Wednesday, December 9, 2020

PPOW / McNally Jackson reading and conversation with Eileen Myles and John Keene

Update Feb 25th, 2021: PPOW Gallery has posted the video of this event on Vimeo. This December 10, 2020 reading with John Keene and Eileen Myles was a kind of belated book party for the publication of Wite Out: Love and Work, a reprise of the 2011 book party at PPOW for Wite Out's prequel, The Public Gardens: Poems and History

At this event on December 10, 2020, John and Eileen read their own work (Eileen's most recent publication is For Now; John's new book of poems is due out soon). They also read some selections from Wite Out. They chose excerpts from my book that are too private for me to read aloud in public, and it was moving to hear those poems/passages in their voices. 

I think we were all surprised at how warm and interesting the evening turned out to be. (Of course it would have been a different kind of event if the November election had turned out differently.) You can watch and listen to the readings and our conversation here.  (I mentioned John's blog in our talk, I think; I've learned so much from reading his posts on art, literature, and much more. You can find that here.)


Above: Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street, Manhattan, November 2, 2011 (the day of the Oakland General Strike). I was in NYC for a book party for THE PUBLIC GARDENS. 



Thursday, January 16, 2020

For SFMoMA's Open Space: A Paper Person

New post up at SFMoMA's Open Space, first of four as columnist-in-residence. The old world meets the same old, same old; American history, etc. You can also find here a piece I wrote for Open Space's "Interwoven" last spring, "Liberty and Luxury." 

Though this new piece isn't an excerpt from Wite Out, my forthcoming book, it does address some things explored in that book and its prequel, The Public Gardens: Poems and History (2011). #Dorchester Days, #EmmettTill, #JamesBaldwin, #FannyHowe, #BernadetteDevlin, #RoevWade, #BrownvBoard, #TheSoilingofOldGlory, #ToniMorrison, #archives, #notebooks, #collages, #IrishAmericans, #ItalianAmericans, #racism . . .








From Old Notebooks