Sam Truitt: Dick and its Origins in Transverse & Elsewhere Ahead: April 25, 2014
On Friday, April 25 at 7 p.m., Sam Truitt presented his most recently completed project: “Dick: An Oblique Kennedy Conspiracy Countdown,” a one-year project (22.Nov.12—22.Nov.13) of daily transmissions via youtube interacting chronologically through sound, images and motion with the text of his recent book Dick: A Vertical Elegy.
Read an interview with Sam Truitt in advance of this event.
Out from Lunar Chandelier Press, Truitt’s recent book is a prose poem grounded in proprietary knowledge about President Kennedy’s assassination. The pith of that information is transmitted through
Morse Code,the seemingly undifferentiated plane of which is broken up with stage directions from Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Sam Truitt’s active interest in finding new surfaces for poetry began in the mid-90s, leading among other directions on one hand to a series of orbs made of paper mache and chicken wire (the Orf series) and on the other new media. His presentation will focus on the latter and include an elaboration on his notion of action poetry in such works as Transverse, state/shaft shaft/state, and Days. He will also show and talk on his most recently completed project: “Dick: An Oblique Kennedy Conspiracy Countdown,” a one-year project (22.Nov.12—22.Nov.13) of daily transmissions via youtube interacting chronologically through sound, images and motion with the text of his recent book Dick: A Vertical Elegy.
Sam Truitt was born in Washington, DC, and raised there and in Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of Dick: A Vertical Elegy (Lunar Chandelier, 2014); Vertical Elegies 6: Street Mete (Station Hill, 2011); Vertical Elegies: Three Works (UDP, 2008); Vertical Elegies 5: The Section (Georgia, 2003); and Anamorphosis Eisenhower (Lost Roads, 1998), among other books. His honors, among others, include a 2011 Howard Fellowship, two Fund for Poetry awards, the 2002 Contemporary Poetry Series Award from the University of Georgia. Sam Truitt holds degrees from Kenyon College, Brown University, and the State University of New York. After his undergraduate studies, he worked in various positions including stagehand, audio technician, private investigator and carpenter. After his MFA studies, living in New York, he was a journalist, editor and publicist and taught around the region. Currently he teaches in the Language and Thinking Workshop at Bard College and is the Executive Director of Station Hill of Barrytown. He lives in Woodstock, NY. For more information on his work, go to http://samtruitt.org/.