Results tagged “poetry”

Hugo House will be hosting Visiting Hours this Friday at 7:30 p.m., featuring Northwest favorites such as Benjamin Parzybok, Elizabeth Austen, Matt Smith, and Molly Rose. Tickets range from $15-25.

ARBITRARY ART: Vital 5's newest Arbitrary Art Grant happening is going down tonight. The guerrilla event is taking over part of the parking lot on the 500 block of East Pine Street (near the intersection with Summit Avenue)--the outline of an art gallery's walls will be on the ground. The trick here is to get people to show up with a work of art tied around their neck; the people stand on the lines, forming the walls of the gallery and displaying the art. One gets the $500 grant. Just don't be late. 6-7 p.m. // 500 Block, East Pine Street // free to gawk, may pay to participate!

HOT NGONI NIGHT: All the way from Mali, ladies and gentlemen, Issa Bagayogo, the international dancefloor sensation! He's touring for his new album Mali Koura, which offers blues, world beat, reggae, funk...a lot of stuff. The mixture of West African music with house music dance tends to knock people over when they hear it. Stylus magazine called his previous album a contender for world music album of the year.

              

Having had a peek inside, it's obvious that criticisms that the new "15th Ave Coffee & Tea," as the signage puts it, has ripped off its next-door neighbor Smith aren't going away any time soon. Woodblock print-style logo? Check. Long table of rough reclaimed wood? Check. Vaguely Western and/or rustic, farm-themed? Check.

During the long Q&A session after his Seattle Arts and Lectures talk, Gary Snyder was asked about climate change and everyone in Benaroya Hall mentally leaned in to hear. "I don't worry about it," said Snyder, taking the opportunity to mention that he thought about climate change in chunks of geologic time, 200 million years or so. There used to be palm trees in Greenland, he pointed out, and while we Pleistocene refugees may be freaked out at losing our glaciers, it's fair to say the world has warmed up more than this before.

STILL TRUCKIN': Sonic Youth's new album going to try the Block Party again, so this is about as good as it gets for people like us. Three Imaginary Girls co-hosts the event with Hannah Levin, Gainsbourg's co-owner.

DEAD GIRL ART: Today it will be warm and sunny, which means it's a good day to break out of the office at lunch, snag a free parking spot at the Frye, and pop into their cafe for a bite before enjoying some disturbing paintings. Their exhibit Over Julia's Dead Body showcases Gabriel von Max, a Munich Secessionist "best known for his paintings of beautiful, dead women." Gabriel was into spiritualism, somnambulism, and painting with a dark palette.

HOW-TO BOOK: You may have run into Reza Aslan, author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, while watching the Daily Show. Now you can see the professor of creative writing (at the University of California, Riverside) in person, talking about his newest book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. Sounding a bit like John Gottman, Aslan says the best cosmic war is one that isn't fought; he says need to strip conflicts of their religious connotations and address the more earth-bound grievances that generate the cosmic mindset.

MONKEYSHINES: We were going to suggest you go see Chris Cornell at the Showbox SoDo, but it's sold out. So instead we'll remind you that you have until May 10 to catch the Curious George-inspired exhibit at the Children's Museum, Let's Get Curious! Is it an egregious example of product placement? Whatever, we just like it, to paraphrase Liz Lemon. Not to overshare, but Curious George was easily the most appealing character we remember coming across in our toddling era. Oh, that monkey!

British poet Simon Armitage (b. 1963, Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire) was in town this week for the Seattle Arts and Lectures Poetry Series (still tickets available for Naomi Shihab Nye's second night, May 8).

ELECTRONIC LOVE: Washington D.C.-based d.j. duo Thievery Corporation will be coming to the Paramount for one night only. Known for their "acid jazz" cocktail lounge sound and progressive worldly beats,they are definitely one of those groups you may think you've never heard, but once you've listened to, you'll recognize. One of their most popular songs, "Lebanese Blonde", became a hit after it appeared in a little but well-known movie, Garden State, and it is used frequently in intros on radio stations such as KEXP and NPR. We guarantee this to be great for a date night, and hopefully some movin' and shakin'.

SO HUNGRY: Head to the Northwest Film Forum for Steve McQueen (not to be confused with Steve McQueen) and his first feature Hunger (not to be confused with The Hunger). Instead of sexy vampires, the film's about the true-life hunger strike undertaken by jailed members of the Irish Republican Army, who just wanted to be treated as political prisoners rather than common criminals. While the politics of the film--does it glorify terrorists?--are debatable, McQueen's skills as a director are not; he's got a fine eye and a commendable patience with the camera. There's not much talking in the film, which leaves plenty of time for surprisingly lovely images (see the lonely inmate making friends with the fly in his cell), except for one virtuoso seventeen-minute single-take conversation/debate between a prisoner and a priest, which could've used subtitles, as we don't speak Leprechaun. Hunger runs through Thursday.

For those of you who didn't know, April is not only about Easter and April Fool's Day; it's also National Poetry Month!

