Thanksgiving 2012

Guest of Honor : Bill Berkson A Menu Poem

A Twelve Course Meal over Twelve Hours

By Geoffrey Gatza

BlazeVOX [books] Buffalo, NY

Thanksgiving 2012 by Geoffrey Gatza Copyright 2012 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition BlazeVOX [books] 76 Inwood Place Buffalo, NY 14209 Editor@blazevox.org Nota Bene image: Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, oil on canvas, 102cm x 65cm, 1942

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A Thanksgiving Dinner
Champagne Toast Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Ros champagne Vintage 1998

Amuse Bouche Kaviari Beluga Gold Caviar with Steamed Chickpea and Ricotta Crepe

Cold appetizer Chilled Hamachi, Sunny Side Quails Egg, Basil Flowers and Red Wine Gastrique

Soup Seared Amaretto Infused Foie Gras and Roasted Fennel Salad in Tomato Consomm

Fish Smoked Halibut, Pickled Shitake, Green Pea and Sorrel Sauce with Crme Fraiche

Pasta Roasted Abalone Mushrooms Risotto, Parmigiano Reggiano and White Truffles

Intermezzo Lychee Sorbet with a Splash of Champagne

Quail Pan Seared Quail with Bok Choy and Braised Pear and Parsnips

Capon NYS Free Range Capon Roasted with Walnuts, Pine Nuts and Chestnuts, Pumpkin Flan and Lingonberries Sauce

Salad Roasted Winter Squash and Prosciutto Di Parma, Goat Cheese and Golden Sultanas

Cheese, Nuts and Port 1920 Wiese and Krohn Vintage Port & Chevrot, Edel de Cleron, Taleggio, Stilton, Morbier, Pecorino Toscano with fresh Pineapple Slices, Caramelized Walnuts, Sundried Tomatoes.

Dessert Lemon Tart and Raspberry Tuille with Crme Chantilly Flourless Chocolate Cake with Rose Water Gelato Magic Chocolate Box, Rum Cake and Blood Orange Parfait

Table of Contents
Thanksgiving Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 7 Poetry, Poems, Bios & More ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Poetry by Bill Berkson......................................................................................................................................................... 15 Slow Swirl At The Edge Of The Sea ........................................................................................................................................................... 15 For the Heart of the Second Floor .............................................................................................................................................................. 16 Red Devil.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Blue Is The Hero ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 20 Anhedonia ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21 Business ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 22 Fourth Street, San Rafael ............................................................................................................................................................................... 23

Thanksgiving Menu-Poem ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Nota Bene ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Noon ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Course One ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Thirteen Hundred Hours .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 Course Two ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Fourteen Hundred Hours ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Course Three ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 33 Fifteen Hundred Hours ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 Course Four .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Sixteen Hundred Hours ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 Course Five ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 38 Seventeen Hundred Hours ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 39 Course Six.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 40 Eighteen Hundred Hours ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 41

Course Seven ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 42 Nineteen Hundred Hours ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 43 Course Eight ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 45 Twenty Hundred Hours ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 46 Course Nine .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 Twenty One Hundred Hours ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 48 Course Ten ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 51 Twenty Two Hundred Hours ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 52 Course Eleven....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 53 Twenty Three Hundred Hours .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 54 Course Twelve ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 55 Midnight ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 56

Thanksgiving Introduction Hurray! Its Thanksgiving once again, another November, another year gone by, and another time to feast with dear friends. This is the eleventh Thanksgiving Menu-Poem and we are celebrating the great poet and art critic Bill Berkson. For two thousand and twelve we are celebrating with a twelve-course meal over twelve hours. A quick note, on the following pages we have everything Bill Berkson; including a full biography with links to poems, reviews and interviews. Hurray! This menu is a bit more extravagant than most thanksgiving meals in a nationwide recession. But I think this best represents what I would serve to honor Bill. Since this is paper, a poem, a fiction, a conceptual dinner, it is all right to say we will spend our time in excess. This is a twelve-course meal and is the meal I would serve if resource were unlimited. A grand meal for all of our friends to gather in one place and for a few hours celebrate on this day of thanksgiving to honor our friend, Bill Berkson. They say that if one lives long enough they and they continue to generate great work that person naturally becomes a national treasure. I truly believe that Bill a treasure, and one could make a case that he is a bodhisattva, a person who lives an enlightened existence and is able to move through life inspiring those around him. From his moving poetry to his insightful writings on contemporary art, along with many others, he has helped shape and craft a nations artistic identity. He has the rare double gift of possessing as much charm as wisdom. I for one can attest that his writings have multiplied my world by ten-fold. We published a book of his art reviews and interviews, a collection of writings that holds so many thoughtful responses to things that cannot speak for themselves. I find my world so much richer for having Bill in my life. I am certain many hundreds of others can say something similar. The poem that accompanies the menu is one long work entitled, The Twelve Hour Transformation of Clare. It details the disappearance, transformation of a woman into words. This poem was prompted by several deaths that occurred on the last day of January 2012. Notably, the artist Mike Kelley committed suicide and Dorothea Tanning died at the age of one hundred and one. Tanning, the wife of Max Ernst, known as the last surrealist had passed on. Her death created a wave of grief with in me. In the wake I was glad for her long life, the time she was given and how well she employed her talents. However, I also felt drowned in depression, loss. Now we live in a world where surrealism is actually art history. She took it with her, beyond the present tense; it resides in the past with our memories. She was a painter, printmaker, sculptor and poet, who kept with the current art scene. Even publishing with Graywolf Press her second collections of poems, last year, at the age of one hundred. Her life was extraordinary. And on January 31st, every online newspaper had posted her enchanting self-portrait Birthday. In a flash I saw this poem and spent the next three weeks, in a constant state of work, writing it to completion. It is very clear to me why this poem fits as a celebration of Bill Berkson; it is about the swirl of life, literature intertwined with memory, dying and thus disappearing. This is everything that we give thanks for on this day, surviving. It has been my very great pleasure to create this menu poem and I hope you enjoy!

