Poetry and Cocktails

Last night I went to an open mic called the Human Experience. There was some poetry. I read some from the Murdercycle Diaries. The poetry reading was at the Beat, a cafe in downtown Las Vegas on Fremont Street. It's an interesting place filled with artists doing artistic things, and they had beer, some wine that had been open too long, and some spirits. I was surprised no local beer, but they had Magic Hat #9 and Dogfish Head 60 Min., so I had one each.

There was a lot of rapping, and slam, and some singer-songwriters, lovely women with guitars, a saxophone, and a guy who made 8-bit beats with his Gameboy. It was a loud room with loads of energy. I was entirely surprised when I read that the room fell silent, and everyone in it gave me their undivided attention. After I read, people came up to me and shook my hand and kind of gushed about how much they liked my work. I haven't received that kind of enthusiastic praise in a while at a reading. Las Vegas is a good place to be a poet, I think. But that might be premature, so give me time to investigate.

I met some new people at the reading, and one of them was a woman, so she and I went to one of my new favorite bars: Downtown Cocktail Room.

She's a beautiful middle-sized bar with a tricky door, which, even though I'd been there three times previously, I still paused before choosing to push the glass or the metal. They have an inspired list of seasonal cocktails, and I'll get around to trying more of them, but I had Fernet on the brain, so I ordered a drink I'd heard of online, 50/50 Fernet/Campari, which was OK, but they make impeccable Hanky-Panky's there, and I ended up drinking three of those.

My female companion was one of those lovely singer-songwriters, good guitar work, great voice, and a fair conversationalist. She was good company in that way women always are at dark bars late at night after poetry readings.

Here are a couple lists:

3 THINGS TO HELP YOU MAKE YOUR OPEN MIC A SUCCESS:

1. Never allow anyone to say "Let's give it up again for _______" It's a waste of time, annoying, and inconsiderate to your audience and other performers.
2. If someone goes over whatever time you've allotted them, have the courage to cut them off. If you told someone you would give them 3 dollars, and they grabbed 5, you'd be pissed. Time is precious.
3. If a performer isn't there when their name is called, too bad. They're off the roster.

3 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT DCR:

1. Their layout lets you choose to be intimate or open and part of the action.
2. Sophistication is the theme, but they somehow don't seem snobby about it.
3. Dark as fuck.

How to Join a Motorcycle Gang

This was originally featured here. If you want, you can comment and join the fun. There's much to be had. MURDERCYCLE.

Chelsey Minnis is hot, plus I'm reading tonight

Soooo, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know what a big fan I am of Chelsey Minnis's. I have only met her online, and I'm totally in love with her work. I didn't know she was so beautiful. Jeez. I wish she were in the bay area when I was there so that we could have hung out together and I could have posted pictures of us hanging out together and everyone would be like, wow, you're hanging out with hot, beautiful, talented poets. I wish I knew Chelsey Minnis better.

Tonight, I'm opening for my friend's book opening. That is, I'm going to read from my upcoming book, The Chris Hemsworth Sonnets before he reads from his book, George Washington Werewolf. It all goes down in about one hour. I can't believe it. It all is taking place at the Darjeeling Café in Staunton, VA.

If you have the chance to buy any of her books, you should. They are all magnificent. I should put a review of her last book on this blog. I think it's the only one I haven't written about. It's fantastic.

Reading Anyone?

Tonight is the open mic for writers night at the Darjeeling Café. I like this event a lot because I get to share what I'm working on with the people in my community and also to hear what everyone else is doing. It's mostly fiction writers, which gets a little monotonous if a lot go one after another, but most everyone is pretty good, so there's always something to come back to if you daze off.

To sex things up a bit, here's a picture of Danica Patrick, a photo yielded by google when I searched "sexy fiction writer who loves to fuck poets"

I'm glad there is a scene here, such that it is, but it also makes me miss my writer friends in big cities. I wish sometimes that I was back in a big city that had a monthly reading series or ten. I want to maybe start a reading series with poets from the east coast, but it's difficult to convince anyone to come to a backwater. Hmm. I'm thinking it would be fun to try. If anyone wants to come to Staunton and read at my restaurant to people who like literature and "edgy stuff," too, please email me. We'll get something started.

