Reading Local Seattle

{ Kevin Sampsell, 2/12, 7 p.m., Elliott Bay Book Company}

From Kennewick, and then Spokane, and then for the last long while Portland, Kevin Sampsell will read from the expanded reissue of his experimental memoir, A Common Pornography. The original book was a sixty page slip of a book published by Sampsell’s own small press, the great zine-style Future Tense Press that has continually issued not only Sampsell’s writing but also booklets from the likes of Claudia Smith, Gary Lutz, and Elizabeth Ellen. The 0riginal Pornography walks a tight line between not saying enough and yet saying just the right amount. Each section is probably under 500 words. If you have ever spent anytime in the central part of Washington State with its endless sky, barren hills alternating with lush irrigated fields, and perpetual dust, Sampsell’s book captures this landscape in glancing sentences and rich implications. I’ve used one of section, “Laynee,” several times in writing workshops for “short short” fiction. Every time I’ve used this little piece it generated interest: although as readers they understand it and feel that it is whole, as writers they wonder, “how can I get away with this?” The tiny story deals with when Sampsell’s father became infatuated and very friendly with a ten-year old girl.

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[ Hill Poems: A Collection of Capitol Hill Poetry | Jacob Brooke Press ]

{ Hill }

All of the collected poems in this slender anthology are by local poets and take as their topic the Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Or as Poets West put it in a Metblog entry from last April, this collection is “about Capitol Hill’s degradation into a yuppie hell and the conversion of apartments to condos and the effect on the community”. Even as a fairly late transplant to the Seattle area I can sympathize with this sentiment. My own neighborhood of Ballard, while admittedly historically more staid than Capitol Hill, has suffered a similar fate over the last eight years. Single-family homes have been sold, torn down, and replaced by cookie-cutter town homes and condos. I hardly recognize my own street anymore.

I like the physical feel of this collection. It contains black and white photos of the Capitol Hill area (Dick’s Drive-In, Broadway Rite Aid, night-lit streets slick with rain) alongside the poetry. The overall effect is to bring to mind a half-mad guerrilla poet xeroxing pages of poems to hand out on the street at 2 a.m., and this has always secretly been my (perhaps overly-romanticized) impression of Capitol Hill.

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The seventh annual Jeanne Lohmann Prize, a poetry contest open to Washington residents has a postmarked deadline of January 31, 2010. Three winners will each receive $200.

Rules on the next page.

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{ But I trusted you. I did. }

[ But I Trusted You And Other True Cases: Ann Rule's Crime Files Vol. 14 | Ann Rule | Pocket | $7.99 ]

Is the blood beginning to run thin in Seattle author Ann Rule’s “Crime Files” series?

Or is “But I Trusted You”, the fourteenth and latest volume in the Queen Of True Crime’s bargain-priced paperback line, merely an unfortunate departure from Rule’s normally reliable reporting and storytelling? The title story, with its skimpy chronology of events, its limited insights into the couple whose marriage ended in murder, and its careless errors of fact and supposition, raises both questions.

As a Rule fan and follower I sincerely hope the latter is true—that “But I Trusted You” is a pothole on a road with many miles still left on it. Because, even though she’s now in her seventies and has written for four decades, it’s hard to imagine that this mighty and self-made force of Northwest nonfiction might be slowing down.

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Local Poet and Bus Driver Michael Spence reads at King’s Books Friday, January 8th.

{ Michael Spence, 01/8, King's Books }

Nationally acclaimed for his profound poetry and locally appreciated as a King County Metro Transit bus driver, Michael Spence will be reading his work at King’s Bookstore (218 St. Helens Ave, Tacoma) on Friday, January 8 at 7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. There is an open mic to follow Spence, so poets are encouraged to come read a poem or two.

Michael Spence earned his B.A. in English from the University of Washington. Upon graduation he served for four years as a naval officer aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. Shortly afterward Michael began working locally as a Metro bus driver. He has been driving public-transit buses in the Seattle area for the past twenty-five years.

When asked how a Pacific Northwest poet can ‘Keep Clam’ as they endure Seattle’s driving rain by bus or navigate tons of transit steel and sets of wheels through ever-present urban gridlock, Spence offers his riders Zen-like patience and clever metaphor:

As for having nerves of steel to drive a bus, it seems in my case at least that rhinoceros hide is more of a prerequisite—I try to ignore a fair amount of malarkey in order to concentrate on driving safely”,  said Spence. “One arguably good thing about the job is that it gives me material for writing poems. In fact, I’ve had several bus-driving poems published, and I had another one accepted at the beginning of this month by The New Criterion.

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by Robert Mittenthal

The Sophist– Charles Bernstein

Nothing can contain the empty stare that ricochets
haphazardly against any purpose.
– from “The Simply”

{ Charles Bernstein, 1/7, Henry Art Gallery }

Both comedic and political, Charles Bernstein’s work embraces a slapstick economy of words that questions the very things writers hold most dear. I’ve always thought that the title of his book The Sophist effectively names the provocative place in which he finds himself. Like the sophists he is an educator who hopes to address all citizens, not just those citizens of the so-called poetry world. Like the sophists it’s speaking and thinking well that matters. There is no universal (or consistent) truth in his poetics. Of course this sort of position opens him to endless attacks.

Charley Altieri, who lived in Seattle for a long time teaching at UW, once referred to Bernstein’s work as an “errant singularity”. In a way that sounds like a beautiful compliment, but Altieri meant that Bernstein’s poetry would prove unteachable, and thus was limited.

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