Hey all— throught you would find the following post (from my personal blog) of interest, as it is certainly ahadada related!

Of primary interest to me, as of late, is the use of the hyphen-particularly as it relates to foreign words (especially Japanese)-as we work through Yoko Danno’s translation of the Kojiki. I prefer to use them only where it is established convention to do so or where omission would result in ambiguity or confusion. My mantra: when in doubt, leave it out!

Anyway, check out the rest of the post here. The original Quill & Quire blog post can be found here.

This is just a quick heads up to let everyone know that comments have been temporarily disabled on all posts. This is to eliminate comment spam and reduce the amount of time that is required to police the site, until we have figured out a better monitoring system.

I think that comments are a great way to express your thoughts on a particular subject in an open forum. However, many blogs (including this one) have had to moderate comments because of how pervasive spam comments are. Comments have become a burden to me (as webmaster) and Jesse (as blogger), because of the time needed to make sure that spam bots aren’t playing our system.

Many blogs offer comments because of traffic benefits and for the community — thre reason that we’ve kept them alive until now. As a content publisher and blog reader, I have mixed feelings. As a reader, I like comments because I can commment on what I’m reading. However, as a publisher, it can take time to approve or delete comments as well as respond to them.

Lately, however, both Jesse and I need to concentrate on getting several books to print! Truthfully, we should have done this sooner but decided against it as many of the older articles invited comments. However, after a recent spate of comment spam we have decided to go ahead with it. Please let us know if you have any problems or concerns with this. Thank you for your understanding!

Via Daniel Bradley’s blog, I discovered this fine collection of 2006 Poetry Readings in Buffalo (at the Big Orbit Gallery), hosted by everybody’s favourite all-american Kevin Thurston and sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center which are now being hosted by House Press.

Missed ‘em the first time around? Catch ‘em here.

Daniel Bradley provides a little context on his reading with Gustave Morin:

Included is gustave morin and i reading from last fall (scroll to the bottom of the page) this actual isn’t the famed torched village anthology portion of the evening . . . that was held in the parking lot where things can burn, but the reading is pretty good, sound is great and there is even audience participation

We sat next to Gustave Morin, Rob Read, and Daniel Bradley at last month’s Small Press Book Fair in Buffalo. We didn’t see them light anything on fire.

Although, if I recall correctly John W MacDonald had some evidence of the guys burning Ottawa down here.

Writes Gustave Morin in MacDonald’s comment stream:

There is for me something beautiful in the ephemeral nature of firecrackers that i will always love.

Well anyway — check out the readings courteosy of House Press:

Spring 2006 Readings
Kemeny Babineau (16:50)
Rob Read (18:03)
John Barlow (26:46)
Justin Sirois (18:18)
Lauren Bender (27:00)
CA Conrad (20:12)
Buck Downs (27:31)

Fall 2006 Readings
Amy King (27:15)
Daniel F. Bradley (35:29)
Gustave Morin (34:19)
James Hart III (11:18)
Mark Truscott (14:28)
Angela Rawlings(19:52)

More from Jesse and I soon!

This guy.

Glad that Kevin’s got a blog! Title: “Fucking lies”. Best blog name ever.

Go visit now! He’s also joined up at our Small Press Exchange. Check out his profile—or read his interview with Gustave Morin courteousy of Narrow House.

You should join up with the Small Press Exchange, too. Be like Kevin.

The List of Canadian Poets at Wikipedia needs a lot of work!

I took a few minutes tonight and added a few omissions before I realized how late it is and how early I have to work tomorrow! In no particular order:

rob mclennan
Jon Paul Fiorentino
jw curry
Mark Truscott
Daniel F. Bradley
Stuart Ross
Ross Priddle

Also, Daniel F. Bradley poses some questions over on fhole:

(1) Toronto’s long time scene—what is happening here?
(2) What is all this Canadian lit blogging stuff doing?

Let him know what you think here.

And, lastly, Mark Truscott has a reading Wednesday August 17th at the Drake Hotel on Queen West.

His notice about it is here.

According to Mark, the reading at the Drake is part of Damian Rogers’s series, the Pontiac Quarterly. Next Wednesday’s theme: Virginity!

Wednesday, August 17
Drake Hotel
1150 Queen St. West
8:00pm, $10 or pwyc

Readings by Karen Hines, Claudia Dey, Andrew Kaufman, Mark Truscott, and angry man Edward Keenan. Essay by David Balzer, advice column “Liz, What the Fuck?” and a short film by Alex Pugsley.

Maybe afterwords we’ll all go see “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. I’ll try to grab some pics from the Drake and if I’m able will post them back here—that’s if I can get away from work next Wednesday!

Ahadada is in the midst of the “Battle of the Blogroll Tour”, billed as “The Search For The Top Poetblogger”. An “American Idol”-style competition show in which the contestants compete against one another through trend analsysis and statistics culled from search engines and the like. To be considered for competition, get on our Blogroll!

There is absolutely no skill involved! The process is not in the least scientific! The points don’t matter! Just like your favourite TV reality shows!

From the squared circle of Googlefight, we’re moving into the hallowed halls of Blogpulse for this week’s feature, the Ahadada Rumble.

