RawkRollWhateva

So summer's come to this... I need a job. I finished restructuring my manuscript + finished the rewrites on a chapbook (two of the main reasons that I didn't want to have summer employment- I know, grad school was supposed to be for writing but it seems like I was always WORKING!) nonetheless, it doesn't appear that I'll get my backpay from Eos anytime soon, which would allow me to enjoy summer unfettered by a job & the unemployment checks simply don't support my lifestyle & by lifestyle I mean doing anything other than checking books out of the library and scanning for free events then ducking out as soon as they are over so I don't have to explain that a drink or a poetry book isn't currently in my budget. Now really what kind of summer is that?

I will teach two English Comp courses at LaGuardia/CUNY in the fall + start a business with my Ph.d genius friend, Melissa, but until then I'm going to suck it & find summer employment. Any suggestions?
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July is going to be all about music reading. I just checked out Dean Wareham's book from the library and so far it's pretty good. The book begins with an infamous (that is if you were a fan of Galaxy 500- which I LOOOOOVED) statement from Damon talking about Dean suddenly wanting to become a star and bathing himself in the spotlight. It's a ballsy move & a perfect way to start the book- bring on the drama, turn on the amps, cue up the guitars... "it's no fun giving the middle finger to the blind." Can't remember what Luna song that it is from, but it remains forged in my brain and has given me much delight over the years and still does.
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More rock- a ways back Thurston Moore put out a book exploring the mixed-tape culture and what was lost via no longer making mixed taped. My friend, Julia, and I recently reminisced about making or receiving mixed tapes from past lovers/crushes/heart-skippers & how you'd sit around trying to decode why the person put THAT jam on the tape...

With a c.d. you put on your ipod & just skip over those songs without ever worrying the brain. Anyways, the book was o.k. coulda been much better but was geared towards an Urban Outfitters crowd (unlike Back in the days- which just wound up having an audience at UO, but when the book first came out- we flipped with joy at Powell's City of Books)

Well Mr. Moore is back at it, & even though this doesn't go down until July I'm marking my calendar now for it. A book about Sonic Youth and about the No Wave scene. I love reading this stuff. & the jump-off at McNally Robinson should be pretty damn good:

Friday, July 11, 7 PM

Sonic Youth and No Wave

David Browne, author of Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth (Da Capo Press)

Thurston Moore, author of No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980 (Hna Books)

Thurston Moore is a founding member of the seminal band Sonic Youth and the author of several books. His book No Wave visually chronicles the collision of art and punk in the New York underground scene of the 70s and 80s. David Browne, a journalist and author specializing in music and pop culture for over twenty years, writes about the history of Sonic Youth and its huge influence on this scene. The two will discuss the band and the scene, perhaps with some audio and video.

Common - The People

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I think everyone knows, but just in case you don't, my reading with J.Mae Barizo at Home Sweet Home for tomorrow has been canceled, but KGB Bar has this little reading just to quell your quiver

Celebration of New Books: Tom Fink, Tina Chang, and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs

Start: Jun 25 2008 - 7:00pm

End: Jun 25 2008 - 9:00pm

A celebration of new books! Please join us in celebrating Tom Fink's Clarity (Marsh Hawk Press 2008), Tina Chang's anthology Language for a New Century (Norton 2008), and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs' Paper Pavilion (WhitePine Press 2007).

Thomas Fink is the author of five books of poetry, including Clarity and Other Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, 2008)). He is the author of two books ofcriticism, most recently A Different Sense of Power (Fairleigh Dickinson UP,2001), and he is the co-editor of Burning Interiors: David Shapiro's Poetryand Poetics (2007). His paintings hang in various collections. Fink is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia. His poem, "Yinglish Strophes IX," chosen by Heather McHugh and David Lehman, appears in The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner's).

