Saturday, June 30, 2007

2 Partial Poems

MEASURE: all in the same season, but spanning many years and tears
of foolish sincere youth and promise and no bells just beings
and theres and a lost token touch, resting on the shoulders
of a couple of tenuous

CHARACTERS: here unnamed but tender nonetheless and resting
as usual on the fragmentary exchange of

CHARACTER: in relation to an international picket fence.


from So We Have Been Given Time Or (Verse Press)
by Sawako Nakayasu



May
flowers

Frank shuts
his legs

but

music

seeps

through

from the Frank Poems (ypolita press)
by CA Conrad

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Thank You Knicks

Welcome to NYC Z-Bo! Let's go Knicks! & Oden to the Trail Blazers- oh yeah! but what oh what is Philly doing?

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A Quick But Productive Drop-in at Teachers and Writers

Today was the going away party for Bruce Morrow, assistant director at T&W so I swung by there for hellos and some wine. Sat in "my office" realized how much I miss that job but one has to make at least enough chedda to pay the bills and have a little luxuary left over, right?

I had a copy of T&W newest book, Structure and Surprise, which I did a ton of work for and it made me inexplicably happy to have a copy sitting on the desk with a yellow post-it saying "Steven." I also had the new issue of Rain Taxi which has an interview with fiction writer David Markson (DO READ HIM!) and an envelope from Wave Books-Thanks Monica!!! Enclosed was a copy of Sawako Nakaysu's book, "So We Have Been Given Time Or" I'm thinking of trying to put together a reading with her maybe next year to correspond with AWP... we shall see.

Well both my body and beer are sweating. Goddamn I really need to remember to get an extension cord for my air-conditioner... ah summer you feckled fuck!

The Enclave Wrap-up

The reading went well. I'm pretty sure it was the absolute nicest day thusly this summer so the fact that some people choose to spend it in a dark bar on Saturday afternoon is the mark of the devoted. All the readers did a nice job and it was a personal pleasure to read with CAConrad (another illadelph born OGP). I picked up and have already read his chapbook consisting of "Frank" poems. Good stuff. Odd. Wit and introspective intellect in the fuck-offish way- i.e. so perfect punk I felt new again.

Since I have such a long commute to work I've been reading the journals Lilies and Cannonball and Jubilat (which has a poem by David Sewell (also graduated from NS same year as I) and two poems by Prageeta). The new ish of BOMB has an amazing interview with the artist, Kristen Mamma Andersson- though my one fey knock would be that perhaps Christian Hawkey (yes the poet) did write a bit too much and I felt as if I read more about him than the subject of the interview... oh well

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Me + poesia + m.i.c.= The Enclave June 23rd-Free

So I didn't make it to the opera tonight but I did see Panda Bear last night (amazing!!!!) and now I'm updating my blog. Come out for this reading- it'll be fun (do I always say that?)


THE ENCLAVE READING SERIES: FESTIVAL of the GLOW WORM*
featuring
C.A. Conrad
Iris Smyles
Christen Clifford
Steven Karl
Molly McCloy
Chris Louvet

hosted by
Jason Napoli Brooks and Scott Geiger

Saturday
June 23, 2007
3:30 - 6:30 pm
Kenny's Castaways
157 Bleecker St.
New York

Free!

The Enclave is proud to present its most impressive program yet (and considering the high quality of its past programs, this is a serious claim to make). Please join us for an afternoon with six of the East Coast's most innovative fiction writers, poets, and performers.

Bios...

C. A. Conrad' s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with the PhillySound poets. Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. His book The Frank Poems is forthcoming from CHAX Press in 2008. A small selection of The Frank Poems was translated into German by the Berlin poet Holger, and is now available from YPOLITA Press. He is the author of several other chapbooks, including (end-begin w/chants) , a collaboration with Frank Sherlock. You can see his work online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

Iris Smyles is a writer and cartoonist whose fiction may currently be seen in BOMB magazine's Spring issue. She was awarded the Doris Lippman Prize for her recently completed novel in 2007, and her acclaimed comic book, The Naked Woman, is availableonline and in select New York City bookstores. She teaches creative writing and literature at The City College of New York and Marymount Manhattan College. She is the editor of Smyles & Fish magazine (www.SmylesAndFish.com)

