

Read Linda Lerner's Poem, "Terrible Beauty" for New Verse News for July 26
http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2010/07/terrible-beauty.html
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By George Held
Washington (INS). The Senate Committee on Subversive Activities has brought lefthanded marriage into play in an effort to stop a bill legalizing gay marriage. Arguing that no one is more suspect or queer than lefties, Sen. John Kyl (R-OK) introduced his bill to criminalize marriage between two lefthanders.
“If we are going to even debate the issue of unnatural practices,” the Senator told the committee in session, “we need to start with lefties. They may be only 11% of the population, but they include 38% of the troublemakers,” he said, flourishing a new report from the Gingrich Institute, which outs lefties including Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, and Babe Ruth.
“At least, these rabble-rousers had the decency to wed righthanded women,” the Senator continued. “But can you imagine the potential damage to society if Hillary Clinton was also a lefty?”
“Marriage is an institution reserved for the union of not only a man and a woman but of one righthander with another–or at least between a righty and a lefty.”
Kyl said that gay marriage is more problematic than lefthanded marriage, because gays could pass as straight in some cases. “But lefties,” the Senator opined, “can always be detected by their illegible handwriting or the crazy way they hold their pens or by the way they struggle to use a scissors or to walk and chew gum at the same time. At least Gerry Ford married a righty—Betty Ford used to down her shots with her right hand.”
At press time, Senators were too concerned with policing the lefthandedness in their own families to debate Sen. Kyl’s bill.
Joel Allegretti started the evening, flawlessly reciting poems from memory, starting with a translation. His poems often focused on pop culture divas; Yoko Ono and Nico made early appearances. Allegretti’s latest collection Thrum (Poets Wear Prada Press) is comprised of poems about stringed instruments, though Buffy Sainte Marie kept his poems diva-centric as he read about her performing with a mouth bow (definitely worth checking out on Youtube). Even Eurydice took a star turn, being cast as Greta Garbo’s predecessor and regally pronouncing “I want to be alone.” Allegretti ended with an elegy for his mother (every man’s first diva?), using the dolphin and the butterfly as images to bring the two back together.
Timothy Liu began by announcing that he is about to celebrate 18 years with his partner. He read mostly new poems. In his poems, Liu often breaks down decorum, allowing the physical to lay alongside the emotional in unusual ways. There’s often a mystery at the center of his poems. Whereas the physical usually dissipates the mysterious (as in pornography, where nothing is left to the imagination), in Liu’s poems, physicality neither demystifies nor explains. One short poem: “Every vow I kept/ for seventeen years/ I wanted to break / until I slipped my finger / inside of you.” Knowing that he and his partner have been together for eighteen years suggests that these are marriage vows, while also suggesting that the “you” is his partner. But these ideas both slip away with that finger’s entrance. Where it goes, into whom, what the vows are, why those vows are no longer regretted--these are all satisfying kept out of the poem. A particularly tender poem depicted his elderly father discussing hand holding as they held hands, the softness of each other completing with affection their long isolated bodies. But Liu’s poems often challenge the sentimentality that a love poem can offer: “What need do I have for the mirror you smashed/ when I have your fist to look on.”
Jeffrey McDaniel was quite funny, though his humor was carefully calibrated against dire concerns and tragic tones. With poems like “Eliot Spitzer Contemplates Fate” and “The Cuckold’s Survival Manual,” McDaniel made the audience laugh before swerving into darker territory. Many of his poems seemed to be about a failure to connect, about desires that isolated or frustrated the speaker. In one of the longer poems, McDaniel told the history of his body’s evocation of desire in men, from his adolescent years to the present. In ironic circumlocutions, he apologized for his inability to satisfy the desire he provoked, while his explicit refusal to judge them (especially the ones out trolling for high schoolers) came with it’s own indictment. This poem resonated perfectly against the Cuckold poems, in which the speaker’s wife is pleasured in great detail. In both poems, the speaker remains humiliatingly proximate to desire. In one case he is unpleasantly called to a pleasure that is not his own; in the other he is excluded from a pleasure that is rightfully his. His last poem was an elegy for a childhood friend.
Jacob Scheier was the softest spoken of the group. The Toronto based poet’s quiet voice pulled in the audience as he read poems about New York, his previous home. One poem lamented how New York can never live up to its life in the movies—how life has to continue in it’s messiness, while a movie about New York can close itself tidily. The poems deftly wove together strands of personal, familial, and political history. One poem about the sexual abuse of his mother ranged over the family’s Communist commitments and the various ways that the abuse was justified, including red-baiting. Scheier worked to inhabit his mother’s voice, a way of bringing back a woman who died in 2000. It closed out his own reading perfectly, and brought the evening to a close, letting his elegy resonate against Allegretti’s.
Gathered at Her Sky, a Celebration of Life, Black Love and Humanity: Award-Winning Poet/Artist/Filmmaker from Brooklyn Has New Book
Brant Lyon writes poetry, prose, and music. His anthologies include “A Cautionary Tale: Seven New York Performing Poets” (Uphook Press, 2008), Beauty Keeps Laying Its Sharp Knife Against Me” (Logochrysalis Productions, 2008), “The Company We Keep” (Poet Warrior Productions, 2003). His journals include Big City Lit, Lullwater Review, Rattle, Rogue Scholars. He is an editor of Uphook Press, contributing editor of BigCityLit, and curator of the poetry and music reading series, Hydrogen Jukebox, in NYC. For more information, go to logochrysalis.com.
Ronnie Norpel is a performance poet, actor, photographer and jock with a deep passion for the Phillies, where she spent seven seasons as a ballgirl and fan accommodation manager. In New York, “Ronnie G” was the muse and collaborator of Warhol Factory superstar Gerard Malanga, whose phot of Ronnie, “Marble of Light,” was included for the exhibition and catalogue, Artists of the Warhol Circle Then & Now. She studied acting in Hollywood and worked at the Zero One Gallery. Today, Ronnie reads monthly in NYC with the Upper Left Side Writers and Poets. Other readings include the Lower East Side Festival, the SynonymUS collective at Nuyorican Poets CafĂ©, and the Wild Angels at St. John the Divine.

