Jon Papernick in a highly functional Waltham Library study room

Afterwards, Jon pointed me in the direction of Back Pages Books on the main drag in Waltham, Moody Street, and recommended I check out Franz Wright’s latest book, Kore. Back Pages Books is also a publisher, and are printing the Pulitzer Prize winner’s book as a limited 500-copy run. I’m glad I could get my hands on a copy, and two of the poems from the book are on today’s show.

Three clicks to listen:

1: Go to cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes
2: Click the small man wearing headphones (he’s under the picture gallery)
3: Click the first option on the playlist; the show will play directly from the site.

Don’t forget to email your thoughts, comments and suggestions to highvolumes@gmail.com! Thanks for listening!

Short Stories by Jonathan Papernick

From “There Is No Other” (There Is No Other)

“Skin for Skin” (There Is No Other)

From “For as Long as the Lamp Is Burning” (The Ascent of Eli Israel)

Poems by Franz Wright from Kore

“Rain In Waltham”

“Systematic Derangement of the Senses”

Songs

“Overdue” by Muse

“Astral Weeks” by Van Morrison

“Die and Be Free” by Mr. Sister

“Mother Killer” by Mr. Sister

“Uncertain Times” by The Raveonettes

“Walk Into the Sea” by Low

“Lately” by Deuxieme

Transition Songs

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

“Have You Got It In You?” by Imogen Heap

Two poets you wouldn't want to meet in Del Taco . . . actually, probably the best poets to meet in Del Taco. Emily on the left. Charlotte in a special cameo appearance on the right.

I asked her to recommend some Native American poetry, and she told me about one of Hershman R. John’s books, “I Swallow Turquoise for Courage,” which was published by the university of Arizona press in 2007. A very cool read, as you will hear from our discussion.

Three clicks to listen:

1: Go to cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes
2: Click the small man wearing headphones (he’s under the picture gallery)
3: Click the first option on the playlist; the show will play directly from the site.

Hershman R. John grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Sand Springs, Arizona and currently teaches composition, creative writing, and American Indian literature at Phoenix College.

Emily also turned me on to the songs and poetry of Joy Harjo, esteemed poet and musician and a member of the Muscogee Nation. You’ll have to click the link to her [very user-friendly] website to get a true taste of her scope, but she has some fantastic albums featuring her poems and music with her band Poetic Justice, tracks of which are also featured on the show.

So! It’s a muddled love fest as usual, enjoying great work with a great guest. Enjoy, and send your comments and suggestions to highvolumes@gmail.com.

Poems

“A Sheep Dog Locked in Photograph” by Hershman R. John
“Ode to Del Taco” by Emily Thomas
“Fear Poem” by Joy Harjo, performed with Poetic Justice
From “Coyote Took Her Class” by Hershan R. John

Songs

“Tighten Up” by The Black Keys
“The Woman Hanging from the 13th Floor” by Joy Harjo

Transition Songs

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor
“Ai Du” by Ali Farke Toure and Ry Cooder
“Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura

Three clicks to listen:

1.       Click this link: www.cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes

2.       Click the little man wearing headphones (under the picture gallery)

3.       Click “4-11-11 show,” and listen from the website.

Laura van den Berg at AWP 2011

I was fortunate that Laura was able to squeeze in a few minutes with me at the AWP conference, which is, as you recall, where I recorded the poems that appear on last month’s episode. Laura has or will soon appear in publications including Ploughshares, Boston Review, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV. Her first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award. She is currently a teacher in Baltimore.

John Cotter

My second esteemed guest is John Cotter, whose novella, Under the Small Lights , was published in 2010 by Miami University Press. John is also a founding editor Open Letters Monthly, a review website featuring critical work on contemporary novelists, poets, and translators. He is a Boston-based teacher, so luckily, we were able to talk at more length.

I suggest you purchase these books immediately. Both are powerful and palatable. When you’re done devouring those, check out a few of John’s recommendations: Adam Golaski (Color Plates), Elisa Gabbert (The French Exit), Josh Harmon (Quinnehtukqut, pronounced “Connecticut”) and Sarah Goldstein (Fables).

Also: when I was planning the show, I asked Laura for some song suggestions, as I generally do with all guests. She directed me to a playlist she made for the blog largehearted boy as a sort of soundtrack to her writing life. Most of the music on today’s show came from there, and as you hear, it’s a pretty great playlist (and blog), so check it out.

