DeWeese DeWeek at Octopus Books
Public Service Announcement: today if you buy Christopher DeWeese’s new book, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought (which I previewed recently at Pitchfork Fest and it’s a beautiful book, way more beautiful than average), you’ll get Heather Christle’s two books from Octopus—The Difficult Farm and The Trees The Trees—as also beautiful kickers. There are other deals all week, like tomorrow if you buy it you’ll get a note from the author.
Astute readers might remember Chris DeWeese from the Salamun tribute he put together earlier this year.
Here’s a video of Chris that just came out, in which he reads a poem inside a weird tube at the mall:
Here’s the poem he’s reading:
The Atmosphere
The air inside the air
kept getting smaller
as we rose up,
waving off the inches
we had been living in,
the faithful trees
that had watched over us.
Inside the gondola,
sound became a gesture.
A lion on the wind,
and then its skeleton
chopped within the gusts.
The light bent swans
between the clouds,
nasty, angry swans
we could almost feel
fucking up our ethos.
It reminded me of
when we stole the chicken,
how it kept so quiet
we dropped the knife
and just stood there,
stuck around the pentagram
like dumbfounded policemen
who’ve accidentally uncovered
a whole town of nudists.
I mean, yes, we were serious,
but really we knew
there was something wrong,
if not with us,
then perhaps with the system
that trained us in Peace Studies
before leaving us bored
and underemployed
in a summer village.
After a few hours,
we drank the champagne
tradition dictates
every balloonist must carry
to prove to suspicious farmers
they are not aliens,
then we ate the éclairs
we brought to remember
how good the earth is
when the right elements
are placed together,
how totally amazing
that from dirt
grow proud tomatoes,
and countless ideas
from our days.
The travel-size ghosts.
The sandbags we throw
to help us get away.
… kinda cool. If I was reading a poem inside a wind thing, I’d just do a little quatrain, but DeWeese don’t skimp.
Adam Robinson lives in Atlanta and runs Publishing Genius Press. He is the author of two poetry collections, Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say Poem.
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