Issue 11 November 2003 BOOG CITY Free A Brenda Changed My Life BY JON BERGER Brenda changed my life, once. I was still living in my old college town, when Alex suggested that we see the “All AStrung Out” show at a nearby school. I had nothing better to do, so I agreed to see these three major label acts doing solo acoustic shows. First up was Brenda Kahn.
‘Mint Juleps and Needles,’ has the memorably slutty line, ‘You’re cracked, you’ve gone mad. It’s hopelessly sad, but I like you better than most of the men I’ve had.’
She was gorgeous, she was diminutive, she was a raven- haired Jew, and she approached the mic to say, “Is Chaz here? I was playing pool with Chaz before, and I told him to come to the show. Chaz, you out there?” Brenda Kahn was featured on this bill of Columbia acts with other important songwriters, playing at this prestigious school, Brenda Lee in concert and she was asking about some schnook she’d just met. This BLP, Inc. photo semi-celebrity before my eyes had already personalized her performance, as if she were in some coffeehouse. That was so cool. after, I saw she played one week at artist were vital in my development. days, Ms. Kahn doesn’t play many Her set was cool, too. She played songs from her recent the historic CBGB’s and the next at the Who would I be without Brenda shows. After releasing five full-length Columbia debut, Epiphany in Brooklyn, the cover of which unknown Sidewalk Café. Kahn? I can only answer the opposite. albums, Brenda Kahn has begun to featured a photo of her bangy knees trying to remain in frame. That’s where I learned about Anti- Probably, I wouldn’t have become such devote herself to other projects. She’s That cover was like her voice, which ranged from squealing and folk and other hidden musical genres. I a proponent of independent music. It’s the brains behind www.womanrock. shouting to moaning. (I liked the moaning best.) The other acts on discovered that behind every corner you unlikely I would have started a fanzine. I com, a webzine devoted to independent the bill were good, but, well, they weren’t Brenda Kahn. can find a thousand hidden prizes, if you never would have become a poet, or a women artists. “We can change the I was exceedingly taken with Ms. Kahn and got her album knew how to look—a lot of times, even if bandleader, or met most of the people way music is heard, film is seen, and right away. Probably the strongest cut was “Mint Juleps and you didn’t. I know now, or gotten that neat job art is experienced,” she says in her Needles,” which Brenda produced, and included the memorably My infatuation with Brenda’s music desktop publishing, or gone to Brazil or womanrock.com editor’s message. slutty line, “You’re cracked, you’ve gone mad. It’s hopelessly sad, didn’t last at quite that fevered pitch. No Hong Kong. And it all started with a girl It’s a pretty big vision for such a small but I like you better than most of the men I’ve had.” There was a album amazed me as much as Epiphany, named Brenda. person, but I figure she’ll do it. After all, New York feel to the album. When I moved to New York soon and how could it? That album and that I don’t see her much now. These Brenda Kahn changed my life. NANCY SEEWALD Not Your Average Mexican Food i s not less than, two entrees. Speaking from a purely economic determination to develop an appreciation for the more subtle standpoint, the entrees would probably make better leftovers. flavors that Itzocan uses in its cooking. The cactus leaf burrito In addition to the fondue, my friend and I chose the crispy awaits my return. FYI, Itzocan Café does not accept credit Eating Well on a Lousy goat cheese ravioli, tortilla with shredded chicken in tomato- cards. chipotle sauce, and a soufflé made with sweet corn and huitlacoche mushrooms. All of the appetizers were $6, except But Steady Income for the tortilla, which was given in quite a generous portion, and for only $4.50. Brenda Bordofsky wanted to try Itzocan Café (438 E. 9th St.) for a while The fondue was the best, because underneath the cheesy Fort Greene, Brooklyn because I had heard a lot of buzz about the place from exterior was a spicy red sauce thick with mushrooms, poblano Ifriends. It’s small, the staff is friendly, and they serve Sangria. peppers, and chorizo. The fondue was really the only dish Happy Go early to be seated immediately, otherwise plan to wait. that had that spicy kick I associate with Mexican food. The Though they serve burritos and quesadillas for lunch, dinner fare ravioli speaks for itself—it was fried and filled with cheese. My is more interesting, with offerings you won’t see at your average friend was unimpressed by both the soufflé and tortilla. I liked I ran, I walked in the free public who is curvy and intelligent burrito joint. the soufflé because I never eat it, and the tortilla because relax, it’s relief The first time I went, my friend and I ordered two entrees to its tomato-based sauce and black beans helped cut the happy is relief sometimes split—chicken stuffed with goat cheese and vegetables ($12.50), egginess of the former. it sits in your neck, waiting and the flank steak with semolina dumplings ($13.95). Both I made the mistake of ordering too many cheese-based for pacific oceans were good, but neither had a real kick. I thought the dumplings appetizers. There were other options, including a green were interesting, but bland. As a New Yorker, I’m admittedly not salad, guacamole, soup of the day, or one of the specials. too familiar with Mexican cooking, and it’s quite possible that Asparagus with mango and a Mexican cheese was a special leave the grovel of cities the jalapeno-laden red sauces I’m accustomed to were actually on both of the nights I ate at Itzocan. For dessert, the waitress and lot’s wife for mist in the morning created in the U.S.A. suggested that special, the pumpkin crème brulée. It was a child body surfs in America I went back another time, however, because I couldn’t stop made perfectly, but after all that dairy at dinner, I probably among past, resistance and deed thinking about the appetizers I hadn’t tried. Who can resist would have enjoyed another option, like the mole chocolate and recently I’ve figured out deed Mexican-style cheese fondue? I also realized I could afford cake with hazelnut sauce. four appetizers, which would be about the same price as, if As I write this review, I feel within myself a growing BOOG CITY Elliott Smith, Issue 11, November 2003, free EDIT editor/publisher 1969-2003 stumbled upon Elliott Smith because I went to a Mary David A. Kirschenbaum Lou Lord show and he was on the bill. It was a quick [email protected] Brendamania Isell, hearing him sing about his troubles with junk, adies and gentlemen—Welcome to the Brenda love, really just life in general. copy editor issue. Why a Brenda issue, you might ask? Why After that I saw him play whenever I could—the Lnot I say. It started like this. There are three poets since-closed Tramps on West 22nd Street here in NYC; Corina Copp who I know in the scene that revolves around the Poetry opening for Beck and Ben Folds Five at Jones Beach, Project at St. Mark’s Church who have the first name where he had his sometimes backing band, Quasi’s music editor Brenda—Bordofsky, Coultas, and Iijima. And I’d hear Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, she also of Sleater- people mentioning Brenda said this, and I’d be, which Kinney; and New Year’s Eve 1999 at the Knitting Jon Berger Brenda. Factory, when he yelled out at two minutes to 2000, “I I thought wouldn’t it be fun if we had a Brenda need a two minute song,” and I yelled out “Say Yes,” my poetry editor issue and gathered work on and by a whole bunch of favorite song of his, and he played it before bringing his Stephanie Young Brendas. And so, that is what we have done. girlfriend on stage, counting off from 10, yelling happy I must, however, address a Brenda we neglected to new year, and swigging from a just-popped bottle of write upon, a Miss Brenda Walsh. She may have just champagne before passing it to us to swig from. small press editor been a character on Beverly Hills 90210 portrayed If you don’t know his music, pick something up, with Jane Sprague by Shannen Doherty, but she was always more than my choices being either/or or Elliott Smith if you want fictional to me. something sparse. If you want something harder and a bit fuller and faster, his work with the band Heatmiser, columnist-at-large which also featured Coomes, is great. There I’d pick Greg Fuchs Mic City Sons. Letters to the Editor: It’s a sad time on this end, even sadder than Cobain poetry calendar editor [email protected] really. Rj Gambale
