March 1, 2015
Donato Mancini and Paul G. Maziar
Sunday, March 1
7:00 pm
523 SE Morrison
The interdisciplinary practice of Donato Mancini focuses mainly on poetry, bookworks, text-based visual art and cultural criticism. He is the author of four acclaimed books of visual, procedural and conceptual poetry: Ligatures (New Star 2005) Æthel (New Star 2007), Buffet World (2011) and Fact 'n' Value (2011). He is also the author of the much discussed critical work You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2012), an extended discourse analysis of the language of poetry reviews. He visits Portland with a number of new publications in tow: Loitersack (2014), a poetics in the form of poetry, poetics, theory, theory theatre, questions and laugh particles; Multiple Bippies (2014), a re-issue of two books by Vancouver/Winnipeg poet Colin Smith, edited and introduced by Mancini; SNOWLINE (2015), a bookwork drawing together 600 years of translations of the French poet François Villon, published by ETH PRESS, of Spare Room founder Chris Piuma.
Paul Maziar has written poems such as "Another Odalisque," an admittedly goofball reply to the famed painting which inspired many useless nudes to follow; "The Bad Dancer from Barbarize," a self-portrait in fragments; "We Sing For the Future"; and others which yet remain in manuscript. His chapbook, Little Advantages, which came out from Portland's Couch Press in 2014, is comprised of poems that have delighted even the most curmudgeonly of readers, and features a handsome cover painting by Will Bruno. No trophies or honors are worth mentioning.
from Geranium Days
Folly isn't in looking
But staring unable to move
At symbols systems and rituals
Who can blame the house of Achilles
The abode of me
A center of stuck sound
Or drunk soda water
Not the stomach or the lungs
It's Giordano's buttoned lip that filled with smoke
When the guy next to me prays to the holy father
For himself and all his friends
Mysteries aren't among his skills
In paradise I turn up the epistrophy
And talk like a trumpet
And love one who esteems
Just about everything
While there's still a morning
I get crazy ideas
I go into the long tunnel
To somewhere
The little Italian corner
What's Italian for under the avenue with lights everywhere
You can hear the world up there
Where the trains cut across and snow builds up
No sun needed
Loud bells muted bells
Are we underwater yet?
Here comes a speedy light curving left
It grows
Until our wigs fly off
A small child cries while his uncle laughs
In the wind off the screaming metal
They'll take the next one to dumbo
The man with a beard
Down to his toes
Arrives in long coat with yellow stars
He plays a secret on a flute
And the child stops crying
Bursts with laughter
Cries laughing at the mystery
And falls asleep before the next one
Eyes close like these flowers
Springing out of pens and of gardens
That light is relieving itself
Your eyes on brandy mistake windmills
Carry me over the brook little bridge
Strawberries out of time out of season
Why do we always find you here Alma
Your celebrity loaf and losing your keys
Nothing but white ties chinchillas jewels
In the movie palaces
The polished boys are fleeing now
Fluctuating bows
Below their half smirks
They're breaking the spines of books
Who's to say we shouldn't have a drink
And yell into a thunderstorm?
You're not the you you think you are
Don't worry about these brandied roarings
They're sitting ovations for you
Better leave before they get here
Paul G. Maziar
from Loitersack
Every word was once a poem
every word once sad apart to pin so
sad as every word to go
to not go get sad not you
once sad to word to scratch it poem
too once too too
sad to word-sad mod too
old to go do all to
words once sad as total was
nor once sad as every word
when was was not a word yet
every poem once sold mud once words
so every very word-sad word
once was so so sad not so-so.
Donato Mancini