Rockets, Geoffrey :-)

Poetry, Poems, Bios & More Bio Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet and critic who now lives in San Francisco. He taught art history and literature from 1984 to 2008 at the San Francisco Art Institute. A corresponding editor for Art in America, he has published reviews and essays in such other magazines as Artforum, Aperture, Modern Painters, ARTnews and artcritical.com. He is the author of some twenty books and pamphlets of poetry most recently, Not an Exit and Lady Air -- and was awarded the San Francisco Bay Guardians 2008 Goldie for Literature as well as the 2010 Balcones Prize for his collection Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems. His previous books of criticism include Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 and The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings 19852003. Jed Perl in The New Republic remarked that The Sweet Singer of Modernism is animated by an easygoing prose style, an exact feeling for the power of images, a keen respect for the value of an artists words, and an abiding fascination with the art world as a social fabric.

From Wikipedia Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattans Upper East Side, the only child of Seymour Berkson, general manager of International News Service and later publisher of the New York Journal American, and the fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert. He studied at Trinity School, Lawrenceville, Brown University, Columbia, The New School for Social Research and New York Universitys Institute of Fine Arts. Having begun writing poetry at Lawrenceville, encouraged there by such teachers as John Silver and the eminent Emily Dickinson scholar Thomas H. Johnson, he went on to study short story writing with John Hawkes and prosody with S. Foster Damon at Brown. But his full commitment to poetry was prompted under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch in spring, 1959 at the New School for Social Research. It was also through Koch that he was introduced to the poetry and arts community loosely termed the New York School, which in turn led to close friendships with Frank OHara and such senior artists as Philip Guston and Alex Katz, as well as with poets and artists of his own generation such as Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, George Schneeman, Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll and others. After leaving Columbia in 1960, he started work as an editorial associate at ARTnews, where he continued for the next three years. During the remainder of the 1960s, he was a regular contributor to both ARTnews and Arts, guest editor at the Museum of Modern Art, an associate producer of a program on art for public television, and taught literature and writing workshops at the New School for Social Research and Yale University.

After moving to Northern California in 1970, Berkson began editing and publishing a series of poetry books and magazines under the Big Sky imprint and taught regularly in the California Poets in the Schools program. In 1975 he married the artist Lynn OHare; their son Moses Edwin Clay Berkson was born in Bolinas, California, on January 23, 1976. He also has an adopted daughter, Siobhan OHare Mora Lopez (b. 1969) and three grandchildren, Henry Berkson and Estella and Lourdes Mora Lopez. New friendships in the California years have included those with Joanne Kyger, Duncan McNaughton, and Philip Whalen. Berkson is the author of some twenty collections and pamphlets of poetryincluding most recently Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems and Lady Air.His poems have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies and have been translated into French, Russian, Hungarian, Dutch, Czechoslovakian, Romanian, Italian, German and Spanish. Les Parties du Corps, a selection of his poetry translated into French, appeared from Joca Seria, Nantes, in 2011. Other recent books are Whats Your Idea of a Good Time?: Letters & Interviews 1977-1985 with Bernadette Mayer; BILL with drawings by Colter Jacobsen; Ted Berrigan with George Schneeman; Not an Exit with Lonie Guyer and Repeat After Me with John Zurier. Beside the aforementioned collaborations, he has done extensive projects with visual artists Philip Guston, Alex Katz, Joe Brainard, Lynn OHare, and Greg Irons, as well as with the poets Frank OHara, Larry Fagin, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman and Bernadette Mayer. In the mid-1980s Berkson resumed writing art criticism on a regular basis, contributing monthly reviews and articles to Artforum from 1985 to 1991; he became a corresponding editor for Art in America in 1988 and has also written frequently for such magazines as Aperture, Modern Painters, Art on Paper, artcritical.com and others. In 1984, he began teaching art history and literature and organizing the public lectures program at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he also served as interim dean in 1990 and Director of Letters and Science from 1993 to 1998. He retired from SFAI in 2008 and now holds the position of Professor Emeritus. During the same period, he was also on the visiting faculty of Naropa Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, Mills College and continues to lecture widely in colleges and universities. He has published three collections of art criticism,to date, the latest being For the Ordinary Artist: Short Reviews, Occasional Pieces & More. As a sometime curator, he has organized or co-curated such exhibitions as Ronald Bladen: Early and Late (SFMoMA), Albert York (Mills College), Why Painting I & II (Susan Cummins Gallery), Homage to George Herriman (Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery), Facing Eden: 100 years of Northern California Landscape Art (M.H. de Young Museum), George Schneeman (CUE Foundation), Gordon Cook: Out There (Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis) and George Schneeman in Italy (Instituto di Cultura Italiano, San Francisco). In 1998 he married the curator Constance Lewallen, with whom he lives in the Eureka Valley section of San Francisco. Berksons archive of literary, artistic and other materials, including extensive correspondence and collaborations with OHara, Guston, Brainard, Mayer and others through the years is maintained in the Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Bibliography Poetry Saturday Night: Poems 1960-61 (Tibor de Nagy, 1961; reprint, Sand Dollar, 1975) Shining Leaves (Angel Hair, 1969) Recent Visitors (with drawings by George Schneeman) (Angel Hair, 1973) Enigma Variations (with drawings by Philip Guston) (Big Sky, 1975) 100 Women (Simon & Schuchat, 1975) Blue Is the Hero (Poems 1960-75) (L, 1976) Red Devil (Smithereens Press, 1983) Start Over (Tombouctou Books, 1983) Lush Life (Z Press, 1984) A Copy of the Catalogue (Labyrinth, Vienna, 1999) Serenade (Poetry & Prose 1975-1989) (Zoland Books, 2000) Fugue State (Zoland Books, 2001) 25 Grand View (San Francisco Center for the Book, 2002) Gloria (with etchings by Alex Katz) (Arion Press, 2005) Parts of the Body: a 1970s/80s scrapbook (Fell Swoop, 2006) Same Here, online chapbook (Big Bridge, 2006) Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently (The Owl Press, 2007) Goods and Services (Blue Press, 2008) Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2009) Lady Air (Perdika Press, 2010) Parties du Corps, trans. Olivier Brossard, Vincent Broqua et alia (Joca Seria, Nantes, 2011) Expect Delays [forthcoming] Collaborations Recent Visitors with Joe Brainard (Boke Press, 1971) Hymns of St. Bridget with Frank O'Hara (Adventures in Poetry, 1975) Ants with drawings by Greg Irons (Arif, 1975) Two Serious Poems & One Other with Larry Fagin (Big Sky, 1972) Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings with Frank O Hara (The Owl Press, 2001) The World of Leon with Ron Padgett, Larry Fagin, & Michael Brownstein (Big Sky, 1976) BILL, with Colter Jacobsen (Gallery 16, 2008) Ted Berrigan, with George Schneeman (Cuneiform Press. 2009) Not an Exit, with Lonie Guyer (Jungle Garden Press, 2010) Repeat After Me, with John Zurier (Gallery Paule Anglim, 2011)

