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People I Know: P. Engel Kills It

Real quick: just want to send out congrats to excellent PIK Patricia Engel, who The Roving Editor reports just signed a two book (story collection/novel) thing with Grove/Atlantic, which is tremendous news for people who like good writing. Patricia’s stories are relentlessly readable, and her characters tend to be bound by a kind of simmering wickedness and regret that they’re either trying to distance themselves from or confront honestly. See “Dia,” published recently in Geurnica:

I ask what brings him to town and he’s agitated, looking to the dark clouds for the right words.

“You’re not going to like it,” he says.

“Just tell me.”

I think it can’t be that bad because Día was never one for drugs. He managed a bar for years without drinking, spending the slow afternoons before the happy hour crew rolled in reading history books on a stool in the corner. That’s how we met. One day I asked what he was reading.

“I’m a professional gambler,” he says.

I can’t help it, my whole forehead lifts like strings are pulling.

Last time I saw Día, he was studying for the Foreign Service exam. Spoke six languages and could talk politics and literature in any of them, always on my back to study, asking what grades I was pulling since I was majoring in screwing around. He’d yell at me on the corner of 14th, tell me a smart girl like me was throwing it all away. Call me an ingrate, a brat, a blind fool for running around with Malik, who Día said spent more time in the bathroom snorting the amputated limbs of my compatriots than being a boyfriend to me.

“Gambling?”

Patricia’s been knocking on the door of some major awards and recognition as of late–and has been getting robbed as far as I’m concerned–so its nice to see some overdue recognition for just an absolute monster of a writer I really admire (and like). Good work, PE.

Guernica: “Dia” (link)

Boston Review: “Lucho” (link)

The Roving Editor: Patricia Engel Debut Coming in 2010 (link)

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Local Man Makes Weird Faces, Calls Writing “Useless Task.”

The fine folks at NewsHour did Capitol Letters and The Way We See It two big, huge solids today: first they named Cardozo Senior and TWWSI contributor Javairia Henry’s poem, Graffiti, their “Weekly Poem“:

Then, a couple of hours later, they posted a fine round-up of the TWWSI project, featuring student authors Stephon Buckner, Shayla Thomas, Brianna Kirkland, Ashley Pierce, Julious Evans, and at the 1:20 mark, the lost, third member of the Pale Force making strange faces and saying something vaguely emphatic about how writing can feel like a “useless task”, whatever that means:

I feel like I have said enough here. Buy the book please.

Links

Weekly Poem: ‘Graffiti’

For Washington Writers, a Creative Calling

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Milestone w/ Bruised Chompers + I’m Reading This Week

Today marks my third, smoke-free month–I quit over spring break this past semester–and in honor of the milestone I received in the mail a nice little gift from my buddy Gerald, currently on a West Coast excursion: an empty pack of Taiwanese, Longlife cigarettes, complete with duel warning labels depicting a mother and child dying of secondhand smoke on the front, and a set of tarred, bruised and bloody chompers on the back. The irony of it all is baffling and excellent, but I think Gerald gets it right when he says: “All I know is that it makes [people in the US] look like lightweights.” A nice reminder of a habit I don’t miss as much as I thought I would.

In other, less morbid news: along with tremendous poet buddies Kevin Stoy and Nicole Foreman Tong, I’m reading at this year’s Artomatic, where for a month every year a bunch of people take over an office space, paint on the walls, and use it as a hub for peddling both overpriced beer and artistic expression. Details:

Wed Jun 17 - 8:00pm-9:30pm
Poetry Room (9th Floor)

This reading will feature three recent graduates of Mason’s MFA program.

Nicole Foreman Tong is a poet whose writing has appeared in the American Book Review. Her poems “Address for My Sister,” “Pentimento,” and “Thoughts Before Self-Portrait, 1981″ just won a Dorothy Rosenberg award for Lyric Poetry.

Mike Scalise’s essays have appeared in Ninth Letter and Post Road, among others. He recently edited The Way We See It, a collection of D.C. student writing published by the Capitol Letters Writing Center. Scalise, the recipient of a work-study scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, was recently named the Fall 2009 Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University.

Kevin Stoy is a poet whose work has appeared in the Boxcar Poetry Review and 42opus, among others. His work is forthcoming this fall in Phoebe. Please join these three local writers as they read from their work.

We’re on just after the Sarah Palin Tribute Band and just before the screening of “In Search of Elusive American Fuels” in the “SunTrust Film Screening Room.” I’ll probably read something that features cigarettes.

Link to the Facebook event.

