hOt whiskey blog

I quit.

This will be the final (575th) blog posting here.

"Neanderthals were cooking shellfish in Italy about 110,000 years ago."

Red Rover Series - Experiment #16 - Evented Breath

Featuring:
Jennifer Rogers
Jesse Seldess

7pm Sunday, October 14th
doors lock at 7:30pm
suggested donation $3
BYOB

at the SpareRoom
4100 W. Grand Avenue
NEW LOCATION close to Grand & Pulaski
in the American Stencil Company building
2nd floor, suite 210-212
http://www.spareroomchicago.org

JENNIFER ROGERS runs Hot Whiskey Press with her fiancé
Michael Koshkin. She is currently pursuing a Masters
of Humanities from The University of Chicago. She
holds an M.F.A from Naropa University where she first
learned of the Surrealist group of Prague and decided
to dedicate at least the next several years to the
study and translation of Czech avant-garde poetry. Her
other pursuits include letterpress printing and plant
maintenance. She is also employed in the field of
alchemy for arts' sake. Her chapbook, Periplum maps
our starless shores, is available from Livestock
Press.

JESSE SELDESS relocated from Chicago to Berlin and,
more recently, from Berlin to Karlsruhe. In Chicago,
he co-curated The Discrete Reading and Performance
Series with Kerri Sonnenberg. In Berlin, he organizes
The Floating Series of exhibitions and events with
Leonie Weber. In Karlsruhe, he continues to edit
Antennae, a journal of experimental writing, music,
and performance. Chapbooks of his poems have been
published by Answer Tag Home Press, Bronze Skull
Press, and the Chicago Poetry Project, and his book of
poems, Who Opens, appeared on Kenning Editions early
in 2006.

The Hot Whiskey Site is back in action. Needs some updating, some changes here and there, but for now we'll live with it. A flawed site for a flawed tomorrow.

4 Translations of Augusto de Campos
Samuel Knights

The second Moonshine has been sent out.
If you're interested and not already a subscriber, ordering details are over here.

"Before the speech, Laura Bush, the first lady, did walk directly past Mr. Ahmadinejad, putting her right hand on the corner of his rostrum at one point, though no words were exchanged."

“Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship,” Mr. Bush said.

"Known as Burma as until 1988, Myanmar has been one of the least accessible countries in the world until very recently. The fact that the country has been inaccessible for so long has meant that Myanmar has been relatively untainted by the excesses of modern life and retains an aura of a bygone age. As a destination Myanmar offers great natural beauty, magnificent archaeological sites, stunning pagoda and temple architecture, warm and hospitable people. For the majority of the population, Buddhism is the center of individual life and the monastery is the center of the community. The Burmese are graceful and gentle people, whose warm hospitality leaves a memorable impression. Traveling to Myanmar is a mysterious journey into the past where traditional customs and rituals come to life."

I was just searching around in The New York Review of Books' archives and found this collaborative letter from 1968:

To the Editors:

We assembled poets respectable enough to travel across the planet to Stony Brook hereby announce to the public that we are all victims of closed vision, crippled mechanical consciousness, and bad poetry mouthed by all governments and propagandized thru controlled mass media.

That police state military tyranny, sexual repression and laws against expansion of consciousness by joyful music naked dance and high natural herbs threaten further evolution of the race. Joy to all poets' wives and lovers in every country (Herbert).

That no government except the invisible commune of poetry has become conscious that man's usurpation over all nature is an egotism that will destroy human as well as whale kingdoms thru ecological disruption of the planet surface.

That revolutions of consciousness manifested in human society by younger generations present should be protected from armed dinosaur repression and black magic violence perpetrated by the state; that everywhere Stony Brook to Vietnam the state is the cause and source of violence, state violence is preventing peaceful change. Student violence exacerbates some people (Cooperman). Poets fighting on suburban lawns drunk is also real. (Ginsberg).

That Black Power is the active American conscience, the African soul rising within our nation to force the European soul to love and the marriage of races in a new humanity. We must all work for the wedding of Asia and our continent. For Asia sulks in rejection and pride and only begins to roar in pain (Duncan)—that Black Power is an ideal vision of African Divinity resurrected to save the white rational races from suffocating the entire planet in dung colored gas—We ask return to true tribal structure in which men use society rather than be used. (Oppenheimer)—

That the U.S. utopian* war against attempted state* utopias in China and Cuba as well as Vietnam is a bring down for the entire human race—that good old Dr. Spock and friends have made pure poetic statement aiding and abetting younger bodies to avoid War Theater, that the assembled poets commit the same holy deed.—

That the new consciousness articulated by longhair revolutionary student generations Prague New York Paris Madrid Santiago everywhere on earth begins the fulfillment of human anarchy (withering away of state [Guellivic]) and communal utopia prophesized by poets for millenia—Academies should return to wisdom study in tree groves rather than robot study in plastic cells—Bless the Universe!

