Thursday, July 29th: Poetry Flash presents Stefanie Marlis & Carol Moldaw

Stefanie Marlis's latest book of poems is cloudlife. C.D. Wright calls it "Aphoristic, enigmatic, and startling. Part elegy for her father and the brisance of his twentieth century, part cautionary tale for this one. Once more Marlis converts an intimate history into a distinctive, austere expression." Among her other books of poems are Slow Joy, which won the 1989 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, rife, and fine, which was a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.  She has also authored the novel Love (K)not.

Carol Moldaw's new book of poems is So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems; "Out of acutely observed, deeply felt particulars the poems balance intimacy and objectivity in exact, lyric language." Author of four previous books of poetry, which are represented in the new book with a generous selection of new poetry, as well as a novel, Moldaw has received  a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer's Residency, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize.

Thursday, August 5th: Poetry Flash presents Love Over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems, featuring Ellery Akers, Ellen Bass, Chana Bloch, Gail Entrekin, Kathie Isaac-Luke & Ellaraine Lickie

Edited by Robin Chapma n and Jeri McCormick , this new anthology from Mayapple Press celebrates poems by women over sixty. Marilyn L. Taylor said of it, "in this era of steamy effusions about romance and passion, comes this show-stopping array of love poems--insightful, sophisticated, deeply erotic at times, often undeniably brilliant." Eleanor Wilner wrote of it, "In plain language and unashamed directness, these elder women poets, in lines alive with both remembrance and presence, like Barbara Crooker's couple in their hammock, "lie . . . caught between the mesh / of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up / in love, running out of time." And, knowing what they know, they still, like Lucille Clifton welcoming a granddaughter into a violent world, can say: "and I am consumed with love / for all of it."

Tuesday, August 10th: Save the Gulf - A Benefit for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade The Louisiana Bucket Brigade is a 501(c)(3) environmental health and justice organization working with communities that neighbor the state's oil refineries and chemical plants. The EPA-approved "bucket" is a simple, community friendly tool that fenceline neighbors use to take air samples. We complement the community group by adding a level of technical expertise to their work. We provide this tool and training to community members to monitor and expose industrial pollution as it happens. We assist residents in their fight to reduce pollution and protect public health. We work with community groups to help them take air samples and achieve their goals, be it relocation away from a polluting facility, reduced pollution, or a moratorium on facility expansions. The more evidence the communities gather, the more power they have to attain their goals. Taking air samples is a powerful experience for community members who are used to being ignored, overlooked, and disrespected by corporations and government. Dorothy Jenkins, President of Concerned Citizens of New Sarpy, used to call the refinery to complain about the odors. A low ranking operator would tell her not to worry, that the black plume of smoke that billowed for hours near her home was not harmful. Now Mrs. Jenkins has a bucket. When refinery managers and government regulators tell her that there is nothing to worry about, she answers, "Why, then, was there a benzene reading of 14 in my air sample, a reading that violates the state standards?" The bucket gives community members power to hold institutions accountable to provide a safe and healthy environment.

Oil Crisis Spill Map This map visualizes reports of the effects of the BP oil spill submitted via text message,  email, twitter and the web. Reports of oil sightings, affected animals, odors, health  effects and human factor impacts made by the eyewitnesses and the media populate  points on a this public, interactive, web based map. We hope that information this will be  used to provide data about the impacts of the spill in real time as well as document the  story of those that witness it.  Why does this map matter?  This map utilizes public testimony to visualize the impact of the BP oil spill over time  and geography. By using information that comes from participants we will be able to  track, document and make public the effects of the BP oil spill. By making all  information public we hope to facilitate transparency, accountability and effectiveness in  the oil spill response and clean up.

Thursday, August 12th: Poetry Flash presents Julie Sheehan & Robert Thomas

Julie Sheehan's newest is Bar Book, Poems and Otherwise, which Molly Peacock praises as "employing the metaphor-rich names and recipes of cocktails, an exuberant third collection from a 'dancer of language.'" Her first book won the Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University, and her second, Orient Point, won the 2005 Barnard Women Poets Prize.

Robert Thomas's latest book of poems is Dragging the Lake, about which Brendan Galvin says, "He can be lyrically contemporary, or speak in extended narratives through the personae of Leos Janácek, Jakob Boehme, and Jaqueline du Pré. Dragging the Lake is richly textured, various, deeply satisfying, and snazzy." His first book, Door to Door, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize, Fordham University.

Tuesday, August 17th: The A Tonalist

Scheduled readers for the event:

Brent Cunningham, Andrew Joron, Alli Warren, Standard Schaefer, Sara Larsen, Scott Inguito, Rob Halpern, Laura Moriarty and Yedda Morrison.

Thursday, September 23rd: Poetry Flash presents Bob Hicok and the Stegner Fellows: Matthew Siegel, Keetje Kuipers & Sara Michas-Martin

Bob Hicok's new book of poems, his sixth, is Words for Empty and Words for Full. Recent books include This Clumsy Living and Insomnia Diary. He is one of the nation's more celebrated poets; among his honors a Guggenheim Fellowship and two from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Prize, four Pushcarts, and more. He will be reading with three poets who are all past or present Wallace Stegner Fellows in poetry at Stanford University.

Keetje Kuipers' first book of poems, Beautiful in the Mouth, won the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published last March.

Sara Michas-Martin was a Stegner fellow and a Jones lecturer at Stanford; her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

Matthew Siegel is a current Stegner fellow, his poetry has appeared in Poetry Daily, Diagram and elsewhere.

