An Actual Kansas No. 2

An Actual Kansas No. 2 warmed the chilly end of November and over fifty people spilled over the chairs and onto the floors of Lawrence's 6 Gallery to listen to the work of Cyrus Console and Scott Pierce.

We had boxed wine and cold food and canned beer but people came for poetry. There is a palpable attentiveness around here, and as was commented later people are well-dressed and mild-mannered, they do not drink all the wine and they leave some crackers and cheese on the plate. The dress shop upstairs, named something about eccentrics, played canned and terrifying Christmas music all night and it leaked through the floors.

Ken Irby gave a lovely introduction for Cyrus, and though I had written a very honest introduction for Scott, about how he was the first poet in Texas to write of the moon, and how he was born in the year of the Chupacabra, and how he was the love child of H.D. and H.D., and also how he finally escaped his youth-life of petty crime to find a life of more major crime of art, standing at the podium my notes were suddenly abstract marks (unreadable!) and I spoke instead of dove's defeathered breasts (said to resemble hearts) and Austin and love.


Cyrus and Scott were gentle and intense, the work of each fortuitously corresponded with the other's: there is Cyrus who is gentle and intense of the head, and there is Scott who is gentle and intense of the body. Both have written poems about Emus. Scott read his quick poems, and what is one of my favorites -- the poem from Moss Ranch. Scott said the word "Jackshit" (as in, "I don't know Jackshit about emus") and later told me the first word he ever wrote was "Hogrot." Cyrus read from his new book from Burning Deck, Brief Under Water, which I hope you will buy, and he read some new work for those who love epics.


Dennis Etzel wrote something about our Thursday night in Kansas: here. I've taken some pictures & made a flickr set: here.

Please join us for our holiday reading -- legends Kenneth Irby and K. Silem Mohammad will read on Friday, December 14 at 7 p.m., also at 6 Gallery.

Actual Kansas No. 2

Join us Thursday, November 29, at Lawrence's 6 Gallery for a reading by Austin's Scott Pierce and Lawrence's own Cyrus Console.

Scott Pierce is a poet, printer, and publisher living in Austin, TX. He is founder and publisher of Effing Press and also works as a coordinator for Skanky Possum Press and as coeditor and designer of the skanky journal O POSS. Some of his poems have been bound under such titles as The TV Poems, Elms and Other Arteries, Exploder, and Some Bridges Migrate, the later of which is still in print from Small Fires Press. A recent project, Whisper in My Ear / You Are My Pamphleter: a book of poems about making books of poems is forthcoming as an Effing chapbook.

Some poems online can be found at

Blazevox: http://www.geoffreygatza.com/ebook/s_pierce.pdf

Fascicle: http://www.fascicle.com/issue02/poems/pierce1.htm

horse less review: http://www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/pierce.html

*
Cyrus Console lives in Lawrence, Kansas. His first book, Brief under Water, is forthcoming from Burning Deck, January 2008.

Elvis was in a better place.

The style of the dog was naturally beautiful

The habit of travelers in service of God

The cowgirls’ under the stars, the students’

Caught as catch could, rushed, anonymous

Ever wakeful, bright, obedient

Lightweight, manually retractable

They spent weeks in this attitude.

For a time they were like floating. Drunk

Persons staggered through the gloaming

No home to them despite the many ways

They sought shelter there as if it were

Perhaps I will go. I am tired

Of what sets us apart from animals

How everyone can clearly see a music

Of her own invention in the shelter

Of Petrushki station, slowly sipping

Aftershave all afternoon.

an Actual Kansas 1 at 6 Gallery

Robert J. Baumann and Ken Rumble stand behind a curtain at 6 Gallery.

Ken Rumble and Jim McCrary both gave delightful, entertaining readings, and the crowd was also very satisfying. Check out what Dennis Etzel has to say about it.