counsel Ian S. Wilder First printing, 2,000 copies. Additional copies of this issue may be obtained by sending a $3 ppd. check or money order payable to Boog City, to the address below. Paper is copyright Boog City, all rights revert d.a levy lives to contributors upon publication. Boog City is published monthly. Boog always reads work for Boog City or other consideration. (Send SASE with no more than 5 poems or pages of any type of art or writing. Email subs each month celebrating a also accepted. Please put Boog City submission in subject line and email to [email protected]) Send SASE or email for Boog catalog. renegade press in america BOOG CITY 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H New York, NY 10001-4754 Thursday Nov. 6, T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 www.boogcity.com • [email protected] 6:00 p.m. TOUGHER DISGUISES • OAKLAND, CA ACA Galleries POETS REFINE 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr. (bet. 10th and 11th avenues)
MONEY hosted by BOOG CITY editor David Kirschenbaum There are thousands of Americans everyday For information call 212-842-BOOG (2664) • [email protected] who are looking for a safe place to invest their money. Poets are the best source for removing negative charge from your wealth, UNIQUE and raising the collective conscience of the ALL THIS GREETING & MORE 75¢ planet. You can change your life FOREVER COLOR CARDS AT COPIES by sponsoring a poet today! CA Conrad 331 EAST 9th STREET is one such American poet serious about New York, NY 10003 making poetry a lifelong quest, ready and THE Tel: 212 473 7833 SOURCE Fax: 212 673 5248 willing to refine your money! If you are UNLTD 10 AM - 6 PM Mon - Thurs 10 AM - 5 PM Fri interested in sponsoring this poet, call 215- “It’s Worth The Trip Down The Street” 563-3075, or write CAConrad13@aol. R com, you won’t believe the difference a 4¢ $5.99 FILM poet will make! OVERNIGHT COPIES & MORE DEVELOPING MANUSCRIPT SINCE 1982! 2 SETS of prints or FREE film RATE
2 BOOG CITY NOVEMBER 2003 Oakland Press Tougher Than The Rest BY JANE SPRAGUE hile pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Mills College in Oakland, California, James Meetze studied with Kathy Walkup in the WBook Arts Program. Investigating the history and practice of typography and letterpress printing, he printed an edition of his own work, A Race of Effort. Pleased with the results, he decided to start his own press. He found himself faced with a dilemma not uncommon to small independent presses. “My intention with the press was really to focus on emerging and amazing poets,” said Meetze. “But, in reality, how many people will buy a book by someone they’ve never heard of, published by an imprint no one’s heard of?” Citing Clark Coolidge as a significant influence on his evolution as a poet, and considering Coolidge’s extensive volume of unpublished poetry, Meetze approached him about publishing a letterpress edition of some of his work. Coolidge’s On The Slates and Meetze’s mentor Peter Gizzi’s FIN AMOR were published in 2002. Generous friends helped catch the pages as they came off of the press, as well as with the folding and sewing. With these publications, Tougher Disguises Press was born. (The imprint takes its name from the first three lines of Jack Spicer’s poem, “Thing Language”: “This ocean, humiliating in its disguises/ Tougher than anything./ No one listens to poetry.” Deer Head Nation takes on everything from Meetze admits a deep love for handmade books, but the labor-intensive aspect of publishing them can be problematic. Wanting to move beyond redneck freak-outs to the pervasive slick sickening what is possible with handmade publications, he began approaching poets about book-length manuscripts for publication as trade paperbacks. “If a violence that somehow might embody, or embalm, manuscript provokes me to think of it in book form, and perhaps challenges my ideas of what form it should take, that’s a major part of it,” he says. “I our post-millennium American soul. look at the book as the perfect—or in many cases, not-so-perfect—conjoining or blending of two art forms, the text and the vehicle, or book.” Meetze’s commitment to design and “contemporary writing that is informed by and simultaneously incorporates the work of the avant-garde Deer Head Nation delivers exactly that Mohammad It’s the only thing I ever really wanted to give you. I’m sorry movements of the past 100 years” works to create an aesthetic evident flashes a floodlight on the spurious consequences love is sometimes so abstract. in Tougher Disguises’ recent publications, The Frequencies, by Noah Eli of American brand-name globe-trotting capitalist Gordon, and K. Silem Mohammad’s Deer Head Nation. consumption, run amok with a spooky, bedeviled, and Cool, wry, and incisively dubbed, The Frequencies Deer Head Nation is a spooky smashing of all things creepy in American ironic eye, offering an unsettling tour through the opaque perfectly dizzies the places it takes you to and tunes you culture and their infinite creep into the national consciousness. It takes on underbelly of our gruesome citizenship. back in again. everything from redneck freak-outs to the pervasive slick sickening violence Gordon’s book-length poem The Frequencies charts that somehow might embody, or embalm, our post-millennium American the twisting of lovers caught between mixed signals, … Pardon me while I cover soul. From wet panties to Palestine, Iraq to “antler chandeliers,” “put a girl on messages, and misunderstandings, tweaked by more the incision lines on your bookshelf sentimentality, drink your desktop” and watch the Technicolor ghost of North America’s ruinous than the amplitude of mouths, with a poetic tour through the tea you left at the station. So sweet. So cold. I know you ever-present-past gloat its guts all over the page. pop culture, the secret life of ornithologists, and play- said the past always catches up with us, that there’s nothing list politics. Gordon’s work is marked by lines of clean, wrong with a little radio. After all, it’s how you hear it that “Puppy Craziness” complex prose, while he stages radio frequencies counts. as conduits to human intellect and tricky hearts. The what we all really need is love Frequencies deftly maneuvers links of language, to theory Forthcoming Tougher Disguises books include Chris in these horrendous times to literature to love to the possibly unutterable idea of Stroffolino’s Speculative Primitive, Cynthia Sailers’ Lake in this toxic atmosphere comfort as a live thing, inside the radio box. Systems (whose cover graphic is featured above), and some believe this thing, some believe that Stephanie Young’s Telling the Future Off, due out in late people here think they need a new car and new clothes … Sure, the reception really 2003 and spring of 2004. Tougher Disguises books but we see that what we really need has no written language, nothing but a speaking voice & are distributed by Small Press Distribution (spdbooks. is something adult the impossible idea of empty space, nothing but the room org) and are also available directly from the publisher sinister and just a little bit dark inside the way we read the radio toward our own nowhere. (tougherdisguises.com). Stop the Presses! It’s Brenda Starr
