APR 15 | poetry | Random Abiladeze

Random Abiladeze
Poetry Night at Bistro 33
Wednesday, April 15

Featuring a rare Open Mic poetic performance by poet Traci Gourdine.

Random Abiladeze (pronounced “Abilities”) is a 24 year-old Hip-Hop Artist and Spoken Word Poet from Sacramento whose work has been honored by the Hip-Hop Congress, a Grassroots International cultural arts organization. His debut CD with fellow artist Prozak Morris – under the name T.O.P. (The Other Poets) – was released in December.

Random won the 2008 Battle of The Bay Poetry Slam at Stanford University and Sacramento State University’s Word of Conscious Action Poetry Slam, was voted Youth Speaks Male Poet of the Month for October 2007, and is a two-time champion of the Got Spit! Poetry Slam, hosted by the Sacramento Chapter of the Hip-Hop Congress. He has also won several rap competitions on such radio stations as 102.5 (KSFM) and 103.5 (KBMB). He has performed at the California State Capitol, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Stanford University, the Mondavi Center, and numerous other locations in California.

Poetry Night at Bistro 33, in Davis, hosted by Andy Jones and produced by Brad Henderson, occurs on the first and third Wednesday of every month beginning at 9 P.M. with a 10 P.M. open mic. Please arrive early to ensure seating.

Do Kaltenbach!

Go see the Stephen Kaltenbach exhibit going through Feb. 21, 2009 at the Verge Gallery. This isn't the Kaltenbach you think you might know. Well, it is. But if your only experience with his work is the barn door sized painting Portrait of My Father in the Crocker Museum's post-modern gallery, then you're in for a surprise. Time capsules. Mines. Great-big-lush-black-velvet holes.


Photographer commands "Push the Kaltenbach!" Wife and Daughter comply (or attempt it.) This piece looks like a large naval mine fished out of the Strait of Hormuz, its detonating nubs polished off before being laid into the gallery. Stand near it long enough and a swollen, dischordant rumble emerges and fills that corner of the gallery.


The Verge is one big gallery surrounded by large artist's studios. Excellent use of the old Napa Auto Parts building at 19th & V Streets. Pictured above is a piece by Liv Moe (one of the primary movers in putting together the Kaltenbach show.)


More of Liv Moe's studio. Tim Foster, our guide through the studios (pictured right) with some Troublemaker.


I was pleased to discover that artist Michael King has a studio at the Verge.

King's street vendor suitcase with various items incorporating his sublime miniature drawings. I collect his wooden nickels, seen on the left panel of the display case and was delighted to pick up two more during this event!

Read Liv Moe's excellent piece on Kaltenbach in the January issue of the Midtown Monthly.

JAN 25 | It's all about the Haggis

Sunday, January 25, 2009
6pm
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Poems-For-All presents
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BURNS 250
A Burns Night Poetry Reading
Featuring
KEVIN JONES
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Presenting
'HAGGIS: A REBUTTAL'
by Rachel & Richard Hansen
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The Book Collector
1008 24th Street
Sacramento
Between J & K Streets
916.442.9295
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Free

This year marks the 250th anniversary of
the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns.
We'll mark the occasion with our annual
Burns Night Poetry Reading.

This year's featured reader, Kevin Jones,
is a scholar and poet who has proven his
mettle when it comes to getting tongue and
tooth around the challenging dialect of
Burns' poetry. You'll enjoy his reading of
poems by the National Bard of Scotland.

Burns Night is traditionally an opportunity
to heap praise upon the Scottish foodstuff
the Haggis. And Mr. Jones will, of course,
read Burns famous poem 'To a Haggis.' In reply,
Rachel and Richard Hansen will offer up their
'Haggis: A Rebuttal.'

Please join us for an evening of food, drink
and poetry. There will be an open-mic; an
opportunity to read poems that pay tribute to
Burns or his native Scotland. Anyone who
braves a go at reading a Burns' poem earns
themselves a dram!

Pointlessly small blank books for a cause

My daughter Ru and I have installed at the bookstore the tiny curio case pictured above so we can sell miniature items with all the proceeds going to Loaves & Fishes, a local organization that helps the homeless. The blank books are available now with a variety of odd covers; 50 cents each. Hemp friendship bracelets made by Ru will be available shortly. Forthcoming: irritatingly tiny calenders, address/phone books!

Buy a book ... one approach

My bookstore's recent ad in the Midtown Monthly. The direct approach using a concept we borrowed from another used bookseller, Doug Webber, who had a little sign behind the counter of his now gone N street store with same said directive, "buy a book you bastards!" As the economy swan dives into a vat of crap the message we're trying to deliver -- playful desperation -- seems to resonate.

