James Tate from “Read the Great Poets” Viper Jazz, 1976
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ROCK TRACKS TATE • SHIRT AS WEAPON • LUMUMBA LIVES• KIDS POEMS AS •SHIRT ROCK TRACKS TATE BOOG CITY A COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER FROM A GROUP OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS BASED IN AND AROUND NEW YORK CITY’S EAST VILLAGE ISSUE 7 MAY 6, 2002 FREE B It’s aby elladonna* at anunsungseries at sings Anne Waldman 308 Bowery (btwn Bleecker and Houston) Langston and his own poetry. “Langston Hughes has been www.bowerypoetry.com reincarnated and lives in Spanish Harlem. His name is tel: (212)614-0500 Willie Perdomo. Where a Nickel Costs a Dime is a price- less, precious package of poetry.”-Claude Brown, author of across the street from CBGB’s | F train 2nd Ave | 6 to Manchild in the Promised Land. Then our nighttime pro- Bleecker | 212-614-0505 gram brings on: A whole lotta brilliant squirm and genius Our Schedule: Everything Subject To Change! poetoids! One $7 ticket gets you: (Watch for Grand Opening of Coffee Shop, “Best Coffee on 8PM John S Hall: Spoken Word God the Block”) 9PM Bradford Reed & the Amazing Pencilina 10PM KING MiSSiLE III! Tuesday, April 23 BOOG CITY 7 PUBLICATION POET PARTY BANDS 7PM $6 Monday, April 29 Bob Hershon will read his sardonia melodia Brooklyn 7PM to midnite! $5 THE LITERARY KICKS “SOME- pigeon cucurucurus! Ed Berrigan survives another year! THING FOR PEACE” SPRING POETRY HAPPENING 9PM $7 THE MIKE, MUMS & BEAU SHOW: Are you Todd Colby. White Collar Crime. (I think that sounds good, ready? Mike Ladd, Mums da Schemer, Beau Sia bring what do you guys think?) acclaimed WOMEN OF WORD Hiphop Vaudeville to the Exxtremes’ Exxxtreme! Miss this series. Supreme Poets is reigned by the sassy Ebony Grand Opening at your peril. Washington and will feature some of the nation’s best poets and spoken word artists. Ebony is a spoken word artist Wednesday, April 24 who turns social commentary into art. She performs regu- 7PM: Jane DeLynn’s Leash – book party. Wear dog costume! larly with Women of Word and at the Sugar Shack, Jimmy’s 10PM, $5: Janet Hamill & Moving Star are in residence Uptown Cafe, Justin’s and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Also, every Wednesday in April. Now that’s what I call National she has performed in the film Harlem Vibe and in the off- Poetry Month! LAST CHANCE TILL JUNE!!! Broadway plays Louise (Escape Her Life) and Sex is More Than a Three Letter Word. Thursday, April 25 7PM, $5 URBANA SLAM! with Ragan Fox Wednesday, May 1 10PM, $5 Laurel “Daddy” Barclay Untied 8:30 $10 Supreme Poets Ebony Washington with Karen Jaime, Celena Cipriaso, Helena D. Lewis Saturday, April 27 PoBands (u can talk if u want to) Battle of the PoBands!! 5 Bucks all Night Thursday, May 2 8PM Ken Cormier Can’t Shut Up Poetry$5 7PM, $5 URBANA SLAM! with Patricia Smith 9PM Alan D Gilbert & Jason — Ambient Poetry 10PM, $5 Laurel “Daddy” Barclay Unhinged 10PM Ray Gang Ambient Souk 11PM Ken Cormier Got Yr Back Poetry Friday, May 3 6PM Coffee House Books Party for Gilbert Sorrentino’s Sunday, April 28 Langston Hughes! John S Hall! Little Casino. Mr Sorrentino will read and be signing 4PM: $7 “Visiting Langston: an afternoon with Mr. copies, we’re proud to say! Hughes via David Mills and Willie Perdomo.” David Mills, 8PM CALVIN HERNTON Praise Day our preeminent portraitist of the poetry of Hughes will commemorate the centennial of Hughes’ birth in a staged Saturday, May 4 reading of poems by the “Shakespeare of Harlem” — the 9PM Waiting for Banjo: Everton Sylvester, top US Dub favorites and unknowns. Followed by a reading by Willie poet, leads this brilliant jazz trio. “The best poetry band Perdomo, reading his new children’s book, Visiting this side of Heaven.” 2 BOOG CITY MAY 6, 2002 “In April of 1953 in New York [Franz Kline] took me to meet DeKooning, and having just shaken hands and Franz mentioning I was visiting on spring break from Black Mountain ... inside BOOG CITY Editorial 4 Film STEPHEN DIGNAN 17 The Myth of Fingerprints Lumumba’s vision of a united Africa comes to Harlem Feature: Comics The Poetry Issue Trane DeVore 19 GREG FUCHS 5 Thieves of Paradise How Yusef Kumunyakaa can save National Poetry Month Music 6 JAMES WILK A Punk in the Academy What’s in the water at UMass @ Amherst where Indie rockers like The Pernice Brothers and Silver Jews frontman David Berman (r.) have studied with poetry professor James Tate? Poetry 8 Advertiser Index Bowery Poetry Club 2 Belladonna* Belladonna* 19 •Anne Waldman (r.) and Rachel Levitsky Ladyfest East 20 discuss poetry and activism Unbearables Arts Festival 