Remembering "The Wolf Man" Lon Chaney Jr

Lon Chaney, Jr (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973)

February 10, 2013 -- Lon Chaney, Jr.,  son of famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney, an American actor known for playing such characters as The Wolf Man, The Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster and Count Alucard for Universal, was born born Creighton Tull Chaney,  107 years ago today, on February 10, 1906 in Oklahoma City.

Joel Allegretti  recalls his own adolescent transformation and the famous wolf man in this excerpt from "The Wolf Man of St. Mark’s Place" from his latest book "Europa/Nippon/New York:: Poems/Not-Poems" (Poets Wear Prada, 2012):

Thanks to Universal Pictures, the werewolf relocated from superstition to celluloid. The studio’s initial offering, Werewolf of London (1935), left nary a paw print at the box office. The second, The Wolf Man (1941), transformed the creature into a genre matinee idol who joined the rarefied movie-monster pantheon, taking his distinguished place next to Dracula, Frankenstein’s creature and the Mummy. Objects associated with the werewolf — full moon, silver bullets — entered the popular lexicon in the picture’s wake.

My personal experience was considerably less picturesque than that of Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney the younger). There was nightfall, but no machine-generated fog, no gypsy’s portentous utterances, no Béla Lugosi in one of his progressively lesser roles. I roomed with two other New York University graduates in a tiny apartment three floors above a record shop on St. Mark’s Place in East Greenwich Village. In the summer of ’75, I had the itch to leave the reek of Manhattan. Instead of going home to Minneapolis, I decided a long weekend upstate was the ideal prescription and bought a bus ticket to Monticello, where my mother’s cousin lived.

On Saturday night — I think it was close to midnight (how appropriate) — while the family was in bed, I took a walk in the backyard along the edge of the woods. Yes, the moon was full and as bright as a klieg light. Out from the trees a German shepherd puppy bounded up to me. Laughing out of surprise as well as glee, I wiggled my fingers in the critter’s snout. It thanked me for my playful gesture by closing its callow jaws on my hand and bolting back into the forest. Under the moonshine, I saw the miserable animal had broken skin. I rushed into the house and treated the wound with hydrogen peroxide, a gauze pad and adhesive tape. The next morning, I was in the local emergency room for a rabies shot.
 
I was dying to abbreviate my trip and late in the afternoon boarded the bus to  New York — this in spite of Cousin Maria’s protests. Did I mention she had the same first name as the actress who played the gypsy woman in The Wolf Man? Don’t you love coincidence?
 
Back in the city and feeling weak from the needle, I sprawled on the sofa by the living room window. One roommate stepped out to buy me a falafel sandwich. The other was somewhere.
 
The full moon spilled itself on me, and I learned the little German shepherd was neither German nor shepherd.
 
Chaney Jr.’s shape-shifting scenes are colorful. They had to be if the film was going to lure moviegoers. I’m sorry to report the real-world transmutation is removed from the fanciful worlds of cinema and village beliefs. No, I don’t sprout hair like a sideshow freak, although my eyebrows do acquire a Vlad the Impaler bushiness (pardon the mixed metaphor) and a day’s five o’clock shadow takes on the look of two days’ worth. My canine teeth don’t gain a couple of inches. My voice is my voice, but with a dash of Louis Armstrong. I don’t feed on human biceps; raw pot roast fits the bill. The profound shift is in my personality. The closest analogy is Mr. Hyde. Still, werewolf or plain old were, I’m an American, damn it. Derring-do fills my bones as much as marrow. My father was a Minnesota state assemblyman who always taught me the following: Whether fortune blesses you or misfortune befalls you, ask yourself, “How can I capitalize on this?”
 
The Bowery was only a hop, skip and a lunge away, so I loped to CBGB, called myself Lou Garou and formed a punk-rock band with a trio of like-minded fellows. I was the lead singer.
 
Our name? The Larry Talbots.

[First published in "KNOCK"]

EUROPA/NIPPON/NEW YORK: Poems/Not-Poems
by Joel Allegrettei
ISBN 978-0615600208
Soft Cover, Perfect Bound 52pp.
$12.00
Release Date: March 25, 2012
Now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615600204
and from CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/3785527

Pop culture chronicler Allegretti leads readers of his latest book on a cinematic journey through time and space replete with airplanes, submarines, the expected cathedral stops, plus surprise encounters with marquee idols and urban legends. “Come, children, and take your seat for ‘Europa/Nippon/New York,’ where Joel Allegretti spans the globe with ears to the ground and eyes toward the stars,” Daniel Nestor, author of “How to Be Inappropriate,” urges. Commends Peter Covino, winner of the 2007 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, “Everything instructs, engages, and delights us through the wide-angle lens of this wonderful new collection where ‘the next world is the next movie.’”

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year!

   Xin Nian Kuai Le， 新年快乐
GUNG HAY FAT CHOY 恭喜发财

February 10, 2013 -- Gung Hay Fat Choy! 恭喜发财 Today is Chinese New Year's Day, the first day of the first month of the lunisolar year in the lunar calendar, and marks the beginning of the Spring Festival, the longest and most important festival in  the Chinese calender, which ends with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. The new year will be the year of the black snake.  New Year's Day is a time to forget your grudges, reconcile with friends and family and sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.  Cleanse your home, sweep away any ill-fortune to make way for good incoming luck.