Betty Grable, Ann Rutherford, and Ginger Rogers. They’re all haired, glamorous Brinkley Girls influenced Charles Dana BY JOEL LIPMAN there on the musty Whitman backlist, titles that offer previews Gibson and foreshadowed Messick’s Brenda, Messick drew Brenda Starr: Girl Reporter of Shock and Awe—April Kane and the Dragon Lady (a Terry the strip until 1980, when she retired. Since then, the still-running Whitman Publishing, 1943 & the Pirates Adventure), Joyce and the Secret Squadron (a Brenda Starr has been drawn by Ramona Fradon and, most orget the storyline of this out-of-print, wartime edition, Captain Midnight Adventure), or Smilin’ Jack and the Daredevil recently, June Brigman. which involves the “beautiful and clever” Brenda, “the girl Girl Pilot. The list includes titles from “the Exciting New Fighters Messick’s illustrations are fashionable, flaky, heroic, teasing. Freporter of the New York Flash,” Muggs Walters, her boss for Freedom Series: War novels of adventure for boys and girls” Brenda always looks super—her suitcase never empties out (“He had a pretty fancy set-up there, didn’t he?”), and Larry (Norma Kent of the WAACS, Sally Scott of the WAVES, Barry its frocks. Tom is rugged, his pipe clenched in a steel, square Nickels, the novel’s male love interest. (“He picked her up in Blake and the Flying Fortress, Sparky Ames and Mary Mason jaw. Larry Nickels is tall, blond, rich, smug. The newspaper his big, strong arms as though she were a toy, and held her of the Ferry Command). background and the reporter’s high-energy dash for the hot high in the air, grinning broadly, while she kicked and struggled Eventually Whitman became a Western Publishers subsidiary. story are nostalgic, charmingly silly. Ah, comics and fifth-grade and beat at him with her small fists.”) The rest of the furniture The company still tracks the flicks—licenses include Disney and reading levels. includes Tom Taylor; Flurry Snow; strange potions; spies; semi- Warner Brothers. They even published Liz Taylor and Jane Brenda’s skirt snaps just above her knees. Her hats are darkness; popular dance tunes; mad Professor Squell (“Why, Powell paper doll cutouts in the ’50s and early ’60s. turned for feathers and pins. Brenda’s hair is deliciously red, the old looney was double crossing us!”); Daphne Dimples; Bill Even if only for one animated glimpse of a storyboard’s curly, and full of angles and perfect poses. She’s pure stardom, Bailey; Pesky Miller (“Get him, Pesky, Tom ordered”); gorgeous frame, remember Dale Messick, the first woman to snag a tinsel-tease, the dame who’ll get you in and out of trouble just gowns; flights to Sun Valley, New York City, and Chicago; 19 regular strip (Sunday’s NY Daily News, 1940), and who drew in time for more. illustrations, and 248 pulp pages. the independent, adventurous, sharp-dressing Brenda to flash And if there’s jingoism, evil sexism, nasty politics, and wartime But don’t forget Racine, Wisconsin’s Whitman Publishing some cartoonish glam across news pages drab with war censorship, this reviewer will giggle, smell the old newsprint, and Company—Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Doctor Dan the Bandage reports. “Give us some leg, honey!” And Brenda did. accept the bunk. Brenda, vintage 1943, trumps goofy George Man, the Campfire Girls series, and a World War II list of Dalia Messick assumed the sexually ambiguous Dale W. Bush, the non-president, a truly vapid cartoon drawn to pose novels for boys and girls, built around popular comic strip after unsuccessfully struggling to launch a regular comic strip. like Ken on steroids stuffed in a flight suit. characters like Brenda, Steve Canyon, Invisible Scarlett O’Neil, Her unpublished early efforts included “Weegee,” “Mimi the Come back, Brenda! And bring with you Deanna Durbin, Dick Tracy, Blondie, and Tillie the Toiler; as well as a list Mermaid,” the sassy “Struglettes,” and “Streamline Babies.” Polly the Powers Model, Bonita Granville, the Outdoor Girls, including novels based on film stars, including Ann Sheridan, Influenced by Hearst cartoonist Nell Brinkley, whose curly- Invisible Scarlett O’Neil, even hunky Rex, King of the Deep.
NOVEMBER 2003 BOOG CITY 3 Mother May I The Grand Permission: New Writings on Motherhood and Poetics Brenda Edited by Patricia Dienstfrey and Brenda Hillman Wesleyan University Press, 2003 few months ago, I dreamt that had I googled “motherhood AND sleep,” which directed me to a site listing “Five Foolproof Ways to Get Weiler Your Baby to Sleep So That You Can Finally Get Your Mind Back And ou think you’ve seen her before. Brenda Weiler’s A Maybe Get Some Writing Done.” Alas, I was awakened from this dream, as I got that look, like she’s someone you sort of have been from dozens of others, by the sound of my infant son crying. Yknow, hauntingly familiar. Maybe a girl from high While The Grand Permission does not offer any sleep recipes, it provides a school: cute, so she was always on the periphery of wide range of food for thought. In the 32 essays comprising the anthology, the your thoughts, but also strange, like she wrote arcane most interesting ones are those preoccupied with the time/space necessary words in charcoal in the parking lot—or on her arm. for any artistic endeavor. Pam Rehm confesses: “I’ve learned to take a day and (Anyway, the name “Brenda” just sounds like one you run it into the night. I cope with time in that way. But I’ve also learned how to know really well, right?) take a day and curse it the whole way to bed.” Maureen Owen describes Brenda Weiler sounds familiar, and odd, too—at writing under the influence of exhaustion. “I would keep typing even in a half- least, she does on her brand new, nationally distributed, asleep state,” says Owen. “A sort of somnambulant verse evolved.” Virt Records debut Cold Weather. It’s the Fargo native’s Alice Notley relates how living in a cramped apartment “under salon fifth record since she graduated from high school and conditions” with a husband and two young sons informed her work. “[My smashed her college plans and became a full-time sons] were as inventive in conversation as all the poets who visited were; they musician. The vocals on Cold Weather are warm, the made themselves just as high talking, were less melodramatic and intense; music memorable, and all of it sweetly weird. their feelings were cleaner and there was a pure clean light around their talk The beautiful “Sacred” tells us, “Some woman which I liked to be near and which I liked to include in my work.” C.D. Wright’s stepped up once to tell me that all this was just in my head, but I was not convinced of that, so I simply hilarious account of her son’s early years is summed up by this statement: “He stepped away.” The lines don’t rhyme, their meaning is opaque, but the rhythm, the melody, and the ache is. Therefore and nevertheless, I poetry.” within the words all stick with you, days after listening. Other standouts include essays by Stephanie Brown, Claudia Keelan, Most of the new album, like her earlier releases, remains on the folk-rock section of the Venn diagram— Kathleen Fraser, and co-editor Brenda Hillman. As with any anthology, there subtle, minimal, but with a grander musical scope. The anthem-like army of voices in the chorus of “Trouble,” are a few clunkers swamped in abstraction and pretentiousness. And curiously, the full-on rock attack of “Scatter,” and the creepy sound affects on the opener, “Faucet,” all represent the there aren’t any essays that focus on the economic realities of being a poet sense of exploration Weiler must be experiencing, touring incessantly these last eight years, even moving and a mother. Some mention the subject in passing, but, overall, it is treated from her recent home of Minnesota’s Twin Cities to Oregon. Or maybe that’s just projection. like the proverbial elephant in the living room. In any case, this collection is a It all sounds good, of course, and it sounds like you’ve heard it before, these biting tales of disappointment must-read for women poets who have, or are thinking of having, children. and love. You must know the songs, this sweet voice. Maybe it was in the back of the school, maybe in —Kristen Hanlon an old coffee house, maybe on your sister’s stereo. Or maybe it’s just that you should know them. —Jon Berger
