- speaking of flarf, I gave a reading last night with major local flarfiste Mike Magee & 3 other poets, down at Tazza, courtesy of the gallant Mairead Byrne's monthly series. read some bits of Lanthanum. Mairead re-recited E. Alexander's inaugural poem, with blues quartet backup. Fun.

Fine time at the Tazza reading last night. Mairead Byrne has a gift for comic, satiric poetry - a good M.C., too. This old buzzard enjawed hisself, along with all them decorous lamb-like collegiate young RISD bohos. & I got to accompany (con harmonica) MB on her heartfelt classic Irish lyric entitled "Oatmeal".

(A late evening downtown. While I was doing my hijinks, Sarah noted there were several real bohos - the solitary homeless ones, consigned to neglect - walking by the club windows. On a (rare) mild winter night.)

Will be reading poetry tonight (briefly) at Tazza bar, in downtown Providence, with Mairead Byrne, Lisa Samuels & some RISD students. 10 pm. (Yes, I do emerge from den of hibernation now & then.) Also might be playing harmonica with guitarist Mark Milloff.

See Mairead Byrne's post of Jan. 3rd, & click on the Artaud line, for a funny video of her trials & tribulations in my place of work (the Rockefeller Library).

What is it with these people? What is it with me? Que pasa? Gabriel writes epic poem while in his car driving to see his daughter, here, in Rhode Island. Mairead makes videos of herself & daughter breaking into my library. I write poem inspired by graffiti on sidewalk near my home, drawn (unbeknownst to me) by their daughter - & send it (all unknowing) to Gabriel...

What's going on, Clio? Is Poetry trying to prison-break the Library???

nice poem today by Mairead Byrne, straight from little olde Providence

Went to get some linoleum tested for asbestos at a little lab over on Smith St. Heard some of that old old Providence accent (sort of fusion of Yankee/Irish) from a guy waiting at counter.

But Mairead can tell you more about Providence. A different one. Mairead is my local bloggin' alter ego. There's no Providence without Heaven, & vice versa.

you can get a pretty good image of Providence (& a very different one from mine) from Mairead. She hasn't lived here very long, but in a way, she's a native. She reminds me of the community organizers I used to work with, except she keeps odd notes & writes poems.

Emerged from my musty cave last night to attend reading downtown (at new spare restaurant-bar, Tazza) by visiting Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan. Funny, exuberant, bawdy, silly. Politics, art, sex, religion - all the serious stuff - are fodder for satire. Enjoy life, be free. Great singing (a complex aria set to some industrial engineering magazine?) by the startlingly pale Nada. Poe would have approved. High points for me were their version of the Book of Revelation (set to an antique novelty-items catalog), Gordon's take-off on Whitman (Song of My OwnSelf), Sullivan's long Kerouacky epistolary piece. Their performance style reminded me, oddly, of the atmosphere at the coffeehouse sketched in Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red.

The evening was hosted by two Mikes w/microphone (Gizzi & Magee). Mairead Byrne was there too. This is Providence, reporting.

I often go to Heaven. It's so nearby.

birthday commentary from Heaven (it's Mairead, on parade down the road from me).

Mairead Byrne's blog Heaven has been added to my list of links, which is hardly universal & rarely used by me. But I noticed over at the Buffalo poetics pen (where there's a "Keep Henry Out" sign) that she felt left out of the blogland link whirl. So there you are, Mairead. Merry Christmas, ho ho ho, from the highly-networked blog-Santa club.