John Most: Blog

Raymond Federman (1928-2009)

2009-10-14T19:23:29Z

from "list of what i do to by body everyday" by Raymond Federman in Call: Review #1

When I moved to New York, I thought nothing of trying to start a little magazine--in print. Little did I know that my only major distributor would go bankrupt. Little did I know that I wouldn’t make a very good editor. Nonetheless, in the three issues of Call: Review that I worked on, it was thrilling to see work go from sheets of paper to a bound journal, to know that a handful of people actually bought and read each issue. Raymond Federman, who died last week, had a poem [“list of what I do to my body everyday”] in that first issue of Call: Review. For me, Federman connected my contemporary existence with a time I would never see. A time in which Beckett and Stein walked down the street. I remember a conversation I had with Michel Deguy while I was in Switzerland—he wanted to know if I was friends with Raymond Federman or Kenneth Koch. These were the only two quote unquote American writers he brought up during that conversation. It’s easy to say that Federman never gained the American audience that he deserved. Next spring, Starcherone Books will publish a novelistic memoir by Federman, Shhh: A Story of Childhood, about his life prior to World War II.

an unfinished work

2009-09-19T20:56:38Z

an unfinished work

2009-09-19T20:53:19Z

an unfinished work

Michel Deguy in Rio de Janeiro

2009-09-19T20:14:42Z

Michel Deguy in Rio de Janeiro (2007)

Anne Waldman @ The Poetry Project

2009-09-19T19:45:08Z

Anne Waldman at The Poetry Project (New Year's Marathon 2009)

"Self-Portrait A" Scrap

2009-09-18T17:39:25Z

"Self-Portrait A" Scrap

Charles Olson in Action

2009-09-05T12:11:12Z

I Recently Read

2009-09-01T18:46:06Z

A Worldly Country by John Ashbery (Ecco, 2007)

Château Haut-Bages Libéral Pauillac (2003)

2009-08-27T19:12:32Z

Château Haut-Bages Libéral Pauillac (2003)

an unfinished work

2009-08-25T19:00:28Z

an unfinished work

I Recently Read

2009-08-24T15:54:22Z

In the Pines by Alice Notley (Penguin, 2007)

R.L. Burnside - Poor Boy

2009-08-23T13:59:39Z

R.L. Burnside performing "Poor Boy"

Emrich-Schönleber

2009-08-23T13:14:38Z

Riesling Auslese Nahe Monzinger Fruhlingsplatzchen (2005)

I Can't, But You Should Really Go

2009-03-24T23:08:30Z

LUNGFULL! MAGAZINE RELEASE GALA AND NEW NEW DEAL PARTY

Join us as we usher in the latest issue AND a new era of shantytowns decorated with the discarded blackberries of vanquished bankers, & the quaint but worthless wallets of laid off ad men.

At the event, pick up the latest issue of LUNGFULL!
-- perhaps the last which will be available for "money" -- next year bring a pair of shoes and some fried squirrel, someday you'll point to your copy of LUNGFULL and dazzle your kids with stories about paying for things with little plastic rectangles and pieces of paper.

200 pages of poems, fiction, rough drafts, art, world news reports, irate letters to the editor. A complete list down below.

Saturday 4/18 at 6:45pm

Zinc Bar
82 West 3rd Street NYC
Between Sullivan and Thompson

Subway ACEBDQF to West 4th RW to 8th or Prince

$5-15 sliding scale fundraiser. $20 gets you in plus a copy of the magazine. Madoff Victims and AIG Excs willing to divide their bonuses among the audience get in free.

Still reading this invitation?
Good, now that it's just the two of us, I can further invite you to hit the (relatively) TOTALLY NEW www.lungfull.org

• sneak preview of the upcoming issue.
• video for those too drunk/lazy to read
• explanation of why the crash is a good thing
• because LUNGFULL receives state money, full financial dislosure. Main sources of income: buying beer for teenagers at the bodega and stealing old people's medicine to resell to poets. Cost saving measures: eating coworker's lunch - just click on "budget" for more.

If lungfull.org won't run on your broke down computer, upgrading's never been easier now that looting is the new paypal. Pick up a new hi-def TV and homemade ice cream maker while you're out.

Some people came to New York to make a buck. Others to live a creatively fulfilled life. With no money left to be made, anyone left is either a chump or a creative genius. In either case, you'll feel right at home at the LUNGFULL! RELEASE GALA AND NEW NEW DEAL PARTY.

Hope to see you there my fellow bums & hobos.

Brendan

lungfull.org

Many of the following contributors will be there, singing or reading a poem or two.

New writing from:
Matt Hart, Jessea Perry, Sam Magavern, Nathan Hoks, Nick Antosca, David Berrigan, Bradford Gray Telford, Sean Kilpatrick, Stephanie Cleveland, Rebecca Loudon, Anthony Farrington, Elizabeth Hughey, Craig Cotter, Duane Vorhees, Todd Colby, Jeni Olin, Chris Martin, Scott Abels, Eugene Ostashevsky, Fred Schmalz, Lee Ranaldo, Noelle Kocot, Will Morris, Marianne Vitale, Mike Topp, Clnt Frakes, Kevin McWha Steele, Suejin Suh

World News Reports From:
Sawako Nakayasu in Japan
Dmitry Golynko in Russia
Eugene Ostashevsky in Florence, Italy
Bernadette Mayer & Phil Good in Upstate New York
Sparrow on Long Island, NY
Edmund Berrigan in Brooklyn, NY
Thomas Devaney in Philadelphia, PA
Michael Kelleher in Buffalo, NY
John Most in Virginia
Chuck Stebelton in Milwaukee, WI
Eric Lorberer in Minneapolis, MN
J.S. Makkos in New Orleans, LA
Shafer Hall in Austin, TX
Julie Reid in Petaluma, CA
C.E. Putnam in Seattle, WA

Visual Art from:
Jeff Benjamin, Tracey McTague, Deth P. Sun, Marci Washington

a new widget

2009-03-22T20:32:41Z