Hmmm...

Yes, this is a photo of Maggie Nelson, author of Wave Book, Bluets. Jeffrey Cyphers Wright reviews the book in the current ish of Brooklyn Rail. His reviews begins as such, "Maggie Nelson gives me a boinker. Her brain and her pussy are both talking in this genre-busting hybrid." Hmm, did he just say "boinker" and "pussy" in the first two sentences of his review? I've read a fair share of bad reviews (maybe even have written a few) but this review has got to be the worst ever, right? What do you think? Have you read a worst review? Read the rest of it here.

Then head over to Galatea Resurrects and read a bunch of top-notch reviews of poetry books primarily published by small presses. Hell yeah!

Mid-Week Reading Material

http://www.facebook.com/l/a0253;welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc61.pbr4.pdf

N.Y.C.

Andrea Baker * Macgregor Card * Lydia Cortes * Cynthia Cruz * Pam Dick * Mary Donnelly

Will Edmiston * Laura Elrick * Farrah Field * Kristen Gallagher * Sarah Gambito

Aracelis Girmay * John Godfrey * Odi Gonzales * Myronn Hardy * Mark Horosky

Brenda Iijima * Ivy Johnson * Boni Joi * Hettie Jones * Pierre Joris * Steven Karl

Vincent Katz * Jennifer L. Knox * Wayne Koestenbaum * Estela Lamat * Mark Lamoureux

Ada Limon * Sheila Maldonado * Jesus Papoleto Melendez * Susan Miller * Stephen Motika

Marc Nasdor * Charles North * Jeni Olin * Cecily Parks * Nicole Peyrafitte * Mariana Ruiz

Lytle Shaw * Laura Sims * Mark Statman * Nicole Steinberg * Yerra Sugarman

Anne Waldman * Jared White * Dustin Williamson * Jeffrey Cyphers Wright * John Yau


D.C.

Sandra Beasley * Leslie Bumsted * Theodora Danylevich * Tina Darragh * Buck Downs

Lynne Dreyer * Wade Fletcher * Joe Hall * Ken Jacobs * Charles Jensen * Doug Lang

Reb Livingston * Magus Magnus * David McAleavey * Mark McMorris * Chris Nealon

Mel Nichols * Phyllis Rosenzweig * Casey Smith * Rod Smith * Ward Tietz

Ryan Walker * Joan Wilcox * Terence Winch

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Also new Glitterpony!


Issue 9 features these fantastic poets:

Brad Flis
Brian Foley
Rachel B. Glaser
Michael Kelleher
Hoa Nguyen
Lisa Olstein
Heather Overby
Cassandra Smith
Michelle Taransky
Brennen Wysong
Elisabeth Workman
Lesley Yalen

The lovely cover image for issue 9 was designed by Tristan Benedict-Hall of A Mystery In Common.

Please head on over to GlitterPony and check out the new issue--fantastic poems and a flowered pony all in one place!

Books/Journals I'm Reading Or Recently Read

I must be hungry

I've been trying to post videos from Youtube but to no avail, so let's talk food. Recently, Lila moved to Greenpoint so I finally got around to trying Papcitos. I thought it was pretty good & reminded me a lot of a Portland Mexican eatery. The happy hour specials are quite nice too! After eating we ran into Stella & Matthew who gave us a some recommendations but I'm always open for more so if you live and/or eat in Greenpoint where do you eat & drink?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I got a cardigan and tie for Christmas. Both gray, both striped, both dope! Not that I'm bragging or anything. What did you get?

Books That I Want To Read

Yesterday I woke up to shovel snow

There is snow in New York. Perfect reason for staying in bed and reading. Yesterday I trekked over to Bedstuy to catch a loft reading featuring Evan Commander, Sommer Browning and Matt Hart. Matt Hart read a new long poem which will be in his next book. The poem was pure bad-ass! Word is the next book will glow.

+++++++++++++

What are you doing for the holidays? Traveling? Staying in? Writing novels? Making poems? Creating culinary delights? Do tell.

Amongst The Giants

The lists of best-of(s) continues & you know I like to make lists so check out my three picks over at HTMLGIANT.

Here are two readings that I can't make but I'm sure will be amazing:

We have good news! The Reading at Chrystie Street has moved! You can now find us at

The Four Faced Liar
165 West 4th Street, between 6th & 7th Avenues
on the third Thursday of every month,
7 PM SHARP, as always.

We have better news! Thursday, December 17th brings us the charming Dan Hoy & the acrobatic Justin Lacour. You will not want to miss this, even if you have to sit behind that damn pillar because you arrived a little late.

Dan Hoy lives in Brooklyn and is co-founder of the art, literature, and philosophy magazine SOFT TARGETS. His work includes GLORY HOLE | THE HOT TUB (Mal-O-Mar, 2009) written with Jon Leon, BASIC INSTINCT: POEMS (Triple Canopy, 2008), and OUTTAKES (Lame House Press, 2007).