Brenda Strong f you’re a student of popular culture, you’ve seen Brenda Strong between the cracks, which is strange, because she’s a big woman. IShe’s substantial, impressive. Brenda Strong is Amazon hot. Coultas Here are the places I witnessed Strong without realizing it: Seinfeld, where she played Sue Ellen, “The Braless Wonder” (she’s in that reverse episode, too); Gilmore Girls (she asks Luke out, even though he’s so totally hot for Lorelei); Sports Night (as Sally Sasser); Exhibits Starship Troopers (she’s a captain that gets killed by the bugs); and Seventh Heaven. (Hey, do I seem like I watch Seventh Heaven?) In most of the roles I’ve seen her, Brenda Strong plays a Characters sexpot. But she’s more than that, as her statuesque beauty and her A Handmade Museum intelligence somehow set her apart. There’s a sensitivity to her role Brenda Coultas in Sports Night that makes the seemingly manipulative schemer very Coffee House Press, 2003 identifiable. Plus she’s smokin’! ith A Handmade Museum, Brenda Coultas Brenda Strong is multitalented. She’s produced yoga videos catalogues the detritus-filled wake of “progress” and is even in the Los Angeles Millennium Choir. I don’t know W(“as a person one paycheck away from the much about yoga or choral music, but with this powerful presence street”), assuming the oral and objective histories capitalism involved, I could imagine taking an interest. She’s also featured in has consigned to public character (“the person on the street Harry Shearer’s recent Teddy Bears’ Picnic. —JB who knows everyone and whom everyone knows”), and in the
process, expelling poetry from its own kind of privacy: “to think Bob photo Gwaltney about the possibility of leaving the anonymity of the page and becoming … a public poet.” For Coultas, there is no refuge in wilderness, not to speak of suburbia, only the two landscapes of poor America. From Gary Snyder’s “Bubbs Creek Haircut”: “Goodwill … room of/ unfixed junk downstairs … finally freed/ from human need … room of empty sun of peaks and ridges/ a universe of junk, all left alone.” One landscape has little room for the obsolete (“and, having no place for them, out onto the street they went”) and Brenda Lee one has “space for both new and old things” where “people, if they really want, can have (keep) it all” (a here is one woman and one woman only in both the Rock barn full of push mowers). and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame, Of course, these are the places where the stray, the retarded, the sick, the crazy, and the dead are either Tand her name is Brenda Lee. She has been making hit allowed to stick around or to get thrown onto the street. But this is no simple division between urban and records for over 40 years, sold more than 100,000,000 records, pastoral. Coultas instead brilliantly applies the methods of nature writing, after Gilbert White or H.D. Thoreau, and one of her signature hits, “I’m Sorry,” is one of the top-selling to the urban landscape. records of the 20th century. All this from a lady who’s not even Coultas’s rural meditations (the “farming poems”) combine hayrolls, cows, and John Deere like some Joseph five feet tall. Cornell box of the cornbelt in the book’s “The Bowery Project” section. But what emerges is a singularly Back when Brenda Lee was new at the whole rock and roll unromantic view of the “American” century—from the bottom-feeder-cam, as it were, of those living off waste thing, in the wake of Jerry Lee (no relation) Lewis’s marriage to rather than profit. his 14-year-old cousin, Lee’s management decided to say that the Geopolitical tides and the shock of events, including 9/11, are charted in “The Bowery Project” in entropic tiny 15-year-old was, in fact, a 32-year-old midget. That went over exfoliations: “Two matching sofas with TV resting on seat. A day later, TV on sidewalk between them and only really well in France. the wooden skeletons of couches remain.” The “Bowery bum” who ends up sleeping inside of these wooden Known as Little Miss Dynamite, Brenda Lee (born Brenda Mae skeletons is no more or less visible than the dead of the World Trade Center or the terrorists themselves: “Were Tarpley) has recorded such substantial numbers as “Rockin’ Around they ever visible from this street? Does it matter if I say they were visible from Houston & Bowery if they weren’t? the Christmas Tree,” “Sweet Nothin’s,” and “Is It True?” But most certainly they were.” She continues to tour after 45 years, and, after a recent Those hungry for another serving of Coultas’s American gothic pie (her dismemberments and burials, as in, “appearance” (played by Kelly Clarkson) on NBC’s American “I threw [money] a bone … I could have it buried with me. We’d rest on my grandma’s grave. I’d be in a little Dreams, is it possible there might be a resurgence of interest in this box, my bone an amulet of DNA on top”); her exquisite music—a poet fishing in prose, her words hook, cut, international celebrity? Might we be witnessing the beginning of a and release the cadences of sentences more alive than any written today; or for her oddball humor will not be new wave of Brendamania? Only time will tell. —JB disappointed. But the real service of this book—the best of 2003—is in devoting that sensibility to an accounting of our endangered public lives, the “human need” we ignore at our peril. —Jonathan Skinner
4 BOOG CITY NOVEMBER 2003 Brenda Iijima Looking closely at similar Thine and thy hence the maker Designs. Bronze motivations Wherast dearest a tulip today seen Prospect Heights, Stone urges. Dolomites Scarce ere I’ th’ Determined and mined. I virgin thee and weep a kind a taper’s Brooklyn Anyway Light not wake or knew’st when Not excess knew else die coming from Animate You might call a still life I no we too strong for fantasy By Caravaggio a form of pornography. Enter dream arm in arm & Inanimate Gluttonously the ripe fruit rot is splayed. Aqueduct How engorged the grapes are. Technicolor To ocean. Aims Sense of succulence with no flavor just the I am a machine of growing cells Topmost oily sheen seen. Bones to prop up And my essence is weak. O pupils Flesh filled out with pink malaise or the Now I live in Crete. After the auto Of oppression Sacrifice religiously. Penthouse still. Still I Biography of Cronos. He ate all of Destroy your want of big things Appreciate its meditation His off spring except Zeus. I prefer Inscrutable personal nothingness On color and the molecular disturbance of My parties without full armor the Or have a cheap machine. Nude Oozing fruit in relation to meat. Lions are enthusiastic. A fallacy Harmonious now out of scale. A shank of ham. Visualize a dark plantation Could be grosser. Ecstasy as they Of firs. A fist Say, a demonic mood. Balking at physics Moist. I bite into the big picture Oh Did (where the painting) a bird Yah; This tease is on view at the Alighting resumes shortly after Yah, yah yah yah American Folk Art Museum (I paint myself) as a gap in Yah yah yah (with Nostalgia with wave breaking on it. Heritage) Coda: continuing fluttering Observed the sense is. Down Movement and intervening A country lane. Talk about the technique. Stave the russet wilted Bulwark of forms. Iconic like Basilicas in spaces Forging metal, the skills and domain Booth Fright. Max of the maximum Remain. Declared weathered Of the metallurgist Daring Fear factor. Iron grillwork I By faded plaid emblems yielding That shaft of expertise. Hurl over my heel a foot on Heart’s ardor, bulky and damp. This egg like eco The face. The first peopling on this lake System/ is a bastion a/bout As in Hölderlin’s outlook Were rave To hatch. Or a tornado will wail Do you know anyone