Saturday’s KGB Reading

 

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St, New York

Another spectacle of literary prowess transpired this weekend at a storied artistic hideaway, the KGB Bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a watering hole which has suffered my presence on many an occasion these last few months. This Saturday was the Rutgers University at Newark MFA reading, featuring two fiction writers and a poet. All three demonstrated such zest and talent that my hackles stiffened and became straighter than the heavily-insured hairs clinging to David Schwimmer’s scalp (another notable LES denizen who was, for some reason, absent from the KGB event). 

Fiction writers Katie Reilly and Serena W. Lin wowed the crowd with stories of hypnosis and domestic violence, respectively. Reilly and Lin showed wildly different sensibilities, yet their words pleased the ears like none I’ve heard in recent memory. What lovely wordsmiths they are!

The cerebral poetry of Caitlyn Ferguson punctuated the evening’s fiction. Who said the erudite couldn’t indulge in the language of the unwashed masses? A few epithets never hurt anyone. Thank you, Mlle. Ferguson, for gently reminding us of this truism with your gilded verse.

Keep an eye on KGB Bar’s online calendar of events next month, dear reader, for the Rutgers MFA program’s last reading of the semester.

 

Claudia Rankine Reads From Citizen

At McNally Jackson in SoHo, poets Claudia Rankine and Elizabeth Alexander read to a packed house. Rankine’s book, Citizen, is a National Book Award Finalist this year. As you can imagine, I blended into the crowd quite easily, being a bookworm and a scholar, like many others in attendance. I am a large fellow, but you might say I have four hundred and seventy-two pounds of appreciation for the incisive poetess, Ms. Rankine. Many of the entries in Citizen, Rankine explained, were inspired by true stories related to her by victims of racial prejudice. Many of these were shocking, such as the tale of the lawyer pulled over, arrested, and strip searched for no reason, or the examples of everyday discrimination perpetrated unconsciously by the person standing in line at the cafe.

Even at seven feet and nine inches tall, I was not able to stretch my camera over the heads of all the listeners, but Rankine was kind enough to sign this humble bigfoot’s copy of her collection. I hope she accepts this confession as a modest form of gratitude.

Now comes my favorite part – reading the book ostentatiously at the 7th Avenue entrance to Penn Station, with a pair of bespoke wire-rimmed reading bifocals upon my snout.

“Don’t Shoot” – An Evening of Poetry

Smack Mellon gallery – 92 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY

Bob McNeil and his wife

An engaged and passionate group of artists came together on Thursday night at the Smack Mellon art gallery and studio space in DUMBO, Brooklyn (not to confused with the Disney film of the same name). Each poet contributed works inspired by and revolving around the recent killings of unarmed human beings by police in Ferguson, New York, and many other places around the nation.

“Don’t Shoot” on February 5th featured readings by bilingual writer Yuko Otomo, spoken word storyteller Visual Poetics, Steve Dalachinsky, the visual and literary lyricist Anomalous Who, poet and host of the upcoming Words Sunday readings in Bed-Stuy, Patricia Spears Jones, Joyce LeeAnn, Vice news contributor Peter Rugh, and writer Bob McNeil accompanied by the percussionist Fred Simpson.

The powerful strands of grief, frustration and resilience within these poems were amplified by the beautiful wall art in Smack Mellon. Hangings and installations included everything from traditional watercolor paintings to audio recordings to sculpture.

Best Books of 2014

It’s time for my very first sweeping summary of an entire year in just a few words! I know, I am a bit teary-eyed myself.

The following books and their respective authors will cause your most sensitive little organ, the human heart, to palpitate with festive glee. Here they are, in no particular order:

Books

• Amy Lawless’s poetry in My Dead
  
• Bianca Stone’s poetry collection, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows
• Saeed Jones’s poetry, Prelude to Bruise
• Roxanne Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist
• Stories by Etger Keret
• Brian Jacques‘ Redwall series of animal fantasy books
• Gary Shteyngart’s  memoir about his young Russian-American self, Little Failure
• Kristin Valdez Quade’s (a 2014 “5 Under 35” writer) story collection, Night At The Fiestas
• Victor Lodato’s novel Mathilda Savitch
• National Book Award Finalist and poet Kim Addonizio’s Lucifer At Starlight
• Paige Taggart’s poetry collection Want for Lion
• Andy Mister’s  Liner Notes
• Ana Božičević’s Rise In The Fall
• Mark Chiusano’s debut story collection about the oft-ignored Brooklyn neighborhood of Marine Park
• Whatever you can find by George Saunders
• Awl editor  and talented poet Mark Bibbins
• Julia Fierro’s buzz-worthy debut novel, Cutting Teeth

Free Water #4 … And Poems

Ah, KGB Bar, you are a staid slavic gentleman with a newspaper and pince nez. You are a faint hint of arctic chill on a waning day of summer. You remind us how to live again, you insufferable purveyor of literature!

