: : : BlazeVOX [blogoscope] : : :

80% To Our Goal!

I want to say thank you to everyone for coming to our aid in our recent fund drive. Thank you so much for your help and support! So far in two weeks we have commitments for $7500 so hurray! Thank you a thousand times for helping us see this through! You are the best and I will never forget your kindness!!!

Our Online Raffle will be held on September 1st so there is still plenty of time to play!

Win 25 BlazeVOX [books]

A $500 value

Your choice of 95 titles – so you cannot lose!

5 drawings over 5 weeks

$5 a chance

$25 one chance for each drawing

Hurray!!!    

Paypal us now at our Raffle page!

http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

BUT WAIT – why try a chance!

Make a donation now to help save BlazeVOX [books] and we will send you books!

10 titles — $100 [a $200 value]

15 titles — $200 [a $300 value]

20 titles — $300 [a $400 value]

25 titles — $400 [a $500 value]

Paypal us now at our Raffle page!

http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

BlazeVOX [books] Raffle and Bake Sale

http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

Raffle

Win 25 BlazeVOX [books]
A $500 value
Your choice of 95 titles – so you cannot lose!

5 drawings over 5 weeks

$5 a chance
$25 one chance for each drawing

Hurray!!!

Paypal us now!

BUT WAIT – why try a chance!

Make a donation now to help save BlazeVOX [books] and we will send you books!

10 titles — $100 [a $200 value]

15 titles — $200 [a $300 value]

20 titles — $300 [a $400 value]

25 titles — $400 [a $500 value]

Bake Sale

http://www.blazevox.org/bakesale.htm

Yes it is true! This always works for school programs so why not give it a try! I am a CIA trained chef and can cook up a storm. I have gone into my Grand Grimoire of world class recipes and have chosen some on my best desserts.

If you order this I will mail it to you by USPS! These are specifically chosen to ship well, so it will arrive AOK. If in Buffalo, drop off to your home. If you are not in the Buffalo Area – please add $6 for shipping.

• Ginger syrup
• Culinary TEAM USA Spice Rubs
• Belgian Chocolate Brownies with macadamia nuts
• Dundee Cake
• Almond Cookies
• Half-Dipped M & M Cookies with Dark Chocolate
• Sachertorte

Culinary TEAM USA Spice Rubs

5 4 oz. packets of spices used by the 2000 USA team in the Culinary Olympics. It’s true! I have them and will send them to you – so you too can serve up a world-class meal! Recipes not for sale

Southwestern Spice Mix
Moroccan Tagine Spice
East Coast Grill
Caribbean style rub for Pork or Chicken
Curry Mint Rub for shrimp

4 oz. of each spice:
$45

Ginger syrup

One of the best things that I have ever created. Ginger syrup is a sweet sour and spicy glaze that is great on everything. Really, it is good on chicken, beef, pork and ice cream. Perfect for vegetables or an addition to a stir fry to add that perfect splash of ginger.

10 oz. Jam Jar
$20

Belgian Chocolate Brownies with macadamia nuts

Who doesn’t like chocolate brownies? Chocolate brownies are a timeless classic. Using fine Belgian cocoa brings out a deep rich chocolate flavor that is enhanced by macadamia nuts. You can’t ever go wrong bringing a plate of this delicious desert to any type of gathering.

One 9 inch pie-plate
$30

Dundee Cake

Here is a rich, fruity cake topped with almonds. It became popular at the end of the 19th century. It is often served at Christmas. Reputed to be Winston Churchill’s favorite dessert.

$25

Almond Cookies

Rich and buttery cookies are made with real almond paste, and baked to perfection. If you love almonds, you will love these!

Approx. 2 Pounds
$25

Half-Dipped M & M Cookies with Dark Chocolate

Fresh baked sugar cookies with M & M’s and half dip them in rich chocolate. We pack them with bakery wax tissue in between each cookie for safe shipping.

Approx. 2 Pounds
$30

Sachertorte

Sachertorte is a timeless composition of the most important and finest ingredients from the confectioner’s kitchens: pure chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar, flour, and apricot jam.

one 9-inch torte
$65

Nate Pritts Reviewed on Growler
Nate Pritts’ Sensational Spectacular is reviewsed at www.growlerpoetry.org
a website devoted to reviewing debut collections of poetry.

Hurray!
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-np.htm

Midwest book review on Pat Lawrence
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/aug_08.htm#Fiction

Journals from the Time of the Radar Dog
Pat Lawrence
Blaze Vox
14 Tremaine Ave, Kenmore, NY 14217
1934289566, $20.00, www.blazevox.org/bk-pl.htm

A journal is the collection of one’s thoughts. But what do people make of it when the author is gone? “Journals from the Time of the Radar Dog” tells its story in the format of a collection of journals - one by a character who has passed on, and others by his friends, family, and loved ones. A quirky and offbeat story with an original style, “Journals from the Time of the Radar Dog” is a top pick for any reader looking for something different.

