Somehow, I managed to be an English major in New York without visiting Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. I fixed that last night around seven. Two hours and a few $5-suggested-donation beers later and Amanda, the events director, had to remove me from under the store’s sloping staircase, where I figured I’d hide forever and live among the books. In between I’d attended the launch party for Issue Two of The Coffin Factory, a new literary magazine that I’ve fallen for as suddenly and unconditionally as Housing Works. Contributors Adam Wilson, Carlos Labbé, Jeannie Vanasco, and Justin Taylor read excerpts from their Factory pieces to celebrate the launch before the evening flowed into beery schmoozing.

1. The ever-lively Coffin crew. Randy Rosenthal; co-founder, editor, and party animal; Laura Isaacman, co-founder and editor; Brendan Kiely, self-proclaimed ‘90s guy and managing editor; and Jessie Chaffee, managing editor. 2. Jeannie Vanasco, poetess-in-residence, reading about marital strife and backyard jungles.

Housing Works is a great place for a reading. Its large, open room was outfitted in dark wood, from the reader’s podium and chairs to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases displaying the colorful spines of used books. I thought I was in the library of an ancient, wealthy man of letters. Still, I wanted to tear the books down and stick my nose in their pages, huffing their musty smell. Everything I saw was donated: the labor, the used books, the new books by Adam and Justin, the copies of The Coffin Factory, the beer from Six Point (“It’s for a good cause, so everyone drink four!” Amanda suggested).

1. Carlos Labbé dwarfed by enormous window, reading about a massacre.

 Adam Wilson began the reading with an apologia for the sullen narrator of his story, “That Underlying Want.” “Don’t judge him,”Wilson said, “He means well.” The story was a darkly comic account of a man who leaves his stagnant relationship in New York to visit a dying friend at home. “He’s confronting death for the first time,” Wilson offered to explain why his narrator discussed sluts at the dinner table. Or in his own words: “Proximity to death does funny things to people, like make them horny. I’d seen it in the movies.” And who can argue with the movies?

Next to read was Carlos Labbé, who Granta named one of its best young Spanish-language novelists last year. Looking the part with his goatee and tufts of moustache, Labbé read The Coffin Factory’s English translation of his story, “The Organ Operation of Fuenteovejuna Street.” It’s the story of a man whose dreams are haunted by childhood memories of political violence. Labbé guided the audience through shock, fear, and uneasy laughter (the narrator asks: “Mom, what’s a barricade?”) in one sweeping, Faulknerian sentence.

1. Why so glum, guys? It’s a lit party! Matthew, writer and cell phone photo blogger, and Justin Taylor, hilarious writer and enthusiastic reader. 2. The hungry masses, yearning for their literary fix. 

Jeannie Vanasco broke up the fiction-and-dude-fest with her prose poem cycle, “Nothing Unusual to Report.” She read her poems like they were a lost mythology where the real melted into the surreal, only to set again as the ordinary. Get a load of this place: “Forget the water tower made entirely of light, the burning mermaid fountain encrusted with diamonds, the golf course on ancient burial grounds, my store is the most magical place in town.” The audience was enchanted. Vanasco tried to skip over a longer poem, but her editor protested: “No, read the whole thing, it’s so good!” I’m glad Vanasco listened.

Justin Taylor ended the evening with “A Talking Cure,” a story about a pair of engaged grad students. The narrator’s boyfriend searches for Stonewall Jackson’s arm while she searches for a witch in a WoW-style RPG, until they make the mutual mistake of engaging in a drunken “truth session.” Opening up about their sexual pasts leads to hurt feelings and awkward polyamory. Sounds like grad school to me.

I have many recommendations from last night, and here are a few: Go to Housing Works as often as possible (they have a Friday happy hour!), maybe apologize to Amanda for me. Check out Adam Wilson’s debut novel, Flatscreen. Read both issues of The Coffin Factory, preferably over a Sixpoint. And finally– don’t go to grad school.

***

–Sam Gold is in grad school. He lives in Brooklyn and is writing his thesis on theories of symbolic exchange between his fist and your face.

San Francisco freaks and geeks who like to play dress-up and waltz beyond the midnight hour celebrated the macabre cartoon fantasies of Edward Gorey this past weekend at the 12th Annual Edwardian Ball. This year’s spectacular multidisciplinary tribute — featuring music, dance, theater, video, painting, sculpture, fashion, installation art, aerial acrobatics and absinthe-rootbeer cocktails(!!!) — was inspired by the cult author-illustrator’s The Iron Tonic (Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley). What follows is a parody of the Gorey text with photos from the show.

