In advance of 2009 move, Poets House previews Battery Park City
By RUTH VINCENTWhen poet Stanley Kunitz founded Poets House, a 50,000-volume poetry library and literary center, with arts administrator Elizabeth Kray, he envisioned it as a “house of hospitality, as well as a house of books.†Since opening in 1986, Poets House has grown from makeshift locations in home economics classrooms to the sunny, quiet Spring Street loft it inhabited for over a decade. Now Poets House will have a permanent home: a brand new, eco-friendly, purpose-built poetry space at 10 River Terrace, in Battery Park City, guaranteed rent-free until 2069 by the Battery Park City Authority.
To celebrate the upcoming move, which will take place in 2009, Poets House will host “Poets House in Battery Park City†on October 11, a day of free preview festivities showcasing New York’s plentiful and diverse poetic tradition, including readings by Charles Simic, John Yau, Patricia Smith, Edward Field and Joan Larkin.
Complete article at The Villager.
Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo
Paul Flores reads from Saul Williams’ The Dead Emcee Scrolls
Paul Flores had a great talk at USF today- THE LEGACY OF AUTHENTICITY: From the Anti-establishment Beat Movement to the Mainstreaming of Hip-Hop. The time line he presented, making a direct correlation from Ginsberg’s Howl to Saul Williams’ The Dead Emcee Scrolls, was a well presented study of the complexities of Hip-Hop. For me, the time line is more jazz fuels Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, which then fuels Bob Kaufman, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, which then fuels Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, right to to Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” which is where hip-hop poetry (even before the term hip-hop comes to be) is born.
Previous to this talk, I considered Saul a mutli-genre performance artist who used slam poetry to launch his acting and music career and then never looked back. This is no hate, you can hear Saul say as much in the film Slam Nation and also find similar comments in his interview in Words in Your Face. After Paul’s talk and his reading of the passages in the videos below, I think I will be looking for The Dead Emcees Scrolls next time I’m in a good used bookstore.
Barbara Jane Reyes reads "We, Spoken Here"
Great reading at Pegasus Books tonight. I caught some great videos that I’ll be posting during the week. First off is Barb reading one of her “We, Spoken Here” poems. I love how this poem uses the text from General Taguba (his repeated mention of the “We”) as the launching pad for this litany.
Side rant: I am all for found text and subverting headlines, but I find it disappointing when a poem that desires to be “political” uses that text as bland stand alone lines or as the rally point of the poem. A poem like Barb’s “We, Spoken Here” or Evie Shockley’s “Torture” are great examples that a poem doesn’t need a headline to be political but can use a headline to make us examine the political.
back, way back, back into time
Let us take a nice break from the craziness going on over the For Godot project with folks either ranting to the fullest or proclaiming it the greatest thing ever, and go back to January 2001. A time before 9/11, before Flarf, before indexed searches, and just before I ever wrote/read a poem of my own.
Goodreads Review: Spider-Man: One More Day TPB
Spider-Man: One More Day TPB by J. Michael Straczynski
Rating: 1 of 5 stars
* Spoiler alert * What a sad end to J. Michael Straczynski’s great tenure as lead writer on Spider-Man. His additions of Ezekiel, Morlun, the possibility that Peter is a manifestation of a grand Spider deity, Peter as a public school teacher, the fantastic Spider-Man: The Other storyline (Spidey loses as eye, what?!), and Aunt May discovers Peter’s alternate identity. All wonderful leaps of logic to an iconic character that a lesser writer would be happy with simple story rehashes.
Speaking of rehasin’: I was happy to see the black costume come back but sad to know that it really only happened because of the Spider-Man 3 movie tie-in which I’m sure was a call from the Marvel powers-that-be.
The same powers-that-be (cough, Joe Quesada, cough) who contributed lousy artwork to this series (I could barely recognize Spidey in most of the panels and most of the covers were just awful) and whose idea of ending Peter and MJ’s marriage will add nothing to the Spider-Lore.
A nice touch with the Stan Lee afterword and his justification of the ultimate retcon, but while I dig Stan’s point of view, I still can’t get back my time from what was a lazy, clumsy, and disrespectful send-off to one of the best writers Marvel has recently worked with.