Reading Local Seattle

{ The Dragonfly, UW Bookstore, 3/3, 7 p.m. }

Giuseppe Leporace and Deoborah Woodard have just released a long in the works translation of the Italian poet of Amelia Rosselli, The Dragonfly: Selected Poems, 1953-1981 (Chelsea Editions 2009). They’ll read at the UW Bookstore, University Branch, at 7 pm. Woodard and Guisseppe have been working on the translation since 1995 and the book is packed with what Lucia Re describes as Rosselli’s “tragic yet oddly consolatory voice is comparable only to that of poets such as Celan, Bachmann, Char, Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Plath.” Like the book, the reading will be in Italian and English.

A poem by Rosselli after the break:

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{ Gina Ochsner, Elliott Bay, 2/27 }

A note from Adrianne Harun (author of The King of Limbo): I just want to give a heads-up to anyone interested in a great reading by a fascinating writer. My friend, the ever-magical Gina Ochsner, will be reading at Elliott Bay Books on Saturday, February 27 at 2 pm. Her new book — her first novel after two gloriously original and rightfully praised story collections — is called The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight (and it’s already been longlisted for the Orange Prize).

It’s a wonder.

Go if you can — buy the book in any case. You won’t be sorry.

{ 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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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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