Four from Governors Island

Poem

Lifting something delicate
so the spires don't pierce
the tungsten paunch. The fever
will break with the administration
of knowing glances. From the look
of things, there are people who really
like you, what you do, and who you've
become. It is often necessary to observe
in silence while the pieces are pealed
away from your forearm. Like a steady diet
of lemony light over a decade of fear.
Let me be perfectly clear and clueless here.

Silver Rimbaud

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Six from Governors Island

Gold birds, pink bird, silver bird

Swiss Think Tank W.I.R.E., SAVIDA, and others: Social Innovation in the Data Age: Inventing a Truly Smart City

I'll be participating in a wonderful event on Friday, May 29th. At 7pm I'll be reading a long poem summing up the day's events.

Here's the link: Swiss Think Tank W.I.R.E., SAVIDA, and others: Social Innovation in the Data Age: Inventing a Truly Smart City

ETH ZURICH FUTURE GARDEN AND PAVILION
First Street Garden
Enter at the corner of East Houston Street and 2nd Avenue

Six from Governors Island

Thank you, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council!

Richard Kostelanetz Birthday Tribute

This Thursday, May 21, Picture Room will honor Richard Kostelanetz's 75th birthday with a tribute from Todd Colby, Hyo Know, and Claire Barliant.

7pm-9pm
236 Mulberry Street
(between Prince and Spring)

Todd Colby has published six books of poetry: Ripsnort, Cush, Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Writings, and Tremble & Shine, all published by Soft Skull Press. Flushing Meadows was published by Scary Topiary Press in 2013. Colby’s latest book, Splash State, was published by The Song Cave in 2014. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Hyo Kwon runs her own graphic design practice in New York where she often collaborates with writers, artists, curators and other designers in various forms and scales. In 2011, she organized the 'Richard Kostelanetz Bookstore' for Kunstverein Amsterdam together with Goda Budvtyte, a graphic designer currently based in Brussels.

Claire Barliant is Brooklyn-based writer, curator, and teacher. She has worked as an associate editor of Artforum and an executive editor of Modern Painters. Her writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, Time Out New York, Artforum, Art in America, and Icon, as well as numerous catalogues. Her recent curatorial projects include “As We Were Saying: Art and Identity in the Age of ‘Post’” at EFA Project Space, New York (2014); “Kool-Aid Wino” at Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT (2013); and a screening series for Dirty Looks: On Location, New York (2013).

Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster's Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Directory of American Scholars, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in American Art, NNDB.com, Wikipedia.com, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.

T. 212.219.2789
mcnallyjacksonstore.com
instagram.com/pictureroomnyc

Roots Poetry Series

Adobe Canyon, Arizona

Silvery & Brittle

One can become comfortably ragged before morning
does that special lay-down-and-die thing.
Everyone needs to get away now and then to a place
where the refrigerator hums in a different tone than
the one back home. Get relaxed in a place
where the body feels slack because it is contingent
upon an imminent death delivering a real sense of purpose
to the morning. The sun hits the breast of a male House Finch
and for an instant it looks like its been lit-pink from within.
The skittishness of birds makes me anxious, I do not find them
relaxing to watch in the least. I'm establishing a sense
of the texture of things through touch.
Tonight, I’ll serve Montaigne's Venetian turpentine wafer
with sweet syrup on a silver spoon.
What are you not willing to feel?

After Dinner I Took a Walk

I feel a certain granular happiness
as though I've broken into myself
from an adjoining body. In this damp
playpen known as a damp playpen, people bite
towels and shout at bugs to appear
old-fashioned, like Montgomery Clift
saying something sweet and disconcerting
between puffs of a cigarette. My alacrity
is dour. The chief task of this day
is to be a receiving port for a ray
of light, so don't pull the shades,
even if the sun fades the paintings
and turns that walnut table blond.
My experience of life up to this point
is that blur between us, a hazard light
flashing on a foggy highway, but I digress.
The grapes I ate in pain will endure
in another part of my body. I'll have to
flush myself from the system, turn red,
and attend to whatever seems
sensible in the desert.