The Best American Poetry

A KGB Bar Blast from the Past (circa 2006)

With thanks to Star Black, herself an original co-director of the KGB Bar Monday night poetry series, this photograph of Deborah Landau and David Lehman, two former directors of the series:

Save the Date: Monday, March 6 David Lehman and Katha Pollitt at KGB Bar, 7:30 PM

 

 

Katha Pollitt & David Lehman  

 

KGB Bar

85 East 4th Street (near the NW corner of 4th Street and 2nd Avenue).

7:30 PM.

Doors open at 7 PM 

 

FREE

 

December 5, 2016: Monday Night Poetry at KGB Bar - David Lehman + Elizabeth Powell - 7-9:00 pm

85 East 4th Street  New York, NY

 

David Lehman is the author of many collections of poems, including New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013), Yeshiva Boys (Scriber, 2011), When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (with James Cummins, Soft Skull Press, 2005), and The Evening Sun (2002).  Among his books of non-fiction are Sinatra’s Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World, A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Shocken Books, 2009) and The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a “Book to Remember 1999” by the New York Public Library.  He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is the series editor of The Best American Poetry.  He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at the New School and New York University. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, NY.

Elizabeth A. I. Powell is the author of The Republic of Self, a New Issue First Book Prize winner, selected by C.K. Williams. Her second book Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances won the Robert Dana Prize in poetry, chosen by Maureen Seaton, and will be published by Anhinga Press in 2016. In 2013, she won a Pushcart Prize. Powell has also received a Vermont Council on the Arts grants and a Yaddo fellowship. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, Harvard Review, Handsome, Hobart, Indiana Review, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Slope, Sugarhouse Review, Ploughshares, Post Road, and elsewhere. She is Editor of Green Mountains Review, and Associate Professor of Writing and Literature at Johnson State College. She also serves on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing and Publishing. Born in New York City, she has lived in Vermont since 1989 with her four children.

 

David Lehman and KGB series co-host poet Matthew Yeager, 2011

Monday, September 21: DL x 2 - David Lehman and Deborah Landau at KGB Bar

85 E 4th St New York, New York

7:30 PM - FREE

David Lehman is the author of many collections of poems, including New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013), Yeshiva Boys (Scriber, 2011), When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (with James Cummins, Soft Skull Press, 2005), and The Evening Sun (2002). Among his books of non-fiction are A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Shocken Books, 2009) and The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library. His newest work, Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World, will be published on Oct. 27, 2015. He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is the series editor of The Best American Poetry. He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing program at the New School. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, NY.

Deborah Landau is the author The Last Usable Hour, a Lannan Literary Selection published by Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, which won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. A third collection of poems, The Uses of the Body, is newly out from Copper Canyon. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, Poetry, The New Yorker, The Best American Erotic Poems, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

-- sdh

Monday Night at KGB: Cate Marvin & Jericho Brown

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Cate Marvin & Jericho Brown

Monday, May 11, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Cate Marvin’s first book, World’s Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. She co-edited with poet Michael Dumanis the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century(Sarabande Books, 2006). Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review,Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, for which she received a Whiting Award, was published by Sarabande in 2007. Marvin teaches poetry writing in Lesley University’s Low-Residency M.F.A. Programand Columbia University’s MFA Program and is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. In 2009, she co-founded the nonprofit organization VIDA: Women in Literary Arts with poet Erin Belieu. Her third book of poems, Oracle, will be out from W.W. Norton & Co. in March 2015.

 

Jericho Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Please (New Issues,2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. 

Brown earned a PhD from the University of Houston, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a BA from Dillard University. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta. 

 

Upcoming Spring 2015:

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

 

 

 

Tonight at KGB: Mark Wunderlich & Kelly Forsythe

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Mark Wunderlich & Kelly Forsythe

Monday, April 27, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Mark Wunderlich is the author of The Earth Avails (Graywolf Press, 2014) and Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf Press, 2004). His first collection, The Anchorage (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), won the Lambda Literary Award. 

 

 

 

 

 

Kelly Forsythe has poems published in Black Warrior Review, American Poet, and Columbia Poetry Review. She is the editor of Phantom Limb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upcoming Spring 2015:

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

 

 

 

Tonight at KGB: Post-AWP Open Mic Competition

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Post AWP Open-Mic Competition

Monday, April 14, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

The KGB Monday Night Poetry Series post-AWP open mic competition is tonight. The rules are simple: all poets read for 3 minutes 30 seconds; judging is by blind ballot. The winner receives a 10 minute reading slot in the Fall '15 season with the pairing of his / her choosing + a KGB MONDAY NIGHT POETRY tee-shirt and free drinks for the evening. It's a great way to get heard. Past winners Lily Goderstad, Spencer Everett, and Chelsea Whitton have read with the likes of Billy Collins, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Joshua Beckman, Rusty Morrison, George Green, and Camille Rankine.

