PC & PILOT SITTING IN A TREE....

Pilot Books, a wonderful small press bookshop in Seattle, tossed a little love our way. Pilot picked up a few copies of Poor Claudia No. 2, as well as Zachary Schomburg's LITTLE BLIND THING, and the folks there liked our books so much they crowed about them on the Pilot Books Blog! Thanks, we like you back. Also, in honor of Small Press month Pilot is hosting a mind-bogglingly awesome series of readings and workshops in Seattle. If you're going to be round those parts any time this month make sure to check out the store.

VERY VERY VERY VERY

So, you might have heard that on Wednesday the tenth of February we hosted a night of music, art & literature at Holocene. You might have heard correctly. VERY NICE NIGHT was very nice indeed, and included the premier of Zachary Schomburg's debut collection of film-poems entitled LITTLE BLIND THING. The night was a reading/ installation/ party/ concert and we at PC enjoyed it oh so very much. We hope you enjoyed it, too.

The photos above are courtesy of Mr. Schomburg, who besides being a stellar poet is something of a whiz behind both a still and moving-picture camera.

Attention! We are still accepting submissions for the forthcoming third issue of POOR CLAUDIA. Please send electronic copies of your poetry, prose, essays, or art to editors@poorclaudia.com!

FILMS + POEMS

Poor Claudia is delighted to announce the release of Zachary Schomburg's LITTLE BLIND THING, a collection of twelve film-poems on DVD. Those of you who are interested in catching a sneak peek of Zach's new work should plan to stop by Holocene this Wednesday for PC's VERY NICE NIGHT, an evening of all things nice (re: books, films, art, music, dancing, drinking, conversation, &c). Not only will a few of the films from LITTLE BLIND THING be on display throughout the evening, but Zach will take the stage to read some new work. And, of course, we will be selling LBT for a very reasonable sum of ten American dollars. If you absolutely cannot wait, or if you cannot make it to Oregon by Wednesday, then you can pick up your copy of LITTLE BLIND THING on our interweb site.

See you there!

IDOL IDYLL #2: JOAN DIDION

Joan Didion is our perfect writer. Brash, brave, reckless, an itinerant intellectual who took her writing seriously enough to call it a "craft". No drinks during the drafting but a tall scotch before revision. Forget Tom Wolfe, Didion was the greatest American essayist of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Here is a short video of JD accepting the NBF's lifetime achievement award in 2007.

Absolutely essential reading:
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
THE WHITE ALBUM
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS
A BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
POLITICAL FICTIONS
WHERE I WAS FROM
THE LAS THING HE WANTED
or save yourself some dollars by buying WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE, seven volumes of JD's nonfiction as collected by the Everyman's Library

IN MEMORIAM

The original PC studio is no more! Many have clamored for proof of its existence and now that the premises have been razed we finally feel comfortable sharing the evidence.

RIP, good lady!

BOOKS ARE THINGS FOR PEOPLE

We like books. A lot. Here's what's on our nightstand this week.

Witold Gobrowicz's Bacacay: Okay, wow. So, did you know about this Gobrowicz cat, because we did not! An iconoclastic Pole who fled to Buenos Aires days before the outbreak of WWII, Gombrowicz's airy, bizzare anti-nationalist stories read like Kafka filtered through a fairy tale machine. They are quite breathtaking. Once you finish with Bacacay, get yourself a copy of Gombrowicz's first novel, Ferdydurke, about a middle-aged man who is kidnapped by his former school master and forced to undergo the humiliations of middle school a second time. It's available from NYRB with an introduction by Susan Sontag.

Sawako Nakayasu's Texture Notes

Macgregor Card's Duties of an English Foreign Secretary

Roberto Bolano's Monsieur Pain: If the folks at New Directions and Anagrama are to be believed, Bolano produced roughly six thousand original works in the last five years of his life. The fourth Bolano title to be released in English since the author's death in 2003, Monsieur Pain is another literary pyscho-thriller in the vein of Bolano's The Savage Detectives and 2666. The story concerns a stricken Cesar Vajello, hypnotists, occultists and an incurable case of hiccups.

John Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go There You Are: Don't ask....just...don't ask.

POOR CLAUDIA + HOLOCENE = VERY NICE

The good folks at Holocene have invited Poor Claudia to curate a night of music and art on Wednesday, February 10, as part of the club's once-monthly program, "My Favorite Things." The night will include music from Nolan Foster, Typhoon, Breakfast Mountain, Guantanamo Baywatch and DJs Sexy Cousin and Magic Impact, as well as the premier of Zachary Schomburg's new collection of poem-films entitled, LITTLE BLIND THING. Poor Claudia will of course be on hand to help the magic happen and to peddle Zachary's collection as a handsome DVD and booklet. Music! Poems! Films! Drinks! Come help us celebrate all of these very nice things. Tickets will be cheap (five or six bucks at the door) and Zachary's DVD will be worth every penny no matter what the price (although it too will be eminently affordable). Okay, so, see you there? Yes? Yes!

IDOL IDYLL #1: JOHN BERRYMAN

Click here to see excerpts from two 1967 interviews with PC-approved poet John Berryman. Following the publication of Berryman's first 77 DREAM SONGS, these clips from a BBC profile of the poet (a network television profile of a major cultural figure not associated with said network's own celebrity-driven media machine -- how quaint!) capture the poet at the apotheosis of his two great motive powers: Self-Regard & Alcohol. The recitations are really marvelous, as are Berryman's musings on literature (Stephen Crane: "Mediocre novelist; possibly the greatest short story writer who ever lived." Okay!) and literary celebrity ("Poets don't receive a lot of fan mail."). Enjoy.