The Eternal Balm
(Or, A Winter Night in San Francisco)

The tinies at the Gorey Ball
Danced brightly till they hit the wall.

Those who could not twirl stood upright,
Leather corsets binding most tight.

The lights blacked out and darkness reigned.
Upon her lips, the heathen stained.

The dance floor bounced with bursting busts,
Which cast a shadow on our trust.

A waltzing woman did decry,
“My hair is tall! My bosoms fly!”

Creepy crawling on their backs
Were centipedes and old ear wax.

A mellow voice came from above:
“Hey you, kind sir, is this your glove?”

Whack whack! It smacked across his face,
And thus he plummeted from grace.

His waltzing woman watched him fall
Then threw herself against the wall

Where children with their heads lopped off
Pined like dead butterflies on cloth.

Long rope, blue light, white ruffled skirt,
She left her soulmate in the dirt.

She tied the rope around her neck,
Asked her best friend to pay the check.

She climbed up high and bound the knot,
Her headless body soon to rot.

A noxious cloud then smeared the room
With absinthe-laced nightmare perfume.

See for yourself.

Check out the original Gorey story set to music by Schumann.

***
—Jesús Ángel García is a writer, musician, filmmaker, singer, dancer, whiskey drinker, sushi chef and discreet lover who will not post stories about you with jpegs of your cream on his face if you sleep with him. Some of his work may be found here.

On Friday, If Not for Kidnap, a living room poetry series curated by Donald Dunbar and Jamalieh Haley, brought Kevin Sampsell, Edward Mullany, Chloe Caldwell, Bryan Coffelt and The We Shared Milk to Dunbar’s house in Southeast Portland. Only one of the above is a poet, unless you count the band.

SE Mall Street is not well-lit compared to the glare of an iPhone’s Google Map in the hands of my passenger; however, we obtained a visual of what appeared to be several band members carrying amps and equipment headed towards a large house. After initiating pursuit we were led straight to Dunbar, who was greeting guests from his porch in front of a one-smoker audience. I was unable to get a usable picture of Dunbar at this point and waded through the people who like to stand in the kitchen towards a table with cold beer and book donations for Crow Arts Manor to get a better look at the crowd.

1. Jeff Diteman played cello for last year’s January Kidnap and adores Future Tense Books, especially for introducing him to Gary Lutz. 2. Edward and Anjali Mullany—sidekicks and pals. 3. Jessica credits Dunbar with introducing her to poetry and loves the atmosphere and people. Jeffery likes art and stuff and brews beer. He came because Jessica invited him.

Dunbar is a very skilled host and excessively brave for bringing this series into his home. His invitation was simple:  “Doors open at 7:30, bring anyone you like (seriously, if you don’t like ‘em, don’t bring ‘em), and if you’re able, bring books to donate to Crow Arts Manor, money for the donation jar, snacks or refreshments to share, and your own gorgeous face.”

The We Shared Milk kicked off the night in the crowded living room you imagined when you were planning for childhood talent shows, without realizing you didn’t have that many people in your family or that all your friends couldn’t come over at once. A lot of people finished their conversations somewhere in the dark, close to the kitchen or near the booze.

1. Kat, Kaija, Zach and Chase stake their claim to a living room corner. Kaija came to support Coffelt, a fellow Ooligan Press graduate, plus her friends said this was an awesome series. 2. Evan P. Schneider  and Melissa Reeser Poulin of Boneshaker Magazine with Poulin’s husband, Lyle, and Michael Heald of Perfect Day Publishing.

Coffelt read through a stack of micro-fiction with the steady hum of an idling engine. Caldwell read two selections, one from her soon-to-be released book, Legs Get Led Astray, entitled “The Shit You Say.” Due to a recent knee injury, I asked Evan P. Schneider to report on the second half of the night:

The other guy [Mullany] read about two sentences, then everyone clapped and then Kevin Sampsell came up and was tremendous, reading from a novel he’s been working on for quite a while that he has “been very close to finishing for about year, and might edit for probably another year.”

1. Caldwell reads to a crowded living room and whoever was standing quietly in the kitchen and dining room. 2. Dunbar’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment, in which we are informed of a break in the proceedings.

