Monday, May 26, 2008

Segue 5/31: Matthew Rotando and Simone White

The Segue Reading Series Presents:

Matthew Rotando and Simone White


Saturday, May 31, 2008 ** 4PM SHARP**
at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, just north of Houston)
$6 admission goes to support the readers

hosted by erica kaufman & Tim Peterson

Matthew Rotando’s first book of poems, The Comeback’s Exoskeleton, (with a foreward by Tim Peterson) is available from Upset Press. He is a member of POG, a collective of artists and poets in Tucson, Arizona. Rotando received his MFA from Brooklyn College and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona.
“Story of Learning”
After I learned the language, I learned it well. Then went down to the lake. I said, “Hey, Pond, you got rabbit-congress, how about witch go seventeen something something?” Pond said, “Man, the language is not like that. You better learn.” So I learned. I learned and learned. Then said to Old Man Killer Whale, “Nice for this mine, your thermos mine, your brown interval mine, your Viggo Mortenson.” Killer Wheel said, “Not far enough yet, son. But if you study, your own reward will be that you studied.” Shivering and shaking, I studied and learned. I learned hand and by hand and hand stealing and victim-focused learning. Then I met Wall Of Dogs. Wall said, “You look like another dog for me.” I said, “Yes, cylinder and me talking—like night fighting—and yes or same project makes blame, the astrolabe, wicca, not chancy chancy, all these marriages end in more desire.” Wall Of Dogs spoke, and said, “Only that last bit showed some learning.” So I made the Walking Wall my right side master, learned something else on my left and in my front I wished for a gymnastics container. I said, “I’ve learned. This old language in mine, and easy now. I have it for naming and knowing and learning.” Then Hey Pond, Old Killer Whale Man, and Dog Wall said, “Ho! Ho! Pond Consonant Boy, look at you, handclapping for bottles and vowels and cans!”

Simone White, a Cave Canem fellow, is the author of a collaborative chapbook in conversation with the paintings of Kim Thomas (forthcoming from Q Avenue Press). Currently a doctoral student in English at CUNY Graduate Center, she lives in Brooklyn.

“Poem That Reminds Me of Barack Obama”

Ice house, not original with me, marooned on an ice plateau,
phantom. Were I captured, rendered elsewhere pictorially,
some other grey flake of building would be like
an erotics of long-headed men,
which are, like suburbs, not independently epic.
Cavalcade of the long-headed man,
turf one so wants to lie down on,
like a basketball star is an aggregate of longings to fly or be multiple, raceless selves,
like angels, like abstraction itself,
nonetheless like the awesome black cock we always imagined and coveted,
like, “The tricks I could do with a new eye pencil!”,
like, “A husband like hers erases neutrality.”
And what about grasses, blades of grass?
Like a fact no one has use for, these have no manner
unlike difficulty, like things I won’t talk about.
Like a scratched off part of my face.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Jeremy James Thompson reviews the Javier & Delany reading.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Segue 5/17: Samuel R. Delany & Paolo Javier

The Segue Reading Series presents:

SAMUEL R. DELANY & PAOLO JAVIER
Saturday, May 17, 4PM-6PM
308 Bowery, just north of Houston

$6 admission goes to support the readers
Hosted by Tim Peterson (curated by erica kaufman & Tim Peterson)

SAMUEL R. DELANY is a novelist and critic who lives in New York City and teaches English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is a winner of four Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, and the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a Lifetime's Contribution to Lesian and Gay writing. His novels include Nova, Dhalgren, Trouble on Triton, Hogg, The Mad Man, Phallos, and most recently Dark Reflections. His short fiction has been collected in books such as Aye and Gomorrah and Other Stories and Atlantis: Three Tales. His nonfiction has been collected in volumes such as Silent Interviews, Longer Views, Shorter Views, and About Writing, and he is the author of a best-selling study, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

PAOLO JAVIER is a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer-in-Residence. He is the author of LMFAO (OMG! Press, forthcoming), Goldfish Kisses (Sona Books), 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award. He edits the online journal 2nd Ave Poetry, and lives in New York.

The Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The Segue Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, please visit www.seguefoundation.com, bowerypoetry.com/midsection.htm, or call (212) 614-0505.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Segue 5/10: Renee Gladman & Rachel Levitsky

The Segue Reading Series presents

Renee Gladman & Rachel Levitsky
Saturday, May 10, 2008
4PM (sharp!)
at the Bowery Poetry Club
(308 Bowery, just north of Houston)
$6 admission goes to support the readers
hosted by Erica Kaufman & Tim Peterson

Renee Gladman is the author of Arlem, Not Right Now, Juice, The Activist, A Picture Feeling, and of a work in-press, Newcomer Can't Swim. Since 2004, she has been the editor and publisher of Leon Works, a perfect bound series of books for experimental prose. She was previously the editor of the Leroy chapbook series, publishing innovative poetry and prose by emerging writers.

from A Picture-Feeling

pre rust the iron
twists were dull
and new just
about to pull apart
just as I was flooded
with picture-feeling
--attached to ideas—
except this one
which was nameless (V
pinned beneath
unbearable weight)
or was
the moment before
the real thing and
V underneath—
the verb not
the subject

Rachel Levitsky's first full length volume, Under the Sun was published by Futurepoem books in 2003. She is the author of five chapbooks of poetry and is currently writing a prose novella. She is the founder and co-director of Belladonna*, an event and publication series of feminist avant-garde poetics.

from The Story of My Accident is Ours

"From Almost Any Angle"

We'd woken to the world like characters you'd see in a science fiction movie, the ones without parents, cloned for the purpose of replacing the organs of the rich, or jailed indefinitely or repeatedly for our child-bearing abilities. We had the appearance of arriving whole, the sets of our features predetermined and complete.

We were defined by limitation. We'd been kept away from history by serial clearances: the slums, the streets, the poor, then the rich, then the home, then the street, then the neighborhood, then the mall, and then the mall. The mall.

We recognized each other by the vacant look in our eyes and the sophistication of our speech, when we had the energy to speak. We were not quite like the creatures in Zombie movies that were popular again in our time, we didn't join in the common cause of destroying another or making them more like us, for we didn't have killer instincts, nor did we think that what we were should necessarily be multiplied, though we were confused about the ways we did have, what they were and how they'd come to be. What we knew better than what we were was what we were strange to. We were strange to the ways of smiles possessed by the ones on television1 and outside in front of the church. Or of the two passing each other while one is on the sidewalk and another is driving to deliver a package from a truck. We did not mean to be unfriendly nor dour though I can now see we most certainly appeared so/were so. We ourselves didn't know how else to be; we were mostly all one way.

Friday, May 02, 2008

SEGUE 5/3: Miles Champion and Ted Greenwald

The Segue Reading Series Presents:

Miles Champion and Ted Greenwald

Saturday, May 3, 2008 ** 4PM SHARP**
at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, just north of Houston)
$6 admission goes to support the readers

hosted by erica kaufman & Tim Peterson

Miles Champion's recent or forthcoming books are Eventually and How to Laugh. His recent collaborations with artists include one on paper with Trevor Winkfield and one in latex with Jane South. He moved to New York—the bulk of the traffic was heading the other way—from London in 2002.

"Wet Flatware"

Two docks, up at the scent door.
Rigid mirrors check my building
tears & service
Eye like a silent film cleaning
out the reference
desk, a focus is expecting dust
the top took to kiss
assume neutral article
it came loose You make
the sounds: ah, ee, oo
No mistake, some view

Ted Greenwald was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and has lived in New York City his entire life. During the course of a career that has spanned some 30 years, he has been the author of numerous book of poetry and of a video, "Poker Blues" (made in collaboration with Les Levine), in which he also appears as the sole performer.

from Two Wrongs

Inside person
Speaks to
Outside who
The one with

Alongside
That's the one
Blueprint
New leaf