Remaining 2015 Lineup:

Apr 20  -- Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  -- Mark Wunderlich + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   -- Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 -- Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 -- Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

 

Tonight at KGB: Ada Limon & Jason Schneiderman

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Ada Limon & Jason Schneiderman

Monday, March 16, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

Ada Limon is the author of Lucky Wreck (2006), This Big Fake World (2006), and Sharks in the Rivers (2010). She earned an MFA from New York University, and is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, Pleiades, and Barrow Street. Limón splits her time between Kentucky, California, and New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jason Schneiderman is the author of Sublimation Point, winner of the Richard Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and Striking Surface, A Stahlecker Selection from Four Way Books. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, includingAmerican Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Poetry London, Grand Street, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Story Quarterly, and Tin House. Jason has received fellowships from Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.  He was the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2004, and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in 2011. He is Poetry Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review, and Associate Editor at Painted Bride Quarterly.  Jason Schneiderman is an Assistant Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of the City University of New York.

Upcoming Spring 2015:

 

Mar 23  Dark

Mar 30  Michael Morse + Sarah Rose Nordgren       

Apr 6    Jennifer MacKenzie + Chris Hosea 
Apr 13  3rd Annual Post-AWP Open Mic Competition
Apr 20  Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  Noah Eli Gordon + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

This Week at KGB: Yolanda Wisher, Star Black & Sandra Simonds

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Yolanda Wisher, Star Black & Sandra Simonds

Monday, March 9, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Yolanda Wisher is a Philadelphia-based poet, singer, musician, and educator. Wisher was born in the historic Germantown section of Philadelphia and raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where she was named the county's first poet laureate at the age of 23. She is a Cave Canem graduate and received an M.A. in Creative Writing/English from Temple University and a B.A. in English and Black Studies from Lafayette College. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, and she regularly performs her poetry in collaboration with musicians. In 2013, she co-edited the international anthology Peace is a Haiku Song with Sonia Sanchez. As a teacher, radio host, and founder/director of the Germantown Poetry Festival, Wisher has utilized poetry as a conduit for community-building and youth empowerment for over fifteen years. Wisher heads the Art Education department of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and is also a Founding Cultural Agent for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a new citizen-powered initiative. She lives in Germantown with her husband Mark Palacio, a doublebassist, and their son Thelonious. Her first book of poetry, Monk Eats an Afro, was published by Hanging Loose Press in May 2014.

Star Black is the author of six books of poems, most recently Velleity’s Shade, (Saturnalia Books), a collaboration with Bill Knott. Her work includes three books of sonnets, Waterworn, Balefire, and Ghostwood, as well as a collection of double-sestinas, Double Time, and a book of collaged texts, October for Idas. Her poems have been anthologized in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1880 to The Present, and 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11. She has taught at The New School, Stony Brook University, has lectured at the Bennington Writers Seminars, and is the co-founder of the KGB Bar Poetry Series in the East Village. She works in New York City as a photographer and visual artist.

Sandra Simonds is the author of four collections of poetry: Steal it Back (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State Poetry Center, 2012) and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry 2014 and 2015. She is a professor of English and Humanities at Thomas University in South Georgia. 

Upcoming Spring 2015:

 

Mar 16  Jason Schneiderman + Ada Limon

Mar 23  Dark
Mar 30  Michael Morse + Sarah Rose Nordgren       

Apr 6    Jennifer MacKenzie + Chris Hosea 
Apr 13  3rd Annual Post-AWP Open Mic Competition
Apr 20  Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  Noah Eli Gordon + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

This Monday at KGB: Billy Collins + George Green

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Billy Collins & George Green

 Monday, March 2nd, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Billy Collins was born in New York City on March 22, 1941. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013), Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems (Random House, 2012); Ballistics: Poems (2008); She Was Just Seventeen (2006); The Trouble with Poetry (2005); Nine Horses (2002); Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001); Picnic, Lightning (1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Questions About Angels (1991), which was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series; The Apple That Astonished Paris(1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977).

