•Chance Operations•

George Stair Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, January 30

2012-01-27T14:06:00.001-06:00

George Stair will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, January 30.

The other featured readers will be Jennifer Kronovet and Sally Van Doren.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Musical entertainment provided by Tom Bramer, formerly of Radio Iodine, who says:

Just me, my guitar, and a truck-load of computers, effects processors, and other assorted gear. Most of it will be improvised, because I'm generally too lazy to go to the trouble to rehearse anything.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

George Stair says:

My background has little to do with writing. I studied mathematics, worked as a computer system designer and programmer, and taught programming to handicapped people. When professional employment failed me, I tried making and selling a frozen dessert. When that failed, I drove a taxi. That job provided emotional experiences with people that had to be expressed. Other experiences that inspired were travel and death. I am pleased and surprised when my writing connects.

African Woman

Newly transferred from Atlanta, she was going from a North County restaurant to her motel. I flirted, "You didn't learn to talk like that in Atlanta."

"I'm from Nigeria."

We chatted, normally, I thought.

At the motel: "Why don't you come see me on Saturday. We could have a good time." She gave me the room and phone numbers.

Finally, a line I've never heard from an American woman: "I don't want to have to masturbate myself."

-- George Stair

Jennifer Kronovet Featured Reader on Monday, January 30, at Duff's in the C.W.E.

2012-01-26T11:52:00.001-06:00

Jennifer Kronovet will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, January 30.

The other featured readers will be George Stair and Sally Van Doren.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Musical entertainment provided by Tom Bramer, formerly of Radio Iodine, who says:

Just me, my guitar, and a truck-load of computers, effects processors, and other assorted gear. Most of it will be improvised, because I'm generally too lazy to go to the trouble to rehearse anything.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of the poetry collection Awayward (BOA Editions), which was selected by Jean Valentine for the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Boston Review, Fence, Open City, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is the co-curator of the Fort Gondo Poetry Series, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis.

I Talk To Another More Than Myself

The same words: anathema,
bibliographic, mark

our language as fallen.
Stencils of trees to decorate trees.

At the museum, you are impressed
by ancient bronze. Metal ribs

of another. I wield a dull knife
to my way of seeing:

the cloud-thoughts, not muscles,
feel the threat. The word-hinges—

like tools of unknown origin—
exposed under the more modern way

to light old artifacts. My use of
you could distill us, make room

for another experiment in materials.

-- Jennifer Kronovet

Sally Van Doren Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, January 30

2012-01-24T14:48:00.001-06:00

Sally Van Doren will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, January 30.

The other featured readers will be George Stair and Jennifer Kronovet.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Musical entertainment provided by Tom Bramer, formerly of Radio Iodine, who says:

Just me, my guitar, and a truck-load of computers, effects processors, and other assorted gear. Most of it will be improvised, because I'm generally too lazy to go to the trouble to rehearse anything.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Sally Van Doren’s book, Sex at Noon Taxes, (LSU Press 2008) won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her next collection, Possessive, is forthcoming from LSU Press in fall 2012. Her poem, “Preposition,” is featured as an animated film in the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Everywhere. Excerpts from her epic poem, “The Sense Series” were the text for a multi-media performance at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. A graduate of Princeton University (BA) and University of Missouri-St. Louis (MFA), she has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and in the St. Louis Public Schools and curates the Sunday Poetry Series for the St. Louis Poetry Center.

Cartographer

I thought my authority was
autonomous, but that

abracadabra episode threw me
flat-backed into nowheresville.

I took a stark antiseptic and
mapped out a new impasse.

I went from East coast to West
then found you with my compass

here in the middle. Bless you
and your nobility. You always

know where I am. I’ll pin you
up on my wall and worship

the whole plot of you, my long-
lost space goddess, atlas angel.

-- Sally Van Doren

[Note: This poem has previously appeared in Storyscape Literary Journal.]

Dena Molen at December Reading

2012-01-23T12:39:00.007-06:00

Dena Molen was one of the featured readers at the December 5 •chance operations• reading, which turned the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, will be Monday, January 30.

Featured readers will be George Stair, Sally Van Doren and Jennifer Kronovet.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Musical entertainment provided by Tom Bramer, formerly of Radio Iodine, who says:

Just me, my guitar, and a truck-load of computers, effects processors, and other assorted gear. Most of it will be improvised, because I'm generally too lazy to go to the trouble to rehearse anything.