Christen Clifford is a writer and performer who has performed her solo work at The Culture Project, The Uno Festival in Victoria, Canada. and at the National Theatre of Slovenia in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She won "Best of Fringe" at the 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival and The Audience Choice Award at the 2007 Frigid Festival. She's been an actor in plays Off Broadway, independent films, and has probably had about twenty lines total on soap operas. She's been a mainstage storyteller at The Moth and various other storytelling shows in New York. Her writing has been published in Salon.com, Nerve.com , Blue, and in the anthology Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong (Disinfo) and she has a piece upcoming on Smith Magazine's Memoirville. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has received support from Time Warner and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of the Hourglass Group Solo Lab. She just got her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and won the 2006 New School Chapbook Award for Nonfiction. Clifford just found out she is a 2007 fellow in Nonfiction Literature from the New York State Foundation for the Arts. She is married to writer McKenzie Wark adn has a 3 year old son, Felix and they lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for over 15 years until they got priced out and had to move to Queens.

Molly McCloy, a non-fiction writer from Arizona, has been published in Nerve.com, Slate.com , and MrBellersNeighborhood.com. She recently won the Storytelling Slam sponsored by the NYC-based storytelling organization, The Moth.

Steven Karl received his MFA from The New School. His poems and reviews have appeared in Real Poetik and Lit online. He has an article forthcoming in Teachers & Writers Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn.

Christopher Louvet writes code in Miami, FL for computers in Washington, DC. His poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Tigertail: A South Florida Poetry Annual , and online at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

*
I heard a glow-worm, big as a house, say to me: `I will give you the light you need. Read the inscription. It is not from me that this supreme order comes.' A vast blood-coloured light, at the sight of which my jaws clacked and my nads fell inert, suffused the air as far as the horizon. I learned against a ruined wall, for I was about to fall, and read: `Here lies a youth who died of consumption: you know why. Do not pray for him.'
Wanna know this comes from? Come to The Enclave: Festival of the Glow Worm...June 23

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Mina, Prageeta, Panda Bear, and Faust

Last night was my friend Mina's 30th (though she barely looks 21) birthday party so she provided an open bar at The Soft Spot over on Williamsburg. It's completely odd that after many drinks, laughs, torrid disagreements, that I'm up at 9:00 on a Sunday morning- I must be insane or still martini-tinged!

Tonight is Prageeta Sharma's going away party and it's sad to think that I won't run into her in the neighborhood or on the train anymore...

I'm going to try and see Panda Bear (band) with my friend Shipra tomorrow and then catch Faust at Prospect Park on Tuesday but for now I think it's time for a shower and some espresso.

LIT launch party wrap- up and poem accepted

The LIT launch party was a good time. The funny thing about NS events is that the alcohol seems to either last forever or vanish in a blink- this party was one of them vanishing acts. First all the Brooklyn Lagers disappeared then all the cups and at one point I noticed a few people pouring white wine into empty soda cans. Wow! That's dedication or boredom at its best. Nonetheless it was good to catch Sampson Starkweather read and see so many people I don't know with copies of LIT in their hands. Have I told you how good ish 13 is going to be?

I saw Matthew Yeager (who I hadn't seen in ages) Malachi Black, Mark Bibbins, and met Peter Bogart Johnson's (current editor of LIT along with Nicole Steinberg, a good poet, and a very funny guy) wife, and then left the party with poets Daniel Meagers and Steve Roberts for a few more drinks. Both Steve and myself had work early the next morning so it ended up being a pleasant, yet early evening... sorry Dan!

Friday I got an acceptance email from Knock Journal (out of Seattle) that they will be publishing my "Birthday Poem" in their November issue- yeah for that! At sometime today I have to figure out where else I've submitted that poem so I can retract it- definitely my least favorite task- let's just say my submission spread sheet is a half-assed infrequently updated thing of a disaster!

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

LIT Launch Party!

Don't forget


LIT 12 LAUNCH PARTY AND CELEBRATION!

Wednesday, June 13th from 6-10 PM
Wollman Hall @ The New School
66 West 12th Street, NYC, 10011


see previous post for complete deatails

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Words and the Diminution of All Things

Words and the Diminution of All Things
by Charles Wright

The brief secrets are still here,

and the light has come back.

