Read "Realm of Joy: Poet Michael Basinski Performs at Big Night"

By Aaron Lowinger for Artvoice: On a cold night last November, the curator for UB’s Poetry Collection took the stage at the Burchfield Penney Art Center for a fundraising event for BlazeVox Books, the Buffalo poetry press. The upstairs atrium lobby was adorned with a wine/cheese/fruit spread circled by a dozen or so tables fitted with white tablecloths. The audience was well dressed for a poetry reading: designer jeans, handbags, boots, makeup, clean hair were all easy to spot. BlazeVox editor Geoff Gatza then introduced a man who needs no introduction within the literary community: Michael Basinski. Basinski stood at the podium and quickly exfoliated any pretense of his office found perhaps in his unbuttoned white shirt and dark sport jacket, slipping seamlessly into character as a poet and performer. In his new skin he gave a brief introduction to his poem, “Maid of Beer.”

This Saturday night, February 25, at “Basinskianamania,” Michael Basinski will perform his works in all their forms and possibilities at the Just Buffalo poetry series “Big Night,” at the Western New York Book Arts Center (468 Washington Street). The evening begins at 8pm.

“The poem is a celebration of lawn fetes, a.k.a. church picnics, particularly those of East Side Buffalo, New York’s Polish parishes, and a celebration of those women who served local Buffalo beer in huge paper cups in the lawn fete beer tents,” he said. “All lawn fetes are contemporaneous.”

Read more: http://artvoice.com/issues/v11n8/in_the_margins#ixzz1nEgGyby3. Michael Basinski is a veteran of Soundlab and Basta!/Big Orbit Gallery "Murder the Word" events.