While the ruble crashed and executives at Sony shielded communist North Korea from our nasty jokes, the fourth installment of Free Water transpired on East 4th Street in New York. Staten Island truthsayer Andres Cerpa began a beautiful night of poetry punctuated by the clink of beer bottles and the knowing laughter of a literate audience. The strikingly clever Amy Lawless (amylawless.blogspot.com), 2011 NYFA Poetry Fellow, commandeered the podium next, followed by charmingly complex founder and editor of Monk Books press, Bianca Stone. Ubiquitous Twitter oracle and Pushcart Prize-winning poet Saeed Jones took a break from his job as Buzzfeed’s LGBTQ editor to serve as the night’s final reader. Each a supernova in his or her own right, each a star burst of creativity and panache. 

Pick up a copy of Lawless’s My Dead, Stone’s collection, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, and Jones’s Prelude to Bruise on Amazon. Now! At once, I tell you!

Do your soul a favor and attend the next installment of host Britt Melewski’s electrifying poetry series at KGB Bar in February. Check their Facebook page or the NYC Notable events calendar at The Rumpus blog for dates and times.

Metadata Reading

This poetic collaboration still has my strikingly beautiful head spinning… metaphorically of course!

Billed as an event intended to investigate “poetry as data” and sponsored by the Newark Arts Council and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (coming soon – Oct 23 – 26), METADATA went above and beyond expectations. An opaque curtain hung from the ceiling of the main room at 127 Halsey Street in Newark, bifurcating the modest space and encouraging visitors to mingle freely with readers and other artists. Headphones dangled tantalizingly from suspended cords and rewarded curious listeners with an ongoing recording of the headlining poets reading their work. Intersperse all these sensory monkey shines with real, live poets reading at a microphone, and you may begin to appreciate the wonderful confusion of this innovative event.

The very talented readers (some of whom performed their work remotely and were beamed in, as it were, via headphones) included: Dinah Fay (@dinahfay), Dana Jaye Cadman (@danajaye), Michael Van Calbergh, Melissa Adamo,  Britt Melewski, Paula Neves, Margie ‘Mia X’ Johnson, Jorge Sánchez (@jarnaldosanchez), Marina Carreira, Hyun Cho, and the inimitable Sean Battle. Idea dreamed up by the wonderful artist Brendan Mahoney (@bjamesmahoney) and implemented in collaboration with Dodge Foundation-sponsored poetess Catherine Doty. Mlle. Doty will be a reader at this year’s Dodge Poetry Festival.

During the art opening for METADATA last Friday, there was an impromptu poetry reading which included some of the poets that had originally collaborated with Msr. Mahoney for the art installation (whose voice could be heard from the headphones) as well as other local poets from Newark and beyond.

I do enjoy talking about myself. As it turns out, so do humans. Now isn’t this a fortuitous turn of events? Thanks to Msr. Mahoney, Mlle. Doty, and the curators of this space, I have a reason to talk about myself, talking about them, talking about art… which is about all of us. Heaven on earth. Grazie.

Banquet Reading Series – September

Greenpoint Heights, 278 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11222

Everett

Addonizio – Lucifer At Starlight

A wealth of literary ability abounded at the Banquet reading series on Saturday in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. These poets are making big, innovative strides on the page, which is all the more impressive, considering their legs are so puny and ineffectual off the page. One needs little proof of their credentials, although plenty exists. Among the readers’ accolades, we stumble upon – in a daze, a stuporous miasma of awe and excitement – residencies at the Millay Colony, grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, profiles in Poets & Writers magazine, and Pushcart Prizes. Egads! I shudder, even now, at the feeling of brushing against such formidable endorsements.