Clerihews for Trainwreck Union readers at THROW MAMA FROM THE TRAIN. 27 Apri 2007l @ Mama Buzz in Oakland

I wrote these for the poets I was introducing at the Mama Buzz reading of the Trainwreck Union. It was a great show. It was crazy to stumble across this on my computer. I haven't seen most of these people in a very long time. Some of them I miss horribly. I had a falling out with others. But there was a time when we were pretty awesome.

Hairy Scary J-Rod Roland
Met a girl in Warsaw Poland
She wasn’t bothered by taboos
until he showed her his crazy tattoos

Sweet little Gillian Hamel
By far the sweetest mammal
but if you try any crazy tricks
she’ll kill you with her ninja kicks

Cunning Connie Coady
All the jealous girls say she’s grody
For a catholic school girl that she once was
they can’t believe the shit she does

Slick Nick Roth
Quick as a three-toed sloth
I wouldn’t say he’s slow
He knows things that I’ll never know.

Madame Sara Mumolo
She has no need for gigolo
She’s the one they wanna take out
but she only wants to make out.

Happy Arron Pawlowics
knows brevity is the soul of wits
but he laughs so loud and so high
that he very nearly made me cry

Beautiful Beatrix Chan
She always has a plan
she went all the way to presidio
just to film a porno video

National Poetry Month and How I Quit Writing Poetry and Killed Osama Bin Laden

I always write something in April about National Poetry Month. I feel very conflicted about NPH, but this month has been a sort of return to poetry for me.

Sure, I still read and write poetry. I even publish from time to time. But since I've been in a band, writing songs and playing music and doing all the things you have to do to keep a band going has been taking precedence over all other modes of artistic expression and ambition.

This April, we had two poetry readings at the Darjeeling Cafe. I read at one of them. I read a short cycle that has been accepted for publication, and I read another short portion of a poetry book I've been working on. I'm pleased to report that poetry readings, no matter where you go, are the same as they ever were.

People still clap when they're not supposed to. There are still members of the audience that will say "hmm" rather loudly in order to tell others audience members that, yes, they are listening to poems that are affecting them on a level that pushes them to audible response. There are still those well-meaning poetry reading goers who will laugh mercifully at little jokes in poems. Kids still make noises and distract everyone in a charming way that only kids can. I've always loved it when people make noise at poetry readings (except for the hmm's), but there is still the one lady who will "shh" her fellow inhabitants of the temporary holy ground of poetry. There's still the poet who demands people participate by raising their hands or saying something when prompted. There's still wine and wine and wine and wine and purple tongues to prove it. There are poets who read too long and ones who are too nervous. There are poets who don't know what a poem is but have enough money to publish through vanity presses. There are still stacks of books that go unread attractively arranged on a table near the bar where you can buy them for a handsome fee, knowing you'll never read them because there are just too many poems in them, and they aren't organized in a way that makes you want to finish. The pretty people and the ugly people and the over-educated and the wannabes are all still there and make a hodgepodge of who's who that makes you realize everybody's a nobody in the end because the art you're performing fell out of favor long ago and doesn't matter to anyone outside of that room, so you love them all anyway.

Poetry is still dead except during National Poetry Month for most people who have ever read a poem or pretend to care about things like that.
Poetry is still the greatest form of artwork the human race has ever known, forcing it to the privileged few and fringes.

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Someone put together a poetry strike online. I thought it was funny, so I observed it. It happened on May 1. Poets were supposed to not do anything poetic except maybe look at flowers and faint. For the poet, this is very difficult.

One day of not writing poetry, and Osama Bin Laden dies. Coincidence?
Maybe poets should abstain from writing poetry more often.