pricked Not tangible (ens) gift giv Nailing poles of telecommunication. Its stigma who is enlightened Harpsichord (ers) they brought su I might get out of this At the brink who has reached Hail…steel orbs of ice (n) light with their Chair back This higher plane of being Crash through impression Wings a footprint Flip toward the In the real world (ly) (ing) (s) (ate) Fish tank such as this Can be found under Trees. No hands, head above And going with this the worship Hermopolis A wooden bowl swept Loam might dig And suffering as an end in itself. Happens. Out to sea carved Hole bury Especially capable Ear The Incas versus the Aztecs Blatant tablature chromed Of human speech. Short Brazen might cloud Abjectly and they at least abolished Over in an abode built for grammar Skirt next to naked skin, Scream cause Human sacrifice, on a colossal scale His gyration grown in house In general a Rain moment wistful Look at Rome. Coupled for eyes that insist sentence. Trouble ample Fury directed at the media hounds. Porous grace tinged. Struggle amplitude Savagery is always taken seriously The coming so far for carnage. Stained glass Wrangle trial Torture as cultural treasure. Self Carthage. Wreckage we build Minuet Flagellation is no archaeological Leafy alliances Minute Remain. Moribund not at Quandary Bilingual collections Simple as circle All. Leonine nature. Germane. Known as canyon. Door opening edge. Swirling only velocity. Brenda Iijima art (2)
Brenda Coultas two rocking chairs in the hallway outside our door but when we looked out they were silent and motionless. Around midnight, the East Village we would hear footsteps in the attic above our bedroom, like someone walking in a circle. The attic door was unlocked and A True Account of down the end of the dark hall. Millions of pigeons lived and died in it, millions of pigeons raised whole families and fought When We Lived in a great battles over territory and love in the our attic. There was a broken window from which they gained entry and the bodies of birds covered the floor. Haunted House There were so many strange noises that we stopped paying attention. One day a man knocked on the door asking When I was a welder and a fashion model, I lived on the directions, when I looked down I saw his erection and slammed second floor of a haunted mansion with my sister. From the street the door. I got my sister and a frying pan for a weapon, and we the house appeared to be abandoned, it was a three story brick went looking for him. An elderly man on the street even joined with heavy shrubs, rotting gutters, one block from the river in an the hunt, but we never found him. old Victorian neighborhood that was half ghetto and half old The stalking started after my sister moved away, and I was money where river boat captains and the movers and shakers living alone and working at Firestone Steel, one of about five of 19th century industry had once lived in gilded splendor, those women among of two hundred men. I was nineteen and fresh mansions had been chopped up into tiny and sometimes bizarre from the cornfields of Spencer county just like Abe Lincoln, and apartments and were owned by one slumlord who pounded his I wore full makeup everywhere. I had went to a molding school property signs into the thread bare grass. called Beautiful People, and as a result of my model education, Our landlord’s daughter was a traveling salesperson who I always, even in the steel plant, wore eye makeup, powder, and lived in the apartment next door. She said she often heard lipstick. A story had appeared about me in the local newspaper singing and smelled flowers sometimes and that the place had about how I was a welder and a model. I got invited to the once been a nursing home. Kentucky governors’ mansion and was even made a Kentucky The rent was cheap because of the unfinished bathroom and Colonel. various broken pipes, yet the apartment had charm. An ornate The first time someone opened the transom above the door fireplace, hardwood floors, large living room, old light fixtures. and left my door standing open. The second time it happened Because the house appeared abandoned, antique dealers I secured the transom with a butter knife, the third time I came would break into the ground floor just to look around, we even home and there were cigarette butts in a heap outside the door plant, a stranger, who gave me an extravagant Valentine’s day joined them sometimes. The ground floor was fully furnished, like he had been waiting for me. I never spent the night there present out of the blue. Years later I met a woman who had with more ornate fireplaces and woodwork. Sheets covered the again. I moved and did not give anyone my address or phone lived in the landlord’s daughter’s apartment. She talked about furniture and in one room there was evidence that someone had number. how the apartment was thick with roaches, so much so that they squatted there in the past. I never found out who my stalker was, but years later I heard were inside the wallpaper eating the glue. That’s a sure sign of The haunting begin with the sound of rocking, there were that a Peeping Tom lived next door. Also there was a man at the a haunting, masses of uncontrollable vermin.
NOVEMBER 2003 BOOG CITY 5 POETRY
to conceal Some words shouldn’t marry Brenda Hillman Consider flow for example North Berkeley, California And the unmarried rocks
Cascadia In the east for the search to admire We spoke the stuttering the slurred Spiky poplars near Atascadero Prior to 130 million years ago much of California lay beneath ocean waters. It was bordered Motel 6 Rose to protect the empty on the east by the mainland of North America and on the west by a land mass known as Some moths live only two hours Cascadia. Formal cause means definition Robert Durrenberger, Elements of California Geography Lost Hills Means ask your friend in the blue shirt Why Cascadia’s hair is noisy In issues of representation In the search for the search dandelion seed He threw up from being sick During the experiments with wheels cream When the land mass had slid under Holiday Inn After the scripted caverns After a feathered response When what had been attached shower Water running in the motel Lompoc Was no longer attached To get the being stained out After choosing the type of building Fame The immortal precedes the left margin hydrangea In which no one has died A million pagers not working We recalled a land or condition corrugated wind A satellite had turned left one of those Whose shape was formal Into a round-sided life teeth bedspreads Formality gave pleasure Best Western A truck turned left at the Pacific A shadow’s shadow dragged it Village Inn A sofa-unit in its flat-bed Back to the sea of eyes A line is a unit of attention most natives A poem floats inside its margins Fresno California’s lines so separate They are death and birth receding The dirt was heard chip-chipping say Lom-poke Beauty is not an impasse our girl such a Silicon A forbidden wren Better not to blame The second cause of change said the search The loved one for a slip Neo-Platonist Material cause what it’s made of made glad God had a slip of not existing The Countess of Tripoli listened All girls are an island song not Don’t try to get the stain out Capri Motel Those trucks on 101 with reclining The red made you live faster Ojai Decals of flame and smoke a No longer eating strawberries The willless breath outshocked her He had another call coming in In Chualar a boy threw up thought Nestled down in the paisley pattern an under- Behind a case of Coke The island proposed a merger In the search for the east to admire Then did Half-moon Dewy and the Secret Julys nevered spider & After reconsidering which was west Cascadia didn’t merge it floated In an era of not singing His song survived his supply At the school of lyric abstraction pre-Naugahyde The skin of an unthought is thought She peeled back the skin of meaning After kissing Los Angeles once Change has four causes