The NYFA Immigrant Artist Project is pleased to announce the call for applications for the 6th Cycle of our flagship Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists.
The 2012 Mentoring Program will pair emerging immigrant artists with artists from the NYFA Fellowship Program. Our NYFA Fellows will act as one-on-one Mentors to their Mentees for a period of six months. They will help them in gaining broader access to the New York cultural community by sharing ideas, advice, and resources. Mentors will also guide Mentees in achieving one or more specific goals and objectives. This year’s cycle will take place from April to September of 2012.
Along with the services and resources of the overall Mentoring Program, we are pleased to offer five Van Lier Fellowships this year! This award will provide eligible Mentees with a modest stipend and added professional development support.
This is a competitive program that is free of charge to accepted participants. The first five cycles of the Mentoring Program were highly successful with participants advancing in their careers and forming lasting bonds with their Mentors and other participants.
This program is accepting applications for the following areas: Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design**, Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts, Crafts/Sculpture, Digital/Electronic Arts, Nonfiction Literature, and Poetry.
If you're eligible, apply! Here's a link to the application.
Greetings from the fortress of solitude, a tiny room on the roof of a building in Brooklyn. Much like the character Blanche DuBois (my arch enemy), I am alone with my thoughts... a misunderstood artist sitting in a room alone pretending to be angry at my mother. However, unlike Blanche DuBois, I don't have shitloads of "stuff" that follows me around in dusty, unwieldy trunks. Come to think of it, I do indeed have a lot of clothing that I must donate to Goodwill, but because I'm markedly not a disgraced woman of the night, I uh...I uh... well this extended metaphor thing is getting really bad. Moving on...
So now that Cyber Monday and his ugly older stepsister Black Friday are shrinking in the rear view mirror of my calendar....I can skip to the favored younger child: LAST-MINUTE SHOPPING! Sure it's not even December yet, but Ye Ol' Organized Freaks out there are already completely finished with their shopping. The rest of December is a mere daymare filled with a blank expression-filled pressure cooker of crowds -- or in the pursuit of the avoidance of these crowds. Oh it's almost too late!.....(I lift my lifeless wrist to my forehead and arch my neck back.)
I'm here for you: for you friendly poets and friends of poetry and poets out there like me who haven't begun your shopping and are looking to shop for the poet in your household. Please check out these poet inspired gift ideas. In other words, these are all things that I, Amy Lawless, want and I was inspired to write about. You can backchannel me for the mailing address of my fortress of solitude. (Just kidding!)
Here's what I look like without the following presents (note: completely asleep, perfect bangs, and delicate spectacles):
And here's what I look like once I get the presents (only slightly more awake, perfect vision):
So let's get right to the recommendations!
1. Augury Books has set up an "Indie Gogo" account. I'm pretty sure Indie Gogo is Kickstarter for the people who...haven't heard of Kickstarter before. But more importantly, Augury Books are raising money for their line of cool books and chapbooks. If you click here, you'll view a cute video as well as a list of the books that Augury is going to put out this year:
B.C. Edwards' chapbook, Paige Lipari's chapbook, and Patrick Moran's book. These are books that I'm excited to read and (therefore) you should be excited about these pieces too.
2. The latest and last issue of Supermachine! Here is a link to buy it here. I'm thinking your cool younger cousin might like this. It's cutting edge poetry. I fell out of a train station one day and ended up at the release party and I heard really rad readings from the content of the magazine from Sampson Starkweather, Dan Hoy, Bianca Stone, Dan Magers, Ryan Doyle May, and Jackqueline Frost. I wish I could lift my arms from being lazy. Then I could copy lines from Jackqueline's poem which I laughed a lot during because it was the funniest and darkest poem about OK Cupid (a shitty dating site) I've ever heard.
3. If idealism is your thing, and you believe you can make a difference in the world, you should donate to a cause that floats your boat. Here are a few that are new and interesting (to me). Donate to Occupy Wall Street, or Amnesty International . There are plenty of other beautiful causes. Poets LOVE ideas and are often thrilled with a donation in their name being made to an organization they believe in. This year has been a weird one politically. The U.S. killed an innocent man this year. If you care, then give a little bit to that kind of cause. But if you don't, I'm sure there's something you believe in. If you don't see injustice in this world, you're not reading enough.
