The RUSSIAN SAMOVAR RESTAURANT AND PIANO BAR
256 W 52nd St
New York, NY 10019
between Broadway and 8th Avenue
and on Sunday, January 27, at 6 PM, David Lehman and Angelo Verga will kick off the new series by reading their poems upstairs in the Tolstoy Lounge. Andrey Gritsman will host.
The Russian Samovar is the legendary restaurant and piano bar founded by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joseph Brodsky, and Roman Kaplan. It has a fascinating history -- and a great many wonderful flavored vodkas. In a previous incarnation, the restaurant was frequented by Sinatra, the Rat Pack, and Johnny Carson. At the Samovar you might see Philip Roth talking intensely with a comely friend in a corner banquette. The street itself is justly famous. It is "swing street," because of the many jazz bars that used to be there. And W. H. Auden begins "September 1, 1939" with these lines: "I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-second Street."
The Russian Samovar is no dive. The poetry will be spectacular, the atmosphere equally so. No cover charge, and the poets don't get paid, so you know their motives are pure. Bring a designated driver.
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