David Parker Musical Guest at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 27

 

David Parker, solo jazz piano, will be the musical guest at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 27.

Featured readers will be Sean Arnold, Jim McGowin and Brett Underwood.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

David Parker says:

I was born 1959, the same year Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), and John Coltrane Plays the Blues were recorded, Ornette Coleman arrived in NYC that year as well. Improvising on the piano as early as 5 or 6, with 2 or 3 years of classical lessons around 8th grade. In my high school years, I took extremely valuable music theory classes at St. Louis University High and I also studied composition with Michael F. Hunt.

Taught myself jazz in the years after high school, played cocktail piano at Duff’s for a few years (’79, ’80, 81). Informal studies with poet Shirley LeFlore. Workshop in Woodstock with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny.

Since around “81, I did many concerts and gigs with trumpeter/poet Floyd LeFlore (one of the founding members of Black Artist Group). Studied with Anthony Braxton at Mills College (Oakland, California) in 1990.

In the early ‘90s, I played and studied with Joe Charles (master drummer, teacher and mystic) and Jimmy Sharrod (saxophonist, composer). My record label (Vid Recordings) has released 10 albums over the years.

Jim McGowin Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 27

Jim McGowin will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 27.

Other featured readers will be Sean Arnold and Brett Underwood.

Musical guest: David Parker, solo jazz piano.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Jim McGowin tries to write and paint and take pictures when he isn't at his day job. He is particularly fond of the fusion of art and beer, and has thus read at locations such as Duffs (Chance Operations), Dressel's (Poems, Prose, and Pints), Sandrina's, Atomic Cowboy, and quite possibly some other places he forgot about. He also read on KDHX FM 88.1 once, which he thinks is pretty cool. One of these days he plans on organizing his poems into a book of some sort and giving copies away, because probably no one will want to pay money for one.

something... 2/12

an unintended summer day
an unencumbered florid display
of rationale

an approach, like a roach,
cautious and bearing
gifts of antenna rubbings

the thought bubbles
     twisting

like partially deflated balloons
hanging from a mailbox
with a sign
announcing a party
that has already passed

loose thoughts for a rational man
wouldn't you say?
or maybe you wouldn't

seeing as how we have
already started our
trajectory to tragedy

the tragedy of gas giants

close
but never to be

     a star

-- Jim McGowin

Brett Underwood Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 27

Brett Underwood will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 27.

Other featured readers will be Sean Arnold and Jim McGowin.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Musical guest: David Parker, solo jazz piano.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Brett Lars Underwood is a bartending gadabout who writes, promotes and produces happenings and mishaps in St. Louis, Missouri. He's quicker with the stink eye than verbal reprimands and favors the brushback pitch over preemptive warfare. He has the wingspan of an albatross and would prefer cash.

Man's Crisis of Identity

A)
Button the lip but for a daft witticism
disinfecting citified minivan stories
stewed in knotted midsection oven
mittens telling the ancient news networks
with finger signals that fry the nothings and
insist incidents jumped the fence
dense but the dang boss (trafficker of snores)
in the picture was gone dripped off the smile
of the moneymaking pep in the step, fuck the
criticism splatter jism
amidst nomads and their lawn furniture
sin and wetted with snorts from a
sweaty bottle of brown glass flew
over a confirmed tiny sister sitter
on the facelessness of the worker
who poured the gravity of labor and Santa
gave his lumbago to the slelves
yep—slave elves---
not to mention tiny sirs and philanthropic
yuppies gifting guppies to a shark.

B)
Social lacing never quite hinders unseen
in the hump fields of the nevermind.
The stripping of hazy ids that couldn’t
begin to lend abstraction to the expected
bocce ball precedent pretending when
that ditzy sixball’s scent drips on a coerced ditz.
Or maybe the next hit spy rallying for the
invite of a possibility that the Moondaig to drizzle
Mussolini sugarnecktard on the rim of your grinchole low
the cloud working a lunch shift on Wednesday.
Weep easy. Weep long. Wipe the drips from your gentle smirk.
Loosen the reins of your worksteady belch, ye
clodhoppers, ye Gophermenz.
Then, there came at last,
“Old crayon, you grizzle”, from near
the space needle of no syringe.
At the end of the day, his back
aches and she still smells like onions
muttering gravely into the whiskey
and half drunk ales.
Misery in the tea asks, “Why, mystery?”
at the rust in his socks.

C)
Ice Cream, a time void forcing you,
willing you to believe that you're an angel
to let that pouty dictator melt over the cone
to your cunning fingers of bliss that hold the
magic…oh! The magic!
The magic to render that mourning skeleton
into a man who no longer regrets having
butchered his mother’s tongue... or letting you slip
Cheerios into his guitar hole.

-- Brett Lars Underwood

Sean Arnold Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 27

Sean Arnold will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 27.

Other featured readers will be Brett Underwood and Jim McGowin.

Musical guest: David Parker, solo jazz piano.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Sean Arnold lives in St. Louis across the street from the Botanical Gardens in an apartment with his lovely girlfriend and their dog and cat.

He recently published his fourth chapbook “Soliloquy From a Freight Yard: An Open Fall Window”. This is the final season/book in his “Soliloquy From a Freight Yard” series based around the seasons and freight yard romanticisms.

Sean is taking a final attempt at his undergrad in creative writing at Webster University. He is the former host and co-organizer of Voices From the Underground and Casinotown poetry readings. His poetics have been set to folk music, electronic music, hip-hop, and everything in between.

OH! The Wheat!

all those dates
and pictures
and apps.
-- weird the way myths have always reinforced and combated the hyperreal.
all those screenshots and toocool avatars
like bob marley playing from a youtube page
on a tv hooked up to a bluray player and
pandora.

and a department store in wichita kansas
with kevin kidwell
or a steak n shake in ofallon beside the blockbuster
across from the gasmart
with my old friend who joined the marines.

--and so i think, all
the st louis anarchists
were out of touch
with folks who ride motorcycles.

somewhere the wolves are howling
in an unfettered wilderness. i know,
for i have been there.


ill text you soon homie,
--here we stand

like germs of wheat
blown by the wind.

-- Sean Arnold