4. Maybe you're someone who wants a break from poetry. You're terrified that the world is coming to an end or is broken and you need to prepare for endtimes? (LOL) Well, how about Thermal Night Vision Goggles? We all purchased expensive night vision goggles last year for Christmas, but this year, we need to be able to sense the heat of others as they approach our compound. Wait you didn't know that the world was coming to an end? Oh well, I mean well... maybe it isn't. Maybe you're just feeling that "nagging feeling" that you can't put into words? Well there are 2 avenues to take to calm that feeling: snorts or coughs.
5. Snorts: A Mini Potbelly Pig. Listen sometimes dogs aren't cute enough for those of us who are dying to cuddle something. Thing is: pigs are way cuter. Shhhhhh package of bacon in my fridge! SHHHHHHH!
I know i said I didn't want any of these gifts. I know i said I in fact owned most of these things, however I was lying. I want a baby pig. I want you to give it to me. This one on the left is a cute adorable baby. I think it would look amazing curled at my feet right now and would make me drink less wine.
6. Coughs: I don't know about you, but in my perfect reality, I am sitting on my couch with a potbelly pig curled at my feet and I'm reading Keats' letters. So you should buy the young burgeoning poetry lover in your house a copy of Keats' letters.
Here's a letter to Fanny that makes my Gchats transcripts look like nutritional contents of a baking powder canister!:
25 College Street
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else - The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life - My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love - You note came in just here - I cannot be happier away from you - 'T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often "to reason against the reasons of my Love." I can do that no more - the pain would be too great - My Love is selfish - I cannot breathe without you.
Yours for ever John Keats
Mmmm.... Now I'm jealous of a dead girl and a little lonely like Blanche again. This isn't good. I really want that potbelly pig. Well....(rubbing toe in the sand).... guess I'll have to see if I'm on Santa's nice list. You don't want to see me look like this all year, do you? (look below) Well, short of being alone without a pig, I guess I might continue to breathe another year with just books. Books are my friends, eh? (cute loud, almost artificial sounding *sob*) Here is a list some books that I've made friends with this year. Maybe you should read them too because well...some angel must have gotten its wings in order for you to have continued reading this far: "Negro League Baseball" by Harmony Holiday, "Glass Is Really a Liquid" by Bruce Covey. When I next descend from my turret, a copy of Paul Violi's In Baltic Circles will surely be in the Fortress' mailbox.
7. But there's other stuff I want. No one gave me a copy of Anne Carson's Nox last year, so I must toil away without it. And I can't seem to reserve any of my wine money to buy "This Can't Be Life" by Dana Ward. I loved Ward's chapbook "Typing Wild Speech" and much like the Mini Pig, this would also be one that i'm "not kidding" about wanting under my Christmas tree this year.
8. Are you still curious about the necklace I'm wearing in the 2nd picture? It's a piece of jewelry made by a wonderful poet Paige Taggart, as a matter of fact. Click here if you'd like to look at her wares. Her necklaces make excellent presents. I have given my family members many of her necklaces and they always love her pieces! Always!
9. Oh well now... I guess there's nothing else that I could ask for in the whole wide world if these presents sit under the tree on Christmas mornin'. In gratitude I wish I could give you something of my own to repay you. If only......
Well.... the doctor is here.... I better open my eyes and see what he wants.... See you all next year! Happy Holidays! <wink>
"For months & months, right up until he passed away earlier this year, we were working with Paul to reissue his book IN BALTIC CIRCLES. We all wanted to get it just right. Now, we’re excited to say it’s almost here. Preorder the book now; we expect them to ship before the end of November."
Matt Hart writes "Paul Violi needs to be read (and taught) MORE—with incredible seriousness and with serious delight. He was, hands down, one of our best poets—inventive, adventurous, original, and resourceful—his poems always pushing the boundaries and expanding the possibilities of what poetry could be, while simultaneously reaffirming at every instant exactly what poetry has always been: singing in the service of the infinite."
Hell yes, Matt. Preorder here if you know what's good for you.
