here is stating the obvious, today's sacramento bee published a front-page story about national book award winners joan didion and william vollmann living right here in river city. i'd link to the article itself but the bee has gone and did what it seems every newspaper in the u.s. has done, you must sign up to read its stories.

cheers to the desire to be auden's cheese, local but prized everywhere.

in other news, yesterday clicking thru the aussie journal cordite i read two poems by alicia sometimes, here and here. there is an arc of performance in these poems that desire to be spoken on stage, an energy made from the forms these texts take. i've no idea if sometimes is a regular performer of her work. but instead of being simply scripts for a performance, a weakness i find in much of spoken word writing, it is in the structure of her writing where the performance shape up, the energy of words, grammar and syntax held. sometimes has my attention, even her name, lower-case and an adverb, is cheekily aware of the constructive self, the who who is at once present in the protean art of living / writing.