As soon as the readings were done, more people seemed to come (Lisa Wells, author of Yeah. No. Totally, for example, who looked stunning) and then the house owner [Dunbar] announced they were out of beer and asked two brave individuals to go on a run (which they quickly did), but there was still plenty of hard stuff left on the counter. I had enough Old Crow to make things pretty blurry, so I headed home not long afterward.

If Not for Kidnap provides a monthly opportunity to meet litsters in a scene-agnostic environment. I forgot about House Parties being so fun, even during the Portland winter. Next time, I will bring some food. I guess I didn’t really read the invitation before showing up.

***

—Judith Ossello currently lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find her at www.writerloop.com.

–Evan P. Schneider is the author of A Simple Machine, Like the Lever and the founding editor of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.

“If you don’t think this is the best reading series in Brooklyn and in New York, you’re wrong,” began Ryan Britt, one of five readers at the Franklin Park Reading Series’ December installment this past Monday. Perhaps Britt was a bit overexcited to be reading for his second time at the well-regarded event, but he has a point– this past Monday alone featured the so-hot-you-can’t-miss-him Lev Grossman (The Magicians, The Magician King) and the newest nebbish hero of the literary scene, William Giraldi, whose debut novel, Busy Monsters, has garnered more attention than the seemingly-shy author likely knows what to do with.
 
 
 

1. Giraldi and Grossman, listening in.

The theme was monsters, fittingly enough, and the night began, as it always must, a half an hour late. It was either the discounted drinks, the warmth of the Crown Heights enclave or the quality work at hand that created an attentive and overly-enthusiastic crowd. First to perform (and perform she did) was poet, mother, and all-around badass female Montana Ray, whose powerful name somehow still is not enough to prepare anyone for the resonance of lines like, “You wear coffee stains, sluttily” and “Reading Being and Nothingness did nothing to save me from being the woman on your couch waiting for Isaac Hayes to come out from your wall and hug me.” Her protest poetry, released by Dancing Girl Press, is written in the shape of a gun.

1. Penina Roth, mother, host, and curator of the lauded reading series, looking amazing for someone who probably doesn’t get much sleep. 2. William Giraldi, feeling it. 

Britt was next up, sharing a witty sea monster story with a practiced reader’s great cadence, gestures, and lines like, “the kind of girl who never knew what to do with her arms in photographs.” (His work can be found here.)

The nights masterful imagery was continued with reader Nelly Reifler’s story for Underwater New York, in which she drew from Formica advertisements from the ’50s and ’60s to weave a satirical and clever tale about the reintroduction of “mother” into the home.

1. Lev Grossman reading a not-often orated passage from The Magicians. 

So, what can one say about the already-so-admired authors who rounded out the night that hasn’t already been said? It is worth noting how Giraldi’s whole body is utilized when he reads; and how down-to-earth Grossman seems, but not in a crafted way. But really, I can only say this– you should have been there.
 
 
 
 

See Through: Stories
by Nelly Reifler

Busy Monsters
by William Giraldi

The Magician King
by Lev Grossman

 
 
 
 
 
***
–-Sarah Lerner is a freelance event coordinator for the L Magazine. She contributes art and film reviews to Time Out New York.

At the Paris Review, literary archivist Sarah Funke Butler looks at a young writer who’d hoped to resolve the question of whether symbolism actually exists in literature and whether it was indeed the intention of the writer. “In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. … Each responder offers a unique take on the issue itself—symbolism in literature—as well as on handling a sixteen-year-old aspirant approaching writers as masters of their craft.”

Although Bruce’s survey may not have settled the issue once and for all, the letters on display at the Paris Review (from the likes of Bellow, Ellison, Updike, and Mailer) also prove to be wonderful insights into the habits, intentions, and personalities of the most important writers of the time. Ayn Rand chastises young Bruce, claiming his questions don’t make sense. Jack Kerouac claims, ”Symbolism is alright in ‘fiction’ but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.” And Ray Bradbury offers a few elegant insights, saying that he doesn’t consciously insert symbols into his work: “That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. … Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing…and as unobtrusive.”

For more on literary symbols and a look at the letters themselves, head over to the Paris Review.

***
– Benjamin Samuel is the Online Editor of Electric Literature. He is pretty certain that’s meant to be taken literally.

