This Just In: If you're in NYC tonight!

Friday, February 12 // 7:30pm

Poetry by Duane Esposito (9pm)

Duane Esposito is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. He has an M.A. from SUNY Brockport and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona. In 1994, Diane Glancy selected his work for an Academy of American Poets Award. In 2003, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared in dozens of journals, magazines, newspapers, and one or two anthologies/textbooks. New poems are on the way. He has published two books of poetry: The Book of Bubba (Brown Dog Press,1998) and Cadillac Battleship (brokenTribe Press, 2005). He lives on Long Island with his wife & children.

Open Mic from 8pm-9pm

RankingIY DJs throughout the night

Fort Useless is at 36 Ditmars Street in Brooklyn, one block from the Myrtle Avenue/Broadway stop on the JMZ trains

Stay

I wanted to pass on to you this article by Jennifer Michael Hecht. She posted a variation of it, 1/11/2010 on Best American Poetry, and it's been getting around.

Her poems are fantastic. My personal spiritual beliefs differ from her's, but there's really no denying she's on to something with the whole "Don't kill yourself" thing.

Give it a read, and consider some of the wonders we have.

Here's a poem from her second collection, Funny:

Prosody on Comedy

Tragedy is when all the stage is all good will

and all will wrongly, like too many winter coats

in too few seats on the subway, no one will

give up a thing yet all feel a remote

and stinging sorrow for the standers. Still,

tragedy is the ship sunk, bobbing heads afloat

together in the drink, all happy now to fill

their lungs with air and dream of lifeboats.

No bouts now. All their coveted papers and pills

as wet as once were their eyes, dry as ghost's

now, a low slung. Comedy is why they're still

together, in an ocean wide as wind and sky her host.

As we float, the deepness of the ocean tugs our bones.

In comedy we rush the crowded stage and act alone.

****

The poem originally appeared in Poetry, and Funny was a winner of The Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press.

If you're in NYC this weekend...

I kinda love Kazim Ali. He's a magnificent writer and has been incredibly kind on the few occasions I've been fortunate enough to hang out where he happens to be. I got to see him on a panel at AWP '08 where he read just a little bit and brought down Midtown. He's reading twice in NYC this weekend.

Details:

Friday, February 12th, 5:00pm:

Kazim Ali, Tao Lin, Maaza Mengiste

At the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House

58 W 10th St., New York, NY,

Sponsored by New York University Creative Writing Program.

Saturday, February 13th, 2:00pm:

Kazim at the Four-Faced Liar

165 W 4th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues)

He'll also be at Squaw Valley this summer, and hopes you think about applying.

Bookslut & The Wonderfull Yeare

Nate Pritts is interviewed over at Bookslut. Check out the whole piece where he gets into some nitty-gritty about The Wonderfull Yeare.

Cooper Dillon is taking orders for the book right this minute. They will ship by Feb. 16th, fo' sho'.