Excerpts:

From “Crazy Horse,” Under the Small Lights by John Cotter

From “Where We Must Be,” What the World Will Look like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den berg

From “The Straw Bed,” Under the Small Lights by John Cotter

Songs:

“Autumn Sweater” by Yo La Tengo

“Edge of the World” by Sam Phillips

“Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene

“Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order

Transition Songs:

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

So I kind of just stepped into the giant book fair and started asking people to read their poems to me (with a lot of help from Nick Demske and Heather Overby). It worked brilliantly, as you will hear. I’ve ended up with a wonderfully textured collage of poems amongst the din of the conference. It’s a terrific variety of styles and themes, and I can’t thank the people who read for me enough–not only for reading, but for their support for their show, and their bitchin musical suggestions. Click on their links below, buy their books, spread the love.

Also, there is a new, easier way to re-listen to this show again and again: with Cyberstation’s fabulous new platform, I can store the episode as an audio file for as long as I want without waiting for it to appear in the archive, then getting bumped as new shows air. Needless to say, this episode will be there for a while. Just go to www.cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes, click on the little man wearing headphones (it’s under the picture gallery), and select “3-14-11 broadcast: AWP poets.”

Also! Become a fan on facebook for easy updates!

And thank you for listening, always. Please send your feedback to highvolumes@gmail.com. I’ll be back before too long with Laura van den Berg, John Cotter, and a multitude of other wonderful guests.

Poems:

“Face for Radio” by Dora Malech

“We Use Spoons Mostly” by Trey Moody

“Three Poems Manufactured by the Sky” by Sean Ulman

“Midnight, In Praxis Rends” by John Chavez (and here, and here)

“Port (of Call)” by Dan Boehl

“Conference (Regatta)” by Dan Boehl

“For Luck and Landlessness” by Heather Overby

“I Give Birth To A Girl Who Is So Tiny I Lose Her Immediately” by Zachary Schomburg (and here)

“This Is What You Need To Know About The World, Pretend Son” by Zachary Schomburg

“A Performance: Strong Heart” by A. Minetta Gould

From The Girl Without Arms by Brandon Shimoda (also here)

“Untitled” by B.J. Love

“America, a Love Poem” by Jennifer Karmin

“Professional Extra” by Michael Dumanis

“Brutal End” by Ronaldo V. Wilson

“What’s Done:” by Daniel Khalastchi

“Harlem Tectonica” by Nick Demske

“Hive Me, Fifi! Hive Me! Hive Me!” by K. Silem Mohammad (a copy of this poem will be up on cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes soon!)

“The Love of Reindeer” by Siân B. Griffiths

“Let us assume that we are each others’ best mail order brides” by Erica Jo Brown

“Rime Riche” by Monica Ferrell

Songs:

“I Follow Rivers” by Lykke Li

“The Honest Truth” by Typhoon

“American Boy” by Eleni Mandel

“William Tell Overture (Abridged)” by Wendy Carlos

“Dance Yrself Clean” by LCD Soundsystem

Transition Songs:

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

“Coming Up From Behind” by Marcy Playground

“Zebra” by Beach House

“Summer Home” by Typhoon

“Kaputt” by Destroyer

“Rosa” by Grimes

“Nowhere to Hide” by Gaga for Gigi

“Self Torture” by Andrew Bird

“You are but a draft, a rehearsal for a show that will never play” by This Girl

“Running Up That Hill” by Chromatics

“Small Print” by Muse

“Lover in the Snow” by Rivers Cuomo

“I Love You” by The Pipettes

I’d write more, but I’m off to AWP, hopefully to get some material for the show. Thanks everyone, new show soon!

Ethan Gilsdorf, conquering his car

But first, an announcement: you may have the instructions for how to listen have changed slightly (that is, if you have the memory of a goldfish and look at them every time a new episode of High Volumes comes out). That’s because Cyberstation has an amazing new web platform called Worldvuer. It’s sort of like a hybrid of the old website, facebook and skype. It hasn’t been officially launched yet, but it is up and running, so I encourage you to log on and check out the High Volumes homepage: www.cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes. I still need to work on it a bit, but I’ve uploaded some pictures, as well as the audio overflow from this episode (more on that later).

Secondly, devotees will remember my guest Henriette Lazaridus Power. She joined me in the studio back in October to talk about The Drum and share three lovely excerpts from her upcoming novel Clean Monday. At the time that she appeared on the show, she was in the process of finding a publisher and nothing had been finalized yet, but now Ballantine Books has picked it up. So congratulations to Henriette, and make sure to send me an email if you’d like to receive a copy of that show and hear those exclusive excerpts of Clean Monday.