Guy Pettit recently started a poetry music label called Unicorn Evil Records with Michael Barron that is worthy of much admiration. I wanted to hear all about it and share my findings with you, so I conducted a short interview with Guy. My questions are italicized and his answers are....not italicized.
Why did you and Michael Barron create this record label?
Michael and I, through the course of normal conversation, discovered that we were wanting to do similar things - that is, put poets on vinyl. I had already recorded Lucy Ives reading the entirety of her full-length book Anamnesis (Slope, 2009) with plans to press the recording onto 12'' vinyl. Michael was planning to do the same, but in a split 7'' format, with James Copeland/William Rahilly on one side and Alex Phillips/Bill Gillim on the other. It was serendipitous and I think that as soon we discovered the other's project we knew we should be working together.
How did you and Michael choose Lucy Ives and James Copeland & Will Rahilly / Alex Phillips & Bill Gillim for your first round?
I had heard Lucy read a couple of times and I was drawn to the effect her voice had on how I experienced the poem (Anamnesis is one long poem); she sort-of assumes both a robotic and deliberately unaffected voice, in terms of emotion. And I thought hearing that focused my listening to and being moved by the poem. That is all to say that I thought the book should be heard in addition to being read and what better way to hear it than on vinyl. As for Michael's decision to ask James Copeland/William Rahilly & Alex Phillips/Bill Gillim --- I think they were both working on performative pieces that included sound effects, music, video, etc., which Michael was familiar with and wanted to get out into the world.
What is so special about vinyl? I mean I have my own ideas about the tangible art object, but what do you think?
For me, vinyl seems like it has a better chance of surviving than other forms of media. Physically surviving, I mean. That's important to me. I think when you publish or record or film something you are documenting it, and if it's your intention for that thing to be around for as long as possible, you want to consider the resiliency of the medium you're using. It also sounds really good and is fun to play. You know, it's more memorable to put on a record than to search through your itunes playlists. Plus, vinyl and letterpress, which we used to print the jackets, are complimentary. They're both visually striking. Using both is also an attempt to preserve two means of production that are going extinct --- letterpress more so than vinyl ---- for no good reason. Unless efficiency is a priority? But for who's sake?
So, one is a 7 inch and another a 12 inch? What's up with that?
12" fits more audio on a single record. Lucy's record is just over 30 mins. whereas JC/WR/AP/BG is approximately 7 mins. per side. It's like a chapbook and a full-length, right?
Yes, Guy. You're right. How fitting. But where can I find out more about your label and other projects?
Here are some websites with information on Unicorn Evil Records and Flying Object:
Kings of the Fucking Sea, Dan Boehl's new poetry collection from Birds LLC, is a phantasmagoric adventure about dissolution, loss and pirates. I talked to him about the role of painters in his work, the considerations in putting together a first book of poetry and his writing process (which did not involve a parrot or an eye patch).
Can you explain the plot of the Kings of the Fucking Sea?
Hmmn, yeah. I can explain the plot. There is an unnamed man in his thirties who works at an art museum. He is married. He owns a house. He has a dog. He feels trapped in his life and wants out. So, one day he skips town and ends up joining a crew of polleros, human traffickers. These polleros are Kings of the Fucking Sea. First he smuggles Mexicans into the US through Galveston. Later he smuggles Chinese.
At first this work is freeing, but pretty quickly he recognizes the evil in the practice of human trafficking, of making a living taking advantage of the hopes and fears of others. As he thinks about this the Kings find an abandoned boat in the ocean off the coast of China. The boat belongs to a rival pirate crew, the Cobra Sombreros. Locked in a shipping container are a dozen or so Chinese people who have been suffocated and cooked to death by the sun.
The Kings are not without honor. Seeking revenge, they go to war with the Sombreros, attacking that crew in the islands off the coast of Asia. Though the Kings are outnumbered, they destroy their rivals. Many people die, and the Kings hang the bodies of their enemies from a tree.
And the Kings celebrate their victory. They receive medals, are paid, and they dance with whores. But the unnamed character remains uneasy, and his thoughts drift towards home, the life he left, and he wonders if there is any real difference between his life home and his life on the sea.
