At the Rendezvous last night, I went to the CD-release party for Daniel Hales and the Frost Heaves.Hales had invited everybody from the Po Group to write a poem in response to one of the songs on the album. Neither L. nor I had done this, but he invited us to read poems anyway, by people who did write poems, but weren't able to show for the event. ( Read more... )

My friend Grinwis has a poem this month at Verse Daily. It's called "My Flimsy Crew."

So, Adam and I went down the Millers River, from Athol to Orange, on Saturday. It's a six mile paddle. (Here's a Google map of the run.) It took us around an hour, but we weren't really timing from exactly when we put in to when we took out. The other paddlers we saw were all serious racers, training for the River Rat. There was one guy paddling ( Read more... )

So I went to Cambridge last night to see a show. The Throwing Muses at the Middle East. With 50 Foot Wave and the
Screaming Females. Went with my old college roommate, M. Good times.

I don't remember all of the songs, but they definitely played these: "Shimmer," "Pearl," "Limbo," and "Bright Yellow Gun." It seems like Kristin Hersh, the lead ( Read more... )

My friend Jeff has been teaching English in Turkey for the past year or so. He's written a couple of articles for Time Out Istanbul, about turku bars (turku is Turkish folk music) and a neighborhood in Istanbul called Kadikoy.

On Wednesday, L.'s school was cancelled due to an ice storm. We had stayed over in Springfield, after she had her musician's rehearsal for the Boar's Head. I was supposed to pick friends up at the airport on Tuesday evening, but it turned out that their flight was cancelled, so I ended up picking them up on Wednesday instead ( Read more... )

Fellow poet Kristin Bock talks to the Mass Cultural Council blog Artsake about her new book, Cloisters. In it, the interview mentions the story I wrote last year for The Recorder about Bock, Chris Janke and Liz Hughey.

The Rendezvous bar in Turners Falls cleaned up at this year's Valley Advocate "Best of" reader's poll. This is great, because:

• The Voo is owned by a bunch of friends of mine.
  
• Maybe it means they are successfully re-branding Turners Falls into the much hipper "tfma," at least a little. (Can you gentrify a neighborhood just a little?)
  
• I didn't have to ( Read more... )

Saw the Econoline Kings last night at the Rendezvous. They're my pal Hef's new band. Lots of fun. They covered Carl Perkins and Tom Waits, did some originals, and closed with a raucus version of the Louvin Brothers' "Great Atomic Power." It was much fun ( Read more... )

Bill Waltz's poem "Future Structures" was the featured poem on Poetry Daily yesterday. It reminded me of our visit to Minneapolis a few years ago and sitting upstairs in Bill & Brett's two family, listening to a Caruso album ( Read more... )