By way of Jesse this photo; from right to left: Maya Glass, Shizumi Corman, Youichi Glass (munching on Candy), Cid Corman, Jerome Rothenberg and Diane Rothenberg.

Which serves as an appropriate introduction for an upcoming Ahadada Event that we are all very excited about here. Ahadada’s goin’ to Califoria! Venice, to read at Beyond Baroque.

“It’s a place where you can experience both nationally renowned and outrageous emerging art all at the same time.” And that about sums up the evening that Ahadada has in store for you!

17 December 2005, Saturday - 7:30 PM

AHADADA BOOKS Presents

Join the writers and poets of Ahadada Books, which in 1999 began publishing broadsides, chapbooks, and more, from the US, Canada, and Japan. JESSE GLASS has been anthologized most recently in Visiting Walt (Iowa); a selected poems is forthcoming from West House. CATHERINE DALY’s books include has Locket (Tupelo) and DaDaDa (Salt) and an upcoming Ahadada chapbook. BRUNA MORI’s New York cityscape poems, with ink paintings by Matthew Kinney, is forthcoming from Meritage. She’s appeared in Fence, ZYZZYVA, Trepan, and has a chapbook forthcoming from Ahadada. DANIEL SENDECKI’s Strange Currencies came out from Ahadada in 2003. He is working on a long poem inspired by George Oppen’s “Of Being Numerous.” JEROME ROTHENBERG is author of over seventy books of poetry including Poems for the Game of Silence, Poland/1931, A Seneca Journal, Vienna Blood, That Dada Strain, New Selected Poems 1970-1985, Khurbn, and recently, A Paradise of Poets and A Book of Witness (all New Directions), as well as a forthcoming chapbook from Ahadada.

17 December 2005, Saturday - 9:00 PM

CID CORMAN TRIBUTE and MEMORIAL

The legendary poet, translator, and editor CID CORMAN (b. 1924) passed away on March 12, 2004. Join JEROME ROTHENBERG and Ahadada Press in a tribute to this key figure in American poetry of the second half of the 20th century. Corman published more than 100 books and pamphlets and edited the influential literary journal Origin, among others. In 1990, his two vol. selected poems OF ran to some 1500 poems; Volume 3 appeared in 1998. With Ahadada authors. Bring Corman correspondence, books, or magazines from which to read and share and celebrate. All welcome. Proceeds from this event will be donated to Cid’s wife, Shizumi, and be used to defray the cost of a plot and memorial for Cid.

What’s Beyond Baroque you ask? Straight from the guide book you all love to hate, the Lonely Planet, and rated the #2 attraction in Venice, (after the beach, of course) comes the following passage:

“Dark glasses and turtlenecks may have gone out of fashion, but the beat lives on at this funky place. It’s been the center for literary arts in Venice since 1968. Here, word is spoken, read, displayed and sung. It’s a place where you can experience both nationally renowned and outrageous emerging art all at the same time. The well-crammed bookstore sells cheap books by local artists as well as all of the classics. Free writing workshops are offered throughout the week as well.”

Red Pine gives us a fine translation and an illuminating commentary on one of the most widely loved texts in Asia. We know it in Japan as the “Hanya Shingyo” where it’s available in charming little accordion-like books and held in awe by the ordinary people who chant it every day and copy it for good luck without knowing of its origins and its depths. This kind of devotion reminds me of my folks in the American South and how they held the bible in similar dread. I remember being warned never to write notes–however scholarly–in my copy of the King James, because it showed disrespect for the Creator!

“Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form,” is the “whole truth and nothing but” if I ever heard it. It certainly explains the pitch and tenor of my past existence.

Thirty-two pages of Alan Halsey’s latest, including workings from John Dee’s incredible spiritual diaries. Halsey dips a net into this oceanic text and draws back some exotic samplings.

For more information regarding the FREE POETRY series,which promises to deliver some of the best writing by today’s leading poets at no charge and with no copyright restrictions, please contact the editor at mcsmith[at]boisestate.edu.

The editor of the Perpetual Motion Journal was a man named Irwin Barrows.