Osama's death is a very strange thing. It caused many people to cry out in jubilation. I don't feel the way I am supposed to feel about it. I'm supposed to be happy, I guess. I'm supposed to be relieved. But I wonder how much information died with him, and I wonder if knowing more about him and how he became the way he was would be more valuable than his corpse. I've heard why he hates Americans, but I would like to know what made him hate Americans. I wish that that information were more public, and I wish more people would think about what makes a mass murderer. I learned almost nothing from his death, and that's why victory is often empty, and this one seems Pyrrhic if it is a victory at all.

Sarah Louise Green at BRL

I like the first two poems in this collection of three. It's easier to say bad things about the third than it is to say good things about the first two. I really love the first poem, though, "Perch."

I like the sonic echos that thread the stanzas together. And the animals kind of mirroring each other.

Back Room Live used to be a live reading, and even though the navigation on the site is clumsy, I adore the BRL, and I'm proud to say that I was there from the beginning.

Lately in Virginia (Why I Haven't Been Blogging)

Thank you to all of those who have been worried about me while not blogging. I know that I have told many of you that if I stopped blogging I was probably dead. But a lot has been going on with this move, and I haven't been able to get a free moment. Right now is not a free moment.


I have started work as the publications coordinator at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. I work with designers and printers and Shakespeareans to get the print publications to where we need them to be for the theater. The theater is the beautiful Blackfriars Playhouse. It's a recreation of Shakespeare's only indoor theater, and I've always loved the way productions are handled here. The lights never go out, so the actors can see you as well as you can see them. It creates a dynamic, interactive experience. I've been working on the Myspace page and would love for all of you to be my friend there or to suggest anything. I don't really Myspace very often, so that part is a bit of a learning process for me. For example, I have been trying to figure out how to make the blue bg on the top menu transparent, but it won't work.

I've been working on the Poetry Library of Virginia, too. I have a lot of books in it so far, and I've been working on the website. We've already booked out first readers, who will be Mike Young and Jack Christian; I think I might read that night, as well.

I am also still writing a great deal on a freelance basis for webecoist.com. It's good green-minded work, so I like that.

I still haven't made any friends here, but everyone's friendly. Drinking tea and working, giong to little used bookshops and reading. I saw Quantum of Solace at midnight, and I liked it very much. Miss my peeps in California.

A Poem Closes the Yankee Stadium

I didn't know that Bob Sheppard was a poet. And even though I have never seen a game in Yankee Stadium, and although I am not a huge fan of baseball, it was touched to read in the NY Times this morning that a poem closed the park.

I hope a poem opens the new stadium across the street in April.

And though it is not what 99% of poetry people would call "good" poetry, I think it is the best kind of poetry in that it captures and calcifies in memory the sentiments of a huge group of people.

Farewell old Yankee Stadium, farewell
What a wonderful story you can tell
DiMaggio, Mantle, Gehrig and Ruth
A baseball cathedral in truth
Farewell

I really love how the person hearing the story changes from line 2 to 3. At first it's we who would hear the stadium's story, but then it's baseball's brightest stars in the afterlife. Thus, the spirit of the thing tells stories instead of the stadium itself, making Yankee Stadium one of the stars of baseball, whose passing is mourned and whose spirit is praised. And where do we praise spirits? Cathedrals. So the poem says farewell to all of them and an era that, no matter how little interest you have in baseball, is quaintly nostalgic and seemingly more virtuous and innocent. It's a very elegant little poem, really. Bob Sheppard, who has been the voice of the baseball cathedral for 57 of his 97 years, deserves an equally elegant eulogy when he joins his fellow icons of a better age.

Call Yer Mama and Tell Her Yer at the Library

Get to the nearest phone booth and call yo mama. Whatever you do, don't tell her you're going to a poetry reading. Definitely don't tell her that you're going to Studio One to see William Moor and Daphne Gottlieb with Jack Morgan as MC. She will be afraid for your welfare and cry if she found out the truth.

Reading Rox0red @ idiolexicon. 2 B a P03t is w00t.

The last idiolexicon before the ignominious hiatus was pretty awesome. I know so many people who should have been there to enjoy it. The house was full, though, and I couldn't help but wonder if the people who ran cafe royale thought that they had made a huge mistake letting this series leave them. In this picture, Jack Morgan, Elliot Harmon, and Mike Young look into the abyss way after the reading was over. The thing most people don't know is that poetry readings are supposed to turn into parties afterward. It was Monday and everything, but come on. Who cares about tomorrow? We don't.

