Puckerbrush Press

Googling for "The Shape of Memory" I got regrettably few hits ("Twenty-first Century! Twenty-first century!") but this from Pierre Joris appealed:

Back from poetry reading & talks at the University of Maine, Orono. What a treat! Steve Evans & Jennifer Moxley were magnificent hosts, great talk from poetry to translation, from punk & jazz. Great food and excellent company after the reading. First visit to the hallowed halls, well, largish office, of the National Poetry Foundation with Burton Hatlen, as strangely enough I had never come up to any of the Orono conferences & poetry events — probably because they always seem to happen at a time when I'm in Europe.

An afternoon spent continuing a discussion on Celan and related matters with Ben Friedlander as if we had broken it off only the previous afternoon — though it had been 5 or 6 years that I hadn't seen or been in touch with Ben. Sitting in the University Inn, bitching about the totally erratic Wifi connection that makes even reading email (not to speak of trying to do the blog) a pain in the neck, reflecting on old friends now gone who had come through here often — especially Ginsberg & Creeley. Waking up to total snow landscape on thursday morning, then watch the snow recede à vue d'oeil & reveal old green grass, as if a white sheet is slowly but irresistably pulled back from a pool table revealing the green baize.

The sad news was that local poet Constance Hunting passed away on 5 April, at eighty.

At my reading on the 6, I started by offering a short poem of hers, one often requested and expected by audience members at her own readings. Here it is:

Cezanne

The man astonished all of Paris
with an apple
but his wife
liked only Switzerland and lemonade.