Only two complaints, so far. One from an actual bastard, who didn't take kindly to us mocking his being born to an unmarried mother. The other... well, let's just say that little used bookstores get their fair share of slightly crazy people as part of their customer base. (Hey, not knockin' the 5150s; some buy books!)

Buy a book ... another approach

Books are great gifts. Sure are. And this website has assembled some famous people into the little video above to tell you why they make swell presents. Spoiler alert: Bill O'Reilly doesn't get angry; Dean Koontz looks scary. Lotsa smarm here, but its worth a view just to hear Jon Stewart say “Books make great gifts because they are an amazing way to kill time while your web site is buffering.” But the best line comes from Frank McCourt who succinctly connects books and sex ... but hey! I'm giving it all away. Watch. Just watch. It'll make you bastards want to buy books...

Inside Grove Press: The Barney Rosset Documentary comes to Sacramento

The good folks at Movies on a Big Screen (MOBS) will show Obscene: How Barney Rosset Published Dirty Books for Fun & Profit on Friday, December 5th. Through Rosset's Grove Press some of the most avant garde, outsider, and counterculture literature found an imprint. It is a tale of sound and fury, including the censorship trials that evolved from efforts to publish Lady Chatterly's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.

Barney Rosset is the greatest American publisher of the twentieth century and the most influential cultural figure that you haven't heard of. Under Rosset, Grove Press and Evergreen Review fought decisive battles, including many before the state and federal supreme courts, defeated legal censorship, and opened American life to new and dangerous currents of freedom. But Rosset's public fight against hypocrisy and injustice is inextricable from his tumultuous personal life: the same unyeilding, quixotic, restless energy that upended centuries of law brought Rosset perilously close to destruction.

With: Barney Rosset, Amiri Baraka, Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Al Goldstein, Erica Jong, Ray Manzarek, Michael McClure, John Rechy, Ed Sanders, John Sayles, Gore Vidal, and John Waters. And archival footage featuring Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and Malcolm X.

There will be guest speakers in attendance.

Bill Hughes --poet, historian, biographer, cultural cartographer, writer, playright -- has been turning the brickside of his apartment building in Midtown into an ad hoc art gallery on Second Saturdays. Last month (Sept.) he exhibited art and words related to his interest in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Americans who went to fight --and die-- supporting the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.)

This month he lined the brick with his poems, each enlarged and presented on a letter-sized piece of paper. Weeks after Second Saturday, many still hang there, left there for ongoing poetic inspiration.

SEP 28 | Poetry | Donald Sidney-Fryer | The Atlantis Fragments

poems-for-all presents


Sunday, September 28, 4:30pm
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DONALD SIDNEY-FRYER : The Atlantis Fragments
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The Book Collector
1008 24th Street
Between J and K Streets
in midtown Sacramento
916.442.9295
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We're pleased to welcome Donald Sidney-Fryer back to Sacramento for a Sunday afternoon poetry reading where Donald will present his omnibus edition of the trilogy SONGS AND SONNETS ATLANTEAN.
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"Mr. Fryer is a profound student of Clark Ashton Smith, and the influence shows, but he is very much his own poet, and he structures and plays with a surety and deftness which is remarkable."
-- Gahan Wilson

"Sidney-Fryer has created, in his fictional Atlantis, an entire civilization and a body of absorbing literature. The book should appeal to lovers of poetry, to devotees of science fiction, and to those who admire writers who can fashion a realistic world from the materials of mythology and speculation."
-- Earl J. Dias

"These poems are of an unearthly beauty. They celebrate love, beauty, and humanity; and yet throughout many of them is a consciousness of impending apocalypse. The imagery, lush, exotic, full of colors and magic names, is a welcome relief from the sterile, prosaic poetry of today. If you enjoy tripping on language, this book is for you. Whether the poems really are from the Atlantean or whether they are the creations of poet Sidney-Fryer, they deserve to be read and experienced."
-- Charles K. Wolfe

"Sidney-Fryer is, in a very strong sense, a traditionalist; his creations, superlatively original as they are, yet give us a powerful feeling of continuity with our own past and culture; they make us see ... the ideals that moved us when we were less “secure” and more human: adventure, love of life, and above all, the intricate beauty of a world long vanished – yet not vanished, if only we had eyes to see."
-- Richard L. Tierney


"A delightful book of verse – purportedly fragments of poetry from the lost Empire of Atlantis – that is very much in the tradition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. A work that reflects a glittering imagination and no mean talent."
-- James Gorski

Donald Sidney-Fryer’s massive, 550-page poetry omnibus is the most elaborate book ever published by Hippocampus Press. Its color frontispiece, printed end papers, profusion of interior illustrations, Smythe sewn signatures and illustrated dust wrapper destine it to be a collector’s item. This hardcover omnibus presents the collected edition of the trilogy SONGS AND SONNETS ATLANTEAN in a limited edition of 300 copies.

JUN 26 | Chicano Film Festival