Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Michael Broder started the HIV Here and Now Project as a poem-a-day countdown to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016. Yesterday I joined some contributors--Michael, Lonely Christopher, Guillermo Filice Castro, Debora Lidov and Sarah Sarai--to read our poems at the Bryant Park Word for Word poetry series in nearby Kinokuniya Bookstore. Michael suggested that I read a poem by John Humpstone from the project. John Humpstone grew up on Long Island. After graduating from Pratt Institute, he became an interior designer and was one of the founders of Lexington Gardens, a design and garden store in Manhattan. A lifelong artist and writer and a lively conversationalist, he wrote this poem when he knew he was dying of AIDS, and left it behind unpublished. John died on June 23rd, 1996, a few days before his 40th birthday. Untitled The fireflies who drifted on summer's evening Warm and reassuring dark And seemed to my young eyes a thousand Tiny boats afloat on sunset's lapis sea Cal...

It was a very successful outing for Singapore Poetry at the Rainbow Book Fair yesterday. Sold lots of books and talked to lots of interesting people who stopped by the table. Michael Broder, representing A Midsummer's Night Press, was at the next table. Roxanne Hoffman and her Poets Wear Prada Press was just behind me. Paul Rozario, who was kind enough to help man the table for part of the day, discovered a talent for selling books by chatting people up! We gave out the bookmarks promoting the Singapore Literature Festival in New York in October. I enjoyed reading at the Poetry Salon organized by Nathaniel Siegel. Alex Goh and Christine Chia came for the reading; Sarah Sarai and Charlie Bondhus stayed after theirs. Bryan Borland and Matthew Hittinger came by the table. The only regret was that I was so busy that I could not find the time to look around the fair and say hello to friends. Singapore Poetry with Costa Rican hat (photo by Alex Goh) Reading at the poetry salon...

It was kind of Sarah Sarai to invite me to read with her for Mike Graves's Phoenix reading series. The Yippie Museum Cafe on Bleecker Street has undergone a thorough refurbishment and now is a chill place to hang out. It was pleasantly filled with people and laptops this afternoon, and so we had a bigger audience for the reading than I had anticipated. Sweta Srivastava Vikram was the first to read. Her work was concerned with understanding her multicultural and multinational background. She grew up in India and North Africa, before moving to NYC ten years ago. Her new book gave voice to oppressed women in India and the Middle East. After the reading I chatted with her and her husband, and found out that her sister-in-law lives at Telok Blangah Road, very near to my parents. I read next, from Seven Studies and The Pillow Book . Then Sarah read, from The Future Is Happy , which I reviewed on this blog. She also read new poems. I enjoyed hearing her read, more so than before....

If a poet can be cheerful without being nauseating, Sarah Sarai is she. Her optimism is undergirt by a restless intelligence, a hardheadedness about the world, and a willingness to be vulnerable. She hears happiness in a tenor sax and hipness in Count Basie's Band. Music buoys her sufficiently to dance and sing: There's no foot in the grave, only the dead. Swing time. Bebop. If you need more, I can't help you. (from "The Future Is Happy") Most of her poems, unlike the one I just quoted, are not crowd-pleasers in a poetry reading. They are too dense with cultural, historical and literary references to be understood at one hearing. They are better read and heard in the quiet of one's own room. They are friendly (many of them are dedicated to friends) but not flattering. Sometimes they are too heavy with cultural freight ("In Denzel Washington's Gaze" and "We All Know Things Together"), but at their best their knowingness gives the...