• Big Blog won points with a post about The Bachelor's ex-wife and her YouTubed guest spot as a groupie on local band Out From Underneath's Seattle-heavy music video. Onwards and upwards, Gas Works Park.
• The blog formerly known as bigasscity is quoting none other than ZZ Top while crunching the numbers about Metro's projected budget shortfall and how much money the city could have saved by rejecting the bored tunnel viaduct replacement option.
• Cliff Mass thinks it's "pretty definite": we're looking at more snow, probably on Sunday. Actually, that works well with our schedule. How kind of the gods to check with Seattlest HQ's Google Calendar before sending the cold front!

LUNCH AND POLITICAL POEMS: Nation humorist Calvin Trillin does a special midday Monday event at Elliott Bay, reading from his collection of poems about the 2008 election cycle Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme. The event is free and open to the public, but if you want to go one step further and make a lunch of it, call up the cafe (206-682-6664) to pre-order from your choice of box lunch: roast beef sandwich, albacore tuna sandwich, or egg salad sandwich, all of which are served with chips and a cookie.

To mark the centennial of Theodore Roethke’s birth, poets Linda Bierds, Andrew Feld, Richard Kenney, Colleen McElroy, Heather McHugh, and Pimone Triplett are gathering to read and talk about Roethke, who inspires that kind of devotion, whether you knew him personally or not. The Washington Center for the Book, Poetry Society of America, and University of Washington Creative Writing Program are throwing the party at the Seattle Public Library, in the Microsoft Auditorium. It's this Wednesday, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., and it's free.

For a MacArthur-proclaimed genius, Linda Bierds is fairly low profile. She lives on Bainbridge Island, teaches in the English department at the University of Washington, and has had tons of poems published in mainstream literary magazines such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker, the holy grail of "someone who's not an MFA student has read my poetry" achievement. Tomorrow night she's at the UW Bookstore (7:00 p.m., free), reading from her new book, Flight.

SEE SEE ME RIVER: If you can get yourself to walk beneath the frightening-toothed clown, nothing should stop you from checking out See Me River at The Funhouse tonight. Led by former Das Llamas front man Kerry Zettel, See Me River offers an audial version of American Gothic, crafting haunting acoustic songs that at once drone and soar.

Last Friday we were at Shorecrest High School after-hours for "Coffeehouse," an open-mic put on by the school's literary journal Tattoo. It was our second time around, so we had a better idea of what to expect: the cafeteria was packed to the rafters. Seriously, Friday night and this is what the kids of today are up to? Near the end of intermission we were looking over the art gallery in the hall when this girl ran past us, calling to her friends, "Hurry, it's about to start again!" Which is the first time we've heard someone say that about an open-mic event when they weren't running away.

Austin-based band Monahans do to music what poetry does to words. Tonight, they'll bring their stylin' tunes to the Tractor. Also on the bill is local songwriter J. Tillman and the very pretty Zera Marvel. We called up Monahans frontman Greg last week during their brief stint with the Cowboy Junkies to find out why he thinks people should come to tonight's show.

Saul Williams has done a little bit of everything. He’s an actor, a poet, a spoken-word performer, a musician and a writer. Since we first discovered him in the movie Slam -- which he helped write -- we’ve been fascinated by him, his energy and his words. Since then, we’ve seen him perform twice. Once after the release of his first album Amethyst Rock Star we saw him perform a full-on rock show. The last time we caught Williams was at Chop Suey. He was working on his second book of poems at the time and he performed many of them as well as some of his older works. The shows were as different from each other as each book and CD he releases is different from all of his others.

There are two more poets due in town for the Seattle Arts and Lectures Poetry Series, both in April. Lucille Clifton shows up at the Intiman on April 7, Edward Hirsch on April 21.

WSF is still dead to us, but Governor Gregoire could make our "holiday card" list if she keeps it up. First the viaduct course correction, now she's scrounged up $100 million to pay for three new ferries. Budget, schmudget! She's all action! Plus, the Port Townsenders, come January, will be reunited with their cars on ferry trips, says the P-I:

Pierce County has agreed to loan one of its boats to the Washington State Ferries, beginning in January, to resume car service between Keystone and Port Townsend.

For some reason, though we are committed Capitol Hill brunchers, we had not discovered what wonders Monsoon has going on in their little 19th Ave E hideaway. Behold, the Monsoon brunch menu (pdf)! Last Tuesday night, Eric and Sophie Bahn, the chefs, invited a passel of foodie blogging folk over to try out the brunch menu. You had people like Matthew aka the rootsandgrubs guy, Angela from the Stranger -- and somehow we made the...

Sometimes the world really is a beautiful place. Specifically when there's beer involved. Jack's meeting friends on Saturday for a session of oak-aged beer tasting at Brouwer's Big Wood Fest. He'll then spend the rest of the day rubbing his tum tum and smiling a lot. Thrilled about the possibility of the year's first snow fall, Kim will spend as much of the weekend as possible getting over the cold that's been lingering for a...

The local act opening for Dolan and Buck 65 was Rudy & the Rhetoric, now out on CD-R. They sound clean, rehearsed, and synthy; the MC (Rudy, we presume) looks freshly scrubbed and straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, one of the outdoorsy pages, where the guys are fully clothed. We had no idea Ken dolls could rap, but he was pretty good, and the DJ (the Rhetoric?) did some cool scratching. Overall, they were surprisingly polished but we had a hard time taking them seriously, especially since the MC kept wincing at the crowd's lukewarm reception.