Today is Patti Smith's sister's birthday

It's also my birthday.

Last night some friend's came out for bday drinks. I kept it tame & feel pretty good today, except I'm tired but can't seem to sleep. Tonight I'm going over some friends' apartment, but you should think about checking this out:

Please join us next Monday, February 16, for a rare and exciting reading by Stephen Dobyns, author of twelve collections of poetry including Velocities; Lee Briccetti, Executive Director of Poets House and author of Day Mark; and Ted Mathys, author of Forge and The Spoils, forthcoming in April 2009.

Monday February 16, 7 PM

Stephen Dobyns
Lee Briccetti
Ted Mathys

11th Street Bar (510 E. 11th Street, between Avenues A & B)
Closest subway: L to 1st Avenue. Also walkable: F/V at 2nd Ave, L at 3rd Ave or 14th Street / Union Square 4/5/6/N/Q/R/W/L.

For poems & more about our readers, please visit our website: www.triptychreading.com

Stephen Dobyns has published twelve poetry collections, including Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992 and Mystery, So Long; ten novels; a collection of short stories; ten mysteries in his Charlie Bradshaw detective series; and the highly acclaimed nonfiction book Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry. His awards and fellowships include a Lamont Poetry Selection, the National Poetry Series, a Melville Cane Award, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Lee Briccetti is the long-time Executive Director of Poets House. Under her leadership, Poets House developed the Poets House Showcase, an annual exhibit of new poetry books, as well as Poetry in The Branches, a national outreach program that assists public libraries throughout the country in providing poetry services. Lee has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Poetry and has been a Poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her first book of poetry, Day Mark, was published in 2005 by Four Way Books.

Ted Mathys is the author of The Spoils, forthcoming from Coffee House Press, and Forge, from the same publisher. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, his poems have appeared in such venues as American Poetry Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, and Jubilat. His work has been anthologized in A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years, and Verse, 1994 - 2004: The Second Decade, as well as translated into Italian for La nuova poesia Americana: New York. Originally from Ohio, he has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Berlin, and New York and currently studies international affairs at Tufts University in Boston.

Poem

16 february


Linda, your birthday was the worst one. I awoke
with your name on my lips but the room was already
tilting and spinning. noxema cold waving hot skin
my hands two red paws radiating violet threads ribs
peeling intestine shuddering room rising and swell-
ing. One tender moment the fever lifts the overhead
fan a white propeller shifts spraying shadows across
whitewashed walls shells my left arm and I drift. A
child holds on to a snowflake candles illuminate
your trusting face. happy birthday my sister, syr-
upy hairs stick to my cheek purple spine merging
plastic sheet. happy birthday sister, I reach relief my
burnoose yards of cheesecloth cocoon to roll up in
water a distant pitcher liquid streaming golden
stars so aware of teeth and temples and the heat
avenging moving in like squatter laughing with
huge white teeth like tombstone and so aware of the
temple on he hill surrounded by jackangels.

hotel internacional mexico
16.2.74

Patti Smith from Early Work 1970-1979