And now, most importantly, today’s wonderful episode. After Henriette was on the show, she recommended that I talk to Ethan Gilsdorf, the author of the highly praised travel memoir / pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. This is especially exciting for three reasons. One is that I haven’t had a guest yet who has read a memoir/pop culture investigation. 2) I personally have been on the fringes of geek culture my whole life, and 3) Ethan is a pretty cool guy and a great writer. And I am definitely not the only one who thinks so:  Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks was named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Ethan also publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor; his blog “Geek Pride” is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com; and he does loads of other cool stuff, like teaching, and storming the Somerville citadel.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is a seriously fun, thoughtful and relevant read; I’d pick it up immediately if I were you. But first—listen to this episode of High Volumes, because “The Gary Gygax” song loses a lot in print.

To listen to another excerpt from the book, another poem by Ethan, and two more Harry Potter-related songs, go to www.cyberstationlive.com/highvolumes and click on the icon with headphones (located under my pictures). There are four audio files waiting there that wouldn’t fit into the show. Stay tunes for more updates about the new site . . .

This show will be archived January 30^th.

Excerpts/Poems by Ethan Gilsdorf

“Prologue” from “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks”

“Notes of the Previous Users”

Songs

“The Shire” by Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

“The Gary Gygax Song” by Uncle Monsterface

“The Weapon” by Harry and the Potters

Transition songs

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

“The Pass of Caradhras” by Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

“Save Ginny Weasley” by Harry and the Potters

“Rosa” by Grimes

—Valéry Larbaud (tr. J. Kates)

V. Larbaud and J. Kates

A few weeks ago I went to the ever-excellent Boston Book festival and met the good people of Zephyr Press at their booth. Zephyr Press is a non-profit press that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. A few days ago I had the pleasure of sitting down for a chat with Jim Kates, editorial co-director of Zephyr Press.

Jim   is a poet and literary translator, as well as a former president of the American Literary Translators Association. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry in 1984 and a Translation Project Fellowship in 2006. Besides three poetry chapbooks of his own, he is the translator of seven volumes of poetry by Russian and French poets, and he is also the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era.

For more information about the poets on today’s show, visit www.zephyrpress.org, and become a facebook fan.

This show will be archived on Sunday, November 21.

Poems

“Embers in the Forest” by Liliana Ursu (tr. Sean Cotter)

“Roasted Goose” by Shang Qin (tr. Steve Bradbury)

“In a Broken Mirror” by Anna Akhmatova (tr. Judith Hemschemeyer)

“Thallus” by Tatiana Shcherbina (tr. J. Kates)

“Not in the chimney, but in the gas pipes . . .” by Mikhail Aizenberg (tr. J. Kates)

“Psalm 137” by Genrikh Sapgir (tr. J. Kates)

“It’s better not to live in Moscow . . .” by Dimitry Aleksandrovich Prigov (tr. Robert Reid)

“Winter Elegy” by Marzanna Kielar (tr. Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese)

Songs

“American English” by Idlewild

“Language” by Scott Matthews

“Un Jour Comme Un Autre” by Brigitte Bardot

“A New Name for Everything” by The Weakerthans

“Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura

Transition Songs

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

“Far Far” by Yael Naim

“Fibre De Verre” by Paris Combo

“My Maudlin Career” by Camera Obscura

“Night Windows” by The Weakerthans

Even Curtis' modes of transportation are disjointed

Please note: no bongs were harmed (or used) in the making of this show.

As you are aware, every episode is different here on High Volumes, but no matter who my guest is, or what we’re reading, it’s basically always a big love fest. Which is great. There really aren’t many convenient avenues for hearing work read aloud. However, being constructively critical of others’ work is just as important as reading and appreciating it, in terms of growing as a writer. So this show a little more critical, in a good way.

My classmate and fellow poet Curtis Perdue joined me in doing this. Curtis is a third year poetry student at Emerson College, where he is also a teacher. He is the assistant poetry editor of Redivider, a literary journal I’ve featured on the show a number of times. He is now in his last year at Emerson trying to fill his thesis with poems that explore “the perceptive and deceptive workings of the imagination”–some of which we are treated to in the course of this episode.

Curtis directed my attention to an article published in the September 2010 issue of Poetry magazine by Tony Hoagland, “Recognition, Vertigo and Passionate Worldliness” (which is where “the bong of disorientation” came from). Devotees will remember that Tony read for the show back in February. I think it’s safe to say he’s one of the best-known American poets writing today. He has published four other poetry collections and a book of essays and has won many prestigious awards and grants over about the past 20 years, and he is the head of the creative writing program at the University of Huston. The essay is called “Recognition, Vertigo and Passionate Worldliness” and can be found at poetry.com.

