Thanks to those who came out last night to my reading at the Art Bar. I had fun, and it was nice to go out into the world like a poet, nice to chat with Stephen and John and Sam and Becca, although Sam accused me of being a librarian and censoring the small blue. the small blue was not censored last night, insofar as it was first "censored" by my editor who insisted that I cover all that lovely blank space throughout the book with black smudges shaped like words, lest people think that we made a mistake. My readings of the text are meant to return it to a state more resembling the original, which is why I say that there is no number 63 (or whatever) when people ask me to read them.
The Art Bar is endearing. Never am I ever quite surrounded by so much seriousness when it comes to poetry. It's endearing. I love it. There is nothing like being validated for being something you hope no one will ever defined you as. Life is strange that way -- the seriousness of it all, when it is all so fleeting, so uncompromising. And yet, it happens, it has consequence. I have been thinking about classification for a long time now, at least a few months (can we classify that as a long time?) and I wonder often at what it means to "be" something. What metaphors are at our disposal to explain how things "are"? No wonder I'm so uncomfortable describing myself as something, or classifying myself in relation to everything else in the world. To define oneself is to let them ascribe. It gives them power.
Anyway, for those who weren't at the Art Bar last night, or perhaps didn't even know about it, I'm reading again on Friday at the IV Lounge. For now I must return to my paper on Foucault, discourse, truth, knowledge, identity and power. And surveillance. Watch out!
