September 14, 2008

Maggie Nelson & Cynthia Nelson

Sunday, September 14
7:30 pm

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta  

$5 suggested donation


Maggie Nelson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005). She is also the author of two books of nonfiction, The Red Parts: A Memoir (Free Press, 2007), and a critical study, Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Her next book will be a work of experimental prose about the color blue titled Bluets (forthcoming from Wave Books in Fall 2009). After many years of living and working in New York City, she joined the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles in 2005.

Cynthia Nelson is a poet and a musician who lives in Portland, Oregon. She has toured widely with her bands Ruby Falls, Retsin, The Naysayer, and Cynthia Nelson. She teaches music at the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls and is currently working on a piano-based third solo album of songs (see Nonstop Co-op for the first two). Her recent books include Kentucky Rules (Soft Skull, 2003), and last year she published work in 6x6, an Ugly Duckling Presse chapbook, and coedited the radical fiction journal Tantalum.



WHAT IT IS


It is what
it is. But

what is it?
What it is -

Some soft
tautology

whose two terms
are touch

Time to give, time
to give it up.


Maggie Nelson



AUTUMN AT RICE

the countergirl has a cold
i am feeding ginger candy 

quietly the scene
passes into evening

givenchy
she smiles as if it's plenty

lucite skate wheels
in the candy setting

sun west after
noon please

play with
me

rice


Cynthia Nelson