Tina Chang's Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004) was a finalist for the2005 Asian American Literary Award. She received an MFA in poetry from Columbia University and her poems have appeared in American Poet, Indiana Review, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, Sonora Review, among others. Her poems have been anthologized in Identity Lessons (Penguin Putnum, 1999) Poetry Nation (Vehicule Press,1998), Asian American Literature (McGraw-Hill, 2001), Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Poetry 30: Poets in Their Thirties. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, the Van Lier Foundation and has held writing fellowships from Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Djerassi, Fundación Valparaíso, The MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Villa Montalvo. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Hunter College.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her first collection of poems, Paper Pavilion, is winner of the 2007 White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published nationally by White Pine Press in October 2007. Beforehand, the manuscript was a finalist for the New Issues Press Prize in Poetry and a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series "First BookPrize." Poems from the book have appeared in Crazyhorse, 5 AM, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Poetry NZ, Tulane Review, among others. Her work has been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (Temple University Press 2003) and Contemporary Voices from the Eastern World (W. W. Norton 2008). Her
music collaboration, "Among Joshua Trees," won the New York Youth Symphony's First Music Series and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is a fellow at theUniversity of Southern California and founding director of the USC Summer TIME Writing Program.

3's Up

This week's reading jump-offs look like this:

Tuesday, June 24th 6pm


Boog City presents d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press
ixnay press (Philadelphia)
Tues. June 24, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free
ACA Galleries
529 W. 20th St., 5th Flr. NYC

Event will be hosted by ixnay press editors
Chris and Jenn McCreary

Featuring readings from
Jen Coleman, Brenda Iijima and Jenn McCreary

with music from Brian Speaker

Wine, cheese, and crackers, too, curated and with an introduction by Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum
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One of my favorite journals, The Agricultural Reading, is having another amazing line-up:

The Agriculture Reader is pleased to present one of our favorite poets: Anthony McCann. He is joined by Ag.Re. editors Jeremy Schmall and Justin Taylor, and fiction contributor Mark Edmund Doten. Pleasure will be manifold, but seating is limited. It will please us to see you there and you to have come.
AT THE KGB BAR AT 7 PM ON THURSDAY JUNE 26TH
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Who's Hot? Earshot!!!

Summer has arrived, and that means the end of another smashing season of EARSHOT! Our final Spring reading will take place on Friday, June 27th at 8 PM and will feature nonfiction writer Christen Clifford, author of the solo play BabyLove, and poet Richard Scheiwe, author of the chapbook A Dry Moon Dialogue! Three MFA students join in on the fun and it's all for five dollars, which scores you a free drink (as always)!

Come join us one last time -- then, see you in September!

Your pal,
Nicole


EARSHOT!

Join us for the next installment of EARSHOT at The Lucky Cat, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn! EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area.

*Friday, June 27, 2008 at 8 PM*
Hosted by Nicole Steinberg

Featuring:
Christen Clifford
Richard Scheiwe
Niina Pollari (Sarah Lawrence College)
Catherine Lacey (Columbia University)
Amber West (New York University)

Admission is a mere $5 plus one free drink (beer, wine or well drinks only)!
The Lucky Cat is located at 245 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Driggs and Roebling. Visit their website for directions: http://www.theluckycat.com.

'Twas Good

The opera at Prospect Park last night was much better than the season finale at Central Park last summer because you weren't actually sitting on top of each other, people weren't talking on cell phones, and the volume was much louder or just clearer? And yes the crowd was smitten with the "love couple" who hammed it up for all they could- but hey it's the opera and that's exactly why you go to the opera- to be transported into that other world of exaggerated emotions and pulses, and heart beats, and string variations that makes our little lonely lives momentarily disappear

Juviley And Geva Alon - It comes to this

This is one of my favorite songs on Juviley's record, and I like how different this live version sounds compared to the recorded one.

You Should Go

It's an open reading featuring JOHN FINDURA as the featured reader. It should be a wicked crazy night. I heard Slash from Guns N Roses might show up. And those who like to show up to shit for personal ironic cataloguing, there's a man named Orion 0.60 who has shown up for the last 2 readings.

If you would like to be considered as a featured reader @ Control Poetry, please email me. For a full list of readings, open the attachment or go to www.myspace.com/controlpoetry.



Go Celtics!
Amy
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Yep go Celtics go!

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Poetry Reading:
Bei Dao and Jennifer Chang

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor, New York NY (Map It)
$5 suggested donation

An evening of poetry. Bei Dao reads with Chang, author of The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008).

