Vincent Katz and Jane Gregory: February 4, 2016

Steve Dickison introduces Jane Gregory, and remarks on her and Vincent Katz's mutual connection to Alice Notley's play Anne's White Glove. Gregory reads from a series of poems entitled "Profices," from an unpublished manuscript. She reads "Profices," "Profices," "Action is content, and content without any action is desire," "Profices," "Profices," "Profices/Not Special," "Profices," "Profices/Giddy Up," "Paranoia," and "After a deep silence." Gregory remarks that "After a deep silence" was the first poem she wrote after having a child. She then reads "Profices," "Ted Says," "Profices," "Profices," "Profices/Book," "Profices," "Profices," "Now that I know death by residual technology," "Profices," "Profices/But It Is An Infinite Command," and "Profices."

Steve Dickison introduces Vincent Katz, who talks about his newly published book Swimming Home and its connection to the Bay Area. He then reads "A City Poem" and several sections from his long poem "Barge" from Swimming Home; "Fecundity," "Summer," "The Pond," "Over Cleveland," "Buchanan Unbowed," and "Lothian" from Southness; "Maecenas," and "Tell me what you know," from his translations of The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius; and "Oro Puerto," "For Rene," "Ode to Diane di Prima," and "Ode to Spring," from manuscript.

In response to questions from the audience, Jane Gregory discusses her reason for titling multiple poems "Profices," and on the general absence of imagery in that work. Vincent Katz discusses the conjunction of visual and verbal in his poetry. Gregory remarks on the artwork, by Guy de Cointet, depicted on the cover of her book My Enemies (The Song Cave, 2013). Katz remarks on his writing of odes, more to moments than to persons, and his relative inability to write elegies. Gregory remarks on her desire "to include in the poem the difficulty of the poem's coming to be," and Katz remarks on "the position of poetry in society" and its importance, to poets and on a larger social scale. Gregory concludes by addressing a question on the serial structure of her poems by speaking to her recent writing practice.