Poems (or Prose) by People I Saw While I Was Away

"I am you who destroyed yourself. Your dream will be the death of all your kids"


excerpt from the essay, "Hawthorne" by Rebecca Brown from her book of essays, American Romances (City Lights, 2009)

Poems by People I Saw While I Was Away (or translated by people I saw while I was away)

Crickets

Crickets plant their blue flags
atop the evening
with tiny glass hammers.


Summer Music

In its embers, summer
is grilling a cicada,
intimate flesh of the tree.


from Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade
translated by Alejandro De Acosta and Joshua Beckman (Wave Books, 2011)

Poems by People I Saw While I Was Away

Everyone I Knew in High School Is Dead


I put a down payment on the jungle
Disfigured liquid milking out what was
left of the vine.
Can you say it? Say I'm here because
innocent people are dying
To have extra saliva to spare
A hardhat for a castle
of canned peas
Pinch to make
sure you're not the ghost or
a book. As we speak someone else
rewrites language, as in papery stomach, as in
lift off. It's cramped inside the magnet
but it's a good day for fox hunting
A volunteer, a willing blonde

-Julia Cohen
from 1 + Scattered = 0 (ypolita press, 2011)

Stain of Poetry for August 26th has been canceled.

"WEIRDO AND BEAUTIFUL POETS. GOOD TIMES." – BLACKBOOK

STAIN OF POETRY
Paul Siegell + Kiely Sweatt + Bronwen Tate + Jared White

August 26th @ Goodbye Blue Monday – Bushwick, Brooklyn

with

Paul Siegell is the author of three books of poetry: wild life rifle fire (Otoliths Books, 2010), jambandbootleg (A-Head Publishing, 2009) and Poemergency Room (Otoliths Books, 2008). Paul is a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly, and has recently contributed to Black Warrior Review, Dark Sky Magazine, La Petite Zine and many other fine journals. Kindly find more of Paul’s work at ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL (http://paulsiegell.blogspot.com).

~

Kiely Sweatt has been living in Barcelona the last three years teaching English, translating and writing poetry. She started up the Prostibulo Poetico, in partnership with the Poetry Brothel, Poetry Society of NYC. She has since helped to start working on branches in Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela. She is co organizer of Tri Lengua, a multi lingual reading series in Barcelona, which looks to promote overseas writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She holds a degree in Spanish Literature from WVU and an MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work has appeared online and in-print through such publications as The Why and the Later by Carly Sachs, Best American Poetry blog, Shampoo, Sawbuck Review, BCN Ink, and PSEUDÒNIMS

~

Bronwen Tate is the author of the chapbooks Souvenirs (Dusie 2007), Like the Native Tongue the Vanquished (Cannibal Books 2008), Scaffolding (Dusie 2009), and if a thermometer (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2011). Her most recent chapbook is the loss letters (Dusie 2011), a collaboration with Ming Holden. Bronwen makes her friends hungry on her blog at http://breadnjamforfrances.blogspot.com. She’s a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University where she’s completing a dissertation on scale in post-1945 poetry. These days she’s really enthusiastic about the word processing program Scrivener, the new Gillian Welch album, and Sundara silky lace yarn in the “heirloom tomato” shade.

~

Jared White lives in Brooklyn, where he co-directs the Yardmeter Editions event series and, with Farrah Field, he has recently founded a poetry bookstore, Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. His chapbook Yellowcake was included in the hand-sewn anthology Narwhal from Cannibal Books in 2009. Poems and essays have also recently appeared in Action, Yes, Coconut, Harp & Altar, La Petite Zine, No, Dear, Open Letters Monthly, and We Are So Happy To Know Something. An occasional blog can be found at jaredswhite.blogspot.com



at

Goodbye Blue Monday

1087 Broadway
(corner of Dodworth St)
Brooklyn, NY 11221-3013 (718) 453-6343

J M Z trains to Myrtle Ave
or J train to Kosciusko St

Poems by People I Saw While I Was Away

Beach


Wants the heavier shoulder.
Dune grass firing the greenheads forward.

First off the asphalt to yes.
Grouped in wets.
Mark the territory. Skull crushed.

Glass in hand
of swollen midpoints.
Glass is sand.

Hearts are cards.

We flip like fish. And settle in
for the grief performance.

-Emily Kendal Frey
from The Grief Performance by CSU Press,2011

Dear Seattle,

Book-making tutorial & reading with Hitomi Yoshio and Steven Karl
Sunday, August 14, 2011, 1:00 - 3:00 PM
Lobby
Free with Museum Admission

Join Joshua Beckman, poet and editor of Wave Books, for book-making tutorial in Shelf Life.

To celebrate their inaugural season of poetry in translation, and in anticipation of Wave’s Annual Poetry Festival 2011: Poetry in Translation, Wave will host bilingual readings and book making tutorials each August Sunday at 1pm. These workshops/readings will be in the style of Cuban cigar factories, in which the workers are read to, out loud, while they work with their hands.

This tutorial will also feature readings from Hitomi Yoshio and Steven Karl.

Dear Denver,

Hi Friends,

This is to invite you to Mathias Svalina's book release party coupled with a Bad Shadow Affair reading THIS Saturday, featuring Maureen Owen, Steven Karl, and J. Mae Barizo, and Mathias Svalina. We'd love love love to see you there. Love.

Here is the info:
Saturday August 13th
730pm
Lost Lake Lounge | 3602 East Colfax | Denver, Colorado

Bios:
Maureen Owen (born July 6, 1943 in Graceville, Minnesota ) is an American poet, editor, and biographer. She has served as the Program Coordinator and Acting Director of the Poetry Project at St Mark's-in-the-Bowery, New York City, where she has also taught workshops in writing and magazine production. She has published many books including American Rush: Selected Poems, AE [Amelia Earhart], Hearts in Space, Imaginary Income and Zombie Notes.

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo was shortlisted for Canada's 2008 Robert Kroetsch award for Innovative Poetry and Ahsahta Press's Sawtooth Poetry Prize. She has received an International Publication Award from Atlanta Review, and was an Editor's Prize finalist for Spoon River Poetry Review. As a prize winner in the William Stafford Award, she was published in Rosebud. Her work has also appeared in Baltimore Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Sink Review, Atlanta Review, among others. She has work forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and Bellingham Review. She is the author of
two chapbooks, "The Concert Review" and "The Marble Palace."


Mathias Svalina is a co-editor of Octopus Books and Octopus Magazine. He is the author of Destruction Myth and the newly released I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur.

Steven Karl is the author of the chapbooks, emissions/ of (H_NGM_N, 2011), (Ir)Rational Animals (Flying Guillotine Press, 2010) and State(s) of Flux w/ Joseph Lappie (Peptic Robot Press, 2009). He has poems in or forthcoming from EOAGH, With +Stand, pax americana, Taiga, Jellyfish and collaborative poems with Angela Veronica Wong in Super Arrow. In one way or another, he is involved with Sink Review, Cold Front Magazine, Borough Writing Workshops and Stain of Poetry. He sometimes blogs at stevenkarl.blogspot.com.

The First Annual New York Poetry Festival on Governor's Island

Matt Hart reads History Lesson at Sacramento Poetry Center Mar. 9, 2009

Beirut - East Harlem