E-Verse Radio

Imagine if NYC Were an Atari Game: 8-Bit Big Apple!

Thanks to E-Versers Patrick and Erica for sending in the 8-bit New York City site. Click below to view.

Visit Mad-Scientist Jason Nelson’s Inter-Dimensional, Multi-Planar Machine Poems

Born from the computerless land of farmers and spring thunderstorms, Jason Nelson somehow stumbled into creating awkward and wondrous digital poems and interactive stories of odd lives. Currently he researches Net Art and Electronic Literature at Griffith University in the Gold Coast’s contradictory lands. Aside from coaxing code and creatures into breaking, playing, and morphing [...]

Dances with Smurfs, or Just a Pocahantas Punched Up a Bit?

Ernest Hilbert, with Caleb Barber and novelist Dave King, at the Bowery Poetry Club

Hey, stop by the Bowery Poetry Club on Wednesday, March 31st, for an evening of new American writers.
Click here for the Academy of American Poets listing.
Ernest Hilbert with poet Caleb Barber and Dave King, author of the best-selling The Ha-Ha, soon to be a major motion picture starring Josh Brolin.
March 31, 2010, 6 PM
Bowery Poetry [...]

Top Five Ways “Dutch” is Used as an Adjective About Things that Have Nothing to do with the Netherlands

5. Dutch auction: An auction in which the auctioneer starts at a high auction price and proceeds to cut the price until someone is found to buy at that price.

4. Dutch oven: Refers to a thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid, which is a common item found in many places throughout the world. Probably [...]

Ernest Hilbert and Jericho Brown at Frequency North

Thursday, March 18th, 2010, 7:30PM
College of St. Rose and Frequency North Present:
An evening of poetry with Ernest Hilbert and Jericho Brown
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor
420 Western Ave. Albany, NY 12203

“Your Body Made Heavy with Gin” by Jericho Brown
I can relax. I smell liquor on your breath.
Soon your arms will be too heavy to lift,
And [...]

E-Verser Jesse Rossa at the Oscars: Just Follow George Takei’s Thumb

Hey, Jesse, can you get some of the E-Verse staff in for next year’s Oscars?

And for good measure, here is the pumpkin version of Jesse, carved by one of his fans.

Ernest Hilbert Reads “Two Portraits” from Aim Your Arrows at the Sun

 
Love Among the Ruins, or LATR, is a small press named after the unfinished Evelyn Waugh novel and based in New York City. It was founded in Summer 2009 by editors Daniel Lin and Margaret Monaghan.
Click here for more information or to purchase Aim Your Arrows at the Sun by Ernest Hilbert.
“Two Portraits” by Ernest [...]

Ernest Hilbert’s Top Two Hundred Best Songs of the Decade, Number 9

“Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
How does one solve the problem of modern rock? Where to go? It can’t get any quieter. Any more whispering and moaning and we’ll lock these people in their rooms. It can’t keep sifting the rusty box of punk and hard rock forever. So what do Karen O [...]

Xaipe

Here is one of our cats, Xaipe. She’s a little killer. Pure evil. Her mother was pregnant with Xaipe and her siblings when we rescued her and found homes for all kittens (and mom). Her name is a Greek salutation, akin to “rejoice” in English, and it is one of the longest continually-used greetings in [...]

Lester

E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #79: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, 1922

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 1922.
It’s rare that a novel or one of its characters enters everyday language. Most people can identify Captain Ahab or Hester Prynne, and their circumstances or personalities may be summoned to make a point about obsession or hypocrisy. But only rarely does a novel get right to the heart of a [...]

Remember the First Time Your Cat Encountered Snow? Simon’s Catin’s “Snow Business”

Levi Stahl Urges Ernest Hilbert to Write a Noir Novel-in-Verse over at Quarterly Conversation

Mr. Stahl, poetry editor for Quarterly Conversation, writes on their new blog, Constant Conversation:
Even the least money-conscious among us has a fantasy about what he’d do if he came into a windfall of absurd proportions, right? A trip around the world? An apartment in Tokyo? A shelf full of rare first editions?
Me, I think I’d [...]

“Now with open belly rescue feature!”: Top Five Dead Taun Taun-obilia

For those of you who are not Star Wars babies, a word from Wikipedia about TaunTauns:
Tauntauns are 2.5 m (8.2 ft) tall bipeds, indigenous to the ice planet Hoth. Tauntauns are covered with white fur and have downturned horns, four nostrils, and a foul body odor. They subsist off lichen found in hoarfrost as well [...]

