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Brett Eugene Ralph and Steve Albini Read

Published on August 25, 2009 0 Comments
Sep ’09
20
3:00 pm

black sabbatical

Brett Eugene Ralph, whom Harmony Korine calls “a true beast of a man with insight and beauty to spare” and whose work has been described by Will Oldham as “an excuse for hope . . . sustaining, inspiring, even rescuing” will read at Quimby’s from his book Black Sabbatical. When asked about his influences, Brett Eugene Ralph points to three enduring sources: growing up Southern working class in the 1970s and 80s, playing in punk rock bands, and practicing Tibetan Buddhism. Not a likely combination for a poet, perhaps, but one that has brought forth Black Sabbatical, a debut collection that sings with gutbucket colloquialisms, hallucinatory interludes, and the storytelling tradition of Kentucky. Riled and immediate, the voice that booms from Black Sabbatical is of a seeker tearing the place apart, unafraid to see things for himself, to sing what he has seen, or to say what the long road that led here has cost him.

“[Brett Eugene Ralph is] a poet as honest and a debut collection as consistently strong as anything else currently out there.”
-Michael O. Mayberry, Alabama Writers’ Forum

Southern gothic meets alt-country twang, and rural hardship meets terse postpunk sophistication [as] Ralph’s troubled characters and dissonant outbursts evoke a self-destructive youth: “It’s like somebody choking on a car horn,” one poem ends, “or something metal being born.” Ralph’s rough free verse recalls the deep Ozark surrealism of Frank Stanford and the early poems of Denis Johnson, though neither precursor takes on quite the same blend of upper South present and past.” –Publishers Weekly

For more info: http://www.sarabandebooks.org

Also joining the bill is Chicago producer and musician Steve Albini, who will read some short fiction. He’s been writing short fiction for years. Did you know that?

teddy merino reads *the city the earth the heart a happening*

Published on August 7, 2009 1 Comment
Sep ’09
5
7:00 pm

teddy marino (yes, all lowercase, he tells us) got his start as a poet while studying History at UW, Madison, and working at a daycare. He wrote about politics, the apocalypse, and sex. After graduating, he lived a year in Puebla, Mexico, where he taught English, volunteered for a labor rights organization, and lived in a Franciscan orphanage.

In August of 2007 he moved to his native city of four generations. He found an Americorps job, working at an elementary school on the border of Garfield and Humboldt Park. He continues to work there as a teaching assistant and bicycle program manager. He writes about his (and the schools) neighborhood, about the city, people, and children.

His first book, *the city the earth the heart a happening* is mostly about Chicago, with a little bit of Puebla, a couple poems from the East Coast, and a handful of love poems.  And this is what he tells us about it:

“I want to celebrate before suffering the interminable winters of publishing companies whose bodily gases smell too much like roses for me. Broiler Plate: Italian sausage, Polish sausage, matzah balls, beef tacos, fried plantain, collared greens, and a barbecue seitan sandwich.  Broiler Plate: Looking for cultural nourishment of an unsung Chicago poet? Welcome to the party.”

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SEAN FELIX READS FROM NAMELESS FACES

Published on July 25, 2009 0 Comments
Aug ’09
24
7:00 pm

Various works meant to warp your world view. Wither its laughing at the bizarre, reaching for the steak knife under the weight of melodic verses, or simply trying to contain a shiver, you will find yourself left slightly askew. Fresh from his stay at the psych ward SEAN FELIX exposes fragments of his mind without requiring the tokens usually necessary for a peepshow of this caliber. Subjects ranging from battles against a twisted god to the murder of a girlfriends mother will leave you wanting to reread the fluid narratives. Little girls with knife fixations, critiques toward the art world, man’s murderous narcissism, and the slow death that encompasses so many relationships are just pieces of a whole. Come hear a verbal menagerie of morbid curiosity, YOU ARE INVITED.

NAMELESS FACES is a collection of short stories, excerpts, poetry, and rants. Inspired in part by actual events and also by events only taking place inside the authors head, distinguishing the two is a constant challenge. Sean Felix reflects on the abstractly complex as well as the absurdly apparent which binds us all. You will be only spectators awaiting the ambulance to arrive at the scene of the collision.

SEAN FELIX is a resident of Chicago, is fascinated by pork products, hates electrical engineers, and is plotting to destroy straight leg pants (ladies, your feet look like elephant ears because of them, get a clue). This is the first of his viral distributions.

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Tyler E. Boudreau Reads From Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine

Published on July 16, 2009 0 Comments
Aug ’09
12
7:00 pm

Written by Marine Corps veteran Tyler Boudreau, Packing Inferno (Feral House) traces his 12-year career as a Marine, from boot camp in South Carolina to the first siege on Fallujah in 2004.  Boudreau’s transformation from eager recruit, to a professional-minded Marine torn between an intense desire to experience combat and a growing skepticism about the  operations in which he is participating, and finally to a Commanding Officer who lost faith in the mission, is told in deeply personal detail. Boudreau, an Iraq war veteran grappling head on with the psychological trauma left by war, refuses to be silent. His transformation is reflective of the broader American discontent about a war and occupation with no end in sight, and no moral compass left to guide it.