Around the corner from Voodoo Donuts, Erik Bader hosted his fifth Literary Mixtape reading at Valentine’s with Paul Collins, NPR’s literary detective on Weekend Edition; Sarah Mirk, Portland Mercury Journalist; and Pauls Toutonghi, English Professor at Lewis & Clark College and novelist. Co-organizer Matthew Korfhage usually hosts the event, but he was fixing a wind turbine somewhere where wind turbines are found and repaired.

1. Jesse Lichtenstein, co-organizer of Loggernaut Reading Series, talks to Paul Collins, the evening’s headliner. 2. Hanging out before the event begins. 3. Crowd participation required standing as well as listening.

Intimacy lingered, as if it had no other plans for the night, except to see what would happen next or maybe who would walk in. Each reader read something they didn’t write. Each reading felt a little like going through family photos with an old friend. Each person who walked into Valentine’s was cooler than me.

Bader started the evening by reading Haruki Murakami’s “On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning.” His smile, on pause, at Murakami’s reference to young D.H. Lawrence’s piggybank was the first of many personal reactions that make this reading series unique. The piece also highlighted the mysterious draw of that which we love and cherish regardless of intricate reasoning and logic. Our ability to explain or defend these feelings is irrelevant, but the shared experience is obvious and powerful.

1.  Chloe Caldwell came from NY to PDX to check out the scene. She also hosts the Hudson River Loft Reading Series. Matt moved here two months ago. He still doesn’t see the brilliance in Murikami, but enjoyed the zine readings and people watching. 2. Mirk, Toutonghi, & Tom Colligan, who also organizes a 24hr Moby-Dick reading in February, with over 120 readers.

Toutonghi’s trifecta included an essay, poem and short crowd participation piece which may have been a short story. While reading the essay entitled Birds of a Feather by Payton Marshall, his wife, Toutonghi commented that it was all a true story. His second selection was a poem, in honor of a high school friend who was in town. The third was just for fun, I think.

Mirk read selections from three local zines: On Subbing by Dave Roche and published by Microcosm in Southeast Portland; Good Crew written and published in Xtratuf by Moe Bowstern; and Jason Breedlove’s 1065131. Mirk’s snap and zing delivery complemented her honest and well-written selections. It’s been a while since I bought a zine, but she made we wonder why we don’t buy them like wine. I may need to go to Reading Frenzy to check out a few.

Collins chose to read some stories by Byron Rogers since they are not in print within the US, so we would never get a chance to read them if Collins didn’t read them to us. What is not to like about obsessive societies and collecting memories?

Collins’ selections were the perfect ending to a curated night of literature, the mixtape that sounds different each time you play it, because it plays your mood as well as the music of the moment.

***

—Judith Ossello currently lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find her here.

At Beyond Baroque in Venice, Los Angeles, readings occur in a black room that looks & smells like a place a mutinous 1930s Navy commander would get court-martialed in. I got to the reading on time, which is early for California, causing me to get eyeballed by performers who must have been wondering what’s the angle of the young kid with the notebook & the camera. I wonder that myself sometimes. It was Sunday, so the drinks from Friday night’s ‘Housewarming Party’ and Saturday night’s ‘End of Summer Symbolic Blowout’ were weighing on me and all I wanted to do was listen to cool stories told by cool people. After a while, like most readings I wander into, the room filled with strangers I couldn’t help but say look interesting. Poets from a mile away.

1. Co-host L.K. Thayer absorbing light and lit. 2. The room becomes a vacuum as Elya Braden reads the hardest poem of the day. She trembles as she says: “They say you can’t take blood from a stone, but my heart bleeds for my lost babies.” 3. Comedian-turned-cowboy-poet Jeff LaBeouf begins, “I was smoking medical marijuana when I had the thought that cows are reincarnated old hippies.” They both love grass, he says, ‘Moo’ is just ‘Om’ backwards, “and on rainy nights they shit magic mushrooms!”

Taking over hosting duties for their writing teacher/guru, Jack Grapes – who arraigned the show then inexplicably fled to Paris – poets Adesh Kaur and L.K. Thayer seductively combined high-style with low-brow, as they reminded the crowd of the way the LA Poets & Writers Collective keep readings moving. Each reader gets two minutes and fifteen seconds, then they are interrupted by a remote controlled fart machine, and if that doesn’t work, “then you get hit with the water pistols,” said Adesh, holding up a lime green, plastic Derringer threateningly. This righteous practice embodies a line from their mission statement: “We speak no one’s heart and no one’s mind but the heart and mind of the collective.” Countless radical tonal shifts speckled an afternoon that showcased 28 poets – one building you up, the next knocking you down – creating the sensation of slow, heavy breathing. I kept finding myself thinking, ‘How could anyone follow that?,’ and then somebody did, because somebody has to.