Memoirs Young Manhattan (w/ Anne Waldman) (Erudite Fangs, 1999) Since When [memoirs, forthcoming] Prose What s Your Idea of a Good Time?: Letters & Interviews (w/ Bernadette Mayer) (Tuumba Press, 2006) Criticism The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings 1985-2003 (Qua Books, 2004) Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 (Cuneiform Press, 2007) For The Ordinary Artist: Short Reviews, Interviews, Occasional Pieces & More (BlazeVox, 2010) The Elements of Drawing in Wayne Thiebaud: Still-Life Drawings (Paul Thiebaud Gallery, 2010) Piero Guston and Their Followers, Philip Guston/ Roma: a symposium [forthcoming] Dean Smith in Action, Dean Smith, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco Dewey Crumpler s Metamorphoses, in Dewey Crumpler, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, 2008 Seeing with Bechtle, in Robert Bechtle/ Plein Air, Gallery Paule Anglim, 2007 On Adelie Landis Bischoff, Salander O Reilly, 2006 Ultramodern Park, in David Park: the 1930s and 40s, 2006 Introduction, in Jo Babcock, The Invented Camera, 2005 A New Luminist, in Tim Davis, Permanent Collection, 2005 George s House of Mozart, in Painter Among Poets: The Collaborative Art of George Schneeman, Granary books, 2004 George Schneeman s Italian Hours, CUE Art Foundation, 2003 Without The Rose: Jay DeFeo & 16 Americans, in Jay DeFeo & The Rose, University of California Press, 2003 Pyramid and Shoe (Guston and Comics) in Philip Guston, Thames & Hudson, 2003 The Abstract Bischoff, Salander-O Reilly, 2002 DeKooning, With Attitude, in Writers on Artists, Modern Painters, 2002 Spellbound (Vija Celmins), McKee Gallery, 2002 Warhol s History Lesson, John Berggruen, 2001 Join the Aminals (Tom Neely), Jernigan-Wicker, 2001 What the Ground Looks Like in Aerial Muse: the Art of Yvonne Jacquette, Hudson Hills / Stanford Art Museum, 2001 The Searcher in Elmer Bischoff, University of California Press, 2001 Ceremonial Surfaces in Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000 Existing Light in Henry Wessel, Bransten Gallery, 2000 "Jackson Pollock: The Colored Paper Drawings", Washburn, 2000 The Portraitist in Elaine de Kooning / Portraits, Salander O Reilly Gallery, New York, 1999 Hung Liu, Action Painter, in Hung Liu, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco,1998

Things in Place, in Table Tops: Morandi to Mapplethorpe, California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA, 1997 Autograph Hounds, in Hall of Fame of Halls of Fame, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 1997 Homage to George Herriman, Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery, 1997 The Romance of the Rose, in Jay DeFeo, Moore College of Art, 1996 Changes like the Weather, in Facing Eden, University of California Press, 1995 The Ideal Reader, in Philip Guston: Poem Pictures, Addison Gallery, 1994 Poet and Painter Coda, in Franz Kline, Tapies Foundation/Tate Gallery, 1994 Apparition as Knowledge in Deborah Oropallo, Wirtz Gallery, 1993 The Thiebaud Papers, in Wayne Thiebaud: Vision and Revision, Fine Arts Museums, 1992 "Air and Such" in Biotherm by Frank O'Hara, Arion Press, 1990 Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, SFMOMA, 1991

Editor In Memory of My Feelings by Frank O'Hara (posthumous collection of poetry, illustrated by 30 American artists) (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967; reprint 2005) Best & Company, a one-shot anthology of art & literature, 1969 Alex Katz (with Irving Sandler) (Praeger, 1971) Big Sky magazine (12 issues) and books (20 volumes), 197178 Homage to Frank O'Hara (ith/ Joe LeSueur) (Big Sky, 1978; reprint Creative Arts, 1980; 3rd edition, Big Sky, 1988) The World Record (with Bob Rosenthal), lp of poets readings, St. Marks Poetry Project, 1980. Art Journal, Special de Kooning Issue (with Rackstraw Downes), 1989 What's With Modern Art? By Frank O Hara (Mike & Dale s Press, 1998) Anthologies The Young American Poets,10 American Poets, The Young American Writers, The World Anthology, An Anthology of New York Poets,Best & Company,On the Mesa, Calafia, One World Poetry, Another World, Poets & Painters, The Ear, Aerial, Broadway, Broadway 2, Hills/Talks, Wonders, Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, Best Minds, Out of This World, Reading Jazz, A Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century, Euro-San Francisco Poetry Festival, The Blind See Only this World, The Angel Hair Anthology, Evidence of the Paranormal, Enough, The New York Poets II, Bay Area Poetics,Hom(m)age to Whitman, POEM, The i.e. Reader, Nuova Poesia Americana: New York. Other Recordings of poetry on Disconnected (Giorno Poetry Systems) and The World Record (St Marks Poetry Project); Daniel Kane, All Poets Welcome; and in the American Poetry Archive (San Francisco State University), PennSound (University of Pennsylvania) & elsewhere.