The word remember touches my hand,

But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel

Against the occluded sky.

All of the little names sink down,

weighted with what is invisible,

But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.



There isn't much time, in any case.

There isn't much left to talk about

as the year deflates.

There isn't a lot to add.

Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels

Wherever a thing appears,

Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable

in their mute and glittering garb.



All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us

out of the

Blue Ridge.

All afternoon the leaves have scuttled

Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.

And now the evening is over us,

Small slices of silence

running under a dark rain,

Wrapped in a larger.



From Buffalo Yoga by Charles Wright. Copyright © 2004 by Charles Wright.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

What Did You Always Want To Be

You know I always wanted to be a rock star or at least a guy in a band- funny, huh?

What did you always want to be?

Two Poets I Recommend Reading On The Same Bill

I've read at this location maybe back in the winter and had a good time. Brooke is nice and the gallery so small it feels like everyone is there for just you! I'm a big fan of Liesel (who also just graduated from New School's MFA program) and Kate Hall- who lines always make me jealous! Come and see them + the others.


JOIN US FOR A READING AT PARK SLOPE’S 440 GALLERY!



WHEN: Sunday, June 10th from 4:30-6:00 pm

WHERE: 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue (at 9th St., F to 7th Ave.)

CONTACT: Brooke Shaffner at brshaffner@hotmail.com

Admission Free



WHO:

LIESEL TARQUINI

Liesel Tarquini recently graduated from the New School with an MFA in poetry. She will be leaving Manhattan in August for a Fulbright residency in Berlin focused on translating contemporary German poetry, and is in need of a poetry patron (no sugar daddies, please!). For more information, see www.lieseltarquini.com.



DOUGLAS LIGHT

Douglas Light is the author of the novel East Fifth Bliss, which received the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction. His short fiction won an O. Henry Award, and has appeared or is forthcoming in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 anthology, StoryQuarterly, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. To contact the author, please visit www.douglaslight.com.



KATE HALL

Kate Hall received the Robert Frost Poetry Prize while a senior at Kenyon College. Her poetry, stories, and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as The Antioch Review, Rattle, Perihelion, Mr. Beller's Neightborhood, The Brooklyn Rail, The Mississippi Review, 3:AM Magazine, 5_Trope, and Stirring, where she served as a poetry editor. She was recently nominated for storySouth’s Million Writers award for fiction and won a Time Out New York short story contest. She holds a JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Greenpoint.



CHERYL BURKE

Cheryl Burke’s work appears in dozens of print and online publications. She is also the creator and producer of PVC: The Poetry vs. Comedy Variety Show, a monthly event at the Bowery Poetry Club featuring comedians and performance poets. Cheryl has given readings and performances of her work throughout the US and Great Britain. In 2003, Cheryl received an artists’ fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Cheryl lives in Brooklyn. Her website is www.cherylb.com, and she blogs at http://theblist.blogspot.com.



SHANEE EPSTEIN

Shanee Epstein, June’s featured artist and a co-founder of the 440 Gallery, will give a talk on her work. Epstein is a painter and educator living in Park Slope. She received her undergraduate degree at The University of Massachusetts and her MFA at Pratt Institute. Her latest show, Polyphony, a collection of abstract paintings, continues an exploration of color that the artist began three years ago. The paintings are hung in a melodic line around the gallery, allowing a dialogue between the pieces similar to the discourse which shapes the artist’s creation process. For more information, go to www.440gallery.com/artist_sepstein.htm.



About 440 Gallery: Park Slope’s only artist-run gallery, a jewel box space offering an alternative venue for nine Brooklyn artists. 440 Gallery seeks to present surprising, unexpected art to the community through exhibitions, talks, readings and events centered around direct contact with the artist. Open Thursdays and Fridays, 4-7 pm and Saturdays and Sundays, 12-6 pm, or by appointment.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Official Launch Party for LIT #12

I'm on the editorial board (though i've missed the last 2 meetings and haven't read the subs for Wednesday's meeting which I'll miss too 'cause of working in Westchester) for this lovely journal and really like this issue, as well as, issue 13 for which all the poetry has been selected for so due come out and have a good time at this release party, okay? I'll definitely be there- 'tho late since I won't get back in the city from work until 7:30-8ish....


