Listen to Maxine Chernoff’s 2000 Poetry Center reading:
What the body might guess,
what the hand requests,
what language assumes
becomes amulet,
which is to say
I am carrying your face
in a locket in a box
to a virtual location
guarded by kestrels,
City Lights} On Thurs Sept 22 11 Omnidawn Publishing presented readings by Cyrus Console, Donald Revell, Maxine Chernoff, and Elizabeth Robinson at City Lights Bookstore. Find more at http://litseen.com.
Friday, May 2, 1975
An Evening with John Cheever
The Cathedral of St. James
Vintage poster of John Cheever’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
The effect of the water on voices, the illusion of brilliance and suspense, was the same here as it had been at the Bunkers’ but the sounds here were louder, harsher, and more shrill, and as soon as he entered the crowded enclosure he was confronted with regimentation.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY CRAMPTON The first meeting with John Cheever took place in the spring of 1969, just after his novel Bullet Park was published. Normally, Cheever leaves the country when a new book is released, but this time he had not, and as a result many interviewers on the E…
Women don’t riot, not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea,
not in sweatshops in New York or El Paso.
They don’t revolt
in kitchens, laundries, or nurseries.
Not by the hundreds or thousands, changing
sheets in hotels or in laundries
when scalded by hot water,
not in restaurants where they clean and clean
and clean their hands raw.
Listen to Ana Castillo’s 2005 reading for the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Remembering Revelation I wanted to laugh,
the way a nonbeliever remembers Sunday School
and laughs, which is to say–after flood and rains,
drought and despair,
abrupt invasions,
disease and famine everywhere,
we’re still left dumbfounded
at the persistence of fiction.
Tuesday, June 3, 1986
Thursday, November 12, 1992
Founder of the Poetry Center of Chicago
Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy the light
of freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an
Indiana owl
or glitter of fish flickering in the Shedd Aquarium of the
imagination
Listen to Paul Carroll’s 1986 Poetry Center reading:
Our matchbox bedroom in the loft above your
sculpture factory
Turns magical at times
Behind its dark blue Druid door. Last night,
Inside you, sweetheart,
It felt as if I were coming from the soul itself.
Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Billy Collins, Andrei Codrescu, Ron Padgett, Lucille Clifton, Mark Perlberg, Li-Young Lee, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anne Waldman, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, Ted Kooser, Paul Carroll, Jorie Graham, and Paul Hoover.
Vintage poster of Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Paul Carroll, Alice Notley, and Peter Kostakis givnig a poetry reading in honor of Frank O’Hara at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
Its so hard to remember in the world – – Weren’t you there? Dead so you
think of ports – – Couldn’t reach flesh – – Might have to reach flesh from
anybody – –
Vintage poster of Poetry in Motion: a film by Ron Mann with Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Ed Sanders, Gary Snyder, Tom Waits, Anne Waldman at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
my ice skates on a wall
lustre of stumps washes his lavender horizon
he’s got a handsome face of a lousy kid
rooming-houses dirty fingers
whistled in the shadow
“Wait for me at the detour.”
Spring cleaning in Baltimore always involved
a yellow bucket sloshing with soapy water
and a rag recognized as the tattered remains
of my father’s bowling shirt, circa 1973.
– Garrett J. Brown, “Lost Anecdote From The Pages Of Vasari”
Receding hairline, your rented room
in the wooded hills beyond light
pollution and suburbia, your penchant
for slender women with large eyes
and small breasts, talent for language
He said, “We do not love by word alone,”
And pulled the silence down around his voice
As though a sound could hurt him. Since those words
Became their own perverse, inviting promise,
She had to smile: “Then what is left to say
That you will listen to, except a kiss?”
Handiwork , By Amaranth Borsuk, Slope Editions 2012 1. Tell us about the title, Handiwork. Where did it come, what does it mean to you, or how did you decide on it?
Your task is to gamble on limited
light and space and face the
meadow, alkali mallow, let light
lick your basal rosette and bloom
bottle thistle through your bearded
creeper.
Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
Of people: These
are all soft animals.
Not one is made of steel.
That
is what he thought.
He felt that they would feel.
If not next day, next Monday.
And he smiled.
Friday, February 21, 1975
Slavic Poetry
with Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordje Nikolic, and John Rezek
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.
Vintage poster of Slavic Poetry, featuring Joseph Brodsky, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordje Nikolic, and John Rezek at the Poetry Center of Chicago.
The Wise Men will unlearn your name.
Above your head no star will flame.
One weary sound will be the same–
the hoarse roar of the gale.
The shadows fall from your tired eyes
as your lone bedside candle dies,
for here the calendar breeds nights
till stores of candles fail.
Joseph Brodsky, ca. 1988. Photograph by Anefo/Croes, R.C. Joseph Brodsky was interviewed in his Greenwich Village apartment in December, 1979. He was unshaven and looked harried. He was in the midst of correcting the galley proofs for his book-A Part of Speech-and he said that he had al…