Up 6.
Read a bit of Artistic License.
Left a little after 10, hit traffic, parked several blocks away from my destination to Pasadena, made it to coffee w/ Julie Tannenbaum about 11:30.
Left there for downtown, had tacos at Grand Central Market, spent a while in The Last Bookstore: Mitchell Morris, The Persistence of Sentiment; Norman Corwin, Overkill and Megalove; Ronald Pearsall Popular Music of the ‘20s; We’ll Understand it Better By and By, ed. Bernice Johnson Reagon; Logic as Philosophy, ed. Peter T. Manicas.
Filled up the tank on the way to Amoeba: Dr. John, Gris-Gris; Ellington “Private Collection” studio sessions v. 1, Back Room Romp (50s small groups), The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse; Ala.Ni, You and I, The New Thing box (16 album/10 CD cheapie w/ Cecil, Ornette, Sun Ra, Lacy/Cherry, Teddy Charles; Luttoslawski, Polish Carols + songs; Blue Aeroplanes, Cavaliers; Rzewski, The People United…; Kathleen Supove, The Debussy Effect, OCR Black Nativity (nice to have on CD, w/ extra Alex Bradford + Marion Williams tracks); Henry Threadgill & Make a Move, Everybody’s Mouth’s a Book; Robert Wyatt, Solar Flares Burn For You; But Yesterday Is Not Today (New World Records LP of 20th c. U.S. art song); Christine Schutt, A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer (short stories).
From there to Westwood, looked around in the Hammer Museum bookstore (attractive but pricey - complete plays of Guy de Cointet runs $60, for example; resisted). Read the first 20 p. or so of Roxanne Gay, Hunger.
Waited around for Jennifer Moxley’s reading - read Artistic License until Diane Ward showed up. Good reading - partly from the very recent Druthers, partly poems written since, and a couple of sections from a prose book, supposedly about poets and birds, that looks to be a kind of sequel to The Middle Room; one was a memoir of Creeley, in which “The Maine Stein Song” came up.
Dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant on the reading series sponsors (the museum and the UCLA English Dept., in the person of host Stephen Yenser). J + Steve, Aaron Kunin, Joseph Mosconi, Brian Kim Stefans, some of Yenser’s family and a couple of other people from the dept. Reminded me of going out after a philosophy colloquium.
Gave AK a ride home, talked about his upcoming book about George Herbert. Home about 1, straight to bed.
Day’s car listening: rest of the drama cues CD, third disc of Triplicate, Tsunami Brilliant Mistake (ambitious, complicated record - I replayed and sang along w/ “Poodle” 3x), St. Vincent Masseduction (an object lesson in inconsistent messaging). Maybe something else?