Song of a Reformed Headhunter

John Marcus Powell launched his book Glorious Babe at Suite Bar last Sunday afternoon. Published by Nemo R. Hill's Exot Books, and designed and illustrated by Julio, the book was celebrated with the artistic respect and warm affection that John Marcus has garnered in years of reading poetry around New York City. Hosted by Cordis Heard and John Foy, the launch was the last installment of the Red Harlem Readers series this season. Nemo led off the reading, followed by Thomas Fucaloro, me, and David Yezzi. As Nemo observed, all of us read a little like John Marcus, so powerful was the influence of the man's voice on us. The original came on stage and read for a most entertaining half-hour. * I started posting the first two lines of a haiku on Facebook, and invited other people to complete it. The results were certainly interesting. a tiny leaf drops into my cup of tea Gwee Li Sui provided the humorous "I ask for refund"; Eric Norris the witty "like Basho...

I very much enjoyed reading last night for R. Nemo Hill and John Marcus Powell's series Reading Queerly!?. The Pink Pony was a wonderfully eclectic venue, though the music from the bar was a little loud. Met Ivan Steiger Galietti, who read two poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini in both Italian and English, one the supplication to his mother, the other a more political piece. Ivan said that he fell in love with Pasolini's poetry at the age of sixteen and met the great man himself in Rome. Lorenzo Pozzan read the beginning of Whitman's "Song of Myself" with much feeling. He is a very good-looking young actor. The open-mic was short but good, anchored by Nemo, John Marcus and Eric Norris. I sold two copies of Seven Studies and one copy of The Pillow Book .  Thank you, my friends, for coming to the reading--EN, TH, AH, R and AS. This is a reading series to which I will return, for its atmosphere of appreciative comaraderie.

I thought of writing about the power of observation in R. Nemo Hill's book of poems When Men Bow Down , and how that power undergirds the philosophical statements in the poetry. I thought of writing about the quiet authority of the poems, how they do not need to shout or leap or flash for attention, but find their way to something akin to epiphany but much more understated, a kind of understanding. I thought of writing about the gay sensibility of the book, how it is so refreshingly different from what passes for gay poetry nowadays. I thought of writing about the book's craftsmanship, its adroitness with blank verse, rhyming couplets, quatrains, sonnets and ghazals. I thought of writing about the achievement of a Western but non-exotic view of places such as Bali, Java, Myanmar, and Thailand, for with the same sympathetic but rigorous eye the American speaker looks at a young homeless couple in New York City, a teenage junkie in San Francisco, and his aging parents in Mass...

It was a wonderful evening that, as Nemo put it, focused on the right thing, the work itself. Bob's book Lightly in the Good of Day collects poems written over the course of a decade. They are about family and friends--real and imaginary--nature, art and the trying conditions of existence. The turnout at Cornelia Street Cafe was strong. There was only standing room when the open-mic began. Valerie Mendelson, the painter of the landscape that appears on the book cover, came with her husband, JF. For the feature, the readers, Jane Ormerod, Adriana Scorpino, R. Nemo Hill, and Thomas Fucaloro, chose poems from the book that matched perfectly their very different reading styles. Jane read "In That Petal Flesh," Adriana read "Going Inside--Especially To Feel," Nemo read "Man, Can They," "Inside Your Expensive Watch"and "After Such Fall", and Thomas read "Take This Rose." The No Chance Ensemble, consisting of vocalists Bruce a...