I was texting to Virginia a lot tonight. I was having a great time, but I wished I was there somehow. I am thinking about leaving the Bay for a while. People think I am crazy for that, but I think I need a break from the scene for a short time. These thoughts are incomplete.

Logan Ryan Smith was there tonight. He didn't stay late enough, but I liked seeing him. He's one of those guys that you're always missing when he leaves. That's a good trait to have. I always think that Logan and I have a lot in common and that we should hang out some time.

We talked about New York and Philadelphia and East Bay and West Bay and Massachusetts. Mike Young lives in Mass. There was a young man wearing a Daniel Boone hat and a young woman wearing a shirt with a peacock on it.

We had to rush to catch the last BART. I will never understand why there is a "LAST" BART.

Seriously, you missed a lot tonight.
We even went to Golden Era for Vegan food that everyone liked.

Things to Live for : Idiolexicon Reading Tonight

Brian Teare and Mike Young are reading tonight at Cafe Royale.
LINK for Idiolexicon Reading Series.
Idiolexicon is my favorite reading series since Pegasus and New Yipes both died untimely deaths.
And Idiolexicon is going on hiatus, so if you haven't been to one of their readings, this is your last chance for a little while. Mike Young is hella cool; you will like him.
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I bought an iPhone yesterday, but I have to wait 7-10 days for it. That was the only way I could do it without losing phone service for a couple days. Gives me something to live for until then.
I'm looking forward to the poetry season kicking back up, too. I don't know what will be happening this fall, but the bay area usually has a good one when it comes to Po-biz.
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I've been reading tons of chapbooks.

Mansions in Berkeley and my ROBOT! And fuck all the people who talk shit about Tao Lin.

Yesterday I went to mansions because my friends Cameron and Jessica are living in one and had their cats stowed at another, and we had to get the cats from B to A. We put them in cardboard boxes and brought them in a car, which was kind of funny. Cats poking their heads out of boxes is like an image out of Norman Rockwell or something.

Both mansions are owned by the guy who owns Rasputin and Blondie's. I don't know his name, so when we talk about him, we just call him Rasputin. The first mansion has a game room filled with air hockey, pinball, and pool, and nerdcore models. It smelled like peppermint oil. Have you ever seen that show called "Silver Spoons" that was big in the eighties? The house reminded me of that. All hardwood floors. I pretended to be Ricky Schroeder and played the pinball games.

I probably will never be rich. I don't think I would like to have a ginormous house even if I were rich. I think I would like to have more friends who have giant houses, though, so I could pretend to be Richie Rich in their game rooms and wear wool socks and slide across the hardwood floors. I think I would also have a remote control car and a robot that could walk around those floors. I would bring them to my friends' mansions and let the robot walk around by itself. The robot would be three feet tall so that it would scare a dog but not a human. It would be able to recite every poem Jack Spicer ever wrote and know how to mix perfect Tanqueray and Tonics. It would also tell jokes and take pictures. It would say ""say cheeze." It would also know the answer to every stupid question people ask about being vegan so that I wouldn't have to answer them anymore.

At my house, it would live in the closet. The only time it would come out is when I went to my friends' mansions and to poetry readings. I think robots ride BART for free. It will introduce me to people and ask other people their names and remember them and tell me when I forget.

I will name it Tao Lin because I like that name and because Tao Lin is kind of short, though much taller than three feet, and because I think Tao would laugh about that. Maybe Tao Lin 3000. It would sometimes say funny things about hamsters or other small animals.

Also, I wish I could buy rights to Tao's new book. I wish I could buy half a share. I don't have 2000 dollars for shares in books, but I wish someone would want to split one with me.