 Poetry translated into French, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Romanian, Czechoslovakian and Hungarian. Art reviews & essays regularly contributed to ARTnews 1961-64; Arts 1964-66; Art in America 1980- ; Artforum 1985-1990; Modern Painters, 19982003; artcritical.com 2009. Awards Dylan Thomas Memorial Poetry Award, The New School for Social Research, 1959 Poets Foundation Grant, 1968 Yaddo Fellowship, 1968 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, National Endowment for the Arts, 1980 Briarcombe Fellowship, 1983 Marin Arts Council Poetry Award, 1987 Artspace Award for New Writing in Art Criticism, 1990 Visiting Artist/Scholar, American Academy in Rome, 1991 Fund for Poetry Grant, 1994, 2001 San Francisco Public Library Laureate, 2001 Guest of Honor, Small Press Distribution Open House, 2004 Paul Mellon Distinguished Fellow (lecture), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 2006 Goldie for Literature, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2008 Balcones Poetry Prize, Austin, Texas, 2010 Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (CCLM) grants for publishing, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978 Honorable Mention, Editor's Fellowship, CCLM, 1979 NEA, Small Press Publishing Grants, 1975, 1977

Sources Contemporary Authors, Volume 180, Gale Research Ron Padgett, ed., World Poets, Volume 1, Scribners, 2002 Terence Diggory, Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets, Facts on File, 2009 Daniel Kane, All Poets Welcome, University of California Press, 2003 Steven Clay and Rodney Philips, A Secret Location On The Lower East Side, Granary/NY Public Library, 1998 Who s Who in American Art, 2009 Constance Lewallen, Joe Brainard: A Retrospective, Granary Books, 2001 Ron Padgett, ed., Painter Among Poets: The Collaborative Art of George Schneeman, Granary Books, 2004

External links Interviews & Reviews In conversation with Robert Glck In conversation with David Levi-Strauss 20 Questions with Bill Berkson Bill Berkson on Morton Feldman In conversation with Jarett Earnest Schwabsky on For the Ordinary Artist Interview on Art Practical

Poetry by Bill Berkson

Slow Swirl At The Edge Of The Sea Figures in trees screech; The sun steams, the near air boggles, Et voil, the brooding nimbus. Death, real death, its an Old World custom, A certain semblance of knowing Whats what, without which nothing works.

For the Heart of the Second Floor Now you see it no you dont Not a problem put this next to that Time and materials thats the work Take-out pattern recognition delivers Apropos an apropos You recognize like the back of nobodys business Small pleasures across fields of dark matter splurge The problem lies elsewhere down Alongside the solution

By the ponderous lake raw stupor rules Fake governance arrogance yammers The no-singing elephant in the sunny situation room Outsourced consciousness cheat sheets

Bestow on encrusted skulls No news is good from sadsack Baggy Dad either Or the cornfields

So it goes absent authenticity Under twinkly blurs deft circularity Story threads legible in every bright night sky Doused with travel plans and grievance Compressor smudge an index of indelible Opacification epithet dire surmise default What color is that? Marimba Now that light has come back to us Its bath of water fragments celestial respiratory function thrives Some mornings I can tip my cap air antique manners in the Philosophers Walk back reading up on metamorphosis and pragmatism

There are many things more interesting about me than my name sings one attuned In bold magnanimity colors squared with Shape advancing smilingly print to fit

Red Devil The red devil perched with his sword a little to the left above the profile of Dante on the torn square of wrapping paper pinned to the wall that shows a series of Italian cigar-box labels Dante is one of them, as en Veil at the tear-edge is another. Dante wears his customary, slightly pinched, fierce fuck you expression which is not directed at anyone personally, the viewer but registers inner struggle toward thought and concentration. The Red Devil was one of a string of Italian restaurants around Broadway in the theater district circa 1950 where I used to go for supper with my parents between Sunday movies. It was my favorite for spaghetti and meatballs and within easy walking distance of the best theaters The Rialto, Strand, Roxie, Paramount, Capitol and Loews State. My father had lived and worked in Rome during the 30s, he so enjoyed speaking Italian with the jovial hefty waiters, and I would have Chianti mixed with water like a real Italian kid. By the door and on the front of the menus was a red devil, the piquant muted red of spaghetti sauce. One time as we were leaving the place, getting on our coats, there was a tall stately brunette standing near us, adjusting her mink wrap. She was sexy, I was 12, I froze and gawked. Then I noticed my father looking at her too with a funny light in his eyes. I dont know which way my mother was looking, but for a split second my fathers look and mine clicked, and he gave me a very knowing glance. I felt something slip into place. It was our first shared joke as men.

Blue Is The Hero leading with his chin, though bristling with military honor, camp and ora pro nobis, rolling out the red carpet of chance on a plea that you might give others a front-row seat: Lady, take off your hat. So extra special Other times, it would be a roof garden like the one Rauschenberg has, being no Nebuchadnezzar of the bush, or, standing on your head, feeling the earth has hung a lawn and these dogs have come to bite you where it hurts I wonder if theyve really caught the scent, which is a poor memory in our Symbolist ears of what it must have been like to read The Hound of the Baskervilles for the first time in 1899 oh truly modern and amused and wrong, before the world, before the cold and the dry vermouth and everybody started wearing sweaters, taking pills. I confess to a certain yearning in my genes for those trips, tonics of the drawn shade and rumpled bed, the Albergo delle Palme in Palermo, instead of hanging on the curb, learning to love each latest gem fantastic! as the lights go out all over the Flatiron Building, which leaves the moon, sufficiently fa so la, and the clouds disentangle a perfect Mondrian, pure gray, to which you give nodding assent, somewhat true you are that helicopter, primping for the climb into whose bed of historical certainty? the fuel streaming down the sides, like fun in the sun, air in the air.

Anhedonia You must understand, it is difficult for me to die. And it is easy for us to go on living? Bukharin/ Stalin, Plenum of the Central Committee, 1937 Or maybe the other way around; Ive lost the thread: Something about Evil Days, Evil Ways, Business as usual, The kids, their schools And the Infernal Machine. Difficult it is, regardless of what Is said or put to writing In the end. Say we do as we pleasetacit approval Of a faulty transcription, sentence Taken down, in a kind of rapture.