Molly’s Books is Back!

After a two year vacation, Molly’s Books is back in the Italian Market in South Philadelphia, so while you’re stocking up on bison loin and red snapper, stop in and grab a book to read on the way home.
We are open from Wednesday through Friday, from 12 till 6 and Saturday and Sunday from 10 [...]

Top Five Movies in Which Tom Cruise Lives a Secret Double Life

We’re not sure what this means, and we’re not prepared to speculate. Still, Mr. Cruise seems to take a lot of roles that require him to play a man leading a double life.

Bethany Brings Us Top Five “More” Appalling Examples of the Sexualization of Little Girls

Ernie hates when I send these to him, but it’s an important issue . . . – B

Winners of the Tollund 2010 Poetry Prize Contest

The Tollund Group has announced winners in its first annual poetry translation prize:
We are proud to announce the winners of the Tollund 2010 Poetry Prize Contest. The challenge was to recreate the words of a particular sonnet in the Nordic languages. This contest was different from other poetry translation contests in that it was on [...]

Top Five American Cult Scandals

5. Charles Manson’s Family.

4. Heaven’s Gate: Its 39 members committed suicide during the pass of the comet Hale-Bopp on March 26, 1997, so that their souls could join a spaceship following it.

3. MOVE: A Philadelphia-based religious Afro-centric back-to-nature cult that was a thorn in the side of the Philadelphia police for many years, until the [...]

Faulkner, Exley, Chandler? Who’s the Greatest Drunk American Writer? (#1 is a Tie!)

Head over to SofaKingDrunk.com to see the list of top ten greatest drunk American writers of all time.

Here are a few choice remarks on the subject by the contenders:
“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.” – Ernest Hemingway
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to [...]

2010 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Novelists, biographers, historians, poets, critics, politicians, soldiers, public servants, scientists, and medics will be joined by artists, philosophers, theologians, architects, engineers, botanists, environmentalists and children’s writers.

Change We Can Really Believe In: Domo!

Thanks to E-Verser Bill, famous lawman, for sending this in.

“It’s a Horror Poem”: Comment on “While You Were Out”

Over at his blog, Noise for Its Own Sake, Justin Hamm commented on my poem “While You Were Out“:
There’s so much quality poetry out there these days that it’s impossible to keep up with everything, but I’d like to link to a handful of poems that’ve really resonated for me lately.
The first, “While You Were [...]

Jersey Shore Before MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, or, Before Snooki There Was Ernie

I have developed the unshakable habit of calling the impish, overnight-star of “Jersey Shore” something like “Smoochi” or “Snoopy” when compelled to discuss the show in polite company. It seems I can only devote so much of my brain to information about people who haven’t actually done anything. E-Verse assistant producer Kara, one of the [...]

Upcoming Readings for Ernest Hilbert

What follows is merely a thumbnail sketch of my readings for the first half of the year. More may be added, and you should certainly double-check the details (time, for instance, and lineup) closer to the dates to be sure of what you’ll be getting yourself into. I hope to see you at one of [...]

E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #80: A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley, 1968

E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #80: A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley, 1968.
This fictional memoir is as breathless and manic as its author surely was when couch-surfing his way across Eisenhower’s America, steadfastly refusing to grow up, always lurking in the shadow of his beloved local sports-hero father, who died at 40. Fred, Ex, Exley, [...]

Learn How to Make and Publish Your Own Comics with Pat Aulisio

Philadelphia comic artist Pat Aulisio is teaching a class  at Pterodactyl on publishing comics and art zines. Click on the logo below to sign up for the class or learn more. You can also visit his blog here.

In this course students will learn how to write, draw, and self publish their own mini comic. Students [...]

Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “While You Were Out” Read by X.J. Kennedy in the New Issue of LineBreak Magazine

Click here to head over to Ashley Anna McHugh’s indispensable online audio poetry magazine LineBreak to hear elder statesman Mr. X.J. Kennedy deliver a reading of my poem “While You Were Out,” from my forthcoming collection All of You on the Good Earth. You may stream directly from the site. This recording will also turn [...]

Poetry & Popular Culture Features Ernest Hilbert at the Joyce Kilmer Rest Stop (Sounds Illegal, I Know)

Mike Chasar’s excellent poetry blog “Poetry & Popular Culture” has a great article about all of the many things named for popular Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer. Head over now to read (you should go there weekly to see what Mike’s been up to, always fun and enlightening stuff).