People shit-talk a lot. Some people do it about Tao Lin, and when it happens I feel bad because it's much bigger and much more intense when it happens to him. When the police made me come into the station because of shit-talking Rae-Lyn Barnes, that was pretty intense, and when Suze Stein made that comment about people who like me being horrible people, that was pretty intense, but sometimes people who are not as easy to laugh at and dismiss say mean things about Tao that are untrue and stupid, and I don't understand it.

I am going to wear my Tao Lin shirt today.

Poetry Reading in Small Town America

Lo Berg quoted Hamlet at KRONOS Gallery in Staunton last night. That's only funny because this town is Shakespeare-nuts.

She's a good reader whose voice reminded me of an actress I once dumped for being totally fucking cra-cra.
I mean she was crazy, that one.

Lo Berg is a little young to really review. I can't expect her to face real criticism.
But I will say this:
She was very good at moments. She needs to stop rhyming so much. She should read experimental shit and start experimenting. Stop looking earnestly at the audience after every poem; it comes off fake or self-congratulatory. Lo Berg has a great reading voice, and she's pretty good at working an audience. She's a got a lot of confidence in her.

Does anyone like funeral poetry? I've seen famous poets start getting all teary-eyed and read a poem they'd written for a dead friend or relative. Save it for the funeral or just read it without introduction. Why do so many poets think they need to include a sob story in every reading they give?

Actually, I don't know how old Lo Berg is, and I just reminded myself that you open yourself to harshest criticism when you stand in front of a group of people and call yourself a poet. Beware poets: whenever you give yourself a title, you simply must live up to it.

The open mic. in the beginning was pretty fun. Fairly standard stuff, but there were a couple of gems in there, including a woman with a country accent reading famous poetry and a bear-bellied rocker-haired local reading his own work like what he thought a poet should sound like. That was fun.

And the KRONOS space was awesome. The peeps who run it are bent on changing the art world and the world in general.
Or something.
But I like their boldness for creating a scene in Staunton of all places. Staunton seems filled with such spirited individuals, people who don't want to leave but disdain the horrors of stagnation. I love people who will their dreams into reality, and when I come back to Staunton, which I certainly will, I hope KRONOS won't have given up on poetry readings. I also hope that they train their audience not to clap after every single poem. Clap at the beginning and end, and everyone will be much happier.

So frustrating, that clapping thing.

Where have you been lately?

Hi.
I am feeling much better. You know how people say, "I didn't sleep last night"? They almost never really mean it. Asthma is one of those fun ones that make you stay up all night. So there were about four night in a row through which I only slept about one or two hours. That kind of insomnia makes everything a blur. It makes writing really hard to do. Those waking hours are pretty useless, but I still got a lot done, e.g., I read at Studio One, published a book by Sara Mumolo, and went to the Idiolexicon reading. During the past two days, I have slept something like 20 hours. I am still quite tired, but I know ther are many of you who read this blog every day, and I wanted to let you know I am OK, well better than OK. . . I'm getting better.


My reading with Barbara Claire Freeman and Trevor Calvert went quite well by all accounts. I feel like I wasn't even really there. I felt disconnected on stage, like none of my thoughts were connecting with any of my other thoughts. Barbara Claire Freeman was pretty awesome. She made a big deal about how much Jack Morgan has grown in popularity over the past two years (how many more people hate me than did before), and Trevor Calvert was great. I always like him; he said something funny about Optimus Prime I liked. Jared White came out to join a lot of other people. It was a good turn out for a Friday in the summer. I thought it was altogether a really good reading, and I am proud to have been a part of it. By the end of this summer, we'll get all the kinks out of the series, and we will be f'ck'n awesome by next season.

The Idiolexicon reading was on Monday. It was a fun reading in kind of a weird venue. I like the idiolexicon readings. Marcus Merritt had some strong poems I really liked. Hugh Behm-Johnson was awesome, too. I have to say that I didn't expect that good a reading. It;s been a while since I've heard some good poetry. It's been a while since I've been to a reading that wasn't mine. I think I am going to take a short break from reading so that I can start going to other people's events more. Cafe Royalle had a really nice bartender.