S-S-S-Saturday

No shower

Submissions to be sent

Skewers soaking in sink

Juviley singing of falling leaves

Hit the street quick-steppin'

Straight to coffee

Anthony & his mother the color of bitten peach

Anthony's mother with horse hoof gravel voice

Anthony's mother who only curses clearly

Anthony what have you done to your mother

It's not all your fault look at her swollen rotten fruit

Bitter spit and cigarettes

Certain the ship is searching at every stop light black hair girl makes Mr. Spock signal

Old ladies in sun 'brellas

School clothes' kids scream from windows

Girls hand in hand all giggles

Tourist spit clean camera lenses

Little Italy pest stationed in front of lame eateries

Children in hats

Girls in skirts

Guys with collective collars popped

Chinatown and its perpetual smell of food

Summer Squash to be cut

Submissions being ignored

How long before we sweat

I Want To Be Your Candy, Candy

This Friday the Thirteenth at 7pm

Zachary Schomburg!
Genine Lentine!
Emily Kendal Frey!
Genya Turovskaya!

Get Very Superstitious!


Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007) and
has poems from his forthcoming second book, Scary, No Scary in Denver
Quarterly, Born, and Fou. His translations of the Russian poet, Andrei
Sen-Senkov, are forthcoming in Circumference and Mantis and his poetry
collaborations with Emily Kendal Frey are forthcoming in Pilot, Diode,
and Sir!. With Mathias Svalina, he co-edits Octopus Magazine and
Octopus Books. He is wrapping up his Ph.D at the University of
Nebraska.

Genine Lentine's poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in
American Poetry Review, American Speech, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Ninth
Letter, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Tricycle. Her collaboration with
Stanley Kunitz and photographer Marnie Crawford Samuelson, The Wild
Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden was published in
2005 by W.W. Norton. Her manuscript, Mr. Worthington's Beautiful
Experiments on Splashes was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.
Her project, Listening Booth was recently part of Southern Exposure
Gallery's 1st Annual Public Art day. She lives in San Francisco.

Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon. Recent work is
forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Spinning Jenny and 42opus.
Collaborative work with Sarah Bartlett will appear in Portland Review,
Bat City Review and the horse less press anthology New Pony. Poems
from Something Should Happen at Night Outside, a collaboration with
Zachary Schomburg, will appear in Pilot, Sir!, Diode and Jubilat.

Genya Turovskaya's poetry and translations from Russian have appeared
in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, 6x6, Aufgabe, Poets and Poems,
Octopus, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is
an editor of the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling
Presse. She is the author of a chapbook, The Tides (Octopus Books,
2007).



Only at Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(718) 302-3770

"L" to Lorimer, "G" to Metropolitan.

Bread Alone

Every summer I renew my vows with basil, thyme, avocado, and other sandwich items. Grand Daisy Bakery over on Sullivan Street has the perfect baguettes to make a quick meal or for a chill snack of bread & cheese. Does anyone know if there are better baguettes in the city? We should each make a simple sandwich and then have a taste-off in the park. What do you think?

So Close I Could Skip There If I Wanted To

BARGAINS! BARGAINS! BARGAINS!~~

9th~Annual Lit Mag Fair~at Housing Works

Housing Works Used Book Café, 126 Crosby Street in Soho~

Sunday 12-5 pm--- $2 journals

Lit fiends can take home armfuls of lit mags discounted more than 50% at only $2 a copy! ~Choose from hundreds of magazines from all over the country and hobnob with many of the~editors who’ll be there in person to meet and greet.

Week/End/ W(rap)ped

Friday's LIT release party kicked off what would be a longish weekend for me. The party was great- if you missed it (poor poor you!) The new ish of LIT looks all grown-up and classy. The party was held at a gallery in the Parson's School of Design building where there was plenty of white wine, radishes, grapes, brownies, and limited Coronas.

Heather Christle read her poems and pretty-much had every eye and ear a swooning.
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Picked up tacos from La Esquina while walking home and settled into a night of Heroes watching.

Roommate (aka Deep Disco) came home and wanted to go to the Hedi Slimane (ex Dior/ rock n roll photographer guy) after-party. It was 2 blocks away + the last night I'd see my roommate for the rest of the month since she was leaving for Europe on Saturday. So off we went. The space is nice- two huge floors. There was a punk band and open-bar when we arrived which soon turned into a pay bar and dj's djing on both floors. Only two forms of punctuation were allowed at this party: question marks and exclamation marks. There was a lot of standing around, some fawning, some incredulous eyes, some lusty mouths, and a ton of pouting cigarettes. My roommate busted out the body jams to a bunch of 80's jams and I made the "Sorry I'm straight face" as well dressed boys attempted to grove their way in my direction.

We leave.