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Ain’t No Party Like a C-SPAN Party; More PIK News

The other night at Busboys & Poets was the release party for The Way We See It, the Capitol Letters student anthology I edited and have written relentlessly about here to over the last eight months. I’m pleased to report that it went tremendously (likely because I had no hand whatsoever in the planning of the thing).

Me and everyone I worked with got to talk to some folks at NewsHour, who will allegedly put together a web segment that you’ll all see when I do. Also, some C-SPAN people set up a tripod for a later broadcast, which will make this the second time this year Frazier O’Leary’s unstoppable AP Lit class will make an appearance on the network. (Look. This year alone, these guys plowed through a Toni Morrison book, were covered by WaPo for it, performed Shakespeare at the Folger, and hung out with Edward P. Jones and Cynthia Ozick.The most exciting thing I was involved with my senior year of high school–that didn’t have to do with females and certain fumbling, awkward milestones–was being considered, then quickly passed over for an opportunity to paint some quaint public mural of the city of McKeesport with this guy.)

So when, about ten minutes before stage time, I asked our seven student readers what pieces they picked to read for the party, and they gave back a flippant, near unanimous “I dunno,” I really shouldn’t have panicked as much as I did. Those guys are used to the spotlight by now. Ashley, Javairia, Tyrek, Shayla, Brianna, Julious and Stephon all stepped up to that microphone with an easy, commanding, and sometimes very powerful stage presence beyond their years. Every single one of them absolutely killed it.

Photos after the jump, but I  want to take a moment here to also congratulate Person I Know Eric Axelson, who–aside from being an absolutely essential presence for both Capitol Letters and The Way We See It–has had a banner week on the Internets. Proof: one nod from the Onion’s AV Club, who recognized Eric’s past contributions to The Dismemberment Plan in their Caught In My Shadow: 21 Unjustly Unheralded Sidemen feature:

Travis Morrison once made a list of his 100 favorite albums and included a surprisingly large amount of Miles Davis and Prince. Still, there was nothing particularly funky about D.C. indie-rock outfit The Dismemberment Plan, no matter how many times Morrison mentioned Gladys Knight, but Eric Axelson’s bass work came close. Bouncy, slippery and significantly livelier than his contemporaries’, Axelson’s bass lines frequently were the melodic and rhythmic anchors of D-Plan songs. For proof, check out Emergency & I’s cathartic closer “Back And Forth,” where Axelson’s literally goes back and forth between two notes, but still keeps the energy hotter than 90 percent of Flea’s work.

Then another from DCist, who provides a platform for Eric’s newer incarnation of himself as a beer connoisseur:

The night started off slow with their Wild Goose XPA (Extra Pale Ale). The XPA was inherited when they purchased Wild Goose. It wasn’t a bad beer, but pretty forgettable. From then on, every beer, love it or not, left a strong mark and sparked conversation.

Nice work wearing many hats well, Eric. Now, onto photos. You can check out more at the Capitol Letters Flickr group.

More.

Continue reading ›

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Now if you ask me that defense is inadequate.

I’ve been waiting for about a week to post this, but PIK Ryan Call has put together–with the help of Gene Morgan’s “Twitter feed press”–RESEARCH-BASED ARGUMENT ESSAY: COLLAGE TEXTS, an online chapbook of poems constructed entirely (and anonymously) from students’ essays for Call’s composition courses at the University of Houston. The result is something familiar and kind of attractive, but ultimately unnamable. The pieces are at once hilarious, ghostly and cathartic, but never once betray the good, earnest spirit behind the students’ intentions for their work.

Best to let the things speak for themselves I think:

Incentives are a great way to foster enthusiasm in the workplace.
For example, if you have an extra finger
you can perfectly work like any person with five fingers.
You could type the same way
a person with five fingers does.
You could eat the same way;
you could do all the household chores
the same way as a person with five fingers.
A clean and sterile hospital will be of use.
My proposal has the interest of the people in mind.

Or:

I thought if I made a mistake,
I could simply do things over and over as I pleased,
but I soon came to find out that I was wrong.
She told me she had already shopped for some clothes for the baby
without even knowing the sex of the baby.
One time I looked down a hole that was in a stall
and I could see the person
sitting on the toilet below me.
Some couples pretend that their abortion was a miscarriage
to escape from people’s judgment.
To this day she carries around a hairdryer
outside with her
while riding around in her car
for protection against potential homeless attackers.
Now if you ask me
that defense is inadequate.

Either way, I caught a look at the whole collection last week and have been itching to pass it along to my teacher friends. Download the whole thing here (PDF) if you want. Enjoy.

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