But it hardly matters. As the Kings embark on a new voyage their ship is attacked by Megamouth, an unworldly shark with breath like god’s very navel. Everyone but our hero dies. Our hero washes ashore onto an abandoned island, a broken resort hotel on the beach, washed out by a tsunami. Using the debris he finds on shore to fashion a raft, he sets back out onto the ocean, searching for home.
At least I think this is the plot. Not all of this account is in the poems, so it is open to interpretation.
Can you tell me about the persona you use when you read poems from KFS?
Persona. Funny. My press mate, Sommer Browning, just said in an interview at Faster Times that she does not regard poetry readings as performances. Well, I do, and when I read I try to communicate to the audience the darkest, most shameful place inside of me. I try to show them the shame that is stamped onto my soul, my soulshame. When I read I want to approach the precipice, look over, consider breaking, and then not break. And the audience does not want me to break. They want me to make it, to survive, to heal, and to carry on.
Sam Starkweather once told me about your book, that he loved the way it challenged the potential of what a book of poems can be, was that something you intended to do?
Adam Day, Badger Apocrypha (PSA Chapbook Award chosen by James Tate)
Construction: It’s got the classic PSA style look. Really well put together nice low-gloss cover. Fits in your back pocket. The cover looks like hair.
Critical Analysis:
Sample poem:
Mrs. Speaks
She stands before a window speaking with a friend, she shifts like compost collapsing beneath a dress in summer heat. On her nose a wreck of warts that glistens in light like elvers. She’s remembering out loud: “When the workers marched Badger came home to find Henry had my skirt up past my garters, and a leg of lamb hot on the table. And I told him? Eat up before it gets cold.” In the half-light, the way the shadows played his face, he looked like a bearded woman. But, Badger was a bullock. He took me hard by the arm, on a night walk, watched an owl snatch a cat from the road. Badger mewling and hooting beneath stuttering streetlights, watching with the subtle giddy smile of a retarded child.
Christopher Salerno ATM (horse less press)
Construction: Green like money. It’s a basic 8.5x11 folded paper, surprisingly economical for a collection of poems about money... oh... now we get it.
“It’s yeah, it’s an understatement, you know it’s. I’m sorry man I got magic and I got poetry at my fingertips most of the time and this includes naps." -Charlie Sheen
"But here’s the actual problem. If the poetry world celebrated its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence poetry would wind up being a largely female world and the men would leave. Poetry would not seem to be the job for them. I think that’s the fear. Losing daddy again! Plus women always need to support, I mean actively support male work in order to dispense with the revolting suggestion that they are feminists."
I have realized for some time that many of the books I buy are written by men or boys. Why is that? I suppose didn’t want to seem like I’m a pussy myself. I suppose I wanted to be taken seriously as a poet – not a female poet. This is an ugly realization that I am proud to express. It should not be “revolting” to be a feminist.
I was also thinking a lot about this poem/blog post that Ariana Reines wrote on her blog after AWP – I can’t find it now so I can’t link to it. [Found it: click here.] Ariana is a totally fearless writer who I’m sure many of you love already. She was hungover on a bus (or at least that was the voice she was using in the poem/blog), and she discussed all kinds of amazing things, but one of them was how males have very little problem talking themselves up, especially at a place like a writer’s conference. “Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s where I published. Here. Look. Look at me! Acknowledge I exist.”
At AWP, I was pretty much too shy to talk to anyone I didn’t know already, which is a huge shame because I’m a raconteur. What Ariana and Eileen have to say really touch me.
That giant spider is the female. That little spider is the male. Now I don’t think we will or can stop supporting all the male poets we love. But perhaps we can support each other—more. It’s not ugly to be a female poet.
Is the following ugly?: Three weeks ago I was PMSing REALLY BADLY and I lay in bed watching “The Kids Are All Right” on my laptop SOBBING. Total chick movie. Total Hollywood. My uterine lining was dying to shed. (Is that gross or is it just the truth?) Somewhere, some executive knew that that movie would appeal to intelligent women. Why should I be ashamed of my experience? Why should I keep that a secret? It’s the truth. It’s my wound. Hey look at it. I exist. Look at this! It’s not standing in the corner at a reading with three guys wearing outfits that are all the same talking about how cool we are.
