William L. Fox & David Abel

Sunday, November 7, 2004
7:30 pm

Mountain Writers Center
3624 SE Milwaukie Ave.
$5 suggested donation.

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William Fox is a poet, artist, critic, and essayist. He has published fifteen collections of poetry, and six books of nonfiction about art, cognition, and landscape. He was the editor of West Coast Poetry Review magazine and books from 1972 to 1988, which published poets as disparate as William Stafford and Ian Hamilton Finlay, and was one of the few presses in the United States at the time to give serious attention to concrete poetry. For the past ten years he has been a full-time writer, whose research takes him to some of the most remote regions on the planet. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

Recent books of poetry include Reading Sand: Selected Desert Poems, 1975-2000 (University of Nevada) and One Wave Standing (La Alameda Press); of nonfiction, Playa Works: The Myth of the Empty (University of Nevada) and The Void, the Grid, and the Sign: Traversing the Great Basin (University of Utah). He lives in Los Angeles, where he has recently completed books on the Antarctic (Tierra Antarctica) and Las Vegas (In the Desert of Desire), forthcoming from Trinity University and University of Nevada, respectively, and is working on a book about Mars.

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David Abel is a poet, editor, bookseller, raga singer, and poker player who moved to Portland in 1997. One of the instigators of the Spare Room reading series, his recent publications include A Reading of a Reading of Ashes (envelope #6), "Frozen Sea" in foArm #2, and "Threnos" (sewn on a thirty-seven-foot ribbon by Katherine Kuehn). "Embargo" appears online in the current issue of Slope (www.slope.org), and "Dual Coup" is forthcoming in foArm #3. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, Cut (Situations, NYC), and the long collage text "Conduction" in the exhibition catalogue Conduit, devoted to the work of artist Anna Hepler (Modular Unit Design, Seoul, Korea), as well as the artist's books Rose and Selected Durations (collaborations with Katherine Kuehn, published at the Salient Seedling Press).

Other recent Portland manifestations include a solo performance ("Closet Drama") and performances with the ensemble ChuNiMu at the Second Annual Spare Room Sound Poetry Festival, and a repeat performance as one of Linda Austin's Boris & Natasha Dancers in PICA's TBA Festival.

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an excerpt from
"sky the line"

by William Fox & David Abel

in the sky
above plowed fields
a line of clouds
the straight rule
of law

    on the far skyline
    my road disappears
    a crow follows
(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

           aligned in the sky
mirage: earth and water
           eye for an eye

on my line of sight
always the sky

at the county line
the sky changes color

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    a line alive aloft
    skin sky scared
    the tree limbs lost

from the west sky
wind across the road
a line of onion trucks

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

twelve powerlines
along the road
accord in the sky

    a line of wildfires
    to my left
    and on my right
    the blue sky
    of the aqueduct

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

afoot afield and
out of line with the sky
workers bent over
a thousand melon vines

    lined up against
    the white sky of noon
    the early words
    of summer

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Driving,
only the road is real.

The half-moon rises,
rides alongside.

(DA)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    aligned with the sky
    a wing

    my eye reflected
    in the window

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

a line on a map
I trace with my fingers

a line on the ground
I tread with my feet

a line on the page
I true with my lungs

unsigned fingers
pedaling feet
breathing eyes

(DA)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    above the snow line

    below me

    blue sky

    and
    green field

(WF)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Before dawn
the sky is just a line

then beyond
the endless lines of lights

a line of light
where the sky begins

(DA)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

an infinity of lines
passes through every point

of planes
through every line

too many sheep to count

mist rises from the field
like music, like money

clouds gather,
line the sky

(DA)