You're invited to the launch party of LIT issue 12 on Wednesday evening, June 13th, from 6-10 PM
Five wonderful contributors will be reading their work! What else is there to do on a Wednesday night, right?


LIT 12 LAUNCH PARTY AND CELEBRATION!

Wednesday, June 13th from 6-10 PM
Wollman Hall @ The New School
66 West 12th Street, NYC, 10011

Featuring readings by...

STEPHANIE ANDERSON
ED PARK
REBECCA WOLFF
ISHMAEL BEAH
SAMPSON STARKWEATHER

Live DJ! Food and drinks! Copies of LIT! Literary excitement!

Reader bios:

Stephanie Anderson's work has appeared or is forthcoming in American
Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, LIT,
Painted Bride Quarterly, and Typo, and her chapbook, In the Particular
Particular, won the 2006 DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press Chapbook Contest.
She lives in Manhattan and teaches in Harlem and East New York.

Ed Park is a founding editor of The Believer. His short fiction has
appeared in Columbia, Crowd, and the anthology Trampoline, edited by
Kelly Link. His first novel, Personal Days , will be published next
year by Random House.

Rebecca Wolff is the editor and publisher of Fence and Fence Books.
Her own books are Manderley and Figment; she is at work on a novel,
The Beginners.

Ishmael Beah is the author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy
Soldier, published by Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar,
Straus & Giroux. He now lives in Brooklyn.

Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, North Carolina. He works
as an editor of science textbooks. His poems are published or
forthcoming in jubilat, Poetry Daily, Absent, New York Quarterly ,
Sink Review, Gargoyle, Redivider, Ashville Poetry Review, Lumina; and
were nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. He lives in the woods alone.


LIT 12 is now available!

Featuring poetry and prose by...

Stephanie Anderson * Ralph Angel * John Ashbery * Sarah Bartlett *
Edward Bartók-Baratta * Ishmael Beah * Francis Benteaux * Dan Boehl *
Jessica Breheny * Shira Dentz * Julie Doxsee * Elisa Gabbert * John
Gallaher * Daniel George * Dobby Gibson * Noah Eli Gordon * Kurt
Haenicke * James Haug * Matthew Henriksen * Donald Illich * Joy Katz *
Erica Kaufman * Mark Lawlor * Alex Lemon * Federico García Lorca *
Joseph Massey * Clay Matthews * Kristi Maxwell * Kristin McGonigle *
Joyelle McSweeney * Sharon Mesmer * Stephen Paul Miller * Gina Myers *
Amanda Nadelberg * Carol Novack * Ed Park * Andrew Michael Roberts *
Minal K. Singh * Sampson Starkweather * Mathias Svalina * Jen Tynes *
Susan Wheeler * Joshua Marie Wilkinson * Dustin Williamson * Allyssa
Wolf * Rebecca Wolff

Art by...

Emily Farranto * Pamela Lawton

Plus a SPECIAL FEATURE on THE NEW SCHOOL'S ASHBERY FESTIVAL
Featuring an interview with JOHN ASHBERY by Marit MacArthur and
critical writing by...

Kacper Bartczak * William Burgos * Roger Gilbert * Daniel Kane *
David Kermani * John Koethe * Micaela Morrissette * Dara Wier

For more info, visit the LIT blog at http://lit-magazine.blogspot.com!

Friday, June 1, 2007

Not Much of Anything

You know in New York there are always readings and other literary events to attend. I believe the Book Expo begins today or was it last night? My lack of knowledge should clue you in that I'm taking a week off and not doing much of anything for a couple of reasons:

1) I start one of those 40 hr week jobs next week and 2) somehow I've managed to hurt my foot so it only feels good when I'm not walking anywhere 'tho i will succomb to the call of coffee soon and hobble over to The Bean + I need to go to Cobble Hill because I could have a week of Netflix and rejection (oh i mean acceptance) letters bulging from my mailbox!

Right now I'm reading the new issue of LIT, Crazyhorse, and half reading Poetry Magazine plus Joanna Fuhrman's Frued in Brooklyn. LIT is pretty solid (of course i'd lie and say it was even if it wasn't since i'm on the editorial staff) with lots of Ashbery Festival essays, and Crazyhorse has new poems from Michele Glazer and Albert Goldbarth!