George Green’s first book of poems, Lord Byron’s Foot, won the New Criterion Prize in 2012 and the Poets’ Prize in 2014. His work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005, and 2006; The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets; and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds. Green grew up in western Pennsylvania but has lived for over three decades in Manhattan’s East Village. He teaches at Lehman College, CUNY, in the Bronx. In 2014 he received an award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

Upcoming, Spring 2015

 

Mar 2    Billy Collins + George Green  

Mar 9    Star Black + Yolanda Wisher + Sandra Simonds   

Mar 16  Jason Schneiderman + Ada Limon
Mar 23  Dark
Mar 30  Michael Morse + Sarah Rose Nordgren       

Apr 6    Jennifer MacKenzie + Chris Hosea 
Apr 13  3rd Annual Post-AWP Open Mic Competition
Apr 20  Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  Noah Eli Gordon + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

*****

About the Series:

Labeled New York's best poetry series by such publications as New York Magazine and Time Out New York, the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Reading Series has hosted over 550 poets in more than 300 readings since it was founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman; it  focuses on combining established writers with the most exciting young and upcoming poets.  The list of past readers includes legendary American and international poets: John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Anne Carson, Billy Collins, Richard Howard, Fannie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, Molly Peacock, Marie Ponsot, Tomaz Salamun, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, James Tate, Anne Waldman and Charles Wright.  Currently, the series is curated and hosted by poets John Deming and Matthew Yeager.

About the Venue:

A former single-room speakeasy (one of Lucky Luciano's favorites) KGB Bar was transformed into a Ukrainian socialist social club in 1948. To this day, the bar retains original decoration from its former incarnations, including a red hammer-and-sickle flag hanging from the tin ceiling, plus stained-glass Beaux Arts cabinetry, red walls, Soviet triumph posters, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.  KGBBar is located at 85 East 4th Street in New York's East Village (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue). Readings begin at 7:30 PM. There will be one ten-minute intermission. No cover charge for admission. All readings open to the public. Though it is smoke-free, the massive pervasive cigarette cloud that existed as little as twelve years ago (and contributed much to the venue's conspiratorial air) is still easily imagined. 

This Monday at KGB: Carol Muske-Dukes & Howard Altmann

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Carol Muske-Dukes & Howard Altmann

 Monday, February 23rd, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of 8 books of poetry, 4 novels and 2 collections of essays & has co-edited anthologies. (Her most recent book of poems is TWIN CITIES, from Penguin, her book SPARROW was a National Book Award finalist.) She is professor of English/Creative Writing at the Univ. of Southern California and is former Poet Laureate of California.  She is bi-coastal (many years in NYC) and has written for the NYTimes, LA Times & the Huffington Post. Awards include NEA, Guggenheim, Castognola Prize from poetry soc. of america, Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers award, Pushcarts,  etc.  Published & anthologize widely, inc. Best American Poetry, New Yorker, Paris Review, cover of APR, Kenyon Review, etc. -  many anthologies.  She  also co-edited "Crossing State Lines: an American Renga" with Bob Holman - from FSG. www.carolmuskedukes.com

 

Howard Altmann is the author of two books of poetry, "Who Collects the Days," (Mosaic Press, 2005) and "In This House," (Turtle Point Press, 2010). His poems have appeared in Boulevard, Poetry, Slate, The Yale Review and elsewhere, and are forthcoming in the anthology, "New Writings of the Americas: From Patagonia to Nunavut (Texas Tech University Press, 2015). A Montreal native, he holds degrees from McGill and Stanford and lives in New York City.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upcoming, Spring 2015

 

Mar 2    Billy Collins + George Green  

Mar 9    Star Black + Yolanda Wisher + Sandra Simonds   

Mar 16  Jason Schneiderman + Ada Limon
Mar 23  Dark
Mar 30  Michael Morse + Sarah Rose Nordgren       

Apr 6    Jennifer MacKenzie + Chris Hosea 
Apr 13  3rd Annual Post-AWP Open Mic Competition
Apr 20  Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  Noah Eli Gordon + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

*****

About the Series:

Labeled New York's best poetry series by such publications as New York Magazine and Time Out New York, the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Reading Series has hosted over 550 poets in more than 300 readings since it was founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman; it  focuses on combining established writers with the most exciting young and upcoming poets.  The list of past readers includes legendary American and international poets: John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Anne Carson, Billy Collins, Richard Howard, Fannie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, Molly Peacock, Marie Ponsot, Tomaz Salamun, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, James Tate, Anne Waldman and Charles Wright.  Currently, the series is curated and hosted by poets John Deming and Matthew Yeager.