Date: Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 3:20 PM
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| Gathered at Her Sky Life Poems by Tantra-zawadi ISBN 978-0-9841844-6-0 Paperback: 42 pages Poets Wear Prada, June 2010 $12.00 |

Tantra's writing oozes with the passion of Neruda and the sensitivity of Sonia. Her words can warm the coldest of hearts.
Bruce George
Co-Founder of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam
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| THRUM Poems by Joel Allegretti ISBN 978-0-9841844-4-6 Paperback: 38 pages Poets Wear Prada, March 2010 $12.00 |
In THRUM Joel Allegretti, deftly and delightfully, strums his magical musical instrument, which is poetry, as he forges fresh forms of songs and stories that are inspired by strummers' strings. “Context is everything,” Allegretti reminds us, and we’re planted in the heart of a global ancient/modern orchestra. Prepare yourself for the revelatory performance.
Martine Bellen
Author of Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems,1997 National Poetry Series selection







By George Held
Cuyahoga Falls, OH. (INS) Stung by the recent loss of its most famous citizens, the city of Cleveland is seeking to follow suit, leaving Ohio bereft of its second largest metropolis. The Municipal Council has appointed a delegation to negotiate with Sun Belt states to cut a deal to move this Rust Belt city to New Mexico or Arizona.
“We might have lost Lebron, Harvey Pekar, and George Steinbrenner,” said chief negotiator Walt Przybniec, “but at least the Cuyahoga River hasn’t caught fire for 40 years. Still, the weather sucks, no one comes to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame anymore, and even the cargo ships on Lake Erie are passing us by.”
On the other hand, Cleveland is rising on the list of most dangerous cities, ranking No. 7 in 2008. And Przybniec notes that white flight in the 1990s left only 38% of the city’s population made up of its former racial majority. “Let’s see if my relatives will stay in the suburbs or move to the Southwest with us,” he said.
The defection of Akron native LeBron James to the Miami Heat dimmed NBA title aspirations for the hometown Cavaliers in an otherwise dismal sports environment. The NFL Browns are perennial doormats and the Indians last won the World Series in 1948 and trail only the lowly Chicago Cubs for the longest drought since their last championship.
Asked how decaying Cleveland would appeal to the Sunbelt, Przybniec pointed to the Cleveland Clinic, a medical powerhouse, and Case Western Reserve University, ranked 37th in the nation. “We figure that Flagstaff AZ or Roswell NM could stand an infusion of Cleveland know-how,” he explained.
“Confidentially,” Przybniec added, “no one in C-town wants to live here anymore. That’s why Dennis Kucinich keeps running for Congress.”
