I want to thank everyone who came to the Weymouth library last Saturday.
It’s pretty weird to be referred to as a ‘poet’ (actually I think it’s pretty weird to be talked about at all) but I did read some verses and had a Q&A. I thought it went rather well.
I hope to see all of at the next one!
I’ll be doing a Meet the Author event at Weymouth Public Library on Saturday April 13th at 2:00, and will read from my book Kings, & Saints, & Knights. There will be a short lecture (definitely) and cake (rumoredly) .
It will be at Tuft’s Library near Jimmy’s Broad Street Diner — where I recommend both the Reuben and the Monte Cristo.
I did my first interview today with Annie’s Book Stop in Worcester. I was very lucky to sit down virtually with Selena Lovett and join a large, yet renowned, roster of writers. It was both a pleasure and a great experience for me. We talked about everything from coffee to that time Stephen Sondheim missed the chance to work with me.
After a few decades of procrastination, I have finally gotten around to reading Ulysses.
All this time I was intimidated by two aspects of the book. First its reputation for being excessively difficult, which it is not. And second by its sheer Dublinness, which I got over.
For the first aspect I’ll concede that the book is certainly full of arcane jokes and it has something of a radical format. But the parts that are supposed to be clear and and the parts (such as the Circe section in Nighttown) which are not should be obvious enough to the reader. And any lack of clarity is not not willful obscurity — it is an aspect of design the reader will understand.
Nobody who isn’t James Joyce himself will probably get all of the reference unless they begin with an annotated copy of the book — a tactic I’d not recommend because the novel, however unusual, is immersive and nothing breaks immersion like a squad of annotating professors. Footnotes, especially good footnotes, make more noise than an active bomb-testing site, or a daycare before nap-time.
A lack of annotations may indeed cause problems. It may be that the youngest prospective readers of the book wouldn’t be familiar with catechisms or newspapers (both of which lend their forms to chapters). While neither of these genres are as central to the culture as they were in 1904 when the book is set, or 1922 when it was published, such a prospective young reader would likely know they exist and need only minimal instruction in their use and format.
The second aspect I got over by working with The Here Comes Everybody Players (who I have written of before) a Boston-based Irish theater troupe. Talking with the actors, and hearing them speak onstage, taught me how to hear the people of Dublin — and the great novel of Dublin. Thrown in to that experience was learning about the constant popular culture references that are mixed into the book and we now call Trad Music which I knew from growing up around Boston.
What I didn’t expect was that the book would be so much fun. Ulysses has a reputation of being plodding obscure and dismal. Perhaps this reputation was fostered to be the counter to those who called it scandalous and pornographic when it was published. If so they needn’t have worried. Nobody actually takes book recommendations from the Post Master General. It’s dark and weird but playful and — no matter how much commentary I had heard about it — full of surprises. It proved to be the opposite of its reputation and was swift, readable, and joyful.
Happy New Year!
I hope all of you readers have a better year than the one previous. In fact blessings and champagne for everyone who needs it! I hope you take some time off to be unproductive. I certainly have.
I’ve also made The Alien Buddha Press’s Play List # 14 you can check it out and see what the cool kids are up to. It is certainly heartening to see my fellow writers doing such great work.
I’m delighted to announce that a few verses from Kings & Saints & Knights of have been selected by my editors for the Alien Buddha Zine #58.
It’s a great place to check out the very best contemporary writing; especially if you haven’t read my book yet, and want to know my opinions on actors, audiences, cats, fish, hot-buttered rum, Instagram, photography, snow, snow ploughs, stages, suburban sprawl, wild animals, and Amy Winehouse — and I know you do.
It will hit the stands (or at least the interwebs) December 30th.
Kings, & Saints, & Knights, my latest book, has just received a minor revision — I cleaned up a few typos and I inserted an illustration by the great M. Grant Kellermeyer.
The title poem of the collection was weirdly the title piece of Swords, Snakes, and Shipwrecks (back in 2016 when it had a different title), and I felt that the poem had been damaged by being separated from the original drawing.
Now everything has been restored.
You may follow Saint Carannog into the cave at great peril, but fully illuminated.
My latest contribution to the Blue Unicorn magazine, Socratic Dialogues, is hitting the stands!
If anyone wants to visit Braintree, this is the time to do it.
The leaves are beautiful. The weather is crisp but not cold. The fruit in the orchards is ripe — the brains are big, wise, and heavy on the boughs.
And, best of all, it is time for the book fair at the Thayer Public Library — where I will be in attendance.
I will have copies of both my books and I will be happy to sign them.
This Saturday I’ll be involved in a workshop reading of the Sirens section of Joyce’s Ulysses with the Here Comes Everybody Players–who I had the honor of doing last Bloomsday’s performance with.
It will take place from 2 – 5 PM, November 18th, in the Red Room, at The Foundry (101 Rogers St Cambridge).
The chances of the reading being broken up by the vice squad or the forces of The Postmaster General are remote but are also greater than zero.
Thomas Olivieri 