The Ahadada Rumble is a thirteen poet event, which begins with three poets in the ring. A poet is eliminated from the Ahadada Rumble when they trend lower in the Blogpulse trends over time graph, and are thereby virtually “thrown out of the ring” with both feet touching the floor.

The winners of this round are the last poets remaining after all others have been eliminated. They will move on to the Battle of the Blogroll: Round Three!

Blogpulse allows you to enter search terms to see mentions trended over time. You can enter up to three queries under the trend terms.

Click the following hyperlinks to reveal the trends.

Battle Royal #1:

Kevin Wood vs Ron Silliman vs Jim Behrle

Winner by anonymous decision, Ron Silliman!

Battle Royal #2:

Geof Huth vs Patrick Rosal vs Crag Hill

Winner by anonymous decision, Geof Huth!

Battle Royal #3:

Catherine Daly vs Jess Glass vs Ross Priddle

Winner, upon review, Catherine Daly!

Battle Royal #4:

Nick Piombino vs Jukka-Pekka Kervinen vs Mike Snider

Winner, upon review, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen!

Stephanie Young, by virtue of the fact that she is the odd woman out, and further, because she has a pretty cool blog, will receive free entry into the next round, thereby proving that this contest employs absolute-zero logic.

Thus, the winners, in no particular order, still fighting, drawn from the initial pool of twenty-six poetbloggers:

1. Ron Silliman
2. Geof Huth
3. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
4. Catherine Daly
5. Stephanie Young

Stay tuned next week for more pugilism, romance and intrigue on Battle of the Blogroll, as our poet warriors are caught in an entangled web that brings the great poetic blogosphere head to head with… Stay tuned!

Let’s get ready to rumble! Googlefight is a website that allows users to compare the number of search results returned by Google for two given strings. Which gave me the stupendously stupid idea to have all the writers and poets that populate our blogroll square off against each other in a fictitious battle for the equally fictitious “Ahadada Belt”.

Via Wikipedia:

The results are displayed graphically in a Flash animation. Two animated stick figures fight on screen after the queries are entered, and then an animated bar graph appears showing the results.

Check out the following cards and click the links to savour some poetic pugilism…

Let’s get ready to rumble!

Barbara Jane Reyes vs Kevin Wood: Googlefight!

Bob Grumman vs Ron Silliman: Googlefight!

Jim Behrle vs Brian Kim Stefans: Googlefight!

Darren Wershler-Henry vs Geof Huth: Googlefight!

Patrick Rosal vs Paolo Javier: Googlefight!

Daniel Sendecki vs Crag Hill: Googlefight!

Catherine Daly vs Eileen Tabios: Googlefight!

Mark Truscott vs Jesse Glass: Googlefight!

Jon Paul Fiorentino vs Ross Priddle: Googlefight!

Timothy Yu vs Nick Piombino: Googlefight!

Josh Corey vs Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: Googlefight!

Mike Snider vs Todd Swift: Googlefight!

rob mclennan vs Stephanie Young: Googlefight!

The Winners (in no particluar order; who live to fight another day on the road to the Ahadada Belt):

1. Kevin Wood
2. Ron Silliman
3. Jim Behrle
4. Geof Huth
5. Patrick Rosal
6. Crag Hill
7. Catherine Daly
8. Jesse Glass
9. Ross Priddle
10. Nick Piombino
11. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
12. Mike Snider
13. Stephanie Young

Note: This is not very scientific; nor was it meant to be! I realize that names, unlike serial numbers, are not necessarily unique. For instance, a search for Jesse Glass, reveals this pipe. Nice! But until all of you have serial numbers, this is the only way I can waste my time! That really puts people like Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and me(!) at a disadvantage! I was absolutely pounded by Crag Hill!

Check back here in a few short days for the next round in “The Battle of the Blogroll”, to take place, not in the squared circle of Google, but in the hallowed halls of “Technorati“.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here reflect those of Googlefight and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Ahadada Books!

Want the latest buzz about what’s going on in poetics online? Tripping the Blogosphere Fantastic maps trends by mining the hot topics appearing in poetry & poetics blogs. Randomly and casually updated from us Ahadadians with the news and views of other poets and blogs.

Now available from Dynamism are these strange, but cool gadgets. From the site: “Never again will you have to choose between having sushi or having a USB memory drive–thanks to the USB sushi drive.”

Which brings us around to Geof Huth’s excellent “dbqp: visualizing poetics” blog. Last week, Geof posted a selection of recent visual poems from Scott Helmes. The haiku-like nature of the pieces prompted responses from Bob Grumman, Michael Harold, Jesse Glass and Geof himself regarding the nature of haiku and the Western fascination with the form. Check out the post here and the comments here.

Over on Silliman’s blog, Ron comments on the “implosion” of the Realpoetik email zine over the weekend and the ensuing frustration, commenters liken it to “road rage”.

Head on over to Kevin’s woodshed and take his quiz based on The American Film Institute’s list of what it considers the top 100 film lines of all time which of course, as Kevin points out, “means lines from U.S. films only.” I like Kevin’s blog — he’s a Canadian transplanted to Japan and writes for an English language paper there.

Don’t you just dig those sushi USB drives?