slid Aristotle chair The landmass known as Cascadia La Quinta Inn The boy hardly bent throwing up His parents pick strawberries for us Redding He had little mirrors in his spine The I caused flagrant slipping Material cause means why marbleized Sing sank sunk in the Something-ocene nun-colored Because of what sidetable Earth started out loose All boys are an island Pretty loose just debris channel-changer In issues of representation Had a pretty good head on her shoulders a shape-shaped California motels sometimes have magpie His head made up of singing Colonial type scallops in the moulding Loss of meaning is made up inner courtyard The boy must have been hot nunning by Of two things loss and meaning The business of margins waiting Phenomenal accuracy as a moral stance Country Inn What must Drake have thought Kildeer love the really shitty fields and Suites When he strolled past the bankruptcy office Near the missile-testing site in Lompoc Marigolds on the boardwalk They run past drought tolerant gardens Costa Mesa The back of a poem is brighter The talk of the town Than the back of a painting Radisson Shirley flies a plane in that one Osiris rode a ferris wheel Nail City Bravo Pizza Taco Loco Ophelia rollerbladed San Diego The beyond sang the anti-lyric couch having Syntax is the understudy for infinity His parents pick strawberries for us They don’t know what caused Cascadia He picks strawberries For us its horizon As the arrangements became larger To will World champion Nafta unacceptable stain The lyric had become depressed The cloud of unknowing knew remote Abalone chips in the sidewalk the future panicked In the search for the C in Cascadia control There were little mirrors in his spine She felt chastened by angularity As he threw up Credit unions offering farm credit teabag Do you still love the sentence anti-song Damselflies over ferrous chloride Aristotle’s four causes of change The land mass coddled the sea trench Formal Material Efficient Final They turned right into the argument And what of the warbler latitudes Switching to de-caf was the problem And what of the unknown where Cercamon and Peire Cardenal The inexhaustible plays against form post-Naugahyde Material cause what it’s made of Four Points A compass went south of crazy truth Fat-free chocolate envelope Missions indicated by green squares I’ll be good mama you can come out The skin of a thought is a thought In heaven we’ll be recognized Saint Torn earth is better than conquerors Monica His parents pick strawberries for us The left had a fear of margins He picks strawberries for us Some moths live only two hours On where Cascadia slid Country Inn From flying low in the fields to sing and We found a glassy spot to be assembled And Suites The face-shaped vault of infinity A merging subverts the categories Her address was mad at her
6 BOOG CITY NOVEMBER 2003 Powerbar It wasn’t just the not singing We anguished it up and released it I laughed or Whatever gets old and scary Baja snapped off at Malibu Brenda Bordofsky it cried Which rhymes with pale blue Tattoos on the backs of nymphettes Fort Greene, Brooklyn We could have been happy sooner Californians aren’t good at merging Happy Ellis Motel Little mirrors in his spine After Gregory Corso Cascadia didn’t merge it floated Tulelake Why did the chicken cross the ocean I have refused Get someone to help you do it to underestimate A poem touches its margins gently I know this estimate and these arms Twelve=the waltz X 4 causes are not mine by judgment, but given Formica The scrub jay cracks seeds for hazel by accident kitchenette Thought it was Charlie knocking no love and no thieves We’ll eat no more strawberries how this day the matchmaker She thought envelopes are fattening glows when she has dressed after the owl Her letters arrived unsealed all in town or how a box of standard In the trench for the east to admire letters from one soldier in Vietnam to In one motel was a gooey spirit one woman we shall call my motherqueen true Read The Highwayman as children (afraid equally of life and death Black-haired woman tied up myself an addition to this crippling) Naugahyde Shoots herself to warn him They’ll write in the noir of heaven pattern and habit mighty about their The Ojai mountains near Jane’s house affect on god, children and the rot Quiet as the soul of Because of houseplants Too much earth for each strawberry will collapse “I wish he would have died in Vietnam” The little seeds get stuck in your teeth she is indiscreetly dying On earth they will be noticed never was dying And all the human themes replaced by a dark house in the valley dying a live wife’s nightmare In recognized it will be heaven a dead wife’s mantra The final cause of change said Aristotle dying The reason to which things tend sits in the concrete Quality Inn The beyond is made of the beyond in the back-yard-house-in-the-valley She had a face lift on her hands applying and applying sun burnt sod Space prone punctuation driven with the neighbors The change didn’t sink it floated You of missing cities The island sang right in slow motion bath gel They’d call this their great lost love But the cliff knows Where to find the ocean Executive Inn People think poets make poems Poems make poems lying down shower cap The final cause the Goddish reason Brendas Reading There’s a song that sang all night There were mirrors in his spine He bowed like California Bordofsky • Iijima Todos los dios estan una isla This accidental May and more Didn’t fear the right margin Country Inn The reason to which things hover In the next millennium Sun. Nov. 23, 3:00 p.m., $3 Don’t wake your sleeping brother In the earth for the search And Suites After considering which was west They came upon a piece of land The Bowery Poetry Club shoe cloth under It had fragments in its spine 308 Bowery (& 1st St.) It had everything you wanted soap In the tablets on which it was written There’s a space that sings all night little soap Not knowing the lyric was broken New from O Books: iduna by kari edwards 104 pages, ISBN # 1-882022-49-1, $12.00 The sun looking pretty strange O Books: 5729 Clover Dr Oakland CA 94618 Lying down on 101 it floated little You want to or you don’t “If benign linearity marks the last vestige of Cartesian consciousness, Vitruvian space and Spinozan soap Want to change but you’ll change ethics, then iduna signalizes its catalectic adieu. For there is no return after this. kari edwards has written and conceived a bold, complex text that pushes lyricism to the brink of an interstice, between the Dictionary and its scream. Auto-translative, self-contaminatory, iduna never renounces its splendid linguistic excess, fabricating a textural world of legibility and illegibility, gravitation and non-gravitation, that powers its dweller (for one must dwell in iduna) gesturally around and among its morphs and torques. If Deleuze and Guattari are correct when they aver that writing ‘has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come’ then iduna provides a special map to a certain dream of Coleridge’s: the frontiers of a post-cognitive.” — Steve McCaffery
“Paratexts and processing suggestions stream through kari edwards’s iduna... The constant drive to make use of formal possibilities at the level of page and opening brings graphic format into substantive play...A machinic drive echoes in this work as a human, subjective voice struggles to come through the registers of current language events, noise, news, records, communications. The shape of a human outcry presses through the mass of mediated material. Form embodies possibilities enabled by the instructions of forced justification, font shifts, hard returns, tabs, chunked blocks, and other basic elements of text processing...Before we can ask what something means when we read it, we must ask what it means to read — and edwards poses that as a high-stakes question providing the point of departure for current poetic production. — Johanna Drucker