Business Roses are red The gods favor mostly honey Containment bars all exit Insofar as the bouncing ball Dispenses With unlikely arrival What horses are to marriage Or a pirate dish of dead mans bones So is passionate love best compared to a fire Ignited across a calm, reflective stream Yours as the bright lights spin out of time As if you had summoned them

Fourth Street, San Rafael There was an old man at the bank today Standing beside the paying/receiving window while his wife Cashed a check or made a deposit she wore a light Blue dress black shoes black hair Not a sign of white or grey in it But from the curve her shoulders made a weight sunk Down to her ankles she was probably of a certain age Though a few years younger than her husband Whose ripened aging was no way disguised A stiff olive drab fishing cap visor above his long bony face And around his neck he had on one of those thong ties old gents wear With a metal clasp at the collar and blunt tips at the ends Loose hung sports jacket and baggy no-color slacks with a belt He stood talking seriously to her about their money matters And whenever he wanted to make some special point He would place his hand firmly on her back and pat or caress it With such decorum he would be her constant lover any time Healthy wealthy and wise, and so it seemed Stepping up to the adjoining window next in line

Thanksgiving 2012
Guest of Honor : Bill Berkson A Menu Poem
A Twelve Course Meal over Twelve Hours

The Twelve-Hour Transformation of Clare

Nota Bene On January 31st 2012, a woman slowly transforms over the period of twelve hours into words. Beginning with the hairs on her arms then to her skin then her body coverts into empty space marked by all the words in all the worlds dictionaries present and past. Her words take shape, organizing from short phrasings to into longer texts, into spontaneous poetry and onto longer prose works. Texts meld into a literature. She dances in the moment. Her life finds meaning in the definition of devalue. She is unsure if literature defined her life or rather, her life is an invention of literature itself. Emotions responding to her changing environment, works of literature set out a path for her to follow. Now, in her new shape, the works that defined her are now less than adequate to navigate straits flowing past the end of the story. She forgoes literature discovering other forms of writing law, philosophy, physics, and so on. Finding no solace, she transforms further into logical statements and equations. These expressions divide their forms, converting into sets that can be in the universe and sets that do not need a universe to formulate their function. Slowly, hour by hour, she converts into nothingness, anything and everything all in the same moment; a thing in the universe and an object of pure conception, surviving as would a number four floating in an alone space, in the seas of infinity without a function until a skilled mathematician can recall her on a dusty slate chalkboard in a red one-room schoolhouse for an empty classroom except for one teacher and one child.

Noon The sun concedes in stupidity on this last day of January twenty twelve. Easing its slight fingers through the cellophane covered windowpanes, Creeping outwards, over the floorboards and carpets to touch, warm the Two faces of Clare staring in her vanity mirror applying makeup and scent. News is reading through her in twitter streams on a bright computer. Electric shadows illuminate upwards as lines written quite literally on her mirrored face. She reads heartbreaking stories of famous suicides. The failures of privilege speak, death makes them friends, if not equals. What was real-life before the Internet, her mind thinks but cannot recall. Inundated with memories of Alexander McQueens walk into the sea. To meet Virginia Wolfe and fit her death gown with larger pockets to ballast Her body, anchor with anything at hand, skipping stones, schoolbooks, praise. Dreamlike portrayals of the female form dance in her doorway; With sadness she will begin to process this new everything world. As faded sheets of music reading songs, the ear listens elsewhere, The voice is a silent dark embolism; her heart weeps words as tears For strangers who happened to make artwork that match her taste. A soundtrack for idioms, curiosity, wrought out consuming irony Literal sex, metaphoric beautiful friendships, visions of oblivions. I still have your memory; you woke up dead, face down in the muck.

Course One

Champagne Toast Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Ros champagne Vintage 1998

Thirteen Hundred Hours Dark rills begin, the words of every generation of humankind appear, Pour forth from her eyes and nose in analogous driblets of India ink. Watercourses of raw writing systems lope across her rejecting anatomy. In dictionaries of doublespeak, containers of human appreciation Her eloquent body bleeds expressions, many she cannot translate. Foreign creature phrases branch out, rindle under, black runnels Of words words words burn gridirons, reframe her blistering matter. Curve intimately inwards, transform into valiant isolated commands. Nevermade supernatural sharp obliterates exhilarating fear of defeat. If this is death then I welcome it with a regretful mind, Clare decides. I should have had the courage to stop, not live a life expected of me. A life true to my imagined ideals of living, it was never out of reach. I wish I didnt work as hard as I did at that office. Gone on more walks Enjoyed nature more, had another child, opened my door to that cat. I should have had the courage to express my feelings, not make peace. More and more black speckles, words upon words metastasize her body. Tears and horror become Clare. A mothers pleading for forgiveness at the foot of grave markers for the unborn. Please let me survive this. I should have stayed in touch with my friends. In this golden time My deep regret is not giving more time to friends who move away. I wish that I had let myself be happier in the moments that required The access necessary for happiness; and in the gray times, really pivot Achieve a truer sense of sadness; one that might be written down in a book Or, a screenplay for the empty masses seeking stories sadder than their own. It was her leathered skin that held her in lifelong distrust, a plastic mess. A covering marked only by it's ability to change, degrade in a heavenly way. Writing harsh reminders of past traumas in scars and cancerous growths. Her mother would look in the mirror and see a flower in bloom nearing it's wither point, ready to be cut down and admired. A metaphor sitting within a flower vase becomes itself a metaphor, her mother embodied nuances. Ancient reminders of her grandmothers sun freckled arms. The unappreciative hard work performed at the farmhouse. The cats that kept her warm, the chickens cooped for eggs. How these images remind her of the smells of barns, Manure and sweet grasses, that boy who lost his foot in the combine,

The girl with the red barrettes and her sister with pigtails and overalls. Orange sunsets under shade trees overlooking waving fields. Grandfathers midnight war screams; a girl is somebodys daughter. Her thoughts wrinkle in her fathers stark remarks at her brothers funeral, Stating, Life goes on but you are dead inside, rotting away. Netting a series of holes tied together in webbings that only responds by saying, thank you.

