Friday, February 22, 2013

Will Kyle Musical Guest at Duff's on Monday, February 25


Will Kyle once again provides the music at •chance operations• on Monday, February 25, at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid.

Featured readers will be Dwight Bitikofer, Eamonn Wall and Emily Grise.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

You can hear a version of "Mirror Zone" as performed by Will's band Swords & Horns by clicking here.

Mirror Zone

I'm afraid
You're afraid
Everyone's out there burning in their graves

Let us go
Let's go out
I'll find you out
Everyone we've told

I don't care
What we do
We will just slide away

And then we'll all be in the mirror zone

Oh, oh, the mirror zone

You will run
I will chase
I will burn
You will find every little piece of you ...

Down inside
In your heart
You will pull it up
And then we'll start
From the beginning of your ...

Life is hard
You don't care
But you will find your way
When you're older
I promise you

Oh, oh, the mirror zone

-- Will Kyle

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Dwight Bitikofer Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, February 25



Dwight Bitikofer will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, February 25. Eamonn Wall and Emily Grise will also be featured.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Musical guest: Will Kyle.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Poet Dwight Bitikofer is active in St. Louis poetry circles where he often organizes readings that include poetry and music. In some of these he performs with a “spiritual jazz” musician to create “po-jazz.” Bitikofer has been published in several journals and has been a winner of poetry awards. Bitikofer is a publisher of community newspapers in St. Louis and is a native of rural Kansas.
Notes Bent on the Avenue Or Apocoli

There -- in the 8500 block of this street
–- there he stands on the sidewalk, tenor
sax drawn to his pursed lips, baggy black suit,
golden leaves swept by wind, somehow
his fedora stays in place as notes blow
through my open windows
–- makes me smile.

Here –- in the 8600 block of this avenue
she sits on a tall stool teetering
on the curb, her silver flute peels
a melody from below her blue scarf,
straight brown hair fanned
by merry breezes that carry her breath
from her lips into my car driving by
–- makes me almost want to cry.

Now I drive the 8700 block this autumn
afternoon, sun in the paling blue
of October and I see kneeling
the old man in faded green cap
grasping a banged-up blues guitar
strumming as if this were the last day
of the universe –- two chords make it
to my window and I grasp at hope.

Eighty-eight hundred block of this street
and there stands a proud, young man
whose gaze I remember. He puffs
his face, purses his lips and blows
life itself into the black stem of a clarinet,
fingers the silver valves. Years before
his conception I knew his mother,
and his grandfather and his uncle.
I see them all when he plays.
I gather his strength as he blows me by.
We are connected –- does he even know?

Eight-nine hundred on the avenue and yes,
there he is, the drummer, sun-tanned hands,
long fingers on the jimbay making a rain
of maple leaves, shaking down red heartbeats
of memory while sap slides and chlorophyll
withdraws, clearing windows on the street,
drumbeats talk to wind, drummer’s eyes
half closed, young face, old soul reaching in
and finding wisdom his mind can’t know
the beating heart held in his hands
reaches out, touches me as I drive by.

Nine-thousand block of this street now that curves
by the railroad crossing, there she stands, stout,
firm brown face lined with experience,
mouth crinkled at the corners by little joys
and ironies, where now she holds a silver
alto saxophone and blows a stream of unnamed
something at once mournful, joyful, as lights flash
and a train pounds by, a song evocative of words
not yet written, notes not yet played and I know
I still have miles to go and she will lead me.

This town, this sound, these turning leaves
through my open windows, imagining
on the breezes of a warm autumn afternoon
live performances blown outside
the jazz station on my radio.

-- Dwight Bitikofer

Eamonn Wall Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, February 25


Eamonn Wall will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, February 25. Dwight Bitikofer and Emily Grise will also be featured.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Musical guest: Will Kyle.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Eamonn Wall, a native of Ireland, has lived in the USA since 1982. His poetry and prose have been widely published and anthologized in Ireland and the USA. His most recent poetry collections are Sailing Lake Mareotis (2011) and A Tour of Your Country (2008), both from Salmon Poetry/Dufour Editions. His prose books are Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame, 2011) and From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills (Wisconsin, 2000). Eamonn Wall is Smurfit-Stone Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where he teaches courses in Irish and British Literature and directs the Irish Studies program.

The Found World
after Robin Robertson

(1)
We walked there once, late afternoon,
listening out for ancestors, timber wolves,
the heft and stroke of evergreens high above
the road in Carrigdoon. As I recall it now,
the red scarf about your neck was loosely tied,
bandana style, your boots were as scuffed
and dry as the old leaves you pushed into
the sheltered cracks along the roadway:
we were following songlines to Lough
Bloom. I imagined or remembered
that you held my hand and I understood
that it was to you alone, among the two of us,
that the great gift had been offered: first,
among your father’s elderberries, and, later,
on a walk through the great oak woods
an hour’s journey from your childhood
home where you heard the great hinges
among the high oaks hollow out a fugue.
Who were we that late afternoon in Sligo:
son and mother, husband and wife, a boy
being led through night and day by a light-
skinned blue-scarfed lady? It was as if
in childhood that a book had been passed
into your hands. You opened that book,
you quickly broke its code. I, on the other
hand, had been raised among believers
to kick out blindly all spring at bluebells
and communists, to slash at tree bark
with a heavy hatchet stolen from
a neighbour’s shed. I had no book. It was
not allowed. From a pulpit in the great
cathedral in my town, a clergyman,
gray and solid, paraphrased. I had been
trained to praise the heavens, hate all
that was natural to the world. The heart,
they reminded me, was a neutral zone.
As we walked, that afternoon under
Carrigdoon, you pointed out names
of what comprised this space, and these
I quickly memorized. At times, as we
walked, I clutched more firmly to your
hand. Then, as though some cherry picker
had raised me upward, I kissed the crows’
feet near your eyes. Your voice mesmerized
me. We walked on along a country road.

