to step up with us.

Thank you for your gift at this time. We will continue to reward your faith and generosity. We make a pact with you. The ascent beckons.

Thank you for supporting Chax Press.




Charles Alexander
Executive Director

ps Chax Press is a 501(c)(3) charitable arts organization, and your donation is fully tax deductible.

Ways to donate:
1. Send us a check in the mail, to Chax Press, 411 N 7th Ave Ste 103, Tucson, AZ 85705-8388
2. Go to the “donate” page on our web site: http://chax.org/donate.htm
3. Go to your own Paypal account, and have a payment sent to us; you may even be able to arrange for regular monthly payments, to make this easy for you. Just $8 per month adds up to a $96 annual gift that helps immensely.
4. If you practice online banking, arrange through your online payment service for a gift to be sent to us. You can also arrange in this way to make a regular monthly or quarterly contribution.

charles alexander
chax press
chax@theriver.com
411 N 7th ave, suite 103
tucson arizona 85705
520 620 1626

mammalized chiffon sachets

Zukofsky says, in A Test of Poetry, that about the only thing in Keats he values is the four-syllable sequence "hedge crickets sing" from Ode to Autumn. My friend Tenney Nathanson thinks that's not quite fair, for, while also applauding that mini-sequence, Nathanson believes you can take almost any string of four syllables in that Keats ode and have a memorably sounded orchestra of consonants and vowels.

Somehow I was thinking of this while reading Lisa Chen's marvelous 2007 book, Mouth (Kaya Press). And here are some brief snippets demonstrating her soundings.

cocktail boozer slurring
punctilio metropolis
tin cup rakes
mammalized chiffon sachets
weathercock pirouettng
cellophane Easter
fist or shiv
piazza, pavilion, please
atlases bereft
pudding's curdled
creature's breast feathers
Parachute girls
tangerine cream couches
casks of fish oil
Motel soap: god's milk tooth
mess of feathers like a pigeon
bows on a bullfighter's slippers
a sea with a stream of piss
peanuts balanced against their hips
mulberry, razzle
jiggle the knobs
wired like brows diving
Ducks tippling

Not by any means all 4-syllables, nonetheless . . .

Thanks Linh Dinh for praising Lisa Chen's book. Because of your remark on the back cover, Cynthia bought it for me, thus I read it, and, even more than the ear-pleasure noted above, a terrific book!

appreciations 3: Karl Young

(third in a series of brief "appreciations" of less than 200 words on various figures, with, sometimes, a sample of work)

Karl Young, Alfred Jarry: Unfinished Wood

Can I possibly honor KARL YOUNG in 200 words? (That question & this parenthetical remark do not count.)

He does not mince words, or, he does mince, twist, hone, shine, shape, and more. When experimental poetry was vast and exciting and not nearly as narrow as at present, he was active in making visual poems, working with sound poets, creating artist's and performance books, and a lot more. He also created communities, such as that which grew from BOOX to become WOODLAND PATTERN under his guidance as founding father and visionary programmer.

He created MEMBRANE PRESS, publisher of everything from a book of commentary on Clark Coolidge to books of disintegrating photocopy procedures by internationally active writers and artists. Later, he created LIGHT & DUST BOOKS, carrying on his nearly-one-person anarchical constitution of a kind of culture few of us can encompass, and the marvelous LIGHT & DUST web site, which remains perhaps, THE great literary (in a broad sense) repository of our time. All while rarely venturing from either Milwaukee (early) or, more recently, Kenosha, Wisconsin

Karl Young's Score 7 (based on Tu Fu's Night in River Lodge)

Had he been in New York, I think he might be the most celebrated experimental literary artist of the last 40 years. In Wisconsin he has created a body of work that may well grant him that title over time.

alexander on mappemunde

MAPPEMUNDE is always a blog worth attending. I am honored that Tim Peterson chose to write a report about my talk in the THREADS series at Granary Books and place it on his Mappemunde blog. Here is his take on PRESSING BETWEEN . . .