Course Two

Amuse Bouche Kaviari Beluga Gold Caviar with Steamed Chickpea and Ricotta Crepe

Fourteen Hundred Hours In time, all the dead books of world war two will one day rise again. Not as a bird, but as a cloud, a multitude of geese seeking rainbows. In her own words, At first I sought clemency without courage. How I loved the form I once embodied. In sentiment I mourn every Syllable of the healthy skin, each nameless corpuscle, the innumerous Highways of capillaries, the unseen imagined atoms I never really knew. My eyes, their blueness were shut tight. I could not see, the rising fear The wind of the unknown harkens itself in delitescence. There was no pain. I winced at pain that did not come for what seemed an eternity. Nothing. There were stunning rivers of words revolving in the place I was once stood. For a thousand years I have been solitude, I am still that person, I believe. I remember a substantial spirit being defiled. A living mass of hope burning Asking, what happened, by whom, by what means, how? No answers. An umbrella drenched in phantom rain, my discontented memories struggled Against my own understanding, my thunder form, a spectacle constellation. An admonition of text floating in context clouds, as a shrouded blue sky. Virtue hands of information paused to where my face once looked out. Words arresting where my eye once perceived all things. Everything similar. My orientations were parallel; a swarm of concealing, a skin used to describe. I questioned if anything had really occurred. And yet, in those first few minutes My desire to live as I was, to remain presently, I would have promised anything. It is too embarrassing to recited the choleric prayers I gasped, Moments of waiting for the torture sock to be placed in my mouth. Ready to be electrified into shock. To cry out as I watched my face devolve, my legs open to mists of emptiness. Converging with the oncoming screaming storms. There will be no more sin! I must live, stay here and pay my debts, my penalties for all the wrong, Gray consequences imbued in pleas for forgiveness. I could not move, fear Floored me, strapping down the uninvited, as a voyeur of your own autopsy. Able to watch, accept that death was yet another in a series of poor choices. What did it feel like to die? I do not know. I did not die I went back to my room and sat in my chair and cried.

Course Three

Cold appetizer Chilled Hamachi, Sunny Side Quails Egg, Basil Flowers and Red Wine Gastrique
Back row left to right: Lisa de Kooning; Frank Perry; Eleanor Perry; John Meyers; Anne Porter; Fairfield Porter; Angelo Torricini, Arthur Gold; Jane Wilson; Kenward Elmslie; Paul Brach; Jerry Porter; Nancy Ward; Katharine Porter; friend of Jerry Porter | Second Row left to right: Joe Hazan; Clarice Rivers; Kenneth Koch; Larry Rivers | Seated on couch: Miriam Schapiro; Robert Fizdale; Jane Freilicher; Joan Ward; John Kacere; Sylvia Maizell | Kneeling on the right back to front: Alvin Novak; Bill de Kooning; Jim Tommaney | Front row: Stephen Rivers; William Berkson; Frank O'Hara; Herbert Machiz. http://artists.parrishart.org/artist/838/ John Jonas Gruen Julia's 3rd birthday, Water Mill, 1961 Photograph 2012 John Jonas Gruen

Fifteen Hundred Hours The afternoon sun bathes the thousand miles of addled tranquility. The birds chatter away, marking no disturbances in the garden. The mournful cry of a red-winged bird, flying lost in the blue skies. Plotting, planning, exploring. What was next? What am I? What was I? Curiously unfeeling her shade eyes look over the possessions of her home, Attempting to discern what was absent from these seasonal necessities. The consciousness that bound all of these obscurities and clichs together was overgrowth, a hermit woman who escaped her life in the words of others, who loved too much, loved to little; an unborn child swimming in springs. Her midnight immateriality was in itself an icy success of accumulation. A life of summer trees obscuring the wars rallies her country entertained. A severance of the self from painted still life, an ice cream and it's cone. Looking at the red trees she looses track of the looming presence Of invisible gases rustling in temperature and pressure fluctuations. Fusion, manipulation, questions of failure or success, fashion choices. The scent of sarsaparilla, coke-bottle eyeglasses, allowances, space; Winter. The weather is already warm, the ground should be frozen. Fallen leaves on the pathway to the home of one no longer there.

Course Four

Soup Seared Amaretto Infused Foie Gras and Roasted Fennel Salad in Tomato Consomm
Bill Berkson, 2008. Poet Copyright John Sarsgard http://sarsgard.photoshelter.com/image/I0000om1QHBC4y1E

Sixteen Hundred Hours I do not know what to do I remember I could not sit at my dying mothers bedside I could see her bruised hands Shouting at doctors, the spark of now, not as then; beautiful smelling of fine soaps, linen of outside, of waterflowers, shrubs; talking with neighbors they lean into one another the doctor calls for a cart the moment is over; we go inexplicable sadness we will all be missed people we love pass an enemy within enemies a cannibal of parasites a volatile chemical alarm for the plant it is a pathogen layering it's immune response a cunning advantage of life a bacterium for spreading nature transmitted through insects targeting resistance

a release of seeds, sterile males in different parts of the world will change the entire species we can manipulate anything it is an interaction, infection to sound off alarm beacons in a part of our cultural shift we try to control the disease by dispersing more diseases we shall all miss her we all shall be missed mislead again by love The tango of horizons we grow into red skies aging orange vapor trails at every step we are doomed the door opens it is time to go time to dance into evenings with each beat with each step we crumple She is remembering so many Things she wanted to forget. What a marvelous mythical beast she was in her mind.