My roommate packs and cleans.

It's 4am. I try to sleep.
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Saturday is H-O-T. V texted to say she was heading over to Governor's Island. We both had mutual friends there for the 1920's Jazz day event. I lack motivation and never catch the ferry. Saturday passes slowly like sticky unwipeable sweat.

5PM Jared's backyard for his bbq. Garden burgers, beer, fiction writers, poets, journalist, and horses running around on the TV screen. Jared (aka Czar Hohl) will be gone all summer. Adam will be in Jamaica for July then moves to Africa in August. Damn what eva will I do? P.S.G.'s on straight summer hiatus.

I make my way to the Fou Magazine party. The editors do their thing. The readers rock- ALL OF THEM. Afterwards, I talk to some poets I know and meet some new poets.
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Sunday I get two poems in my inbox from a poet I met at the Fou party. That made me smile.

Sunday was about food for some reason. Sandy was in the Chinatown hood so walked over to 88 Orchard for Iced Soy Lattes, went to Lovely Day for brunch, went to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, went to Grand Daisy Bakery (formerly Sullivan Bakery) and picked up a baguette then bought avocados from a Chinatown stand, bought vine-ripened tomatoes from Gourmet Garage. I pulled basil from my herb box. I made an avocado, basil, tomato, sea-salt/pepper/thyme-olive-oil sandwich. Ate two of them. They were little.

Went to a bar and watched the finals by myself. Had a couple of Newcastles. Ate fish n chips- by far the most expensive and disappointing meal of the day.
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Monday now. Nothing going on. Drinking espresso. Will read. Will return library books. Will look for work. Will work on submissions. Will try not to melt.

FOU 4 U

Dear Ladies & Gents,

We would be most pleased by your presence at the reading and launch party for Fou (www.foumagazine.net). Come hear a few fantastic poems and toss a few fantastic pints back your fantastic throats and celebrate. Fantastically!

Saturday, June 7th
7pm!

Barbes : http://www.barbesbrooklyn.com/
Park Slope, Brooklyn

Directions: Take the R or the F to 4th Avenue and walk to 9th Street and 6th Ave

Matthew Rohrer is the author of five books of poems, most recently RISE UP, published by Wave Books. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at NYU.

Dan Hoy lives in Brooklyn and is an editor for SOFT TARGETS. His poetry chapbook, Outtakes, was published by Lame House Press in 2007.

Brenda Iijima is the author of Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press) and Around Sea (O Books). If Not Metamorphic was runner up for the Sawtooth Prize and will be published by Ahsahta Press. Also forthcoming is Remembering Animals, which will be published by Displace Press. She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs (yoyolabs.com). Together with Evelyn Reilly she is editing a collection of essays by poets concerning poetry and ecological ethics titled )((eco (lang)(uage(reader). She is the art editor for Boog City, as well as a visual artist. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she designs and constructs homeopathic gardens.

Before being the inspiration for Daniel Day Lewis's character in There Will Be Blood, Adam O. Davis lived in Utah, California, France, Scotland, and other United States. The holder of an Oregon state pole vault record is a different Adam Davis. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Western Humanities Review, and The Paris Review, among others.

Yeah!

Brought to you by Fou:

Hayley Heaton, Cate Peebles, David Sewell
and Brad Soucy

LIT launch party

This is actually the last issue of LIT that I read for- I haven't been able to get me act or body over to NS to keep up with the submissions or attend the meetings... sigh, but this party will be a lot of fun and the issue will be amazing!

*LIT 14 LAUNCH PARTY AND CELEBRATION!*
Friday, June 6th from 6-10 PM
Kellen Gallery @ The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center of Parsons
The Corner of Fifth Avenue & 13th Street

Featuring readings by...

NOELLE KOCOT
WILL COMERFORD

HEATHER CHRISTLE

IRINA REYN

Come eat, drink and be merry, surrounded by gorgeous art in the brand new Kellen Gallery! Come to say goodbye to LIT's departing prose editor, Scott Dahlie! But most of all, come for the memories.

Reader bios:

Noelle Kocot's first two books, 4 and The Raving Fortune, were published by Four Way Books in 2001 and 2004, respectively. Her book, Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems, was published by Wave Books in 2006. Sunny Wednesday is forthcoming from Wave Books in spring 2009. Noelle has won grants and awards from The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review (The S.J. Marks Prize), The National Endowment for the Arts and The Fund for Poetry, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and raised.