To celebrate Chinese New Year we are sharing a poem by  by Erik La Prade, from MOVIE LOGIC: Poems, La Prade's new book of poetry from Poets Wear Prada:

 

New Year’s Secret

On Sunday afternoons, the old Chinese
Fortune readers hang red cloths on the gated
Metal entrance to Confucius Park, Chinatown.
Since they speak no English, they each have
A woman to translate questions.
Most of the readers are refugees from
Pre-Mao China. Too old after World War II
To be reeducated, they would have disappeared
Had they owned land or houses,
Or dabbled in superstition.
I stand by the entrance, looking at their faces,
As several of them offer to read my palm.
Their pet songbirds, housed in wooden cages,
Sit on the lawn. Occasionally, the birds’ songs
Mix with the sounds of men playing mah-jongg
At nearby chess tables. After twenty
Minutes, it costs me ten dollars to learn
I’ll live to be eighty-six.

For your own fortune visit: http://www.gotohoroscope.com/2013-horoscope/chinese-new-year.html 

MOVIE LOGIC: Poems by Erik La Prade

List Price: $12.00

5.5" x 8.5" (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Black & White on White paper
36 pages

Poets Wear Prada
ISBN-13: 978-0615761237 (Custom)
ISBN-10: 0615761232
BISAC: Poetry / American / General

"In this latest collection Erik La Prade continues his cinematic verse celebration of urbanity and human tenderness, showing us life freeze-framed into mise-en-scènes of hilarity and heartbreak, as he walks the high wire of a 21st-century NYC life in the arts."

— ALAN KAUFMAN, author of Drunken Angel, 

editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry 

 "La Prade is a gifted poet, memoirist, critic, photographer, and urban chronicler of lost artistic and literary byways, with a historian's eye for New York cultural history and downtown avant-garde. Put simply, he dazzles."

— GARY SHAPIRO, journalist 

Now available at CreateSpace.com: https://www.createspace.com/4146252
And on Amazon.com: http://amzn.com/dp/0615761232/

Remembering American Poet Musician Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) Part II

An excerpt from "Four Poems for Sidney Lanier" by Erik La Prade, from MOVIE LOGIC: Poems,La Prade's forthcoming book of poetry from Poets Wear Prada:

Henry Ritter
Ema Ritter
Dema Ritter
Sweet Potatoe
Creamatarter
Caroline Bostick
Daughter of
Bob & Suckey Catlen
Born at Social Circle
1843
Died at Wetumka 1852

Four Poems for Sidney Lanier

III
Mid-August. Here, at the confluence of the Coosa and
The Tallapoosa, the Alabama River forms.
West of the river is the city cemetery, where
My people are buried. The oldest
Graves in Section G have no names or stones,
Only humps of rock sticking up from the ground.
Other names are recorded in the cemetery books.
The sun is hot and I don’t have a hat.
My great aunt walks back to the car
While I stand here, reading the tombstone
Of a much-named nine-year old girl —
“Henry Ritter,” “Ema Ritter,” “Dema Ritter,”
“Sweet Potatoe,” “Creamatarter,” real name:
“Caroline Bostick” — dead before
I was born. Her gravestone nicknames are
Scratched over like grooves on
A wax cylinder. My father recited those
Names to me when I was a kid.
Now, I can almost hear
The voices of schoolchildren echoing
Among the graves.

My aunt has lived her whole life in this small town,
And only escaped dying young with the
Help of a White lawyer.
Nothing I write now will
Change how these people — Black or White —
Lived their small-town lives.
Sweat covers my forehead. I need a drink.

Remembering American Poet Musician Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) Part I

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)

February 3, 2013 -- Today marks the 171st birthday of American poet, musician, academic Sidney Lanier, best known for his unfinished "Hymns of the Marshes," which describe the vast, open salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia, and for his novel "Tiger Lillies," detailing  the gruesome hardships of war.  He developed a unique style of poetry written in logaoedic dactyls, which was strongly influenced by the works of his beloved Anglo-Saxon poets.

A Birthday Song. To S. G.

by Sidney Lanier

For ever wave, for ever float and shine
Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine
Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine,

A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread
Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead,
Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o'erhead.

This vine bore many blossoms, which were years.
Their petals, red with joy, or bleached by tears,
Waved to and fro i' the winds of hopes and fears.

Here all men clung, each hanging by his spray.
Anon, one dropped; his neighbor 'gan to pray;
And so they clung and dropped and prayed, alway.

But I did mark one lately-opened bloom,
Wherefrom arose a visible perfume
That wrapped me in a cloud of dainty gloom.

And rose -- an odor by a spirit haunted --
And drew me upward with a speed enchanted,
Swift floating, by wild sea or sky undaunted,

Straight through the cloud of death, where men are free.
I gained a height, and stayed and bent my knee.
Then glowed my cloud, and broke and unveiled thee.

"O flower-born and flower-souled!" I said,
"Be the year-bloom that breathed thee ever red,
Nor wither, yellow, down among the dead.

