Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Finished reading Anna Burns' Milkman today. I liked it very much. Henry Abelove gave me the book when he came to our holiday party. My Goodreads review: A revelation. How does one convey the emotional numbness that the unlikely heroine, Middle Sister, puts up to protect against the various invasive forms of violence in her Belfast community in the 1970s? By showing the constant struggle to maintain the shield, always in danger of slipping because of one's curiosity, anger, fear, and love, if not battered down by communal conflict. The language, repetitive, idiosyncratic, in one word, paranoid, immerses the reader in Middle Sister's consciousness. The immersion is complete with the voices of other members of the community, filtered through Middle Sister's consciousness in such a way that they are always at least potentially echoes of her own dilemma, figures of her own splitting. Today I also got to page 95 of Asad Haider's Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the...

Valerie Mendelson, 2012 Portrait with Blue Shirt  Alert, open, the face has not yet learned to protect its look from the world. A sharp blow —losing a foot or acquiring an incurable failure— will close it. The face knows its luck will not hold. It waits for fate’s knuckles but is not ready (it is a young face) for the slow crack of age.

The Fair, which moved back to the LGBT Center in NYC this year, was well attended. My table, shared with Roxanne (Poets Wear Prada Press), was in a side room because I arrived too late to get a table in the main hall. Still, I managed to sell five copies each of Seven Studies for a Self Portrait and Equal to the Earth . It was a good idea to give a discounted Fair price, and to discount further the purchase of two books. Two copies of Eric Norris's fiction  Terence were also sold. I read for the Poets' Salon, curated by Nathaniel Siegel and Regie Cabico, and for Rachel Kramer Bussel. The first was better attended (at least during my time slot), but the second had a better room where you could actually read without a mike and be heard. WL and Eric came to hear me read. GH came just after my reading and so missed it. I was happy, however, with all their show of support.  * After the Fair, I attended the opening reception of Valerie Mendelson's group show at Westbeth . Th...