SEGUE 4/19: RUTH LEPSON, WALTER CRUMP, AND DAN MACHLIN

The Segue Reading Series Presents

Ruth Lepson, Walter Crump, and Dan Machlin
Saturday, April19, 2008 ** 4PM SHARP**
at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, just north of Houston)
$6 admission goes to support the readers

hosted by Tim Peterson

Poet Ruth Lepson and photographer Walter Crump are the authors of the collaborative book Morphology (Blazevox Books). Ruth Lepson is also the editor of Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology and the author of Dreaming in Color. Walter Crump's photography is included in numerous private and public collections including: Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Museum of America Art (Smithsonian), and the National Museum of Fine Art, Hanoi. His website is www.waltercrump.com.

Regarding Morphology, Tina Darragh says:
"'Awake' is now 'Aquake,' and we are more sensible souls for the 'light tablets' this collaboration tones us."

and Charles Alexander says:
"This book is magic. I want to read it a thousand times."

From "Morphology"

*

"Can anyone think of a
Realist writer? I ask. A guy
In the back of the room
Raises his hand. "Simmonds
Hoote," he says.

*

*

Robert Creeley's new poems are
black                  and white
maps                  of America
clear                  as New
Mexico.                  The clouds
are verti-                  cal curliques
chalked                  through Nebraska
and Kan-                  sas. The
Midwest                  map
strikes                  me--
its neck,                  the
North-                  east,
has been                  severed.
Later I                  notice the absence
of words,                  the
silence.

Dan Machlin's first full-length collection of poems Dear Body: was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in Fall 2007. He is also the author of several previous chapbooks: 6x7, This Side Facing You, In Re; and an audio-CD collaboration with Singer/Cellist Serena Jost, Above Islands. He is the founding editor of Futurepoem books.

From "Dear Body"

Meanwhile you were hiding underneath the table. At one time, they too could
assemble you out of grass – an abandoned rug and decaying vegetables.

We prayed to your effigy like to a beautiful library book you wanted to steal –
the perfect never-noticed crime.

Many years later indexing doubts about your presence you uncover lost plans
for some extreme city.

Or you as your own forbidden lover who meets yourself
Late at night in a forgotten deco motel.

A brief conversation about ephemera (each word drenched with sexual potential).

You know, I've never believed in your hope. So somehow the limbs attached to
a trunk of meat and toes a face lips that say a nose balding teeth barely –

O how this house whispers beneath the dinner table!