Poets Galore at Books Inc in the Castro April 17, 2008

Poets Kevin Killian, Jocelyn Saidenberg & George Albon, will be reading their favorite and best written poems, celebrating National Poetry Month.

In his first poetry collection, Argento Series, novelist Kevin Killian views the horrors of the AIDS pandemic through the films of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento. Structured like a horror film, populating deadpan reportage with badly drawn "characters" whose grisly deaths nevertheless come as an apocalyptic shock, it is a testament to human suffering, a call to political action unlike any other.
Jocelyn Saidenberg's third book of poetry, Negativity, begins in a "dusky" wood, but instead of descending to hell she journeys through the negativity of earthly relations. We hear of friends, lovers, and a declining country--all filtered by a consciousness equally troubled by its own suffering and the suffering of others.

A moment is an inside flutter, a reflection, a civil relapse. George Albon's Momentary Songs, sound the possibilities of forwardness and hope in a surrounding twilight of unprecedented venality. Using a variety of registers--lyrical inquiry, Blakean exhortation, the satirical spiel of Morgenstern's Gallows Songs--they search for alternative states (public ones, affective ones) as well as offer a probe on what has come to pass: "In this eclipse are we the inclement for placing it?"

About Kevin Killian:
Kevin Killian, US poet, novelist, critic and playwright. He has written a book of poetry, Argento Series, two novels, Shy and Arctic Summer, a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows, and two books of stories, Little Men that won the PEN Oakland award for fiction. A second collection I Cry Like a Baby was published by Painted Leaf Books in 2001. His next book of poetry will be all about Kylie Minogue: poets Michael Scharf and Joshua Clover will launch their new press with Killian’s Action Kylie in the fall of 2008.

About Jocelyn Saidenberg:
Jocelyn Saidenbur is the author of Disposed, Negativity, Dusky, CUSP, and a limited edition chapbook, Mortal City. Winner of the New Langton Arts Bay Area Award in Literature, 1999, and former Director of Small Press Traffic, Saidenberg is an editor and publisher of Krupskaya, a small press publishing collective. She also works as a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. Born in New York City, she currently lives in San Francisco.

About George Albon:
George Albon was born in 1954. He has a degree in film theory from Southern Illinois University. Work of his has appeared in Hambone, Talisman, Ribot, O Anthology 4, Lingo, West Coast Line, non and elsewhere. He is also the author of Reading Pole, Transit Rock, Empire Life, King, and Possible Floor. He lives in San Francisco, California.

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Books Inc. is a locally owned and operated independent bookseller with 10 locations in California. Books Inc.’s origin dates back to the Gold Rush Days of 1851 when Anton Roman struck it rich in Shasta City, California and set himself up in business selling books. That small bookstore was moved, bought, sold, burned, rebuilt, renamed and became Books Inc., as we know it today, in 1946.

Today, with 10 Stores and 200 employees, Books Inc. serves as a shining example that independent bookselling can survive and prosper, even if we must dance among the elephants.

This Event is Free at Books Inc. 2275 Market St. San Francisco 94114
For Questions: 415.864.6777 or on the web at www.booksinc.net and
www.myspace.com/booksinccastro

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