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THE POETRY PROJECT October / November 2017 Issue #252 The Poetry Project Oct. / Nov. 2017 Issue #252 Director: Stacy Szymaszek Archivist: Will Edmiston Managing Director: Nicole Wallace Archival Assistant: Marlan Sigelman Program Director: Simone White Bookkeeper: Carlos Estrada Communications & Membership Coordinator: Laura Henriksen Workshop/Master Class Leader/Reading Group Leader (Fall Newsletter Editor: Marwa Helal 2017): Yoshiko Chuma, Farnoosh Fathi, Laura Henriksen, Tracie Reviews Editor: John Rufo Morris, Stacy Szymaszek Monday Night Readings Coordinator: Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves Box Office Staff: Cori Hutchinson, Anna Kreienberg, Phoebe Wednesday Night Readings Coordinator: Simone White Lifton Friday Night Readings Coordinators: Mirene Arsanios and Interns: Shelby Cook, Yaz Lancaster, Hannah Maclagger Rachel Valinsky Volunteers James Barickman, Mel Elberg, Micaela Foley, Hadley Gitto, Dave Morse, Batya Rosenblum, Viktorsha Uliyanova, and Shanxing Wang. Board of Directors Camille Rankine (Chair), Katy Lederer (Vice-Chair), Carol Overby (Treasurer), Adam Fitzgerald, Boo Froebel, Erica Hunt, Jonathan Morrill, Laura Nicoll, Purvi Shah, Jo Ann Wasserman, and David Wilk. Friends Committee Brooke Alexander, Dianne Benson, Will Creeley, Raymond Foye, Michael Friedman, Ted Greenwald, Steve Hamilton, Viki Hudspith, Siri Hustvedt, Yvonne Jacquette, Gillian McCain, Eileen Myles, Patricia Spears Jones, Michel de Konkoly Thege, Greg Masters, Ron Funders The Poetry Project is very grateful for the continued support of our funders: Axe-Houghton Foundation; Committee on Poetry; The Destina Foundation: Dr. Gerald J. & Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation, Inc.; Jerome Foundation; Leaves of Grass Fund; Leslie Scalapino – O Books Fund; The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation; LitTAP; Poets & Writers, Inc.; Poets for the Planet Fund; Anonymous Donors; Brooke Alexander; Harold & Angela Appel; Moe Armstrong; Russell Banks; Martin Beeler; Bill Berkson & Constance Lewallen; David Berrigan & Sarah Locke; Mei Mei Berssenbrugge & Richard Tuttle; Rosemary Carroll; Cassie Carter; Steve Clay; Todd Colby; Peggy DeCoursey; Don DeLillo & Barbara Bennet; Rackstraw Downes; Ruth Eisenberg; Stephen Facey; Raymond Foye; Devon Fredericks; Mimi Gross; John S. Hall; Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Kristine Hsu; Ada & Alex Katz; Mushka Kochan; Susan Landers & Natasha Dwyer, Katy Lederer; Glenn Ligon; Gillian McCain & Jim Marshall; Jonathan Morrill & Jennifer Firestone; Tracie Morris; Eileen Myles; Elinor Nauen & Johnny Stanton; Eugene O’Brien; Ron & Pat Padgett; Lucas Reiner & Maude Winchester; John Sampas; Luc Sante; Simon Schuchat; Kiki Smith; Susie Timmons; Jo Ann Wasserman; Sylvie & June Weiser Berrigan; Marjorie Welish and David Wilk. The Estate of Kenneth Koch; members of The Poetry Project; and other individual contributors. The Poetry Project’s programs and publications are made possible, in part, with public funds from The National Endowment for the Arts. The Poetry Project’s programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Poetry Project’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Contents Letter from the Director 4 Announcements 5 In Memoriam: Larry Fagin, Joanne Kyger, and Tom Raworth 6 Workshops 8 Q&A: Farnoosh Fathi 10 Poetry: Anne Boyer 12 GRIEVANCES: Roberto Montes 14 Art: Kameelah Janan Rasheed 15 Calendar 18 Prose: Anne Boyer 21 Reviews 23 Q&A: Miller Oberman 30 Poetry: Miller Olberman 31 Cover image: excerpt “Questions” (2017) Are We There Yet? (and other questions of proximity, destination, and relative comfort); [also presented at Venice Biennale and Floating Museum in Chicago] Image courtesy of the artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed. 2017 3 Letter from the Director Welcome to The Poetry Project’s 51st season. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves as much as we did on our much needed summer hiatus. Our 50th Anniversary celebration was a whirlwind that culminated with a gala honoring Anne Waldman on April 27. An unprecedented undertaking for us, we went forward with a more tried and true attitude of bravado mixed with “fake it till you make it” guesswork. Now that 4 months have passed, I’m hoping that everyone has heard something about how amazing that night was: from the tiered cake inspired by Joe Brainard’s cover design for Anne’s first book Giant Night (many thanks to Nine Cakes), to the transformation of the Parish Hall into a magical woodland with branches from designer Amy Elise Wilson, to the moving performances by Laurie Anderson, Yoshiko Chuma, and LaTasha Diggs, to the fact that we poets did glamour and did it well. It surpassed the dreams of our wild nights, raising just over $100,000 toward our 50th Anniversary Campaign goal of $350,000. To date we have raised $285,000 toward our goal. We have given Anne Waldman ourselves till the end of 2017 to raise the remaining $65,000. If you would like to contribute to the success of