About the Venue:

A former single-room speakeasy (one of Lucky Luciano's favorites) KGB Bar was transformed into a Ukrainian socialist social club in 1948. To this day, the bar retains original decoration from its former incarnations, including a red hammer-and-sickle flag hanging from the tin ceiling, plus stained-glass Beaux Arts cabinetry, red walls, Soviet triumph posters, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.  KGBBar is located at 85 East 4th Street in New York's East Village (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue). Readings begin at 7:30 PM. There will be one ten-minute intermission. No cover charge for admission. All readings open to the public. Though it is smoke-free, the massive pervasive cigarette cloud that existed as little as twelve years ago (and contributed much to the venue's conspiratorial air) is still easily imagined. 

This Monday at KGB: Michael Broder & Phillis Levin

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Phillis Levin + Michael Broder

 Monday, February 16th, 2015

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by David Lehman and Star Black

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Phillis Levin's fifth collection, Mr. Memory & Other Poems, will be published by Penguin in April 2016.  She is the author of four other books of poetry, Temples and Fields(University of Georgia Press, 1988), The Afterimage (Copper Beech Press, 1995), Mercury (Penguin, 2001), and May Day (Penguin, 2008), and is editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (2001). Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Widely anthologized, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, The Atlantic, Agni, The New Republic, Southwest Review, Literary Imagination, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Plume, and The Best American Poetry (1989, 1998, and 2009 editions). She teaches at Hofstra University and lives in New York City.

Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Animal, Assaracus, BLOOM, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Poets.org, among other journals and anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a colony of feral cats. 

Upcoming, Spring 2015

Feb 23  Howard Altmann + Carol Muske Dukes

Mar 2    Billy Collins + George Green  

Mar 9    Star Black + Yolanda Wisher + Sandra Simonds   

Mar 16  Jason Schneiderman + Ada Limon
Mar 23  Dark
Mar 30  Michael Morse + Sarah Rose Nordgren       

Apr 6    Jennifer MacKenzie + Chris Hosea 
Apr 13  3rd Annual Post-AWP Open Mic Competition
Apr 20  Kathleen Ossip + Spencer Short  

Apr 27  Noah Eli Gordon + Kelly Forsythe    

May 4   Norman Minnick + Chris Jansen

May 11 Cate Marvin + Jericho Brown    

May 18 Matthew Rohrer + Geoffrey Nutter + Randall Potts

*****

About the Series:

Labeled New York's best poetry series by such publications as New York Magazine and Time Out New York, the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Reading Series has hosted over 550 poets in more than 300 readings since it was founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman; it  focuses on combining established writers with the most exciting young and upcoming poets.  The list of past readers includes legendary American and international poets: John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Anne Carson, Billy Collins, Richard Howard, Fannie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, Molly Peacock, Marie Ponsot, Tomaz Salamun, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, James Tate, Anne Waldman and Charles Wright.  Currently, the series is curated and hosted by poets John Deming and Matthew Yeager.

About the Venue:

A former single-room speakeasy (one of Lucky Luciano's favorites) KGB Bar was transformed into a Ukrainian socialist social club in 1948. To this day, the bar retains original decoration from its former incarnations, including a red hammer-and-sickle flag hanging from the tin ceiling, plus stained-glass Beaux Arts cabinetry, red walls, Soviet triumph posters, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.  KGBBar is located at 85 East 4th Street in New York's East Village (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue). Readings begin at 7:30 PM. There will be one ten-minute intermission. No cover charge for admission. All readings open to the public. Though it is smoke-free, the massive pervasive cigarette cloud that existed as little as twelve years ago (and contributed much to the venue's conspiratorial air) is still easily imagined.  

Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

This Monday at KGB: Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party

Monday, December 8, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

MARK DOTY's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. His eight books of poems include School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven's Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. The Art of Description, a handbook for writers, appeared in 2011. Widely anthologized, his poems appear in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and many other collections....Doty's work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He is the only American poet to have received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K., and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts....Doty lives in New York City and on the east end of Long Island. He is Professor/Writer in Residence at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Two new books are forthcoming, both from W.W. Norton: What Is the Grass, a prose meditation on Walt Whitman and the ecstatic, and Deep Lane, a new volume of poems.

VIJAY SESHADRI is the author of Wild Kingdom (1996), The Long Meadow (2003), which won the James Laughlin Award, and 3 Sections (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The Pulitzer committee described the book as “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.” Seshadri has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the NEA, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has worked as an editor at the New Yorker and has taught at Bennington College and Sarah Lawrence College, where he currently directs the graduate non-fiction writing program.