Course Five

Fish Smoked Halibut, Pickled Shitake, Green Pea and Sorrel Sauce with Crme Fraiche

Naropa Writing & Poetics Faculty 1978. Left to right: Peter Orlovsky, Bill Berkson, Patricia Donegan, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kate Millet, William Burroughs, Michael Brownstein , Larry Fagin, at the Varsity Apartments, Boulder Colorado, June 7, 1978. Photo: Cynthia MacAdams http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=naropa-faculty-1978

Seventeen Hundred Hours The blank slate of her life is filled with nonsense; inverted and naked. Enlightened in thought burdens of the past, forgotten ideas set in stone. In these hermetic mists empty words vanish thinly in her mouth. A cyclical narrative of perspectives seeking out a dnouement, a dynamo of consent. There is nothing more to say. We can go no further in the pale story once we have reached the end. All that is left is to put the book down, place it back on it's shelf and begin remembering what was written. Her memories begin clearing out her mother's house, bleak packing crates Old newspapers softening future hard blows and improper storage with That days events time-stamped, to always remember the events leading Up to the day we put in the cellar her pink carnival glass candy dish, along with other bits of a life too provoking to discard. The banal effects of the dead, sloughed off skin, a mountain, a shell of a conch on the oceans floor waiting for another, younger conch to come, create a home in the safe pink spirals. Objects of virtue a future antiques dealer might find interesting enough to retail. All standing at attention boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes in the root cellar, With the wine, to dissolve the sorrows of a century in the dust and cobwebbing.

Course Six

Pasta Roasted Abalone Mushrooms Risotto, Parmigiano Reggiano and White Truffles

Eighteen Hundred Hours Her dark hair is a tangled thicket of possibility. A madwoman of the woods, a queen of trees. A murmuration of starlings lost to the exaltation of the moment, alighting towards the moon, struck dumb with love, hushed in place, a snowstorm. Clare bares her specter wings open to nothing. To white doorways leading her feet into rooms Housing the shreds of ordinary human existence. A drowsy future embodied in her visions of sleep, Cannot now remember the unkindness they retain. Her shape is malleable to her cerulean mood. Words discovered as a wellspring of flowing Shrewdness, a parliament of self-governance, Ghost dances, her reception ballet; a lost monarchy Of banishing perfections performed for mannequins. A coronet of equal moral autonomy rings false, an untrue clang. A hollow note her mind discerns, plucking out as times tables, Recalling the chords of peerless sounds hanging in the sparking googolplex of living words; the life sentences of the long dead. A fleeting success inoculated against the aphrodisiac of supreme power, the holy vertigo of consciousness. Her age of impoverishment nourished in requiems, oaths and magic charms Stories of intrigue spelling her far away, adieu, Over walls of her upbringing as her song fades. What can grief achieve, that the aureate words of failure cannot. Limitations define us everyone in associative nightmare visions. Beauty is the core of the anesthetic that quells painful outrages. How can we all still be alive after all we have lived through?

Course Seven

Intermezzo Lychee Sorbet with a Splash of Champagne

Nineteen Hundred Hours Bags of gold in a line Ten minutes to gather You are then awake Sweating with desire Shouldering empty arms Groups of wet pillows Sex becomes a symptom The pen is a dripping phallus The belief vacuum A binary system of despair Masturbating in a mirror Solitudes of one and zero Anguished memory Too much learning The cult of literature Vocabulary is fiction Atoms energize in colliders Born in the state of nature Let go of all that is beloved The ridged walls of dreams Reality claims superiority The opposite of art appreciation Written awkwardness pictures A pace horses aspiration to win The great survivor survives again Antique clocks buried in landfills Inscriptions suffer for their sufferers What was once fact is today no longer true Todays facts will not hold up to the future The best panacea is an unencumbered death

Collections overwhelming tropes Cunning words cannot be caught From tears dreams invented a life

Course Eight

Quail Pan Seared Quail with Bok Choy and Braised Pear and Parsnips
Berkson (poet & art critic), Nick Dorsky (filmmaker), Chip Lord (filmmaker & multi-media artist), & Stephen Vincent (poet & visual artist) accidentally run into each other on the corner of Castro and 24th Street at 4 oclock on a Saturday afternoon & Vincent yields his camera to a bemused passerby who presses the trigger to this http://stephenvincent.net/blog/?m=20090601

Twenty Hundred Hours The amber day is now ten minutes older. Evanescent light waves refract in colors, Adapt in breaking prisms to their new surroundings; as in the story of Archimedes Discovering in his golden drawings while the Romans destroy the state of Syracuse. "Do not disturb my circles," he chided the soldiers sword that disemboweled him. In disregard, a finger dipped in his own blood, he reached out to fix his equation. Another witness condemning the inadmissible disbelief that we, ourselves must die. A mythic story of a life that did not happen, a translation without an original author. The full definition of life has no fixed value, death is a desert cactus of self-aurora, willful neglect of the impending chaotic, the fire impressions deliberating disorder; As wild and irresponsible children making a mess of the scientific, undoing expressions, creatures of condensation, interpreting life burden as tensions of the absurd, regurgitation, as owl pellets scattered among forest pine leaves, forgotten pins, a moist home for morels. In her self-recovery consciousness peddles forward, a conveyance of modesty bicycling Over new terrains of ambitious wonderment. For all these years her thoughts revolved, Rusting her squeaking body in a chain, a tandem of miserable biological sweat glands. Is she not still sitting here? Her education cannot explain the contradictions of death. Shines now, as a fraud, a counterfeited old master, an artwork worthless in everything Except for its plastic frame holding peacock memoirs of hateful originality and ownership.

Course Nine

Capon NYS Free Range Capon Roasted with Walnuts, Pine Nuts and Chestnuts, Pumpkin Flan and Lingonberries Sauce