Will Comerford has worked as a music journalist and a medical writer. He lives in Brooklyn. His stories have appeared in The Greensboro Review,
Zone 3, and Fourteen Hills.

Heather Christle is the assistant editor of jubilat and blogs for the Kenyon Review. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Fence, NO: A Journal of the Arts, Skein, and Tarpaulin Sky.
She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Irina Reyn's first novel, What Happened to Anna K., is forthcoming from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. She is also the editor of the nonfiction anthology, Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State. Her short stories, essays and book criticism have appeared in such publications as One Story, Post Road, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, The Forward, San Francisco Chronicle and The Moscow Times.

*LIT 14: Available NEXT MONTH!* Featuring poetry and prose by...

Seth Abramson * Paige Ackerson-Kiely * Kim Addonizio * Michael Aird * Jeanne Marie Beaumont * Caren Beilin * James Belflower * Wyatt Bonikowski * Heather Christle * Will Comerford * Nicole Cooley * Rhiannon Dickerson * Chris Edgar * Joshua Edwards * Elaine Equi * John Estes * CJ Evans * Jennifer S. Flescher * Jamey Gallagher * Regan Good * Ian Grody * Kimiko Hahn * Christopher Harris * Anne Heide * Megin Jimenez * Karla Kelsey * Amy King * Noelle Kocot * Lance Larsen * J. Michael Martinez * Karyna McGlynn * Amy McNamara * Joe Meno * Robert Miltner * Sally Molini * Carol Novack *
Idra Novey * Irina Reyn * Anne Marie Rooney * Mary Ruefle * Jerome Sala *
Peter Jay Shippy * Bronwen Tate * Greg Wrenn * Mark Yakich

Art by...

Gregory L. Blackstock * Tiffany Matula

Secure your copy by SUBSCRIBING to LIT! Send a check or money order made
out to LIT to the address below:
*LIT
The New School
Writing Program, Room 514
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011

Single Issue: *$8*
1-year subscription (2 issues): *$14*
*Save 13% off the cover price!*

2-year subscription (4 issues): *$25*
*Save 22% off the cover price!*

What is your "I" doing/ How about being a part of "we"

Fa rils? Listening to Hillary Clinton's speech last night I couldn't help but remember sitting in Prageeta's (Sharma) workshop & Prageeta asking us to consider what our "I'(s)" were doing in the poem, what was their purpose, what were they really trying to convey? The correlation to thinking about "I" and its affectation can be further connected in the book, Ugly Feelings, which I've blogged about in a previous post. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but notice (& tell me you did too!) how often Hillary used the first person singular pronoun. & her "I" was & is an ego-fueled affair.

She also mentioned wanting respect for the 18 million that wanted to see her as president. Ok, so exactly how are they being disrespected? What she is doing is privileging their voice, while simultaneously ignoring all the voices of the "others." (others can be defined as Obama supporters, Republicans, Liberals, fence-sitters, anarchist, & apathetics) So who's really guilty of disrespect? She is really showing off her elitist colors & inclusionary gang of a selected few. Hmmm...


On that note, my man, Obama's speech was one of "we." He, instead of ignoring Hillary's support-base, thanked them for their challenge and making him a better candidate. He also didn't dwell on the "I" instead he spoke with inspiration about what we, as a collective group of citizens in America, can do for this country, as well as, the world. This is the vision I want in the front office. A vision that encompasses the rest of the universe-- that sees all humans as equal & deserving. What Obama did, instead of focus on himself, was to focus on hope- a collective hope for the world, & focus on starting that change here in this country. He also spoke about what kind of future do "we" want for our children & for the environment? These are the true challenges & we're about to step up! So the question remains, are you steppin' with "us" or still prone to your isolated world of "I?"

Little-eyed Jack says to read some poems

Sawbuck
Sawako Nakaysu, John Findura & plenty more

diode poetry
Noah Eli Gordan, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Matthew Thorburn, Julia Cohen & others

Anti
(just found out about this one via Julia Cohen's blog)
Ada Limon, Mathias Svalina, & more verse by more poets

Fou Magazine
Mark Bibbins, Matt Hart, Matthew Rohrer, Brenda Iijima & tons more!

The Cortland Review
Sharon Dolin & other poets I as of now know nothing about