Songs for Girls Reading & Party: This Friday

Neko Case & Nick Cave cover The Zombies' "She's Not There"

via KCRW:

Lost & Found on Harriet

I love this interview with Ammiel Alcalay and Ana Bozičević, and not just 'cause it gives the history of a class I took with them at the CUNY Graduate Center last fall (though it feels very Lost-&-Found to give a history of this class!).

There's lots of great thinking and writing about New American Poetries in the interview, and here's something I especially loved from one of Ana's responses:

Naming is powerful and we should question how we name poets. Something di Prima emphasizes in her work is the personal, rather than collective, approach to poetic heritage – and following that trail back with her was incredibly rewarding. It did lead me to the collective eventually – to her peers and precedents – but by a different route. The scenic route traced by the person who built the road. It was a way to recontextualize her path on its cultural and political map… Once such work of re-classification that came out this year is Duncan’s amazing The H.D. Book. This is the sort of work I think Lost & Found is looking to do. Canonization strikes me as a process similar to beatification – an exceptional individual is made idol. I hope some of the materials we publish can reverse that process, and the reader may find themselves scratching their back with the poet-saint’s fibula. Somewhere between the dumpster and the reliquary is the living archive.

This Kathleen Hanna CNN interview

is cracking my shit up:

"I Kissed a Girl" was just straight-up offensive. The whole thing is like, I kissed a girl so my boyfriend could masturbate about it later. It's disgusting. It's exactly every male fantasy of fake lesbian porn. It's pathetic. And she's not a good singer. I don't want to trash other women. I mean, I think Jason Mraz is horrible. It's not just like I hate other women performers. Jason Mraz, and the new James Blunt song is the worst thing that has ever been created on the face of the Earth.

It's also smart and feminist and has a lot of interesting things to say about the 90s!

Also, here's the story of how Kathleen Hanna and Kurt Cobain graffitied a fake abortion clinic and she came up with the title "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and much more. It an amazing story:

What are your songs for girls in their 20s?

Mixes from Brandi Homan, Daniela Olszewska, and Kate Durbin are now up at Songs For Girls In Their 20s.

Send yours to beccavista at yahoo dot com!

"Pop Time" up at Gaga Stigmata

"Pop Time," my poem for Lady Gaga's video "The Edge of Glory" (and also a Song For Girls in Their 20s), is up at Gaga Stigmata.

Thanks to Meghan Vicks for getting it up in pop time!

Songs For Girls In Their 20s: A Reading & Party

Friday, July 1, 2011

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Soda Bar
629 Vanderbilt Ave.
Brooklyn, NY

Songs For Girls In Their 20s is a literary & performance event and 30th birthday party for me.

The reading will go from 6:00-8:00 p.m., and the party will continue for a long time afterward.

First, these readers will read a poem, sing a song, or do something else evocative of being in one's 20s:

Andrew Koszewski
Brian Pietras

Caolan Madden
Claire Donato
Dustin Luke Nelson
Hanna Andrews
Heather Berlowitz
Krystal Languell
Lily Ladewig

Marisa Crawford
Matt L. Rohrer
Michael Leong
Mónica de la Torre
Nicole Steinberg

These poets will be heard via mp3 missive:

Arielle Greenberg
Daniela Olszewska
Danielle Pafunda

Dolly Lemke
Kate Durbin

Then, I'll read some of the poems I've been writing to music this year, which I call Songs For Girls In Their 20s.

Your emcee will be Andy.

Come on down!

JT's [Red Missed Aches] Launch Party: This Tuesday!

Switchback Books

presents

Cathy Park Hong & Jennifer Tamayo

Reading & Book Launch for Jennifer Tamayo's

RED MISSED ACHES READ MISSED ACHES RED MISTAKES READ MISTAKES

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 | 6 p.m.

Pete's Candy Store | 709 Lorimer St. | Brooklyn, NY | Subway: Lorimer St. L

[Red Missed Aches] feels defiantly unfinished, adhering to a DIY feminist punk aesthetic so that it is more rough assemblage than bound book, a palimpsest that provocatively revises female sexuality and citizenship. Tamayo's debut collection is a daring and astonishing work that refuses borders.

--Cathy Park Hong, judge of Switchback Books' 2010 Gatewood Prize

A writer, artist, & performer, JENNIFER TAMAYO is slowly becoming a human being. Her manuscript, Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes,was selected by Cathy Park Hong as the 2010 winner of Switchback Books’ Gatewood Prize. [Woooo doggy!] JT’s art & writing have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Delirious Hem, Futurepost, The New Delta Review, Contrappostos, andJacket 2. She is the Managing Editor at Futurepoem and teaches art and poetry to students in Harlem.

CATHY PARK HONG’s first book, Translating Mo’um, was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, Dance Dance Revolution, was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007 by WW Norton. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in A Public Space, Poetry, Paris Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, Harvard Review, Boston Review, The Nation, American Letters & Commentary, and Denver Quarterly. She is an Assistant Professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Her third book, Engine Empire, will be published in 2012.

[Red Missed Aches] will be available at a special discounted price!

switchbackbooks.com/redmissedaches

Danielle Pafunda "In a Sentimental Dude"

To be sentimental is to risk being at large in the world. Its potential for failure appeals to me more than its potential for success. It occurs to me that several of my women students this spring noted their fear of embarrassing themselves via sentimental or melodramatic writing, via excess. But all I want to do is embarrass myself that way! What a girl! What a kid! How embarrassing for a grown thinker, how obvious for a woman.

Read the rest at Montevidayo.

Read some other great responses to the V.S. Naipaul debacle from Roxane Gay, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Sarah Sarai.

Listen to a response from today's Weekend Edition.

And take The Guardian's quiz challenge: "The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?" to see if you, like Naipaul, can clairvoyantly "read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two [...] know whether it is by a woman or not."