Thayer was the first to read and suggested you “become what you slay.” Chanel Brenner followed and spoke about her younger son’s depression, blaming herself for it, wishing she had shown more love to him when he was younger. Next was sixty-eight year old poet Roz Levine, one of the day’s many female poets to take the podium and blow away my first impression of them with a rich, fiery style. “Why does your stomach hang over to your vagina, Grandma?…It’s my hang-over, little one,” Roz replied, going on to describe recently getting her first tattoo and wanting to buy a pair of ‘Killer Boots’ that’ll have him “on his hands and knees asking for pussy pudding.” Man, those grandkids are gonna get some awesome birthday presents.

1. A well earned intermission. The phrase written on BB’s welcome arch: “Limping up the aisle, / I already tasted blood.” 2. C. Culp brings as much grace as she does rage to her story of abuse at the hands of her father in her poem ‘Breathe, Just Breathe.’ “Don’t breathe a word of the crinkle in the sheets we share together.”

Robert Carroll said he had some family members in the hospital and talked about the Blues. “When the Blues becomes what you have nothing left to lose / it becomes the news.” After came the dark powerhouse, Andrea Weiler: “I yanked out my right eyeball and took a picture of the seam,” then Satan said, as he opened her legs, “Lose your childhood and innocence in a waterfall of fire.”
At the intermission it became clear that I’d attracted as much attention as I suspected and Kaur asked me if I wanted to read, warmly declaring me a member of the collective. Oy. My heart raced. I looked over the piece I had in my purple pocket Moleskin and said OK, against the judgment of my anxiety. I wanted my 2:15 of play in that weird, dank room.

1. Kelly Ebsary was the first of the day to embrace the water guns, outstretching her arms and shouting lines over the laughing crowd as she was hit on her eyes and cheeks. Made me think Nickelodeon should sponsor readings where at 2:15 the poet gets slimed. 2. I’ll let Angela Robinson speak for herself. “You fuck for pocketbooks? I fuck for houses!” “I want Stevie Wonder to play the harmonica up in my pussy.” Maybe borrowing Roz’s boots would get the ball rolling, huh?

Coming from the break, Patty Lopez’s wildfire poem made her sound like a true Southern Californian: “It’s father, he’s watering the roof to keep us from burning. But he’s not watering it, he’s talking to it, he’s containing it, he’s holding it.” Jean Partel follows with a solid theme for the day: “I hope I’ll be seen for what I am.” After reading a piece she wrote for one of her favorite poets, Ellen Bass, Merry Elkins told the audience how she sent her the poem and that Ellen responded, saying how honored she was and how happy it makes her that the poem ends with “A belief in & search for your own voice.”

My unplanned reading went surprisingly well and after two other recruited audience members went up the event ended, leaving me to feel the difference between who I was when I entered the reading and who I was leaving it. The roles felt jumbled– listener, speaker, reporter, customer– even though they’re all the same.

1. Bara Bara Burns was another audience member that was asked to read, and thank God for that. She came to Hollywood to be a starlet and ended up an addict, and now she says, “I’m a junkie without my junk…I love living on the edge, but now it’s round.” 2. I will never forget her. She said the last lines of the day while both guns soaked her, “Where quiet desperation is lost & never found…I wanna get down, I wanna get down, I wanna get down.”

***

–David Ohlsen, an LA native, is a thoughtless product of UC Riverside’s Creative Writing program and is a regular contributor to Electric Dish.

What a weekend to be in New York City. The air was cool, keeping the summer stench at bay.  Say what you will about the thunderstorms, I’ll take them any day over Eau de Urine avec B.O. that comes out in the subways after long stretches of dryness.  I reveled in the benign stale pizza smell.  Yes, it was a glorious weekend to be a New Yorker: sidewalk cafes were filled with freshly scrubbed couples ordering Six Point beer, the natural, native grasses at the High Line swayed in the breeze, the line at the Shake Shack was less than hostile.  In other words, last weekend was a perfect Manhattan weekend, 2011 style.  Cue the Gershwin.