After Idiolexicon, my friend, poet Sophie Sills, said there was a secret performance down the way of none other than Michael Hurley at Gravel & Gold. That's where I learned that it was Bastille day. Gravel & Gold is a nice little store where hipster ladies can shop; the ladies who run it are really sweet people who like to be nice and have parties and dream about marshmallow cupcakes. They had nothing vegan, but they had 2-buck-chuck. I wanted to buy something so I could support them, but I didn't really fit in the store with all the women trying on dresses and sweaters, so I stayed outside, which was fine because I got to hear Michael Hurley, who is selling paintings there, from start to finish. I felt fortunate.

We went to a bar after that that I didn't like very much with people I thought didn't like me very much, which is pretty normal on that side of the bay. No one introduces anyone to anyone else in San Francisco.

I Like Chickens, but don't be one!

I am reading tonight at Studio One Art Center on 45th and Broadway in Oakland at 7:30. Should be awesome.

I also got three poems published in Mary Magazine. I am very happy to be published next to poets I admire.

Reading Tomorrow Night!

Hi.
I (Jack Morgan) am reading tomorrow night at Studio One Art Center in Oakland near the corner of Broadway and 45th St. at #365 45th St. with Trevor Calvert and Barbara Claire Freeman.

It's exciting to get to read with people I really admire. I hope that you can make it. It will be the best poetry reading you've ever been to in the best space you could imagine this side of the bay. East Bay is pig-latin for Beast!

following up: the last few readings

Last Thursday, I read with Sophie Sills at Adobe Books in San Francisco. It was a good reading, and many people came, and I got a book called Jane Fonda's Life in Pictures because I mentioned Barbarella in a couple of my poems. People I didn't know were giving me high fives after the reading.

On Friday, I got to introduce Ann Svilar, Chris Stroffolino, and C.S. Giscombe at Studio One Art Center in Oakland. It went over very well. I think that the reading series at Studio One is going to be awesome and only get awesomer as we go. Stroffolino had me dancing, Ann spun a good yarn, and Giscombe is always a pleasure (one of my favorites).

On Saturday I flew to LA, and that night I saw All's Well that Ends Well at the Old Globe in San Diego, which was marvelous.

On Sunday, I read at the Smell with Aaron Kunin, Stan Apps, and Sara Mumolo. I think that people liked Jack Morgan's poetry, but I was hoping to meet a new audience by coming to LA. It seemed like everyone there was someone Sara Mumolo invited, and I just thought that there would be more people there. If I lived in LA, I would go see Kunin and Apps read. I saw both of them read in Berkeley not so long ago, and I thought they were great, so what is going on in LA? Why isn't L.A. supporting its poets when they are so good? I suppose LA is a bop-dead city these days. I have always gotten the feeling in LA that there are many cool things going on without anyone knowing it. There are artists in LA living in the same building who don't even know each other. The Smell is a really great location, and the readers were all good, too, but no one knew about it I guess, so the turn out made it one of the smallest readings I have ever done, which isn't the worst things that could happen, but it made me a little sad. I really wanted to get to know the LA scene. I wanted to be introduced to new people. It was a really fun reading, though. Mark Wallace is going to read there next month. He is a good one; I like him. I think people who live in the area should make it out to see him.

I also went to Lost Souls Cafe. I'd been wanting to go there for a long time.

Reading Tonight

Tonight I am reading at the Smell with Stan Apps and Aaron Kunin and Sara Mumolo. It's going to be incredible. Can you believe it?

Neither can I.

I think a lot of people will be there. I think that they will hate me. I think that they might make me cry and drink. I think that I might have to hurt somebody. I don't know what the Smell looks like inside, but my rock star friend says it's a good venue. But he's a rock star. Rock stars have a strange opinions on things rather often. Poets do too, I guess.

I am looking forward to the reading very much. I am reading with some of my favorite poets in the business and that's saying something. I am not sure what.

TONIGHT!!

There's a reading I am helping curate with Sara Mumolo going down at Studio One Art Center, 365 45th St. in Oakland. It's really an amazing space, and I hope that all of you will find time to come.

Ann Svilar, C.S. Giscombe, and Chris Stroffolino are reading. It should be a great night.