Tuesday, October 5th: Three Irish Poets

Patrick Cotter, Gerry Murphy, and Leanne O'Sullivan.

Thursday, October 14th: Poetry Flash presents Timothy Donnelly & Barbara Claire Freeman

Timothy Donnelly' s new book of poems is The Cloud Corporation. Allen Grossman says, "The poems of Timothy Donnelly astonish by their inventive intelligence . . . we learn that self-knowledge can be adequate to knowledge of the world, in all its violence and complexity." His first book of poems was Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenzeit. His work has been translated into German and Italian and anthologized in 100 Poems by Younger American Poets, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for Boston Review.

Barbara Claire Freeman' s first book of poems is Incivilities. Judith Butler calls it "an extraordinary collection of poems. They range in form and style, but they participate in an austerity, a political edge, and what one poem calls 'an abbreviated violence.' Beautifully crafted, tight, with no word to spare, these poems interrogate the region of what is left in the aftermath of devastated land and life." A literary critic and Professor of Literature, she has recently turned her full attention to writing poetry. Author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction, among other works of criticism and theory, Freeman's honors include a 2008 Discovery/ Boston Review Poetry Award and the 2007 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College.

Thursday, October 21st: Joel Selvin

Drawn from forty years of reporting in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. Smart Ass from Parthenon Books will for the first time collect the work of the award-winning music journalist and best-selling author of Summer of Love and other books, Joel Selvin.

From the Redding ranch of country maverick Merle Haggard to the humble Hawthorne beginnings of the Beach Boys in South Central Los Angeles, Selvin tracked rock and roll lore throughout the state for the Chronicle since 1970. "Smart Ass" brings together his finest reporting on California rock and roll - a collection of feature articles ranging in subjects from Phil Spector to Tom Waits, Glen Campbell to CSN&Y, the Grateful Dead to the Beach Boys - all peppered with his trademark insights and acerbic asides.
Highlights include Selvin's historic interview with Augustus Owsley Stanley; the award-winning series on the Bill Graham probate case; the controversial account of the life and death of Sheryl Crow boyfriend and mentor Kevin Gilbert; his frightening chronicle of the making of "There's a Riot Goin' On" by Sly and the Family Stone that first appeared on the cover of England's Mojo magazine.

Selvin specialized in coverage of the Grateful Dead and "Smart Ass" features a full selection of his greatest hits - from behind-the-scenes at studio sessions for "Terrapin Station" with producer Keith Olsen to his chilling tale of despair and anguish that led to the suicide of Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick. He also covered, almost as extensively, the Beach Boys and his classic interview with Dennis Wilson about Charles Manson is included. His interviews with John Fogerty earned Selvin a subpoena in the lawsuit by Fantasy Records founder Saul Zaentz and his liner notes to Creedence Clearwater reissues won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award.

Ironically, in March 2009, shortly after laying the initial groundwork for "Smart Ass," Selvin left his staff position with The Chronicle, part of drastic staff reductions by the failing newspaper. With arts coverage in newspapers slashed and rock music producing fewer and fewer giants, columnist Selvin clearly operated during a golden era of music journalism. His epic biography of the little known rhythm and blues songwriter Bert Berns will be published next year and he is currently co-writing the Sammy Hagar autobiography for Harper Collins.

For much of the last 4 decades Joel Selvin has been one of the most revered (and feared) music journalists and critics in North America. His insights and purity of artistic standards put him in a class by himself. But Joel was unique in a way that set him aside from all other journalists. He had an innate ability to actually insert himself into the lives of many of his subjects -- counseling, advising and actually playing a pivotal role in the success of many legends. Incredibly, he played this role while maintaining his objectivity in evaluating the work of the people he befriended, and he had no hesitation in lambasting these artists when he didn't like what he saw and heard. The articles in "Smartass" are an invaluable collection that is a rare chronicle of modern pop culture. -- Joan Jett

For more Blurbs, click here...

Wednesday, October 27th: Julie Lindlow, author of Left in the Dark

Julie Lindlow is a writer and editor. She earned an MA in English Literature with an emphasis in cultural theory from San Francisco State University, and worked for ten years in environmental and cultural preservation at the Foundation for Deep Ecology, International Forum on Globalization, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Most importantly, she spent her youth slinging popcorn and candy at the Castro Theatre, where her relationship with San Francisco's vibrant film exhibition community began.

About the book...

Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres celebrates twentieth century movie theatres and moviegoing through lush full-color fine art photographs, and personal essays that offer both scholarly and literary appeal. R.A. McBride's vivid portraits of San Francisco movie theatres, including the Castro, New Mission, and Balboa to name a few, illuminate the role of the movie house as a great social nexus. McBride has gained rare access to the interiors of closed theatres, picturing them empty and allowing the grandeur of the architecture to take center stage. Casting the theatres as characters within the city's cultural landscape, scholars and film exhibitors such as Rebecca Solnit, Eddie Muller, Chi-hui Yang, and Gary Meyer, among others, uncover a spectacular variety of forgotten or never-before revealed histories. As society retreats from public life into the anonymity of multiplexes and personal entertainment technologies our moviegoing heritage becomes an ever more significant and inspiring source of ideas for new communal cinematic experiences. San Francisco is particularly fortunate to be one of the world's most vital moviegoing cities and to still have so many of its historic movie theatres. By drawing a continuum from past to present, Left in the Dark offers hope that even as these gorgeous historic theatres crumble, the spirit of Cinema thrives.