This Monday at KGB: Patricia Spears Jones + Shanna Compton

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Patricia Spears Jones + Shanna Compton

Monday, December 1, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

PATRICIA SPEARS JONES was named by Essence.com as one of its “40 Poets They Love” in 2010. She is author of the poetry collections: Painkiller and Femme du Monde from Tia Chucha Press and The Weather That Kills from Coffee House Press and four chapbooks, the most recent Living in the Love Economy. Her work is widely anthologized....Spears Jones has been a culture maven for four decades. She was the first African American programmer as Program Coordinator at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. She served as Mentor for Emerge, Surface, Be, a new fellowship program at The Poetry Project. She ran the esteemed New Works Program for the Massachusetts Council of Arts and Humanities (1989-1991) and was Director of Planning and Development at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (1994-96). She is also actively involved in a variety of formal and informal organizations involved with progressive politics, social justice, feminism, the environment, and multi-culturalism, best seen in her appointment as Senior Fellow for The Black Earth Institute. She teaches for CUNY. Her art, theater, poetry and music essays, reviews and interviews can be found in print and online at www.tribes.org, Bomb, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Black Issues Book Review, The Boston Globe, and Essence and www.Essence.com.

SHANNA COMPTON is the author of the poetry collections Brink, For Girls & Others, Down Spooky, and several chapbooks. The Seam, a book-length speculative poem, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in 2014. She is also the editor of a collection of essays on the topic of video games, Gamers. Her work has been widely published, including in the Best American Poetry series and other anthologies.

Upcoming, Fall 2014

Dec 8    Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party!   

This Monday at KGB: Timothy Liu + Justin Marks

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Timothy Liu + Justin Marks

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California, to parents from the Chinese mainland. He studied at Brigham Young University, the University of Houston, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 
He is the author of Polytheogamy (Saturnalia, 2009); Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse (Talisman House, 2009); For Dust Thou Art (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005); Of Thee I Sing (University of Georgia Press, 2004), selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Hard Evidence (Talisman House, 2001); Say Goodnight (Copper Canyon Press, 1998); Burnt Offerings (Copper Canyon Press, 1995); and Vox Angelica (Alice James Books, 1992), which won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. 
 His newest volume, Don't Go Back to Sleep will be released in Oct. 2014 from Saturnalia.  
Liu’s honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry in 2002, and the Open Book Beyond Margins Award. He also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, (Talisman House, 2000). 
He has served as a core faculty member at Bennington College’s Writing Seminars, and is currently an associate professor at William Paterson University. He lives in Manhattan.

 

Justin Marks's second book of poems, You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored, is forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books in 2014. His first book is A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009), and his latest chapbooks are We Used to Have Parties (Dikembe Press, forthcoming) and Best Practices (Greying Ghost, 2013). Recent work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Matter Barrelhouse, Leveler and Interrupture. He is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in Queens, NY with his wife and their 4 year-old twin son and daughter. 

Upcoming, Fall 2014

Dec 1    Patricia Spears Jones + Shanna Compton  

Dec 8    Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party!   

This Monday at KGB: Agriculture Reader Night

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

A Celebration of The Agriculture Reader

featuring Justin Taylor, Jeremy Schmall, Ian Dreiblatt, Melinda Wilson, and more

Monday, November 10, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black + David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

A reading celebrating AGR6 and X-ing Books happening as part of the storied Monday Night Poetry Series. Melinda Wilson, Ian Dreiblatt, and Jeremy Scmall (both X-ing author and AGR founding editor) will read from their work, and Justin Taylor will present some of the "greatest hits and rarities" from our back issues.

 

This Monday at KGB: Lisa Jarnot, Steven Karl + William Wenthe

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

Lisa Jarnot, Steven Karl + William Wenthe

Monday, November 3, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black + David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

Lisa Jarnot is the author, most recently, of A Princess Magic Presto Spell (Solid Objects, 2014), as well as five full-length books of poetry. Her Joie de Vivre: Selected Poems 1992–2012 was published by City Lights in 2013, and her biography of Robert Duncan (Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus) was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her husband and daughter.

