Sometimes when I’m running around the lake near my house, I start to think of something I want to write. But I don’t want to stop to write it down–I’m running.

So I’ve been figuring out a system for remembering things while I’m running around the lake. There are three shelters, each about one mile from the other. I can use the shelters to store ideas.

Between the beginning of my run and the first shelter, I have some ideas. I leave all of those at the first shelter as I pass it. When I get to the second shelter, I leave all of the ideas I’ve had since the first shelter. And so on. Between the third shelter and home, I keep three words in my head, a word for each shelter, each word a representative of the ideas I’ve stored in the shelter. On my last run, I was repeating “song, blackout, solder” while I ran home.

So far, I’ve used the shelters to write a couple of things, and when I read those things now, they seem obviously written in three parts, each part having its own shelter.

When I Google “Alison Bundy”, Alison Bundy is a gymnast in skirt and heels. Then she is standing in the Palace of Westminister in front of Big Ben. Then she is in Louisville, Kentucky, with a slightly different name.

I can find only a couple of things online by the Alison Bundy I am looking for, one of my very favorite writers, who wrote some of my favorite books, Duncecap, A Bad Business, and Tale of a Good Cook.

Stacey Levine, Robert Walser, Kate Bernheimer, Sheila Heti–Alison Bundy’s writing could be compared to theirs, but she has power and language of her own.

There is an excerpt here from something called “The Child’s Tale,” which isn’t in any of the books I listed above.

And if you subscribe to Harper’s you can read two things online here, “Episode from the History” and “Family Statement.”

We’ll have a couple of tales by Alison Bundy in the next issue of Dewclaw, and I’ll also be posting an interview with her on this blog. I’m really happy about this–being able to get a little more of Alison’s writing where people can read it.

The next issue of Dewclaw is starting to come together. I’m still reading submissions and will be until the issue is full. I’m not sure when that will happen–it kind of depends on you.

On Saturday evening, there was another reading, and I got to check out more Wave poets’ shoes. Here they are in order of appearance.

Saturday, August 15.

1. Anthony McCann

His shoes were elusive. Were they hiking boots or sneakers? They had moc-toes. I tried to sketch them on my program. In the sketch they look like clouds with trees for laces.

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2. Rachel Zucker

They were like Dansko clogs, only cut away, so they were more like sandals. I worked with someone at a bookstore who wore Danskos. She liked to knit. Rachel Zucker read a long poem about being pregnant. She also read a poem in which she quoted Matthew Rohrer saying something like, “When you feel like going dark in a poem, just don’t, and see what happens.” I remembered the darkness that interrupted Matthew’s poem the night before.

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3. Geoffrey Nutter

Geoffrey Nutter! You looked like an accountant with your brown lace-up shoes and wearing a tie, and in fact when you began reading you reminded me of my bank account and how it is empty. But soon you were very funny, and we were all laughing, perhaps Joshua Beckman most of all, especially at your poem in which you reduced everything to dope. “Thy bones are made of dope.”

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4. Matthew Zapruder

He wore plastic/rubber sandals. When I first saw him I thought he looked like he was from Seattle/Portland. He talked about living in San Fransisco in a poem and biking to work in lanes designated by symbolic bikers. He talked about renting space in an office building with other writers. The screen behind him mysteriously began to rise.

I liked what he was reading but my mind started to wander. I thought about how funny it is that people write poems–really struggle to do this, bike through traffic, pay rent at a building where they go to write poems, and sit there, sometimes all day, trying. I love this about people.

Last night, I had a dream about a very lovable Irish Setter, the most tender dream I’ve ever had about an animal possibly because its eyes were so expressive and large, and I knew in the dream that this dog was Matthew Zapruder.

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5. Jon Woodward

I found you endearing. I used to wear that same kind of Adidas shoe with my Umbro shorts to middle school. I found your poem about larvae endearing. I found your last poem, which I remember so little of (there were rainbows, and shifting sonic fields) amazing. I hope that I will read it soon.

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6. Dorothea Lasky

She tripped a little walking to the mic. “I almost wiped out a little,” she said. I think we all liked her then. She wore suede ankle boots with heels.

All weekend she wore loud, clashing clothing. She read her poems loudly, almost shouting them. She read “Boobs are Real.” She said she had to read it because she was wearing the right shirt for it.

When she cut in front of me in line on Friday, I think she was wearing black vinyl sandals. I’m really looking forward to her next book, Black Life.

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7. Mary Ruefle

I assumed they were boots though I never saw the tops of them.  They had angular, stiff soles, like cowboys wear, and horses, too. The last time I saw her, on Sunday, she had a cigarette dangling out of her mouth while she stood outside the gallery arranging papers in what was probably some kind of order, looking tired. I think she’s from the East Coast.

While I biked home from the reading, I thought again how funny it is that people write poems, travel long distances alone to read them aloud, and then stand outside possibly feeling like they still haven’t got something right, or feeling like they have got it all right, and that these feelings might go walking by, eating candy the color of a sunset and talking about their secrets loud enough for a poem’s ears.

This weekend I’ve been going to the readings and things that are part of the Wave Books 3 days of poetry. It’s been really fun looking at everyone’s shoes. Here is a review of the poets’ shoes, beginning with the people who read on Friday. I’ll post reviews of Saturday’s readers soon.

Friday night, August 14.

1. Matthew Rohrer

Right after he began reading, all of the lights in the auditorium slowly dimmed, until the room was completely dark. Immediately they came back on. He was wearing black New Balance sneakers.

On Saturday Rachel Zucker will refer to him, in a poem, as the 2nd happiest poet in the room, after herself.

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2. Richard Meier

I had never heard of Richard Meier before this reading. He wore nondescript black leather lace-up shoes that I will realize on Saturday are the same style Keens that my boyfriend wears.