“Having evacuated the endemic patriarchal script, edwards writes hir own rules of the game in the wee hours when the sky turns green and binary logic decamps posthaste. Under the ruins of gender, iduna is a wild garden where ‘sexuality begets language.’ The anarchic profusion of voices, discourses, idiolects, fonts and typographies that seem to rain down upon the page becomes the new ‘formlessness’ which is the political signature of this resistant and absorptive text.” — Chris Tysh
also by kari edwards: a day in the life of p., from: Subpress Collective /ISBN # 1-930068-18-2. $12.00
Distributed by SPD: 510-524-1668. 1341 Seventh St. Berkeley CA 94710 http://www. spdbooks.org/
Paid for by the Committee to Eliminate Gender
NOVEMBER 2003 BOOG CITY 7 NYCPOETRYCALENDAR
SATURDAY 8 SUNDAY 16 WEEKLY EVENTS SPECIAL 1:00pm 2:00pm (BPC) S.O.A.P.P. (CLA) Poets On Sunday (free) LOCATIONS SUNDAY Poetry: Commerce, Commodity, And (WH) Wave Hill (free) 12:00pm EVENTS Commercialization 3:00pm (BPC) Joel Forrester & People Like Us ($5) 2:00pm (BPC) Scottish Reading Series 2:00pm (149) Nomad’s Choir ($5) (SS) Frequency Reading Series (free) SATURDAY 1 Open reading. 4:00pm 3:00pm 2:00pm 4:00pm (OB) Poet to Poet ($3 + $3 min) (BF) Back Fence ($3|$3 min) (BPC) SubPress Party ($5) (BPC) Segue Series Poets’ Plays ($5) Featured poet(s) + open mike. Featured poets + open mike. 4:00pm 6:00pm 5:00pm (TH) (WS) (WH) (TNS) (VDP) (WSU) (ABC) Our Unorganized Reading ($2) (BPC) Segue Series ($5) (BPC) Tribes ($10) (BPC) Bethany Brooks ($6) (Tribes) Open mike. 6:00pm (CSC) The Viking Hillbilly 7:00pm 6:00pm (CSC) Ziryab ($6) Apocalypse Revue ($6) (BPC) Galinsky Perfpo (CSC) Cornelia Street Cafe ($6) 7:00pm Featured upstairs. Graduation
Featured poets. (BPC) Hip-Hop Greets Poetry ($12) (CSC) Italian-American writers ($6) 8:00pm Hall Town 123 West 43rd The New School, Tishman Auditorium 66 West 12th Street 212.254.9628 Tribes 285 East 3rd Street, 2nd Floor http://www.tribes.org 212.674.3778 Della Via Pace East 7th Street Hill Wave 675 West 252nd Street http://www.wavehill.org 718.549.3200 Sabi at Bar Wabi Below 209 Smith Street, Brooklyn 718.694.2277 Square United Washington Methodist Church 135 West 4th Street 212.544.0005 7:00pm 8:00pm Featured downstairs. (BPC) The 4 Bags ($5) (ZB) Zinc Talk ($4) (SMC) Open Reading ($8) 7:30pm 9:00pm Featured poets. 9:00pm (BPC) From Griot to Rapper: (CC) Chaos Club (free) MONDAY (AAWW) Asian American Poetry Bringing Our Poetic Roots Home Open mike. Festival ($10) 4:00pm ($15) MONDAY 17 (BPC) MacGuffin Tech 10:00pm (MM) Girlsalon Literary Night ($7) 6:00pm 8:00pm (CSC) Writer’s Room ($6) (SS)
4:30pm (TB) (TA) (TEI) (SJU) (TFC) (BPC) Totally Open Slam ($3) (TH) ALOUD! ($25/$50/$100/$240) 8:00pm (SMC) 6:30pm (SMC) Paul LaFarge and Frances (BPC) Mud/Bone: I Will Hear (BPC) The MacGuffin Richard ($8) This Divinity ($10) 7:00pm 10:00pm (SMC) Christopher Stackhouse
(B13) Bar 13 ($5,$4 w/student ID) (BPC) Underground Poetiks ($10) and Rebecca Wolff ($8) Council University, John’s Saint Hall 8000 Utopia Parkway Church Saint Mark’s 131 East 10th Street www.poetryproject.com 212.674.0910 [email protected] Bookstore Shortwave Skull Soft 71 Bond Street, Brooklyn http://www.softskull.com 718.643.1599 The Archway Pinehurst Ave 212.923.5461 Bar Telephone 149 Avenue 2nd http://www.telebar.com The Ear Inn 326 Spring St http://home.nyc.rr.com/earin- nreadings 212.246.5074 [email protected] The Fall Cafe 307 Smith Street, Brooklyn 718.832.2310 Slams, readings, + open mike. Open mike slam with $100 prize. (TB) Library Lounge (free) (Night) Saturn Series ($3) 11:59pm TUESDAY 18 Featured poets + open mike. (BPC) The Bowery Poetry Club 6:00pm 8:00pm Presents: Insert Band Name Here! (CUAA) New York Scores (free) (WS) Wabi Sabi (free) (BPC) Saul Williams ($15) ($12)9: Student poetry slam. 11:59pm Open mike/performance with house dj. SUNDAY 9 6:30pm (BPC) Amayo’s Fu-Akrist-Ra ($10) 10:00pm 12:00pm (BPL) Poetry Readings (free) (SC) (NS) (OB) (PCS) (Nest) (OCT) (NPC)
SUNDAY 2 (Night) (BPC) The O'Debra Twins "Show & (BPC) Armature ($3) 9:30pm (NYOC) Tell" ($3) 11:00am 1:00pm (CB) Wordmusic ($7) TUESDAY (BPC) People Like Us ($5) (BPC) Three Translators 9:00pm 5:30pm 1:00pm “Distant Noise” by Jean Fremon (BPC) Hal Sirowitz ($8) (Hal) Wordsmiths (free) The The Nuyorican Poets Cafe 236 East 3rd Street http://www.nuyorican.org 212.505.8183 The New School 66 West 12th Street Open Center New York 83 Spring Street http://www.opencenter.org 212.219.2527 The Orange Bear 47 Murray Street Coffee & Ozzie’s Tea 251 5th Brooklyn Avenue, 718.840.0878 Candy Store Pete’s 709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg www.petescandystore.com 718.302.3770 Striver’s Cafe and Lounge Frederick Douglas 2611 Boulevard (BPC) Roundtable Reading 3:00pm 9:15pm Nest 70 Washington Street Nightingale 213 Second Avenue 8:00pm 2:00pm (BPC) Sifting Through Embers ($5) (BPC) Karaoke + Poetry = Fun (MC) Muddy Cup (BPC) Poetry on the Bowery ($8) 4:00pm ($6) Featured poet + open mike. 4:00pm (BPC) Writing New York Stories ($5) WEDNESDAY 19 (BPC) Barretta Books (Free) 8:30pm (WSU) Kairos Cafe ($3) No Events Listed. (BU) Buttafly (OB) Poet to Poet ($3 + $3 min) 6:00pm THURSDAY 20 Featured poets + open mike. (BPC) Words, Reeds, Dance ($5) Open mike/performance. 7:30pm 9:00pm 6:00pm (TFC) Spiral Thought (free) (Hal) Wordsmiths (free) (LT) (LB) (JW) (KK) (ML) (Hal) (MC) (ML) M Lounge (free) (BPC) Book Party 8:00pm (MM) Harriet Sohmers Zwerling’s Notes of 10:00pm (LESTM) Open mike. (BPC) The 4 Bags ($5) (BPC) Krunkadumpolis & a Nude Model WEDNESDAY 10:00pm Game ($7) 8:00pm (BPC) Comstock Presents 7:30pm FRIDAY 21 (BPC) All Soul's Party MONDAY 10 (CCG) “Wanted: Poets” Java and Wood Brooklyn Manhattan Avenu, 110 718-609-1820 Halcyon 227 Smith Street, Brooklyn http://www.halcyonline.com 718.260.WAXY Kafe Kay’s 1345-4B Southern Blvd, Bronx 718.378.3434 Labyrinth Books 536 Street West 112th 212.865.1588 The Lower East Side Tenement Museum 97 Orchard Street Lovinger Theatre Lehman College The Muddy Cup Island Staten Street, Duzer Van 388 718.818.8100 [email protected] M Lounge 291 Hooper Street, Brooklyn Meow Mix 269 East Houston Street (SMC) Kenneth King ($12) 7:00pm Open mike. 7:00pm (BPC) Jason Nuzzo “Dead 9:30pm (PCS) Wax Poetic (free) 8:00pm (BPC) First Sundays ($5) Meat” (JW) Java and Wood (free) 8:00pm 7:30pm Open reading. JohnnyO & De La Guarda (11) Reading Between A&B (free) MONDAY 3 (LESTM) Noche Multicultural (CU) Rev. Jen’s Anti-Slam ($3) (BPC) PlayGrounD: Agamemnon (free) 7:30pm by Stephen Berkoff Open mike. 8:00pm (SMC) The Poetry Project ($8) (JO) Johnny O’s (SMC) Fanny Howe and John (ER) (GP) (CU) (FW)
(KGB) Featured Poets (free) (GM) (CSC) (CLA) Featured readers. Not available Nov. 26th. Wilkinson ($8) (Ford) Open mike. (CUAA) 8:30pm TUESDAY 11 (NPC) Nuyorican Slam Open ($5) 7:45pm (SMC) The Poetry Project ($8) 7:00pm Open slam with third week for Hip Hop. (BPC) Shaba Sher ($6) Open mike. Persian Poetry
THURSDAY Central Library Auditorium Merrick Blvd 89-11 The Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street Collective Unconscious 145 Ludlow Street http://www.revjen.com Columbia University Alumni Auditorium 650 West 168th Street http://www.newyorkscores.org 212-563-3250 Elysee Restaurant 199 Prince Street http://www.metaphorical.biz Fort Wadsworth End of Bay Street near School Street Fordham University at Lincoln Center West 60th 113 Street, 12th Floor 212.371.5281 Guggenheim Museum 5th 89th Ave Street Green Pavilion 4307 18th Brooklyn Avenue, 718-435-4722 8:00pm 7:00pm (BPC) Bethany Brooks ($5) 10:00pm (BPC) Los Vinos ($5) (BCC) Brown Chocolate Cafe ($7) (CL) Largo Reading Series (free) Open mike. (SMC) City Lights ($8) WEDNESDAY 12 7:30pm 50th Anniversary Celebration 7:00pm (BPC) NYC-Urbana Poetry Slam ($5) (TB) Library Lounge (free) (BPC) Experiments and Disorders (BPC) Ned Sublette ($10) Long-running championship slam. TUESDAY 4 8:00pm (CDS) The Buffalo Readings (free) Calliope’s Corner (WRHU 88.7FM) (BPC) Starpeople Featured readers + open mic.