Twenty One Hundred Hours dance danceable danced dancer dancers dances papyrus par parable parables parabola clockwise clockwork clod clog cloister elongations elope elopement eloquent eloquently homeowners homes homesick homespun hive crayons craze creak criteria criterion critic bloodymindedness bloom bloomer blossom damsel damsels damson damsons darkness immoderately immodest immolate immortality scintillate scintillated scintillating scintillation jetties jewelry jewels jezebel jiffy jig jigsaw remorselessly remote remotely remoteness screamer screams scree screech screeched immorally immunize impersonal impersonate schooners schwa science scimitar scimitars shuttlecocks sicken sightless sightseers sigma sigmoid sign signal signatories signature signed signet significance sweets sweetshop swell swoop tempestuous template temple tempo temporal temporality thankful thankfully thankfulness thanking thankless thanklessly thanks thanksgiving triggered triggerhappy troubleshooting troublesome troublesomeness troubling trite trounce triumphalism zigzag zippy zips zither zithers zombi zombie zombies zonal zone zoned zones zoology zoom written wrong wrongdoer wrongdoers wronged wronger wrongest wrongful wrongfully wronging wrongly wrongness wrongs wrote wrought wrung wry wunderkind xenon xenophobe xenophobic velocities velum velvet velveteen venal vendetta

yourself youth youthful youthfulness youths yowl unstuck unsubdued unsubsidised unsubstantial unsubstantiated unsubstituted unsubtle unsubtly unsuccessful unsuitability unsullied unsung unsupportable unsupported unsuppressed unsure unsurfaced unsurpassable unsurpassed unsurprised unsurprising unsurprisingly unsurvivable unsuspected unsuspecting unsustainable unswappable unsweetened unswerving unswervingly unsympathetic untainted untalented untamed untangle untarnished untasted untaught relented relenting relentless relevance relevancy relevant ronroneo intencional ronrone ronroneo bolso bolsos fruncidos sobrecargo frunciendo cumplimiento de conformidad persiguen perseguidos perseguidores perseguidor persigue persigue la bsqueda actividades que difunden gracias a la existencia proveedores mbito de pus empujan ser empujado empujado empuja presa fcil empujando flexiones agresivos pus coo pstulas pustulosas pstula puesto supuesta supuestamente pudren putrefaccin putrefaccin putrefaccin putrefacta desconcertado rompecabezas desconcertante perplejidad extraamente pigmeos enanos pijama pijama quadrangular quadrant quadrants quadratic quadratically quadratics quadrature quadratures quadrilateral quadrille quadrilles quadripartite quadrophonic quadruped iekre saldkaisls spos krbas bras spdums lustreless lauta lautas prpilnba krs zelt luxuriating greznuma greznu greznbu grezni li li srms atrodas limfas limftisks limfoctu limfoctus limfoctisk limfodo limfomas limfomu

Lynch lynched lynching lynchpin lu lynxes Liona Lyra lira lyres lirisks lirisks liriski lirisms lyricist lyrics liriis lizns makaks makakas makaroni mandeu cepums macaroons papagailis macaws vle maces maete machetes mahincija mahincijas manu mehniski lometju tehnika manas manists manisti machismo skumbrija lietusmtelis makro makromolekulas makrofgu makroskopiska makroskopiski mad dusmu dmas maddeningly maddest madhouse magisterially magma magmas magmatic magnanimosity

Course Ten

Salad Roasted Winter Squash and Prosciutto Di Parma, Goat Cheese and Golden Sultanas

2011 Alphonse Van Woerkom http://alphonsevanwoerkom.com/portraits/

Twenty Two Hundred Hours Her name is Clare, after Clare of Assisi, and a homeland left across the sea. She was reading the days news Of Dorothea Tannings death and Mike Kelleys suicide as she was getting ready. The sound of broken glass Her face is cut, bleeding There was a woman in the window Two men broke in the door She fell to the gunmens feet Clear coverings mask her face The surface must prevail She is suffocating Is screaming Holding her down She is resistance Hits her head Disappeared Black sites Words pass Astronautica

Course Eleven

Cheese, Nuts and Port 1920 Wiese and Krohn Vintage Port & Chevrot, Edel de Cleron, Taleggio, Stilton, Morbier, Pecorino Toscano with fresh Pineapple Slices, Caramelized Walnuts, Sundried Tomatoes.

Twenty Three Hundred Hours Clare could not live in a place where she died Her pleasure, her beauty Is a peace, a love Found in music and Words. Afterthoughts. This was, is a comfort Glad, if that is the word, For her to have died Without knowing loss. The taking, the surviving Needed in old age. Forgetting. We are all the same, we are one. We are all good, we are all bad. The time I pass Alone is hard. We are a miracle. A blessing. Old age is experience Something to compare No longer curious About the world. We Listen With our brain. Experience. Compare Time and passing moments. I did my duty. I did my best. When I could I survived. Survived. So we live So we die. When we achieve, Our time, when it comes Will be beautiful. Beautiful.

Course Twelve

Dessert Lemon Tart and Raspberry Tuille with Crme Chantilly Flourless Chocolate Cake with Rose Water Gelato Magic Chocolate Box, Rum Cake and Blood Orange Parfait

Midnight Yesterday January 31st 2012 is lined in chalk. White writings set values on the blackboard. The red one-room schoolhouse is unfurnished. One teacher and one child sit in the classroom. An ocean of pure conception survives in shame. A number four sits alone at the table of infinity. The paradox of pleasure is the expense of another. Arbitrary mindlessness sedates our kind enthusiasms. Finding no solace, she transforms definitions. Logical statements divide into twos and threes. Language is a plaything in the hands of intention. Statuary expresses its rage, still outside in the rain. absolute absolutely absoluteness absolutes absolution absolutism absolutist absolutists absolve absolved absolves Thank you for building a new dream, my old dream crumbled away. Your face was an illusion that lingers still, bless you my darling angle.

Geoffrey Gatza is a widely published poet and has received awards from the Fund for Poetry and a Boomerang Award. He is the author many books of poetry, including Secrets of my Prison House (BlazeVOX 2010) Kenmore: Poem Unlimited (Casa Menendez 2009) and Not So Fast Robespierre (Menendez Publishing 2008) and HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage Press 2008), He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now in it's tenth year. His visual art poems have been displayed in gallery showing. Recently, OCCUPY THE WALLS: A Poster Show, AC Gallery (NYC) 2011 occupy wall street N15 For Ernst Jandl - Minimal Poems with photography from the fall of Liberty Square. And in, LANGUAGE TO COVER A WALL: Visual Poetry through its changing media, UB ART GALLERY (Buffalo, NY) 2011/12 Language for the Birds. Geoffrey Gatza is the editor and Publisher of the small press BlazeVOX. The fundamental mission of BlazeVOX is to disseminate poetry, through print and digital media, both within academic spheres and to society at large. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his girlfriend and two beloved cats. http://www.geoffreygatza.com/ http://www.blazevox.org