Oranges & Sardines blog

Makes me think of Fennel

Here is a fun interview :

http://orangesandsardines.blogspot.com/

Secondary Sound by Justin Sirois
Reviewed by Gina Myers on book slut!

http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2008_08_013258.php
“the more I share, the more capital I receive. You’re a copy
of a copy, you’re a file rife with fire – in the ownership
society – in spite of normative code

let yourself be free & collect the monthly allowance

think about meme

copying youyou”

—Justin Sirois “paralysis by analysis”

Today is John Ashbery’s 81st birthday! Hip Hip Hurray! And to celebrate here in Buffalo, I made up 20 abstract birthday cards out of dollar store construction paper and a dollar store glue stick. I then asked poets from Buffalo to sign them and personalize them and we mailed them off in time for him to have them today.

Since everyone cannot play I decided to scan them in, sans inscription, and make a PDF book with pictures of John’s birthday last year. You can view the PDF at the link below. As the art is a celebration of life and commemorating the day he was born, these images will also be used in Anne Waldman’s forthcoming BlazeVOX book, a reprint of her First Baby Poems, due out in the late Fall. Waldman’s poems are a celebration of the beginning of a life and so were a natural choice for the book.

Happy Birthday book:
http://www.geoffreygatza.com/HappyBirthdayJohn2008.pdf

Pictures of John’s 80th last year:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ggatza/JohnAshberyS80thBirthdayParty

If you wish to leave a happy birthday to John please fill in the comment section and we’ll get them to him. So please participate, if you wish!

Best, Geoffrey

- - - - - - - - - — - - - - - — - - - - - -

Never Enough

Reflections on John Ashbery’s 80th birthday

Everyone gets a gold star and cake in the friendly garden.
It was not like Proust at all - No flushing memories -

Madelines made perfection, whipped in copper bowls and pans
John bought some 30 years ago - Things take their own course
To them he was John, excitements weighed through decades

An ornament of candy a warm chandelier, this place to escape
A place of fruit picking, family, winswept wanderings that made the city hop/e

Holy | His home now crème-brule, his grandfather’s spell in the upper room
Land | New owners of Ashbery Farms, Grown children from across the path

This is my next time and I ask too many questions
wanting to walk the beach in the mind of the man who wrote

lakeside to lakeside reflecting on monarch butterflies out of place,
melting ice creams with churning mechanisms of who isn‘t today

The futility seeks your outstretched hand and places
a slice of birthday cake, a frosting flower and a fork.

Here is a streaming video of the wonderful night at Butler Library!

Direct Link to the reading media page CLICK HERE:

The Rooftop Poetry Club Presents

Book release party for: Not So Fast Robespierre By Geoffrey Gatza

Featuring readers:
Richard Owens
Mike Sikkema
Geoffrey Gatza

Book release party for: Not So Fast Robespierre By Geoffrey Gatza
http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006

In Not so Fast Robespierre, Buffalo’s Johnny Appleseed of publishing lays out a public and private map of Buffalo’s (and his personal) community. With his selected Western New York School and personal support system in place, he moves onto “The Book of Life”, which, as always, proceeds disaster as Gatza battles through—rightly or wrongly—the “Cataclysm 535″ —Kevin Thurston

First 35 through the door receive free collector’s edition poem – Fantasia Lights

7 pm Wednesday, July 9 2008
Rooftop Garden, Butler Library

Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY
http://www.buffalostate.edu/library/rooftop/

The Rooftop Poetry Club was established in June 2005 to provide a creative venue for writers of the Buffalo State College community. Through poetry readings, open-mike events, workshops, and campus wide poetry projects, the club has proven itself an invaluable forum for the campus writing community and an asset to the entire college.

The layout of Butler Library is unique in that it contains a second-floor center courtyard called the “Rooftop Garden.” Those of you who are unfamiliar with rooftop gardens may not appreciate the poetic nature of such a space. But if you’ve ever sat up on a roof— away from the world, yet smack dab in the middle of it all—you can surely see how one might be drawn to read, write, and think in such a space. The rooftop garden is a perfect meeting place for the Rooftop Poetry Club. Simply walk up the center steps of the library to the second floor and look to your left– you’ll see the door leading you out to the rooftop.

Happy Birthday Ringo!

Love, Geoffrey

To commemorate the new Poetry USA logo I put together a nice little handmade poem box for the occasion! Inside a Nat Sherman’s Fantasia Lights cigarette box is a broadside poem Fantasia Lights.

The poem is from the Kenmore series, Vol. 1 under the section, A King In New York. The title of this section is taken from the Charlie Chaplin movie, and deals with my recent whirlwind trip to NYC for AWP.

Since this is a limited series and not everyone can get one, here is a PDF of the poem
Download poem here:

http://www.geoffreygatza.com/fl.pdf

How to get the limited edition in your hand?

Come to my reading is July 9th at the Roof Top poetry series at Buffalo State. OR send me an email and we’ll see what we can’t do!

Lisa Forrest - To The Eves

ArtsBeat: On poet Lisa Forrest’s “To The Eaves” http://buffalonews.typepad.com/artsbeat/2008/06/on-poet-lisa-fo.html

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-lf.htm

Buy it here :

at Amazon.com

Montserrat Review’s Best of Summer 2008

Among other great titles, Grace choose:

When I Said Goodbye by DiDi Menendez. c2008.
BlazeVOX Books. 67 pgs. ISBN: 9781934289860.

http://www.themontserratreview.com/BestoSummer2008.html