6:00pm (CI) (CB) (CC) (CK) (CH) (CDS) Can also be heard online at WRHU.org. THURSDAY 13 SATURDAY 22 (BWB) (Church) 8:00pm 11:00am 2:00pm (TA) Archway (free) (BPC) ExploText (BPC) Wesley Clark Presidential Open reading. 5:00pm 7:00pm (KK) Kay’s Cafe ($5) (BPC) Open Mic All Stars ($10)
(BPC) Jason Nuzzo “Dead Meat” Bluestockings Women’s & Bookstore Cafe Allen 172 Street 212.777.6028 Gallery CB’s 313 Bowery @ Bleecker Chaos Club Queens Boulevard, Springfield 90-21 718.479.2594 Casa Del Sol 672-674 East 136th St, Bronx www.casadelsol.org 718.742.2522 The Center for the Humanities 365 Fifth Avenue 212.817.2006 Undercroft of the First Unitarian Church 50 Monroe Place, Brooklyn Cafe Iimani 148 Stuyvesant Brooklyn Avenue, http://www.cafeiimani.com 718.574.6565 Citykids 57 Leonard Street http://www.citykids.com 212.925.3320 (VDP) Live Thursdays 7:00pm 9:00pm Open mike/performance with Kerry Brown (BOB) Acentos ($5) (BPC) Death of the Party jazz trio. 7:30pm 10:30pm FRIDAY (Hal) Wordsmiths (free) (BPC) Raquy Danziger & The 6:00pm 8:00pm Birthday! ($10) (CSC) Pink Pony West ($6) (CSC) Songwriters Workshop ($6) (BR) BBR Reading Series ($4) SUNDAY 23 Featured poet + open mike. 7:00pm 10:00pm 3:00pm (BF) (BR) (BU) (BN) (BPL) (BPC) (Blue) (BOB) 6:30pm (BPC) Blue ($5) (BPC) Marc Ribot Trio ($10) (BPC) Four Brendas (BCC) (BPC) The Taylor Mead Show ($5) (TOA) A Taste of Art (free) FRIDAY 14 5:00pm 7:30pm 8:00pm 7:30pm (BPC) Resonant Voices (OCT) Ozzie’s Poetry Night (free) (BPC) Q2: Audre Lorde Praise (BPC) NYU MFA Reading Series ($5) 8:00pm Open readings. SATURDAY 15 (BPC) Balaklava Brown Chocolate Cafe 1084 Fulton Street Back Fence 155 Bleecker Street Day ($5) Bluestockings Bookstore 172 Allen Street Barnes & Noble Union Square 212.252.0810 Blue Ox Bar East 139th Street & 3rd Avenue The Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery http://www.bowerypoetry.com 212.614.0505 Brooklyn Heights Public Library 280 Cadman Plaza West 718.623.7100 Bar Reis Brooklyn 375 Avenue, Fifth 718.832.5716 Buttafly 769 Brooklyn Ave, Washington http://www.butta-fly.com 718.636.1900 10:00pm 10:00pm 2:00pm MONDAY 24 (BPC) The African Party ($10) (BPC) PHAG! ($5) (BPC) Gypsies ($5) 7:00pm (NPC) Nuyorican Poets Cafe ($5) WEDNESDAY 5 6:00pm (PCS) Wax Poetic (free) Spotlight poet + slam. 5:00pm (BPC) All Out Poetry Jam ($5) 8:00pm 12:00am (BPC) The Bus (CSC) Greek-American Writers ($6) (11) Reading Between A&B (free) (NPC) Nuyorican Poets Cafe ($5) Part 1 7:00pm TUESDAY 25 Open mike. 6:30pm 5:00pm (11) (22) (BB) (Art) (149) SATURDAY (B13) (ABC) (NS) Poetry Forum ($5) (BPC) John Kearns Play (Free) (ACA) (AAWW) 12:00pm 7:00pm 7:00pm (BPC) Respect the Mic ($5) (BPC) Soft Skull Sneak A Peek ($5) (BOB) Acentos ($5) (BPC) Great Companions: A Workshop 8:00pm (BWB) Women’s Poetry Jam ($5) in Poetical Derivation (Night) Artists Lounge ($3 + $1 min) Featured poets + open mike. $250 for 10 classes series 11th Street Bar 510 East 11th 149-155 Christopher St. 718.932.8007 [email protected] 22 Below Cabaret 155 East 22nd Street 212.228.0750 The Asian American Writers’ Workshop 16 West 32nd Street, 10A http://www.aaww.org ABC NO RIO 156 Rivington Street 212.674.3585 ACA Galleries 529 West 20th Street, 5th flr. of Art A Taste 147 Duane Street 212.964.5493 13 Bar/Lounge 35 East 13th Street Brownstone Books 409 Lewis Brooklyn Avenue, 718.953.7328 9:00pm 8:00pm 3:00pm (BPC) Karaoke + Poetry = Fun $6 (BPC) The Em and Lo Show ($5) (TEI) The Ear Inn (free) 11:00pm WEDNESDAY 26 Three Featured Poets. (BPC) The Bus SPREAD 7:00pm 4:00pm Part 2 (BPC) Ladies on the Mic ($7) (BPC) Segue Series ($5) THURSDAY 6 (BB)Tehuti’s Spoken Word Café ($5) (GP) Green Pavilion ($3 + $5 min) THEInterested in your WORD event being listed on 7:30pm 7:30pm the NYC Poetry Calendar? Send your (CI) Open Mic/Slam Competition ($5) 6:00pm 10:00pm (ACA) D.A. Levy Lives (free) (AAWW) (re)collection ($5) (BPC) Paradigm’s Hiphop request to [email protected], including Featured readers + open mike. the name of event/series, name of venue, Featured readers. Revue ($10) date, time, price, and address. 6:30pm 8:00pm THURSDAY 27 (BPC) Tim Wells Welcome Party (SMC) Paolo Javier and Rebecca Reilly ($8) 7:00pm 7:00pm (BWB) Women’s Poetry Jam ($2) (LB) The Poets Grimm (free) 8:30pm Featured poet + open mike. (BN) Seaman Poetry Award (free) (22) A Century of Life and Love ($10) FRIDAY 28 10:00pm 9:00pm (BPC) Celena Glenn ($10) 7:00pm (BPC) Drunken Poetry Slam (free) (BPC) Graffiti Magazine ($10) FRIDAY 7 CD Release Party SUPPORT 11:59pm SATURDAY 29 5:00pm (BPC) Daniel Bernard Roumain 1:00pm (BPC) The Return of the Viking THEPOETRY & Band ($8) (BPC) Urban Word Youth Slam ($5) Hillbilly (free) 10:00pm 6:30pm (BPC) Sixth Sense Presents CALENDARThe NYC Poetry Calendar needs your (BPC) Tunnels ($8) help to survive! Donations are accepted, SUNDAY 30 appreciated, and encouraged. Help 7:00pm 6:00pm keep New York City aware of the (BPC) Latino America en el local poetry events that happen every Bowery ($5) day in your hometown. 8:00pm (BPC) Jeremiah Lockwood If you wish to help sponsor a future edition of the NYC Poetry Calendar, (Blue) Belladonna you can call 212.842.2664 or email 8 BOOG CITY OCTOBER 2003 [email protected].