It also happened to be a weekend when my aunt Mavis (Dr. Mavis Anne Bryant, to be exact) was in town, visiting from Texas.  She lucked out; with the stench and strife of the city less extreme, the city was actually halfway pleasant.  Mavis, in addition to being my aunt, is an editor and writer (Two Schools on Main Street), so along with the usual museum-hopping and eating, we decided to embark on a little literary tourism.  Our first stop: “Poetry from the Rooftops” at the Central Park Arsenal.

“Poetry from the Rooftops” is sponsored by Poetry.org in conjunction with the Parks Department and takes places on the charming rooftop of the Arsenal building, located at 64th and 5th Avenue.  The rooftop is intimate and lovely, the perimeter dotted with stainless steel containers of hostas and the vista filled with the treetops of Central Park.

Thursday’s poets were Cedar Sigo, Rosanna Warren and Dara Wier.  Sigo went first, and ended with, “I loved you once too hard, and twice too soft…three times a lady.” That perfectly sums up my love/hate relationship with New York.  Next to take the microphone was Warren.  Now, I know writing is a way of controlling our experience of the world, but when Warren said, “and the sky opened up,” suddenly the sky did open up.  We all rushed downstairs into the drab Parks Department gallery space.  Warren quipped, “Someone told me that if you want to be a poet, you have to be willing to stand in the storm and get hit by lightening.”  The gallery wasn’t nearly as poetic as the rooftop (actually, it was downright institutional and depressing) but final poet Weir tried valiantly to improve upon it.  Weir is a fellow Texan, and with descriptions such as “like tarantulas dipped in honey,” she won Mavis and me over.

1. Forrest Gander channels Federico Garcia Lorca. 2. Pablo Medina used to sneak away from Fordham Prep to drink beer in the park; today he reads Lorca in the open.

After a Friday at the Met, we met up with writer Louise Bernikow on Saturday for My Lorca, which featured American poets reading their favorite Lorca poems and discussing the poet’s influence on their work.  The event was co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and the New York Botanical Garden, in conjunction with their Gardens of the Alhambra exhibition. We all zipped up to the Bronx, along with Louise’s friend Lizzy, grabbed some watermelon, and snagged seats right in front.  Now, Louise and Mavis are old friends (they were Fulbrighters together in Spain in the sixties), so this was the perfect opportunity for them to catch up and reminisce about their days dancing flamenco and following the bullfight circuit.  For me, it was a great chance to hear Lorca’s poems read aloud, which I’d never experienced. Executive Director Alice Quinn presented the afternoon’s poets:  Forrest Gander, Aracelis Girmay, and Pablo Medina.  Surrounded by the flora of the Botanical Gardens, I was blown away by Lorca’s words— still powerful, still relevant. Afterwards, I resolved to have more poetry in my life.  Today I started with Lorca’s “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias”:

1. Cogida and death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
At five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.

The wind carried the cottonwool
At five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
At five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
At five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
At five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
At five in the afternoon
Arsenic bells and smoke
At five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
At five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
At five in the afternoon,
When the bull ring was covered in iodine
At five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
At five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon
At five o’clock in the afternoon.

1. Dr. Mavis Anne Bryant with Louise Bernikow.  Ole!

Now the weekend is over, and Mavis has gone home, but the poetry stayed.

The next Poetry from the Rooftops event is September 15.  Deborah Landau, Srikanth Reddy and Atsuro Riley will read.

Next summer, the Poetry Society will present French poetry in conjunction with the NY Botanical Garden’s exhibition Monet’s Gardens at Giverny.

***

—Cassie Hay is a regular contributor to The Dish.

Michael Dickman and Zachary Schomberg transformed a space between book shelves at the Hawthorne Powell’s into a place where people tucked around corners and appeared comfortable in folding chairs. These old friends, neighbors, family, fans, curious shoppers and poetry supporters created a very well-rounded crowd reminiscent of a block party, minus the kids.

I can confirm there was no reading at the Burnside Powell’s because I went there first and missed Schomberg’s reading. I did, however, find a five dollar bill as I ran back to my car in three-inch wedges, and managed to drive cross-town in less than ten minutes.