This show will be archived on Sunday, November 7.

Poems

“Elective Surgery” by Lewis Warsh

“A WALL IS TORN DOWN” by Ben Lerner

“The Building of a Skyscraper” by George Oppen

“Less and Less Human” by Wallace Stevens

“Expensive Hotel” by Tony Hoagland

“Food Court” by Tony Hoagland

“Memory” by Curtis Perdue

“Neon Jungle” by Curtis Perdue

“For the Record” by Curtis Perdue

“Confessing my ignorance” by Yusef Komunyakaa

“Midalo” by John Murillo

“The Special People” Peter J. Shippy

“Post-Burial” by Joelle Jameson

Songs

“Sick and Wrong” by Built to Spill

“Beyond Words” by Wax Tailor

“Use What I Got” by Jimmy Cliff

“There is Danger” by Wax Tailor

“Who By Fire” by Leonard Cohen

“Sound and Vision” by David Bowie

Transition Songs

“Positively Inclined” by Wax Tailor

“Sometimes” by Wax Tailor

“This is Hardcore” by Pulp

The Rude Mechs in "The Method Gun": Lana in orange, Shawn behind her

I recently began writing theater reviews for Blast magazine, an online magazine that is based in Boston but universally appreciated. One of my recent assignments for Blast was to interview Shawn Sides and Lana Lesley, who are touring with their theater company The Rude Mechs. Shawn and Lana are two out of six co-producing artistic directors. They’ve been making theater together for over 15 years and in that time have taken Rude Mechs productions all over the world. And, as you can hear from the show, they are basically really cool people and I kind of want to hang out with them all the time.

The Rude Mechs came to Boston last week to kick off the national tour of their show The Method Gun as part of ArtsEmerson’s inaugural season. Shawn is the director of the production and she and Lana are both actors in it as well. You can read Jason Rabin’s review of that show on as well as the print version of this interview on blastmagazine.com.

Alternate view of Lana and Shawn in "The Method Gun"

The Method Gun involves Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, so I asked my friend Nicholas to read one of Blanche’s monologues. Lana also suggested reading from Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, since the Rude Mechs produced a show based on it a few years ago. I hadn’t read it before—pretty trippy, and I am enjoying it.

This show will be archived Sunday, October 24.

From A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Blanche in scene 4: “May I speak plainly? . . .”

From Snow White by Donald Barthelme

“What is Snow White thinking? . . .”

“Perhaps we should not be sitting . . .”

Songs

“Shadows” by Au Revoir Simone

“The Duchess of Parma” by Golden Arm Trio

“Dmitri Dmitryevich” by Golden Arm Trio

“The Moment I Said It” by Imogen Heap

“Sailing to Nowhere” by Broken Bells

“Cool Scene” by The Dandy Warhols

Henriette in the studio

You will recall Becky Tuch—or, will if you just scroll down to the previous blog entry—creator of thereviewreview.net and writer of things. Becky was kind enough to get me in touch with Henriette Lazaridis Power, founding editor of The Drum: a literary magazine for your ears. Yes, The Drum is an audio literary magazine, and most of the stories are downloadable for free on the website. As if reveling in the sisterly bonds of literary audio production wasn’t sweet enough, we are also treated to three excerpts (18 minutes total) of Henriette’s  novel, Clean Monday. I know you’re going to want to rush out and buy it once you hear the clips, but you’ll have to wait, as it is in the very first stages of publication. Another High Volumes exclusive!

In addition to editing The Drum, Henriette is a regular contributor to the writing blog beyondthemargins.com. Her work has appeared in Salamander, the New England Review, Middlebury Magazine, The New York Times online, The Millions, and Rowing News. She spent nearly two decades in academia, teaching at Harvard for ten years after earning a masters of philosophy on a Rhodes scholarship as well as a Ph.D.

Henriette is also involved in many upcoming literary events in the Boston area. Be sure to check out the Boston Book Festival on Saturday, October 16: most events are free, and over 100 authors will be present. Henriette will host two fiction panels: “Time and Place” and “The Web of Relationship.” On Monday, November 15, the Four Stories literary series at The Enormous Room in Cambridge will feature authors published in The Drum.

This show will be archived on Sunday, October 10^th.

Novel Excerpts:

Three segments of Clean Monday by Henriette Lazaridis Power

Montages:

Various authors published in The Drum, compiled by Henriette Lazaridis Power

Songs:

“Waverly Steps” by Roddy Woomble

“Microphone” by Coconut Records

“Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura