great weather left L.A. rumbling at lit epicenter Beyond Baroque on Sunday eve. The thing is, the literary crowd down there is always ready to pitch in for some earth stompin', and all the more it seems at the dawn of this year's Brave New World. Dropping that metaphor, the evening also felt like a huddle of insurrectionists keeping the fire going. Alexis Rhone Fancher stoked things up from the start with her gleeful no-bullshit celebration of lesbianism. How important glee has come to be this past week! AJ Urquidi gifted us a bonfire of feelings with his intense, incisive political wordbeauty. For my seven minutes, I set out to firm the ground by singing mud to everyone. John J Trause then challenged the faultline of language of meaning with his deft play on solemn matters. Chanel Brenner wrapped us all in family, real family in a real world with injuries, death, striving, hope, and Halloween decorations. The inimitable Christian Georgescu leapt in to shake things up with "Green Eggs I Am", a performance piece from his current one man show House of Me that kicks childhood illusions and adult medications right out the window. David Lawton, who cannot be refused, reshaped the mantle with "Tom Kelly", a piece from his recent (and fascinating) series that turns branches of his family tree into vivid narratives. And to bring the night to crescendo, the Honorable Jane Ormerod shared a "Kiss with Recorder and Killer", setting us all on fire and filling us with flowers, in that order. We are entering an era in which both shaking and burning will be essential, will be key, offensive weapons shaking old foundations, burning ideologies, primary tools of vision shaking up each other and and burning off preconceptions. These will need to be widespread, certainly, and poets are a marv place to start -- this group, at least is primed for the cause.
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Submissionsfor great weather for MEDIA’s anthologies are open October 15 to January 15.
The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker is a fearless and dynamic collection of contemporary poetry and short fiction by established and emerging writers. This is essential reading for everyone looking for the innovative, the reflective, and the fearless. The anthology also contains an interview with musician Thurston Moore.