Something else about Richard Meier–when he started reading, I realized that it was he who had given me an apologetic smile earlier in the afternoon when Mary Ruefle and then Dorothea Lasky went in front of me in the line at the cafe. He seemed kind and stooped somewhat.

Eileen Myles and Noelle Kocot had looked at us in line and then left the cafe without ordering anything.

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3. Noelle Kocot

Before the reading I had an idea of Noelle Kocot being an accountant living in NY or maybe New Jersey. She wore black open-back slip-on shoes that resembled sneakers in the front and had thick soles.

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4. Maggie Nelson

I hadn’t heard of Maggie Nelson before this reading. She was wearing open-toe wedge sandals with stacked heels and they looked uncomfortable when she walked across the stage. She read poems about being lonely and “fucking” the Prince of Blue.

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5. Joshua Beckman

My idea of Joshua Beckman before this reading was this: he is the person Matthew Rohrer smokes pot with on long cross-country drives, and then they write poems together about pine trees and how you can choose to be happy.

He wore suspenders with leather detailing that matched the color of his leather shoes. On Friday I thought his shoes looked like Venetian-style loafers, but by Saturday, next to Dorothea Lasky’s mod ankle boots, they looked more hip, less old-money Italian diamond dealer who smokes pot in the grape arbor of his estate.

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6. Dara Weir

Flat-soled black boots that came to mid-calf. Quietly walked across stage. Right after she asked if we could hear her, the mic cut out. I had trouble hearing most of what she read. Wore sunglasses on Saturday into the auditorium and removed them just before the reading began.

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7. Eileen Myles

On Friday for her reading she wore off-white canvas shoes that were kind of dirty. On Saturday she wore weathered black motorcycle boots. On Saturday I imagined the off-white canvas shoes alone in her hotel room. I imagined her sitting in her hotel room before her reading, deciding between the motorcycle boots and the canvas shoes.

I’ve been thinking about fragments lately and writing a lot of them, maybe because I have little time or feel like I am very busy. The fragments I write down from what I’m reading also mostly have to do with fragments. Here are a few:

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“But the part is sick

of representing the whole.”

(Rae Armantrout)

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But the whole is stupid. I never meant any of it. It was a relief to take off my soccer pads in a lit car. I was alone.

(Dorothea Lasky)

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I am writing this on the train to Milan. We flash past towers and factories, stations, yards, then a field where a herd of black horses is just turning to race uphill. “Attempts at description are stupid,” George Eliot says, yet one may encounter a fragment of unexhausted time. Who can name its transactions, the sense that fell through us of untouchable wind, unknown effort–one black mane?

(Anne Carson)

On Tuesday I read with Amelia Gray. This was my second reading, ever, and while I think I improved slightly over the first time I read (at KGB in June for Unsaid Magazine), when I didn’t speak into the mic until I was about half finished with my story, I know I would like to be a much better reader, which for me means being able to project, using voice and gestures, the persona of the narrator, who is often not me and would move his or her body differently than I would, and use different intonation and patterns of emphasis than I do. I am too much myself when I am reading, and I think this contributes to my nervousness. For a nervous narrator, I would be a good reader.

Anyway, it was nice to be able to read with Amelia and musician Anna Lynne, and I thank Matthew for organizing.

I read something called Sag: A Saga, which will be in the second issue of Birkensnake. You can get that issue soon, and I think you will want to.

I met Stacey Levine at the reading. Stacey’s latest book, The Girl With Brown Fur, will be out in September, but it’s already out in Seattle, and I’ve read it, and it’s wonderful.

Claire Donato guest-edited the latest issue of The New Yinzer, and my story Cell Fish is in it. Check out the whole issue! Claire’s pulled together some really good things.

Here’s a little bit of my small story:

He shook the bag onto the table but something stayed inside. I had the feeling he wasn’t telling me some things.

“What’s in the bag?”

“What?”

Earlier we had watched a documentary about people who live in tunnels. One man had built a tunnel from his kitchen to a nearby country so that he could buy cigarettes and guns. He said that when he walked anywhere above ground, he imagined the thin ground falling in certain places, and dust.

We were inside a tiny Mexican restaurant finishing a meal. A man blew smoke out of two holes. The exhaust fan sounded like bagpipes.

+ I added a PayPal button a bit farther down this page. Because buttons are convincing, maybe. The number of copies available is very small. May the button disappear soon. +

In the last post couple of posts I’ve talked about a small book I’ve been working on. I wanted to have something to sell for a few dollars (or give away) at the reading I’m doing tomorrow. Here’s how the cover looks–

And here’s page 37–

I’ve got 25 copies of these, and I suppose not all of them will be gone after the reading. If you’re interested in having one, please send me an email (evelynh at gmail dot com) and we can talk about PayPal stuff. The price is $3 plus a dollar for shipping, unless you live far enough to require international shipping.

Read some of a slightly different version on elimae.

Adam did the layout using LaTeX, which I think we’ll be using to lay out the next issue of Dewclaw. I had a frustrating time trying to print the text at a copy shop–the margins were odd and it wasn’t possible to fold the pages without folding up some of the text. This morning I was anxious to find someone who could understand what was going wrong in the layout and fix it, and I called a printer and tried to explain the situation.  I barely understood the jargon he was using to tell me how to reformat the margins so that he could print it correctly. And then it was like a game of telephone, me, trying to remember what the printer had said, which I felt I had barely heard because I didn’t understand most of it, repeating this to Adam in a chat window. Somehow Adam interpreted what I thought the printer had said, made some changes, and the book was printed and ready this afternoon. It looks pretty good for being the result of probably many mis-communications.