(2)
Save for map, crucifix and sacred heart,
our schoolroom walls stood naked.
In those forbidding rooms, we learned
of natural science that our world had
been formed by miracle that was fullaccounted
in a book of truths we were
not allowed to read. As we walked
together on the paths below Carrigdoon
that afternoon, I repeated after you:
lady’s bedstraw, fairy foxglove, salmonberry,
meadow buttercup and royal fern.
As a schoolboy, I thought it a shameful
thing that my father could tell the songs
of birds and wished him silent when he
began to cite their names: first, in Irish;
then, reluctantly, in English, the language
more distant from his heart. I wanted
to say to you that had the schoolroom’s
walls been decorated with scenes
from nature and schoolboys’ art, I might
have accepted then the beauty of our
world and loved my father a little more.
I did not know that goat’s-beard and field
forget-me-not were the wheelbarrows
on which our world depended, that history
was a patriot game written on the sands.

(3)
In Sligo, while you pulled me along
with your gentle teacher’s measure,
I picked in a quiet manner among
an abundance of flowers and greens,
each placed in the left breast pocket
of my yellow North Face shirt. When
I got home, I lined my collection up
in a child’s copy book, then sought
each Christian name out on the internet.

(4)
We left the road that ran parallel
to the lake and turned down a bohreen
whose ditches were all wildly overgrown,
whose stony centre shot up tufts of grass
and dried moss. We were walking
through the heart of deepest fairyland.
You liked to listen and I fell quiet too
for I thought to learn what listening was.
The sun retained its summer heat
though at times, when it clouded, a dark
hand reached across the little road. Step
by step we walked the wind rose, the wind
as quickly died way. I remember
a tractor’s roar carried across the lake
like a booming cannon, clouds forming
above Carrigdoon. Walking, I learned
to fear no longer, all about us,
the darkness that shapes this world.
Absorbing, filtering, you walked to where
the road divided another time. There,
I was led inland by my returned father
and away from you. He had a list
for me, birds in Irish, and each word
I repeated after him: seabhac mara,
fuiseóg, préachán dubh, géis, gabhlán
gaoithe, caislín dearg. Good man,
he said, now I’ll lead you home. The path
split again, narrowed, ended at a gate
and stile. We crossed a field, mounted
another stile, entered a stony yard. Ahead,
I saw that you were seated on a wooden
form, drinking coffee. My father said,
your children are inside. Before releasing
my hand, to send me forward, he said:
a decade ago, you looked across this lake,
then back toward land, high woodland
overhead in Carrigdoon. You found in pine
needles the spot to hide your oar. Father,
I replied, though I believe you, I have
no memory of this. Son, you must stay
here. Learn the root names of this world
you share. Test against nature’s truer ring,
grunts of old that hollow ring of wisdom.
But don’t conceal yourself: you must
walk laneways to join those gathered
at each noisy crossroad: hear the roar
of the accordion, the pitch of an angel’s
voice. Help us recover what has been lost,
help the young teacher fresh from training
college bluetack posters to her schoolroom
wall. My father, as is now his wont, was
one moment speaking, the next quite
vanished into air. She looked up shielding
her eyes from the sun as I approached her
wooden chair. Here, she said. We’re here.

-- Eamonn Wall

Emily Grise Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, February 25


Emily Grise will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, February 25. Dwight Bitikofer and Eamonn Wall will also be featured.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Musical guest: Will Kyle.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Emily Grise earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2012. Recently, her work has appeared in New Delta Review, the Los Angeles Review, Architrave, and other publications. Her poem "Nerves" was named a finalist for Yemassee's 2012 Pocataligo Poetry Prize. She currently works in the College of Arts & Sciences at Webster University, and as Poetry Editor for WomenArts Quarterly Journal.

Broadside printed by Firecracker Press.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Dwight Bitikofer at January Open-Mic



Dwight Bitikofer was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Dwight will be a featured readers along with Emily Grise and Eamonn Wall.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Jim McGowin at January Open-Mic





Jim McGowin was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise, Eamonn Wall, and Dwight Bitikofer.


Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Christy Callahan at January Open-Mic



Christy Callahan was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise, Eamonn Wall, and Dwight Bitikofer.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Will Kyle at January Open-Mic



Will Kyle was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise, Eamonn Wall, and Dwight Bitikofer.


Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Emily Grise at January Open-Mic



Emily Grise was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Aaron Williams at January Open-Mic



Aaron Williams was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Douglis Beck at January Open-Mic



Douglis Beck was one of seven readers to step up to the open-mic at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Stef Russell Featured Reader in January



Stef Russell was one of three featured readers at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Eric W. Schramm at January Reading


Eric W. Schramm was one of three featured readers at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Raphael Maurice at January Reading at Duff's


Raphael Maurice was one of three featured readers at the January •chance operations• at Duff's reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, February 25.

Featured readers will be Emily Grise and two other readers to be determined.

Doors at 7:30 p.m.; admission $3.00.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.