And that is not all. After the deceptively wry Luke Bloomfield, we heard from Wendy Xu, who, as it turns out, is one of this year’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship winners. That is not something to shake a stick at, humans! The mind-bending, sonically-inventive stanzas of Spencer Everett followed, which caused the room to lean forward in eagerness. Such complex, imaginative writing should be hallowed. Hallowed, I say! Last, but not least, the audience was graced with the introspective, yet lively poetry of the acclaimed Kim Addonizio. This National Book Award Finalist and former Guggenheim fellow has a new story collection due out this fall, called Palace of Illusions. Purchase her poetry collection, Lucifer At Starlight, on Amazon. The Banquet reading series returns next month. Stay tuned to @City_Sasquatch and #banquetreading for updates.

Is there room for a monster like me among such writerly behemoths? Lo, they tower above me. I must redouble my efforts to impress Lorin Stein, of the Paris Review, and Penguin Books. Did you know their publications are not meant exclusively for arctic fowl? Gods above, I had no idea.

Don’t Say What Others Can’t

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

– Anais Nin

Wise words from the prolific diarist and proto-feminist, Anais Nin. So, I’m a writer. That means my role is to articulate that which cannot be articulated.

In that case, here it is.

…

Brick City Speaks: July 14

Hells Kitchen – 150 Lafayette St, Newark, NJ 07105

 

A flock of artists, each of whom deserved to be lauded in his or her own right, congregated last night at the July installment of Brick City Speaks (@BrickCitySpeaks). How edifying to see a community of writers support one another in such a visible way. I was simply gushing with appreciation myself; my table was soaking wet by the end of the night, although I believe that may have been beer.

NB – a doff of the cap to Miller High Life for their surprisingly prescient “Artist Series” of libations. The beer was served in an aluminum tumbler made to resemble gold leaf, thereby implicitly positing that artists are precious personages, glittering in the firmament of society, as it were, and only waiting to be recognized for their brilliance. If I might offer a humbler, but no less significant challenge to these venerable brew-meisters: why not release a “Monster Series” as a companion beverage? I hereby volunteer my own visage for all marketing purposes. Please contact @City_Sasquatch to settle the sponsorship fees. You may forward contract documents to my ghostwriter.

A further doff of the cap to our indefatigable readers, Anthony Cirilo, Safia Jama (read more of Ms. Jama at her blog, The Safia Jama Experience), Cassandra Krawitz, and Margie “Mia X” Johnson (also blogging and @lifeweimagine). An exuberant, electrifying experience for moi and the rest of the audience. All were rewarded with sparkling poetry of various styles and forms, and the hide-splitting #punniness of our celebrity hosts (and writers themselves), Mlles. Serena Lin (@SerenaWLin) and  Dinah Fay (@DinahFay).

Brick City Speaks: June Reading

Hell’s Kitchen – 150 Lafayette St, Newark, NJ

Perhaps it is my new diet of grass-fed london broil and Naked energy drinks, but I am feeling a renewed strength. Then again, it could be the cornucopia of literary talent that bubbles to the surface wherever I go, like my whole grain, gluten-free, fair-trade pasta on the boil.

In the perfectly-odorless city of Newark, birthplace of Philip Roth and Whitney Houston, there is a monthly reading series that demonstrates my claim quite well. At the Hell’s Kitchen speakeasy I found myself in attendance at Brick City Speaks (this is what we writers call personification). Hell’s Kitchen! You say. Egads! Nay, dear reader, do not fear. I, too, felt a wariness at the moniker of this particular watering hole, but my trepidation was quickly proven unnecessary. What a charming establishment; not a lick of flames in sight. Upon my arrival I was greeted by a decidedly undevilish canine by the name of Angelina. She had a dull salt and pepper hide. The two of us conducted a rousing debate on Flaubert in between readers.

And so I doff my proverbial hat to Mr. Saturday (not to be confused with Man Friday), whose verbal illuminations of the human body cavity obviated the imagination, gravity-defying poet Dana Jaye Cadman (@danajaye), and the lovely microfictioness Elizabeth Palamara (@ebethpalamara). What can I say? It was a feast for the soul, a smorgasbord for the senses. I also ate 11 pounds of pulled pork.

Brick City Speaks, hosted by Marina and Ines,  is held the second Monday of every month at 8:00. (@brickcityspeaks)