Photo by: Ted Roeder the campaign and celebrate our half-century of devotion to poetry as a way of life, supporting poets, inclusivity, curiosity, and community, visit poetryproject.org to make a donation as well as to read more about our visions for the future. Thank you to everyone who showed up last year in various and meaningful ways. –Stacy Szymaszek Letter from the Editor What an honor it is to serve as editor Fathi and Miller Oberman speak to bodies of this newsletter and to give back this in their feature interviews. As does until one becomes home. to this home for poetry in this way. I Roberto Montes’s “Grievances” and am happy to be joined by Reviews Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s art -- mark Moments sweep past. The grass Editor John Rufo, whose work I your calendars for her reading and bends came to know through his blog at many others on p.18. then learns again to stand. Ploughshares. Flip to pg. 23 to learn more about him and read the book See you around! I leave you with a reviews he’s curated. I want to thank poem from our Laureate Tracy K. from Life on Mars, Graywolf Press Stacy Szymaszek for entrusting me Smith: with this role and for her patience and guidance as I put this first issue We are here for what amounts to Best wishes for this new season. together; former editor Ted Dodson a few hours, for recommending me for this role; a day at most. –Marwa Helal and Betsy Fagin for leaving behind a beautiful template to follow. We feel around making sense of the terrain, It’s a wonderful and complicated time our own new limbs, to be a poet; to be human and both of my interview subjects, Farnoosh Bumping up against a herd of EDITORS EMERITI: Ron Padgett 1972–1973 / Bill MacKay 1973–1975 / Ted Greenwald 1975–1977 / Frances LeFevre 1977–1978 / Vicki Hudspith 1978–1980 / Greg Masters 1980–1983 / Lorna Smedman 1983–1984 / Tim Dlugos 1984–1985 / James Ruggia 1985–1986 / Jessica Hagedorn 1986–1987 / Tony Towle 1987–1990 / Jerome Sala 1990–1991 / Lynn Crawford 1991–1992 / Jordan Davis 1992–1994 / Gillian McCain 1994–1995 / Mitch Highfill 1995–1996 / Lisa Jarnot 1996–1998 / Brenda Coultas & Eleni Sikelianos 1998–1999 / Katherine Lederer 1999–2000 / Ange Mlinko 2000–2002 / Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan 2002–2003 / Marcella Durand 2003–2005 / Brendan Lorber 2005–2007 / John Coletti 2007–2009 / Corina Copp 2009-2011 / Paul Foster Johnson 2011-2013 / Ted Dodson 2013–2015 / Betsy Fagin 2015–2017 4 fall Announcements 2017-18 Poetry Project staff:(left to right) Laura Henriksen, Stacy Szymaszek, Nicole Wallace, and Simone White NEW READING SERIES COORDINATORS MEMORY AT CANADA The Project is very pleased to welcome Adjua Greaves Bernadette Mayer’s multimedia work Memory will be on as our new Monday Night Reading Series coordinator, view at Canada gallery from September 9 through October and Mirene Arsanios and Rachel Valinsky as new Friday 8. For more information visit https://canadanewyork.com Night Reading Series coordinators. Much gratitude to the outgoing coordinators Judah Rubin and Ariel Goldberg for their amazing years of programming work. Program Director Simone White will still be coordinating the Wednesday Night Reading Series. Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves has been published in The Black Earth Institute’s About Place Journal, The Recluse, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. She is young mother of The Florxal Review and is completing work on The Bulletin of Wilderness and Academy: an introductory conclusion to unschoolMFA forthcoming from Organic Electric Industries. Mirene Arsanios is the author of the short story collection, The City Outside the Sentence (Ashkal Alwan, 2015). She has contributed essays and short stories to The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The Animated Reader, and FALL 2017 INTERNS The Outpost, among others. Arsanios co-founded the collective 98weeks Research Project in Beirut and is the We’re so thrilled to announce our terrific Fall 2017 interns founding editor of Makhzin, a bilingual English/Arabic — Welcome Yaz Lancaster (New York University) and magazine for innovative writing. welcome back Shelby Cook and Hannah MacLagger (The New School)!! Rachel Valinsky is a writer, researcher, and translator living in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Art in America, BOMB, East of Borneo, Millennium Film Journal, C Magazine, and Art21, among others. Rachel is a co- founder of Wendy’s Subway, a nonprofit library and writing space in Brooklyn and a contributing editor at Éditions Lutanie, Paris. 2017 5 In Memoriam Larry Fagin 1937-2017 He wrote or co-authored at least lokapala of Bolinas, what better by Alan Bernheimer fifteen books of poetry. But even guardian of tribal doings. She was more energy went into publishing poet of oikos, of place, of ecology of Larry would have hated this. He had the work of others that he was locus, of history near and distant, and no patience for memorializing or crazy about, starting with a dozen of hearth and home which began with similar sentiment.