Status Report Spock

Not too shabby, not too great. That massive blister that always seems to find me has found me and taken root on the right side of my foot. I've started my diet of mole skin and oxygen which helps the sucker harden and then fall off as quickly as humanly possible. My throat however is wrecked. I've been smoking so much I'm loosing my voice. I know, just what you wanted to hear, right mom? Well that's the sad fact of what's happening... I'm trying to slow down a bit, but well, it's Russia... it's healthier to breathe smoke than it is the air!!

Speaking of Air, did I mention they're playing on Saturday in the park known as Stereo Letto? There's a possible trip to see them, other plans include a group called Pepsicola that I've never heard off but have been told are quite good, so we'll see. Found out that Aerosmith is coming later in the month, but I won't be here to enjoy them. Oh well. Tonight or tomorrow night there's going to be a huge concert in the plaza outside the Hermitage, BONY M is doing a 30th anniversary concert. I saw the stage that was being built as I was walking around yesterday....

I've been to a couple readings... quick run down of things in that dept:

Fannny Howe: pretty great reading, I mean she's a very well known poet and as Jeff said in his intro, had this reading taken place in NYC there would've been a charge for tickets at the door. Fanny's work is one of quiet, it bespeaks an understated silence. The new work that she read from had an element of the pastoral which I don't normally like but I found extremely refreshing as I sat in the Mayakovsky surrounded by the enormous buildings of the anti-pastoral. I kind of wanted to talk to her abobut Tis of Thee, an earlier work, but she seems very shy and when I shook her hand and gave her greetings from the bay area, she somewhat shrank away in a reclusive state of writerly shyness.

Gary Shteyngert on the other hand is a madman, he's like Phillip Roth on steroids. His work isn't quietly humorous, it's loud and in your face nuttiness.

George Elliot Clarke: what can I say about this one, I wasn't crazy about his work. He read too long, the material just wasn't interesting, and he keeps winning awards, is he the sole Black voice in Canada? I can only take so much rhyme and rhythm and verbal dance that meanders to a message that isn't at all new, or interesting, or even merritous. part of the work smacks of showmanship and the whole event was more spectacle than reading. I've never been told "to thank you I want to read 3 more poems" smells of a kind of narcissism to me. The occasional bits of humor in what he read were refreshing, but it didn't make up for a constant and seemingly unmeasured verbal assault. This kind of linguistic orouborous gets very old very quickly.

more later....