 

 

 

Steven Karl is the author of Dork Swagger, winner of the Joanna Cargill Prize for a first book (Coconut Books). His second book is forthcoming from Noemi Press. He is the features editor for Coldfront Magazine and a poetry editor for Sink Review. Recent writings have appeared in jubilat, Sprung Formal, and The First Time I Heard My Bloody Valentine. He lives in Miami, Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

 

William Wenthe’s most recent book of poems is Words Before Dawn (LSU Press, 2012); his other books are Not Till We Are Lost (LSU Press) and Birds of Hoboken (Orchises Press). He has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Open City, Tin House, TriQuarterly, Ninth Letter, The Southern Review, Shenandoah; and other journals and anthologies. Critical essays on the craft of poetry have appeared in The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review. Born and raised in New Jersey, he teaches creative writing and modern poetry at Texas Tech.

 

 

 

Upcoming, Fall 2014

Nov 3: William Wenthe + Steven Karl + Lisa Jarnot

Nov 10: An Evening of Agriculture Reader's Poets: Jeremy Schmall + Justin Taylor + More   

Nov 17: Annual National Book Award Judges Reading: Robert Polito + Eileen Myles + Katie Peterson + Rowan Ricardo Phillips       

Nov 24: Timothy Liu + Justin Marks 

Dec 1: Patricia Spears Jones + Shanna Compton  

Dec 8: Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party!  

Tonight at KGB: David Lehman + Dara Wier

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

David Lehman + Dara Wier

Monday, October 27th, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black + David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30pm

Admission is FREE

www.KgbBar.com

85 East 4th Street * New York, NY

 

David Lehman is the author of many collections of poems, including New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013),Yeshiva Boys (Scriber, 2011), When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man(with James Cummins, Soft Skull Press, 2005), and The Evening Sun (2002).   Among his books of non-fiction are A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Shocken Books, 2009) and The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library.  He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is the series editor of The Best American Poetry.  He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at the New School and New York University. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, NY.

 

Dara Wier's most recent book is You Good Thing from Wave Books, 2013, a Believer's readers' choice for 2014.  Her previous books include Reverse Rapture (Poetry Book of the Year, American Poetry Center, San Francisco St. University, 2009), Remnants of Hannah, Voyages in English, and Blue for the Plough.  She writes a sporadic blog for Flying Object, flying-object.org/, a community arts space and project in Hadley, Massachusetts, and she leads workshops and seminars for the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers.  

 

Upcoming, Fall 2014

Nov 3    William Wenthe + Steven Karl + Lisa Jarnot

Nov 10  An Evening of Agriculture Reader's Poets: 

             Jeremy Schmall + Justin Taylor + More   

Nov 17  Annual National Book Award Judges Reading     

Nov 24  Timothy Liu + Justin Marks 

Dec 1    Patricia Spears Jones + Shanna Compton  

Dec 8    Mark Doty + Vijay Seshadri + Season Finale Party!   

KGB Monday Night Poetry, 10/27: Dara Wier and David Lehman

7:30 pm. 85 E 4th St, New York, New York 10003

DARA WIER's most recent book is You Good Thing from Wave Books, 2013, a Believer's readers' choice for 2014. Her previous books include Reverse Rapture (Poetry Book of the Year, American Poetry Center, San Francisco St. University, 2009), Remnants of Hannah, Voyages in English, and Blue for the Plough. She writes a sporadic blog for Flying Object, flying-object.org/, a community arts space and project in Hadley, Massachusetts, and she leads workshops and seminars for the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers. 

DAVID LEHMAN is the author of many collections of poems, including New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013), Yeshiva Boys (Scriber, 2011), When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (with James Cummins, Soft Skull Press, 2005), and The Evening Sun (2002). Among his books of non-fiction are A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Shocken Books, 2009) and The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998), which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library. He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is the series editor of The Best American Poetry. He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at the New School and New York University. He lives in New York City and Ithaca, NY

This Monday at KGB: James Richardson + Star Black

KGB Monday Night Poetry is pleased to present...

James Richardson + Star Black

Monday, October 20, 2014

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Series founded in 1997 by Star Black and David Lehman

Doors open at 7:00 pm

Reading starts at 7:30 pm

Admission is FREE

 

James Richardson is the author of several collections of poetry, criticism, and aphorisms, and has been awarded or nominated for some of the top awards in American literature, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has appeared in multiple editions of The Best American Poetry, and in publications including The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Slate.

 

 

 

 

Star Black is a photographer, poet, and artist. She has authored six collections of poetry and currently teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. She was recently published in The Paris Review and has written three books of sonnets, a collection of double sestinas, and a book of collaged free verse. Her poems have been anthologized in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, 110 Stories: New York Writers After September 11, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1880 to The Present. Her collages have been exhibited at Poets House and The Center for Book Arts, and published in One of a Kind: UniqueArtists Books by Pierre Menard Gallery.