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Standing room only at last night’s panel.
Occupy Wall Street: J30, “State of the Occupation Address”, Launch Party for The Declaration of the Occupation of NYC (Second Edition), Housing Works Bookstore Cafe (by Scoboco)
Fresh off the heels of their successful project, Best Music Writing are hitting the ground hard, which means its time to start nominating pieces for the next edition! Fill out your ballot here.
Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan (F, 20s, talking about seeing apartments with boyfriend, G train) http://bit.ly/Am9hR2
A Review: The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You by Caits Meissner and Tishon
PARTY TONIGHT, here, for this book! It’s free! There’s going to be music! And poetry, duh.
The distinguishing feature of this poetry collection is not, in fact, the poems—though they are good—but the book’s genesis. As Tishon and Meissner explain in the introduction: “…we’ve been friends for roughly five years. In those five years we’ve shared countless letters. These letters aren’t letters in the true sense of the word. They are poems….” Born from the intimacy of friendship and given to the world by Tishon’s own Well&Often Press, The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You opens the authors’ lives to their new friends—all of their readers.
Despite my initial concern about the continuity of a co-authored collection, I was impressed by the poems’ overlap and by the collection’s structure, which hops between the authors’ poems as each addresses familial loves, old friends, and memories of early homes. Each has stronger works and lesser. Meissner’s “First Loves (For Alec),” the only prose poem in the collection, captures the confusion of childhood loves (she quietly reveals that Alec is her cousin), their ambiguities, and their persistence:
Under the moon I’ve heard the sharp-toothed blue fish of your cries after too much drink and the girls who you broke and broke you. How I can’t stop dreaming of that impure man beneath a willow tree and all the ways I rot inside when over and over again he leaves and leaves and leaves, like my fate is on repeat, my face in the mirror has a yellow sheen and I pull fat away from my body with my fingers—just two of the reasons I am sure no breathing man could love me.
Coming soon: Lord of the Rings legos.
An excerpt by Caits from The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You. Launch party TONIGHT! Poetry about The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and music and you. It’s going to be good times. And it’s free! See you at 7PM.
Thanks to CBC Live for submitting this piece of hilarity and featuring Downton Abbeyoncé on their site!
I was like ok ok it’s no lamps until I saw this one.
Someone in the cheese department at the Westside Market has gotten creative with the cheese labeling. Or as Kathy Cacace notes in her Tweet: has “fucking lost their mind.” The description on this chunk of mimolette reads: “Sara had been gone for 25 years, and in all that time I hadn’t found any new ways to cope. Only to miss her.” This appears to be from James Patterson’s book, Run For Your Life, where he writes something similar about a woman named “Maeve.” (via Unexpected, Bizarre Literary Reference On This Piece Of Cheese: Gothamist)
Thanks for the tip, Hils!
Want to learn more about and listen to our Live From Home concert on February 17 with Lost in the Trees, orchestral folk from North Carolina? Check out Lost in the Trees : NPR page, I recommend the Tiny Desk Concert.
Coming to Housing Works in June: opera at the bookstore. Special nerd opera based on a book! From Morningside Opera. Stay tuned, but start getting excited.
About Us
We are a nonprofit bookstore, cafe, and event space in downtown NYC. All proceeds from every show you attend and everything you buy, down to a record and a PBR, go directly to our mission of fighting AIDS and homelessness. 126 Crosby Street, NYC
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