Robert Duncan

G. E. Kimball III

Stanley Cooperman

Holly Stevens

Donald Hall

Jerome Rothenberg

Ed Sanders

Joel Oppenheimer

Eduardo de Olivera

John Logan

Mackson MacLow

T. Weiss

Anthony Hecht

Denise Levertov

J.D. Reed

Donald Justice

Allen Ginsberg

Louis Simpson

Nicanor Parra

George Hitchcock

Robert Vas Dias

Tim Reynolds

*Zbigniew Herbert

*Czeslaw Milosz

Anselm Hollo

Clayton Eshleman

George Quasha

George A. Williams

Tom Gatten

Milton Kessler

Jim Harrison

Dan Rowe

Allen Planz

Ann London

A. J. M. Smith

Ron Loweinsohn

This just in from Travis Macdizzle:

"Calling all fellow writers, poets, artists and infidels!

Fact-Simile Magazine is STILL ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS for our inaugural FALL issue.

If you enjoy making avant-garde "word whoopee" or know of someone who does, SUBMIT BY OCTOBER 1st!!!!!!!!!!!!

For consideration, please send along 3-5 pages of poetry or 5-7 pages of prose to: travis@fact-simile.com

And remember: Fact-Simile might not make you famous, but it's sure to make your friends pretend to like you!"

I've been dreaming about poetry.

Once again, Mr. Waits blows my mind in this outtake from The Mystery Men:

In case you've noticed...which you probably haven't, our web server, Jatol, is no longer, so the Hot Whiskey site is down temporarily until we can get enough cash to get the site hosted somewhere else.

It's already cold here.

I think Chicago is still pre-L=A=N=G=A=U=G=E.

I love this photograph from today's NY Times. It almost seems like a screenshot from a Kubrick film.

All those picture posts below were intended in the opposite order...a sort of satirical touchy memoir moment if you will, but I'm too lazy to go and switch them around. So maybe if you could look at them from bottom of the screen upwards you'll get the desired effect.

When we were bearded in San Francisco.

When we were young and restless.

When we were insane.

When we were a little insecure.

When we were "totally awesome."

Back when we had mustaches.

FUCKING AWESOME!

For certain top secret reasons to be disclosed at a later date a certain 60ish dollar bottle of port was blown up in my face at our certain apartment on a certain tonight. While washing my face and hands I licked a bit off my arm. This was my first taste. The cork had a defect. The port wasn't ready. But still good.

I drove to New York yesterday morning and bought a Chandler & Price Pilot Press, drove back to Chicago this morning. Now, in a strange zone, I watch this video:



Yet again we own a letterpress, yet this little baby fits in our kitchen. Pictures coming soon.

I find this student film hilarious. Maybe I'm just a little to hung up on Mr. Waits:

The 2nd Moonshine will be out soon. We've been sorta shot down by Columbia. They want us to pay a few hundred dollars to spend a weekend learning things we already know, just to then volunteer equal amounts of time scrubbing floors for every hour we'll be using the facilities.

Doesn't seem right. Vandercooks are FROM Chicago, right? Wouldn't you think there'd be some crazy Vandy underground happening....ie, hunchbacks with torn shirts working underground on handsetting and publishing pamphlets on how to do strange things...occasional poetry....etc...

Everything seems to move slow here.

I've softened like a fine French cheese.

Not to be confused with Poetry (Chicago). We've been to three poetry readings in three nights. Monday was the Red Rover Series in a crazy warehouse space in Humboldt Park...or maybe west of there? Still getting the whole neighborhood chalk marks solidified in my imagination. Tuesday was Series A at the Hyde Park Art Center, a collaborative project. And last night was a series at Danny's. The space was pretty amazing last night. All the right things for a reading. Booze, but not many people there drinking who weren't there for the reading. No smoking or talking during the reading....which was nice for us deaf non-smokers. Nice dark weird space.

I didn't buy any books at any of the readings. We are really broke and having a party this Saturday. So if you're in Chicago and we haven't invited you, send us an email and we'll give you the scoop.

Don't go to the hospital if you don't have insurance. I think it's cheaper to die. The problem isn't so much how much debt you enter, but to how many different sources. The medical industry is a Post-Modern mafia. Everyone's getting paid off. And it's mostly full of those types that you never really liked in school. I think I'm anti-doctor. Pro-sickness.

I finished a first draft of the crazy Frankenstein erasure project yesterday, a little over one year into working on it. Now I don't know what to do. Not sure how I want to think about it from here. I think I'm going to begin doing paintings or visual works of some kind that work with this project and then start to type this thing once I've gotten into that a bit...

Have been meaning to write about Jennifer's new chapbook, but haven't had the focus lately with all the Chicagoness. Also, would like to plug Boom Boom Sakkis's new chapbook. Though I'd imagine if you're reading this you probably read his blog. No? It's one of those links to the left under Both Both or Boom Boom or something like that.

Been getting into the Schwartz lately.

We don't listen to music anymore now that we don't have a car.

Still no letterpress places popping out to us. There are places, but expensive places, places that we could never really afford...