Justin Lacour lives in Astoria, Queens. His poems have appeared in jubilat, Conjunctions, Soft Targets, Horseless Review, and Mustachioed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*
SUPERMACHINE


Friday, December 18th, 8pm

Joshua Beckman
Graham Foust
**Followed by a moderated Q&A!

ALL READINGS TAKE PLACE AT:

Outpost

1014 Fulton St

(grand & classon)

G to Clinton/Washington, C to Franklin

666

As of today I have 666 posts! Fitting that I'm off to Staten Island to submit grades.

I have a makeshift list of chapbooks & music up on the Big Other.

to know this

In to know this Angela Veronica Wong maps the constellation of the body and its desires. The life of a star is the life of a person. Wong's spare, precise lines chart a firmament that is both celestial and down-to-earth.

Buy here!

Come out on Tuesday and hear Veronica read:

Boog City 60: NYC Small Presses Issue

in conjunction with our New York City Small Presses Night Event
Tues. Dec. 15, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free

ACA Galleries, 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr., NYC

with pages put together by the participating six presses:

**Flying Guillotine Press, Sommer Browning and Tony Mancus, eds.

**Litmus Press/Aufgabe, E. Tracy Grinnell, ed.

**Mal-o-mar Editions, Ariana Reines, ed.

**Mermaid Tenement Press, Laura Hinton, ed.

**The North Beach Yacht Club, Ryan Murphy, ed.

**3 Sad Tigers Press, Mariana Ruiz Firmat, ed.

featuring work from:

Charles Baudelaire * Abigail Child
Norma Cole * Kari Edwards
Steven Karl * Brenda Borofsky Serpick
Stacy Szymaszek * Angela Veronica Wong


***As well as your usual swell Boog City content***

**From Our Music section, Urban Folk
edited by Jonathan Berger**

How High & Still Rising

I was planning on writing fancy and smart things about this book in hopes of hyping you dear readers to buy the book and/or come out to hear Ms. Field read this Saturday. But then I realized others have written plenty of smartish stuff already about Rising

How about Ron Slate, Dan Magers, and Ken Walker.

See her read this Saturday:
This weekend will be the year (!) anniversary of the Bushwick Reading Series, and to celebrate, we have four singular readers:

Franklin Bruno, author, musician, multihyphenate (Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, 33 1/3)
Farrah Field, poet (Rising, 4-Way Books)
Joanna Penn Cooper, poet (chapbook Mesmer forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press)
Jason Helm, fiction writer

The reading takes place, as always, from 3 to 5PM at Bushwick Library on 340 Bushwick Avenue, just a couple short blocks away from the Montrose Avenue L-stop. Here is a map both helpful and detailed. If you are still unsure, please don't hesitate to ask. You will know the library by its foreboding brick visage; head on downstairs, the librarians will be able to direct you, or you can catch me by the shirtsleeve as I will no doubt be flitting around arranging and greeting.

I'm not gonna lie; I'm super excited. I hope you are, too. Together we can drink a Drank Extreme Relaxation Beverage to "slow our roll" so that we don't die from hyper-anticipation. Another way to cope is to view the book recommendations, which are starting to go up on the BRS blog. The first is from Joanna Penn Cooper, and it's already up on the Bushwick Reading Series blog, so check it.

Tonight's The Night

Don't miss our final fall event: an exceptional reading by one of the greatest living poets, John Ashbery, whose latest book, Planisphere, we are celebrating. He will be reading with other great poets, Jeff Clark (author of Music and Suicide and The Little Door Slides Back) and emerging poet Stuart Krimko (author of the forthcoming book The Sweetness Of Herbert).



MONDAY, Dec 7, 2009 7:00 PM

Triptych Readings
(pairing established and emerging writers)

JOHN ASHBERY
JEFF CLARK
STUART KRIMKO

11th Street Bar

510 East 11th Street (between Avenues A & B)
Closest subway stop is the L at 1st Ave.
other close stops include L at 3rd Ave and Union Square (N, R, W, Q, 4, 5, 6).

Admission is FREE.

Visit our website for additional information and upcoming readings: www.triptychreading.com

Bio for the readers:

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia, and went to France as a Fulbright Scholar in 1955, living there for much of the next decade. His many collections include Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007), which was awarded the International Griffn Poetry Prize. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won the three major American prizes—the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award—and an early book, Some Trees (1956), was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. The Library of America published the first volume of his collected poems in 2008. Active in various areas of the arts throughout his career, he has served as executive editor of Art News and as art critic for New York magazine and Newsweek. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1988 to 1999. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985 to 1990. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He lives in New York.


