Excellent readings at KGB tonight by Matthew Zapruder and Eileen Myles. An especially full house listened to their work with close attention—prompting Zapruder to note in appreciation between poems, "I really like how quiet it is in here. A lot." Myles engaged the audience just as fully and during a few pieces had to combat the added challenge of a recurring siren on East 4th—a true New York reading. Zapruder read primarily from his new book Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon), with highlights including "Aglow" and "Never to Return." His work features a strong lyricism that is willing to wander in and out of the everyday.
Myles (whom Bust Magazine dubbed "the rock star of modern poetry") brought a raw edge to the evening, channeling the punk spirit of the East Village. This was truly an interesting pairing and one of the best I've seen at any reading. Myles read first from her new novel Inferno (OR Books, awesome flame cover optional)—the story of a young female writer in the literary scene of Patty Smith-1970's New York. She followed this with poems from a forthcoming volume from Wave Books (of which Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman, also in attendance, are editors). Her work drew frequent laughs at her bold imprecations and outlandish, wry wit, as is heard in this video of "Transportation" and "Like."
With a casual atmosphere and featuring some of the best poetry being written today, KGB—skillfully hosted by Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez, and Michael Quattrone, and founded by David Lehman and Star Black—continues to be one of the finest and most enjoyable reading series in the city.
Poets Joshua Beckman, Dorothea Lasky, and Chris Hosea
Excerpt from "Never to Return" by Matthew Zapruder (Come On All You Ghosts):
Next to me almost aloud a book said doctors can
already transplant faces. Another said you know January
can never be June so why don't you sleep little candle?
A third one murmured some days are too good,
they had to have been invented in a lab. I was paging
through a book of unsent postcards. Some blazed
with light, others were a little dim as if someone
had breathed on the lens. In one it forever snowed
on a city known as the Emerald in Embers, the sun had
always just gone behind the mountains, never to return,
and glass buildings over the harbor stayed filled with
a sad green unrelated light. The postcard was called
The Window Washers. In handwriting it said
Someone left an important window open, and Night
the black wasp flew in and lay on the sill and died.
—
Rob Crawford is the author of Brilliant Families, forthcoming from Counterpoint Press. An editor at Overlook Press, he attended Phillips Academy Andover and Yale University. His writing has appeared in Golden Handcuffs Review and Publishers Weekly, and he lives in Brooklyn. @rcrawford7