kansas city

St. Louis, Detroit…Kansas City

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https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/08/square-expansion-st-louis-demolition-blight-vacant-dorsey/596299/

 

Geographer Neil Smith warned long ago in his book The New Urban Frontier that gentrification is not a process where all of a place becomes overdeveloped and most housing becomes overpriced for working people. Instead, Smith noted after studying American patterns, the high valorization of some neighborhoods required the depression of others. While Detroit continues to lose population, its central corridor from downtown to Wayne State University has seen tremendous re-valorization and reversal of decline. Post-bankruptcy Detroit has become two places: a small and very hip renewing area, and a larger, poorer area where demolition remains the city’s primary instrument of social compact.

St. Louis, Detroit…Kansas City

Our Firearms

jdoublep, , , ,

Our Firearms, Who send many to heaven,
Hallowed be Thy Names;
Our hands be wrung,
The N.R.A.’s will be done
in America as it is in Congress.
Give us this day our daily dead,
and send thoughts and prayers,
as we fill with holes those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into solutions,
but deliver us from stray bullets.
Amen.

See also:
https://jasonpreu.com/2018/02/24/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-our-problem-after-wallace-stevens/

https://jasonpreu.com/2018/02/16/thoughts-prayers/

Our Firearms

It’s a record

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isyouisorisyouaint, Threats

Give it a listen:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/threats/1455734714

https://open.spotify.com/album/2sppPsesMHSD92lKxKHFV9?si=qaeyvyk5RpGChfG0_gGjUA

https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Isyouisorisyouaint_Threats?id=Bnxvkmou5akaozemos2xw6hf4o4

Making this record is how I spent this cold, frozey winter. I hope it resonates with you.

It’s a record

Kansas City, come hear poems while drinking the best cocktails in town

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Sunday, March 10th, 6-9pm

Swordfish Tom’s

210 W 19th Terrace, KC MO 64108

I’ll be sharing the podium with the inimitable Silvia Kofler.

https://www.facebook.com/events/the-speakeasy-presents-jason-preu-and-silvia-kofler/2340134616020879/

Kansas City, come hear poems while drinking the best cocktails in town

Fountainverse 2018 Recap

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On October 12th, 13th, & 14th, small press poets from all over North America descended upon Kansas City to read poetry, sell poetry books, and enjoy all that KC has to offer. What used to go by the moniker of “The Kansas City Poetry Throwdown” (cf. https://jasonpreu.com/2016/04/19/some-of-the-writers-from-this-weekends-poetry-throwdown/ & https://www.facebook.com/pg/Fountainverse/videos), was this year rebranded with a new mission to focus on small presses publishing poetry.

In attendance were:

Outlandish Press (Cleveland, OH)

Spartan Press (Belle, MO)

Epic Rites Press (Alberta, Canada)

Aztlan Libre Press (San Antonio, TX)

Write Bloody Publishing (Los Angeles, CA)

CWP Collective Press (Buffalo, NY)

Additional, there were many representatives from Kansas City area poetry organizations & events, such as Kansas City Poetry Slam, The Riverfront Reading Series, and the Latino Writers Collective.

We partnered this year with Kansas City’s Charlotte Street Foundation and their help and support pushed us into new levels of what we could provide attendees and audiences.

The team that puts this event on is made up of Jeannette Powers, Samantha Slupski, Brandon Whitehead, and me.

I encourage any and all small poetry presses out there reading this to reach out to us (https://www.fountainverse.com) and make plans to attend next year. I can’t emphasize enough how much collaboration and cross-city pollination occurs every year after we put one of this events together. Even if you are not selected as a featured press/reader, there are plenty of opportunities for you to present and perform and sell your work.

Fountainverse 2018 Recap

Huron Cemetery Poems IX

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August 22, 2018

It’s too hot to sit with the dead today
     so I float above them,
     hanging on for dear life to the strings
     of a bunch of many-colored balloons.
Up high, where the air is much cooler,
     the oxygen less dense.
The vacuum of space waits hidden above me;
     a black, gaping maw poised to chomp.

Death above, death below, dying in between,
     one hand gripping balloon strings,
     the other trying to choke down a mustard-soaked sardine sandwich.
In the distance, beyond the curve of the earth,
     a thing so monumental its name cannot fit into a human ear.
In the distance, all lived pasts and livable futures.

There may be a mustard stain on my crisp, white shirt
     but I’m afraid to look.
Perhaps the dead have asked me to stay away today.
It’s probably not so hot outside after all.


Capture

Huron Cemetery Poems IX