Jeff Clark was born in 1971 in southern California. He was a first-team all-league middle linebacker for the Mission Viejo Diablos, and their defensive high-point player for 1989. He went to UC Davis for football, attended three practices, and then after a few months practicing with Davis's baseball team, he developed an interest in poetry and became immersed in the Davis music community. He went to the Iowa Writers Workshop, in 1995 returned to the Bay Area, and in 1997 his first book, _The Little Door Slides Back_, was published by Sun & Moon. Its first printing sold out, was let go by Sun & Moon, and was reissued in 2004 by Farrar Straus Giroux, who published his second book, _Music and Suicide_, the same year. He has also written _Ruins_ (Turtle Point Press, 2009) and _2A_ (Quemadura, 2006; with Geoffrey G. O'Brien). Since 1996 Clark has made his living as a book designer, first with Wilsted & Taylor in Oakland, CA, and now as Quemadura (www.quemadura.net). He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.


Stuart Krimko is the author of two books of poems, Not That Light (2005) and The Sweetness Of Herbert (forthcoming, 2009), both published by Sand Paper Press. In 2005 he received a grant from The Fund For Poetry. He lives in Los Angeles.

The Yard

Saturday, December 5, 2009
7:30pm - 10:30pm
267 Douglass Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn

Please join us on Dec. 5th, 2009 for Yardmeter 5

featuring artwork by Bari DeJaynes,
and poetry readings by Evan Commander,
Paige Ackerson-Kiely, and Claire Hero.
7:30 p.m., in Shelton Walsmith's studio.
The wine will flow freely.

Po' Hustle

I have two prose poems up here.

Sawbuck brings the heat here.

Always a great read is Jacket & the new ish is here.

This is happening tonight:

Chin Music at Pacific Standard
7:10-9:10
Please join us for our next evening of Chin Music @ Pacific Standard. On December 3rd, we are thrilled to feature two wonderful poets: Mónica de la Torre and Aracelis Girmay. Mónica de la Torre is the author of TALK SHOWS (Switchback Books, 2007) and PUBLIC DOMAIN (Roof Books, 2008). Aracelis Girmay is the author of TEETH, published in 2007 by Curbstone Press. Boni Joi's poems have appeared in Arabella, Long Shot, Big Hammer, Mind Gorilla, The Brooklyn Rail and many other journals.

Located on Fourth Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, near the Atlantic/Pacific subway hub, Pacific Standard is a literary bar serving up eighteen microbrews on tap and cask (including both West Coast and local breweries), fine wines and liquors, and tasty snacks like chips and salsa, and meat and cheese plates.

Tomorrow night:
Subject: Vanitas 4 Launch this Friday, December 4, 6 PM, at Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York City

VANITAS 4 : TRANSLATION IS OUT!!

Come pick up a copy & hear readings by contributors

Joanna Fuhrman
Ron Horning
Ron Padgett
Raphael Rubinstein
Mónica de la Torre
Paul Violi
Anne Waldman
&
Bill Zavatsky

Contributors to Vanitas 4 : Translation also include Tim Atkins, Mary Jo Bang, Charles Bernstein, Lindsey Boldt, Augusto de Campos, Sean Casey, Mark Du Charme, Alan Davies, Brandon Downing, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jack Hirschman, Jen Hofer, Lisa Jarnot, Mary Maxwell, David Meltzer, Jess Morse, Ray DiPalma, Charles Perrone, Kit Robinson, Ed Sanders, Barry Schwabsky, Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija, Eileen R. Tabios, John Tranter, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Dalt Wonk, Laura Wright, Elizabeth Young, and many more. In addition to poems, there are critical texts, examining the work of Borges and Bandeira, Lorca, Haiku, Pindar’s choral songs for young girls, and the poetry scene of the 1970s. The cover and a special insert were created by Francesco Clemente specifically for this issue.
--------------------
I have a poem in Vanitas so I'll be at this & then it's off to my friend Francis' bday party, but if I had an extra set of legs & ears I'd also go to this:

Multifarious Array
Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street,BK
7pm

December 4
Crystal Williams, Tyrone Williams, Jackie Clark & Tara Betts

& what to do with all these found hours

When I sneezed out came all my lost hours. As I went through the years, days, minutes, seconds, breathes, beats, what was missing was you, dear Grapefruit. So I stuffed myself with jerk tofu, kale & wheat gluten, pea pods & maple tree moss. Then you appeared. My gut bulging-- a bite away from bursting.

Someone did you all wrong. You were ripped from the tree, shipped to a store then placed under bright lights until your color paled. Someone bought you & peeled you & sectioned you & put you in a bowl then covered you in sugar.

When I lick your flesh it's hard to decipher whether the salt is from my saliva or your sweat but this sugar is an offense.

I rescued you. I rinsed you fresh then set about to find the fool so as to squirt tart in a knife's eye.

Finished with the temporary blinding I was exhausted & sticky so I collapsed & you collapsed & there with drip of melting icicles we lapsed.