Packing Inferno digs deep in to the morass of the Iraq war as only a veteran of the conflict can. With rare candor, Boudreau’s account takes readers into the experience of war and all its contradictions. Early in his tour he embraced the call to win “hearts and minds,” politely waving at each Iraqi he met. Yet he confesses that, “most of the Marines, like me, were hungry for blood,” and recounts the unbridled joy he felt after he first saw combat. Eventually Boudreau relates the creeping skepticism that set in at the impossible task of distinguishing civilians from combatants.

Slowly he comes to believe that American military forces are only creating more insurgents with each attack, and that the war’s inevitable consequence is irreversible turmoil in Iraq and even civil war. Back in the U.S. in 2005, preparing for a second tour in Iraq, Boudreau realizes he loves his Marines more than the mission, and feels professionally obligated to relinquish his command and resign his commission. Boudreau’s final assignment as a Marine is not on the battlefield, but as the OIC of 2d Marine Regiment’s rear echelon, assigned the unenviable task of alerting the families of wounded Marines.  It is during this time, in what he describes as the most difficult job he’s ever done, that Boudreau notices the overwhelming numbers of service members returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress. Boudreau starts to wonder why it is never part of his script to tell a mother or a father that, “Your boy is coming home with a broken heart.” If Boudreau left the Marines in 2005, his battles had only begun. From chronic insomnia to sudden bursts of rage, Packing Inferno takes us inside the mind of a soldier struggling to make peace with the demons of war. Boudreau calls on readers not to avert their eyes from the ugly psychological wounds carried by many veterans and to declare loud and clear, “War did this.”

Tyler Boudreau, a twelve-year veteran of the Marine Corps infantry, was deployed to Iraq in 2004 as Assistant Operation Officer for an infantry battalion. Following the deployment he was assigned as the Commanding Officer of a rifle company and was preparing to return to Iraq when he resigned his commission because of his growing reservations about the war. He is the founder of Collaborative Revolution, a new not-for-profit humanitarian project to assist Iraqi refugees and immigrants resettled in the US. He maintains a blog at: www.deeperthanwars.blogspot.com

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There’s Something Wrong With Chess Event

Published on July 15, 2009 0 Comments
Aug ’09
13
7:00 pm

A Dual Release Party For THE2NDHAND broadsheet no. 32,

featuring a short story by Patrick Somerville

& Greg Gerke’s There’s Something Wrong With Sven

Patrick Somerville is the Chicago-based author of a novel, “The Cradle,” out this year, and the “Trouble” collection of shorts. His “A Game I Once Enjoyed,” a short about a chance chess match between two neighbors during the biggest snowstorm of the year, is the featured piece in THE2NDHAND’s 32nd broadsheet, released here. Somerville has been widely reviewed and praised. “The Cradle” even showed up earlier this year in the staid New York Times Book Review, yet he remains true to the roots of his work’s genesis as a mainstay of Chicago’s indie-lit scene. To read selections from his work, interrogate some of the reviews out there, and get in touch, visit his website, www.patricksomerville.com.

THE2NDHAND contributor Greg Gerke lives and writes in Buffalo, N.Y., where he penned the flash-fiction collection “There’s Something Wrong With Sven” — out this year from BlazeVox Books. His work in fiction has appeared variously in several mags, including Rosebud, Fourteen Hills, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, and THE2NDHAND. Writing in the Buffalo News, journalist and book critic R.D. Pohl described the new collection as “a picaresque gambol through many of the leading tropes of contemporary American storytelling from the manic to the gothic, absurdist romance to mock epic parody, Rashomon-effect reverie to tavern patron’s tall tale.” This versatile writer brings his bombast to Chicago in a stop on a multicity tour in support of the book. Visit www.greggerke.com for more.

Spencer Dew, based in Chicago, authored the 2008 “Songs of Insurgency” collection, out from Vagabond Press, and his shorts have appeared in great frequency in some of America’s best online and print lit mags, included, meagerly, THE2NDHAND. Amy Woods Butler (also, incidentally, more recently a contributor to THE2NDHAND) last said the stories in Dew’s collection “pound through the apathy and delusions of our post-9/11 world with the force of a jackhammer.” His delivery, too, honed through regular readings in Chicago and around the country, is unparalleled in its energy. Visit www.spencerdew.com for links to pieces of his prolific online lit presence. (Dew authored THE2NDHAND’S 30th, Winter 2008-09 broadsheet, “Gives Birth to Monsters.”)

C.T. Ballentine, THE2NDHAND’s Chicago editor, will host. Ballentine’s the creator of several one-off and short-run zine projects, including an audio zine (“Radio Plays”) and the occasional “Aftercrossword Special” for his own work. Prior to joining THE2NDHAND as an editor, the mag published his serialized novella “Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date.” Visit www.the2ndhand.com/archive/fried1.html for the first installment.

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