20 •Belladonna*, NYC’s top reading series? •Bluestockings: Buy books here Boogside 10 Anne Waldman “[Things] Seen Unseen” C a n o n Poetry from NYC Public School Students 12 A E - 1 2 New poems from: Bob Hershon, 14 8 m m Rebecca McDonald, and Edmund Berrigan f 6 @ 1 / Printed Matter 15 6 0 Frank Sherlock on Brandon Downing’s (top) Shirt Weapon INSIDE NEXT ISSUE The Food Issue •Nancy Seewald premiers her restaurant review column •Maureen Owen and Telephone Books •Africa Wayne’s Bar Reis reading series in Park Slope •Joe Sacco, Serbian politico cartoonist On Location with Brian Ach ... DeKooning said he had been there in 1948 and of a sudden we were talking about the school, and DeKooning talking about Olson.” —Fielding Dawson from The Black Mountain Book MAY 6, 2002 BOOG CITY 3 don’t see too often but when you do it’s like you’ve been there all along. She had run a reading series at the collec- BOOG CITY tively run Left Hand Bookstore in Boulder, and now she had decided to curate one in New York City. EDIT The collectively run Bluestockings women’s bookstore Issue seven, May 6, 2002 free was opening on Allen Street in the Lower East Side at about the same time. Bluestockings is perhaps the warmest editor/publisher bookstore I’ve ever been in, a shop I feel great about giv- David A. Kirschenbaum ing my money to for zines, a cookie, or a brand new book. It was a natural that Rachel’s new reading series would [email protected] Bellarachel* take place at Bluestockings, and so, in August of 1999, Marcella Durand and Akilah Oliver kicked off the copy chief met Rachel Levitsky outside the tent at the then Naropa Belladonna* series in grand style. Rachel launched Edmund Berrigan Institute, now University, in the summer of 1998. Belladonna* Books, gathering work from each of the writ- INaropa was honoring City Lights’ Lawrence ers who were appearing at the monthly series, and I [email protected] Ferlinghetti, whose first title on his press, Pictures of the helped her put out monthly pamphlets to celebrate the Gone World, Rod Sperry, Boog’s cofounder, and I kept new work. (Design geek note—Here I riffed off the design cover photo next to the first Boog Literature book in 1991 as we of Black Sparrow’s classic Sparrow pamphlets of the Greg Fuchs learned how to make books. We glanced first at 1970s once again—the first time being with a Brenda Ferlinghetti’s cover, then the title and copyright pages, and Coultas pamphlet at the Kinko’s on the Hill in Boulder in comics editor then on to the guts of the book, all the while keeping his the summer of 1993—putting an old Bobbie Louise book open alongside ours to see how we measured up to Hawkins pamphlet next to Mary Burger and Camille Roy’s Gary Sullivan the master. I didn’t know how much longer Ferlinghetti was pamphlets, the first Belladonna* Books, using the side-by- [email protected] going to be around back then, and, thankfully, he still is. side method again.) So I go out to pay homage to a man who’s meant a Bill Mazza, another member of the Rachel Levitsky fan finding the word/quotations editor great deal to my life and art, and outside the tent, this big club, has taken over my design duties and done a bang-up white revival meeting tent that Naropa used to rent each job. The pamphlets are looking better than ever, and, most C.A. Conrad year during their one-month intensive summer writing pro- importantly, Rachel is continuing to publish and promote [email protected] gram, I saw this woman who I could’ve sworn I knew. work by some of the best women writing today. So I walked up to Rachel Levitsky and it wound up we I’m really looking forward to this week’s Belladonna*, lexicons editor didn’t know each other at all, but in the journey to discov- to hearing another mentor, Anne Waldman; kari edwards, Kristin Prevallet er that lack of knowledge we went through our recent his- whose postcards were the first Belladonna publications tories and found out that we had been in Albany studying almost two years ago; and to having Rachel introduce me [email protected] and in New York City, too, and common friends and names to yet another writer, Bhanu Kapil Rider, whose work I were exchanged, places discussed. It was this surreal trip don’t yet know and that I’ll be clamoring for upon the music editor down a shared memory lane with someone you didn’t readings conclusion. James Wilk know you were sharing it with but whom now, thankfully, the fates had caused you to meet. Correction: Stacee Sledge wrote “Working [email protected] Rachel was headed back to Brooklyn after that summer Through the Mysteries of Life” in issue six of ended and we swapped information.