Adam's Clay

I got an e-mail from Adam Clay this weekend and he, "had to cancel [the reading in Chicago}, though I hope to make it there sometime soon-ish."

So do we Adam, so do we...

In other news there is still a reading down here in Hyde Park tomorrow featuring, Charles Blackstone and Cheryl Pallant. Also, Danny's is back this week on Wednesday with a bunch more of the Chicago crowd, Gabriel Gudding, Simone Muench, and Ray Bianchi.

Anyway, back to Adam Clay. I love this guy. His poems remind me of sunrise: always beautiful, best when they're quiet, and surprisingly surprising.

In the poetry spectrum Clay lies somewhere between Wordsworth (imagery, language, purpose?) and some of your more current situational/art poets. I made up the situational/art thing, so don't looking up exactly what that means, rather, just think about it a tad and you'll get what I mean.

The guys got poetry everywhere and a quick search of his name will bring up most of it. In print form he's got a full-length (from Parlor Press) and a chap (from horseless press). With Matt Henriksen he edits the great TYPO online journal, which very kindly rejected me.

I first came across him a few years ago over at the Wave Books site which was (for two issues) publishing an online journal called "The Bedazzler" and my favorite poem of his is still there, that is until right now...when it's also here:

A refusal of night refuses everything once thought

to be revolutionary. True, I can say

the first night of love was all blankets and revolution,

but it had little

to do with the sun

and more to do with coincidental destruction.

I am Rip Van Winkle

without the beard. I am reaching

at airplanes

in the sky

in my sleep every night.

This is the saddest thing I have ever told anyone,

but there is no one here.

Noon

skylines across my vision and the alphabet

is infinite.

The more words I read, the closer each

Atlantic wave comes to take my sickness away.