Next up is Austin's Scott Pierce with a local poet, t.b.a., on thursday, November 29. Also Megan Kaminski and I will be reading in at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Thursday, November 8, 2007, 7 p.m., Nunemaker Center.

Jim McCrary and Ken Rumble at 6 Gallery

North Carolina classic Ken Rumble & local favorite Jim McCrary kick off An Actual Kansas Reading Series on Sunday, October 28 @ 7 p.m.

6 Gallery
716 1/2 Massachusetts St.
Lawrence, KS 66044

Donations alway accepted! No poetry lovers will be turned away for lack of donations!

Questions?

email Anne Boyer at anneboyer at gmail dot com
or Robert J. Baumann at baumann dot baumann at gmail dot com
or email us both at actualkansas at gmail dot com.

***

Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press, March 2007.) His poems have appeared in Cutbank, the tiny, Octopus, Typo, Coconut, Parakeet, the Carolina Quarterly, and others. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

from St. Apples

The war is always there. The war is ongoing. The war is always there. There are people in the war and some of the people are women and some of the people are men and some of the people are girls and some of the people are boys and you and I are not some of the people. The little boys in the war. The amount of people changes but the war is always there. Some people argue that there aren’t enough people. Some people argue that there should be more people. The war is about an argument but the arguments about the amount of people did not start a new war. The new old war. There are lots of little wars or one big war. The war is always there. People here want to keep there there. The size of the war can change and the number of people can change. People here don’t want to go there. The size of the war is always there. People argue about a change in the mood of the people and the war is always there. You and I argue and the war is over there. The old new war. The war is always there and girls are in the war. Some of the girls are little and some of the girls are big and the big and little girls are in the war. The big and little war. Some people in the war are not part of the war. The war is always there and always in the parts of the war and in the place where the parts are even if some people don’t want to take part in the war. You and I do not have parts in the war because the war is always there. The little girls in the war. The war is always there but the war is for us in part. We take no part in the war but we are part of the war though the war is always there. Our part in the war and the parts the people that are there have in the war are different parts. If our parts were in the war. The war is always there and we do not go to it.

& check out these reviews:

Ron Silliman:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-know-ken-rumble-originally-from-his.html

Kevin Killian:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0932112544/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_top/002-7537401-5750437?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books#customerReviews

Mathias Svalina:
http://mathiassvalina.blogspot.com/2007/03/key-bridge.html

Adam Sobsey, Independent Weekly:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A156564

***

Jim McCrary first came to Lawrence in brutal winter of '65 but stuck around for Summer of Love and more. Lived in NYC, San Fran, NorCal as well. Latest publications are allDIY published in Lawrence, including: Hotter Than and Now, Holbox, Dive She Said, Mayaland (with John Moritz), My Book, and most recently Being Frida Kahlo. An interview conducted by Tom Beckett in 2006 is available on line and will be included in a volume II of collected interviews from Exchange Values. He has new work coming out in next issue of Abraham Lincoln edited by A. Boyer and K. Mohammed. He works full time at the non-profit org Independence, Inc. in Lawrence.






A poem by Jim McCrary:

Being led astray – Ekbalam, Yucatan

Precise is a way of moving

and in a place like this

an advantage.

So one should very well

think before.

What one misses while considering

what one finds overwhelming.

Certainly one hears where to look.

To contemplate the advantage

of movement over an obstacle.

As instance

one who has gone to the top.

How could that be? And why?

What were they thinking?

Would we have done something different.

Then again perhaps there is something

in the word pyramid.

Ronald Johnson

But are these landscapes to be imagined
or an actual
Kansas -- the central, earthy, prosaic core of us?

Or is the seen always winged, an eidolon only to us -- &
never
the uncertain capture
of great, golden unembroidered
slabs?

All is Oz.
The dusty cottonwoods, by the creek,
rustle and Emerald City.

And the mystic, immemorial ciy

is rooted in earth.

All is Oz & inextricable,

bound up in the unquenchable flames of double suns.