DON'T MISS THIS, kansans: AN ACTUAL KANSAS #5

The legendary Jennifer "el" Knox, Danielle Pafunda, and Shanna Compton

7 pm, Saturday, April 5, 2008
6 Gallery (716 1/2 Massachusetts St., downtown Lawrence)

there will be wine and chicken buckets

Jennifer L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—where absolutely anything can be made into a bong. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies The Best American Poetry (1997, 2003 and 2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present. She has taught poetry writing at New York University and Hunter College, and is available for children’s parties, séances, and tradeshow booth demonstrations. For even more specious information, see www.jenniferlknox.com.

Danielle Pafunda is the author of Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull, 2005), and the chapbook A Primer for Cyborgs: The Corpse (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, forthcoming). Her poems have been chosen three times for Best American Poetry (2004, 2006, and 2007). Other poems and reviews have appeared in such publications as American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, the Georgia Review, and TriQuarterly. She is coeditor of the online journal La Petite Zine, a doctoral candidate in the University of Georgia's creative writing program, and Spring 2008 Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago. See daniellepafunda.blogspot.com for more information.

Shanna Compton is the author of For Girls (& Others), Down Spooky, and several chapbooks, as well as the editor of GAMERS: Artists, Writers & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels. Her poems and essays have appeared widely in magazines such as No Tell Motel, MiPoesias, Verse, the tiny, McSweeney's, Absent, Coconut, Spork, and Court Green, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2005, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, Bowery Women, Digerati, and Exchange Values Vol. 2. She lives in New Jersey. For more information, see shannacompton.com.

Donations lovingly pried from your hands!

"the best reading series ever"

deb olin unferth reads "sickos" from her McSweeney's threeway


tao lin explores the emotional lives of the child stars

this photo does not do service to the appreciators piled up to the door


More photos are in a flickr set.

More on AAKRS #4

Tao Lin's second poetry collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, will be published by Melville House in May, 2008. He lives in Brooklyn.


Tao's main blog about literature is called Reader of Depressing Books.

He also posts his visual art on Underwater Hamster.

Here are two little e-books by Tao Lin on Bear Parade:

this emotion was a little e-book

Today The Sky is Blue and White with
Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale
Moon and I Will Destroy Our
Relationship Today

Tao Lin interviewed Deb Olin Unferth for Bookslut.





















Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the story collection Minor Robberies (McSweeney's). Her first novel is forthcoming, also from McSweeney's.


Frank Tankard at lawrence.com interviewed Deb.

AGNI has something Deb.

YouTube has something Deb, too:

An Actual Kansas #4

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.