Everyone with a roommate and a porch seemed to be drinking on their porches as I ran down 37th street towards the Hawthorne Powell’s. The Captured by Porches beer cart speaks to the difficulties of the young and restless inhabitants of the Southeast side, who are mostly immune to fluctuating gas prices and tend to negotiate most necessities based on proximity. Food carts continue to blanket the area like a game of Risk.

It was peeking-around-corners room only when I arrived mid-poem at Powell’s  Luckily, I stood next to Jon Boisvert, a local poet, who was kind enough to explain that the Dickman and Schomberg reading was more of a double-header than an opener-main act situation. I thanked him for the additional guilt. Boisvert told me Schomberg read from his book, Scary, No Scary, and that he also co-curates the Bad Blood Reading Series in Southeast Portland.

I did see Dickman read from Flies and close the night with a new nature poem, “Honey Bee.” His reading was as jubilant, but slightly less triumphant in tone than his twin brother, Matthew Dickman, who described his brother as a brilliant, handsome genius when I snapped his picture in the Young Adult section.

1. Michael Dickman and Zachary Schomburg. 2. Matthew Dickman, local poet and Tin House staff member.

Michael Dickman encouraged everyone to buy a book of poetry, any book of poetry. I bought and read Schomberg’s book as homework. which helped me think of a way to approximate how it felt to attend this reading:
Find something true, dark or lovely, and describe it to someone perfectly, according to your own perspective.

This is my theory on why Schomberg and Dickman can explore darkness within their poetry while exuding lightness in their lives.

It was not fun to leave. Dickman and Schomberg bring out the kind of crowd that makes you wish for an after-party.

1. Crowd shot! After the reading. 2. Tracy and Sue came to hang-out and support local poets.

***

—Judith Ossello currently lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find her at www.writerloop.com.

I needed something to get me out of my apartment and distract me from the unemployment blues, so I took up a friend’s offer to attend a reading at the Cornelia St. Café. As I walked through the West Village passing tourists huddled underneath scaffolding (it was raining), my initial motivation to “get out” left me, and all I wanted  was to sit in a dark basement, drink dark beer and – not to get too emo on you – listen to something dark.

The bartender/doorman fed the darkness to me immediately. I asked if I could dodge the cover if I wrote about the reading for EL. I kid you not, his reply was, “Nothing matters anymore.” Deciding he needed a drink more than I, I paid the cover and sat my ass down.

1. Reader Michael Klein. 2. Reader Peter Covino.

Peter Covino, PEN Award winner, opened by talking about the potential construction of a “Museum of Literature” in Providence, RI, complete with themed rooms for both beats and ’20s-era salons. Most everyone in the room thought this was a great idea—I think it is, too— though I wonder what it implies that literature now needs (and merits) a museum. Some of the work he shared were products of a 100-word restraint (this post is about 500) and seemed to be successful for him. He made me smile and feel good, which is a great gift to give, and I agree with him that we “got to start lovin’ people a lot more.”

Covino (word) cloud: air-quotes, lost-soldiers, Mormon-love.

In an alternate time and place, Michael Klein, author of then, we were still living, would have made an amazing fire and brimstone preacher. He wrote about “love without the object” and proposed the question: if one is still a twin when the other has passed on? My off-the-cuff answer is yes, but I also wonder whether the characteristics we identify ourselves with change when said existence relies on someone else. Are you still a Romeo if you have no Juliet? Michael made me laugh, think, and listen. These are also great gifts and reflective of great heart.

Klein cloud: anti-amazon, dancing, risk

City-girl Eleanor Lerman closed the night, and the first thing out of her mouth when she spoke in the mic was, “Boy, does my voice sound strange.” That voice earned her early recognition for her first (wonderful) book, Armed Love, written in 1973, and reminded me, as it should all of us, that “vampires are happ[iest] when they’re homosexual.” My favorite moments were when she told old New York anecdotes, whether it was a raid at a lesbian bar where she was doing homework (at age 14), or taking her dad to a Yankees game and him hearing his name read over the loudspeaker. Echoing Covino, she reminded us that there’s “so much left to love.”

Lerman cloud: Charles St., hashish, starfish.

When I left the café, it was still raining, and there were still pods of Europeans shivering under scaffolding. But all I could think about was getting out, doing some writing, and finding new things to love.

***

—Craig Moreau, author of Chelsea Boy, has just finished a book tour and is currently drinking a beer. He is interested in identity, democracy, and word-clouds.