The truth is, when I woke up this morning, I wanted to write a blog post for Best American Poetry about CHARLIE SHEEN AND JAMES FRANCO. Then I was tooling around the internet trying to gear up and have something hilarious to say, and all the sudden I’m reading Akilah Oliver poems and feeling differently. Here’s a woman who I didn’t know, but had heard of. And now she has died. She is no longer a member of the We Who Are Here Now. I don’t know the circumstances of her death. But look a woman of color who was also an exciting experimental poet has passed on. Take a moment.
What right do I have to the patriarchy and to the matriarchy to blog about two already-famous men? I mean I’m still going to blog about them, but why do I have to do it first? Why not think about women poets?
Dude, did you go to the Dean Young Benefit? I didn't either. So put down your self-flagellation devices and click this link that will transport you over to Coldfront where D.J. Dolack had the wherewhithal to record it and post it and then email me that he posted it. Yay D.J. Also give Dean Young some of your money, otherwise what's the good of SCIENCE? HAHHAHAHAHAHHA. YAY SCIENCE! WHOOO HOOOOOOO!
It's important to use science to keep the people we like and love here as long as possible. Oh right the link! CLICK HERE.
To read about Dean Young and make an online donation, please visit his page at the National Foundation for Transplants.
Why isn't ANYONE talking about the Frederick Seidel poem in the New Yorker in the January 10, 2011 issue? Why does it have to be me? I barely showered today. I was at the liquor store at 3:45 pm. I'm not camera ready!
To preface:....I know as a woman I'm supposed to be all mad and signing petitions about how there are barely any articles written by women in the New Yorker. I totally get that. I totally do. Women ROCK and should be featured more in magazines that sit on coffee tables but are barely read. But this poem by Seidel is fucking phenomenal. It was brought to my attention by my friend James who emailed me because it reminded him of me and I'm a half-blown narcissist (as are we all, except those of us who are full blown narcissists). So i read it because I'm so "busy" that half the time my New Yorkers just sit on my coffee table (especially if all the articles are written by men *wink*... So i read the Seidel poem and I love Ooga Booga. Doesn't everyone? If you don't, there's something missing from your life. You just don't realize you love it yet. What's great about "Rain" is that it not only is a poem about our current world (Forget journalism! I just read a poem perfectly distilling 2010!): Greece's stone filled pocket suicide, and the obsession with Twilight. I mean that's basically last year, eh? The other beautiful thing about it is that it's written in longish lines that all rhyme, but because I'm a little thick today I didn't even notice that until the fourth and last stanza.
Here are a few choice lines from "Rain":
It's the recession. It's very weird in New York. Teen vampires are the teen obsession. Rosebud mouths who don't use a knife and fork. Germany at first won't save Greece, but really has to. It's hot in parts of Texas, but rain drowns Tennessee, people die. It's the euro. It's the Greek debt. Greece knew It has to stop lying, but timeo Danaos, they're Greeks, Greeks lie.
I mean it's really daffy, but it's lovable daft. The last stanza holds some of the most heavy-handed end rhymes since Daddy (LOL), but sometimes we want to end with a bang and not a whimper. (Pour your heart out Tom Eliot!)
Also, why aren't more poets listening to the WTF with Mark Maron Podcast? Marc Maron, a Jewish comic who is constantly in a state of self-doubt and disrepair, interviews comedians twice a week. Wait wait stay with me. I know you may not like comedians. Dude i know. What's more annoying than someone who's trying to make you laugh? But these interviews aren't really that different from talking to your poet friends. I mean what's the point of life? We poets create poems. They write jokes. There's this "THING" we do that we aren't sure why we do it (we certainly aren't getting paid for it...). And comedians are the same way. They are freaks. They have trouble socializing. Ahh, now the light goes on. Yes, please listen to it. Some of the most beautiful conversations about artistic craft available on any media are going on in Maron's garage. And they're free. I am still catching up to all the amazingness, but the 2 parter with Louis CK, the 2 part interview with Judd Apatow both blew me away.