"May all that cling to sprays of time, like me,
Be sweetly wafted over sky and sea
By rose-breaths shrining maidens like to thee!"

Then while we sat upon the height afar
Came twilight, like a lover late from war,
With soft winds fluting to his evening star.

And the shy stars grew bold and scattered gold,
And chanting voices ancient secrets told,
And an acclaim of angels earthward rolled.

To read more poems by Sidney Lanier visit: http://www.poemhunter.com/sidney-lanier/poems/

Ballad of a Weekend - Part II & III

From MOVIE LOGIC: Poems, Erik La Prade's forthcoming book of poetry from Poets Wear Prada:

Ballad of a Weekend

II

In the bedroom’s fireplace,

The fire that burned Rome

Glows: a red shadow,

Reflected in the old clock’s glass face,

Turning time to diamond-hard memory.

Nearby, a violin hangs on the wall;

Its broken strings, like crèche angels, implore us

To repent from our morning lust,

And save ourselves from old faults.

III

Sailing, we drift in a haze of water …

Blue Chinese waves on porcelain.

Fuck your analyst!

I don’t want you to understand me,

Or give me a lecture

On the language of the senses —

Not while the breeze is cool on my skin

And I can watch you sunbathe nude.

 

MOVIE LOGIC: Poems by Erik La Prade

List Price: $12.00

5.5" x 8.5" (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Black & White on White paper
36 pages

Poets Wear Prada
ISBN-13: 978-0615761237 (Custom)
ISBN-10: 0615761232
BISAC: Poetry / American / General

"In this latest collection Erik La Prade continues his cinematic verse celebration of urbanity and human tenderness, showing us life freeze-framed into mise-en-scènes of hilarity and heartbreak, as he walks the high wire of a 21st-century NYC life in the arts."

— ALAN KAUFMAN, author of Drunken Angel, 

editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry 

 "La Prade is a gifted poet, memoirist, critic, photographer, and urban chronicler of lost artistic and literary byways, with a historian's eye for New York cultural history and downtown avant-garde. Put simply, he dazzles."

— GARY SHAPIRO, journalist

TGIF! A Poem to Kick Off the Weekend - Part I

From MOVIE LOGIC: Poems, Erik La Prade's forthcoming book of poetry from Poets Wear Prada:

Ballad of a Weekend

I

I remember what you wrote,

As the sound of your voice

Fills the room tonight

With sudden memories.

Your cryptic apologies

Are ridiculous now,

As when you spoke of faults

In the Earth, or of an ice age

Alive with controversy:

How buried borders

Would suddenly surface

To cover us in shapeless

Earth, the landscape

Itself moving,

Shaking down the walls

Of our room with the dust

Of timbers.

“The mind has mountains,” you said,

Quoting Hopkins. But, when the night

Folded itself into napkins of light,

I still didn’t want to read your letter,

Or, even, clean up the scattered pieces

From the floor, and so left them

Lying in the gray sand.


TO BE CONTINUED ...

MOVIE LOGIC: Poems by Erik La Prade

List Price: $12.00

5.5" x 8.5" (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Black & White on White paper
36 pages

Poets Wear Prada
ISBN-13: 978-0615761237 (Custom)
ISBN-10: 0615761232
BISAC: Poetry / American / General

"In this latest collection Erik La Prade continues his cinematic verse celebration of urbanity and human tenderness, showing us life freeze-framed into mise-en-scènes of hilarity and heartbreak, as he walks the high wire of a 21st-century NYC life in the arts."

— ALAN KAUFMAN, author of Drunken Angel, 

editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry 

 "La Prade is a gifted poet, memoirist, critic, photographer, and urban chronicler of lost artistic and literary byways, with a historian's eye for New York cultural history and downtown avant-garde. Put simply, he dazzles."

— GARY SHAPIRO, journalist

January 30th: Remembering Steam Engines & O Winston Link

Train No. 17 Crosses Bridge 201, Wurno Siding, c. 1957

[Photo Credit: O. Winston Link]

Train No. 17
Crosses Bridge 201,
Wurno Siding, c. 1957

                              by Erik La Prade

After the Photograph by O. Winston Link

Norfolk and Western Engine #601
Runs over a bridge,
Crossing the New River at night.

The engineer leans out of the window,
Looking straight ahead —
While a trail of white smoke
Replaces the horizon.

Below the bridge —
A man drives a 1955 Buick,
Following the road as it turns right.
His face is blurred.
He is about to leave the photograph,
Going somewhere. Maybe going home —
Or leaving it.

From Erik La Prade's forthcoming poetry collection, Movie Magic, soon to be released from Poets Wear Prada in February 2013. 

January 30, 2013, New York, NY -- Rail fan photographer Ogle Winston Link, known for his exemplary documentary photographs of the last of America's steam locomotives, died 12 years ago this day.  

O. Winston Link, George Thom and night flash Equipment. New York, March 16, 1956
O. Winston Link, courtesy the O. Winston Link Museum

  

.

For more information  about Link and his photographs:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/when-steam-locomotion-ground-to-a-halt/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/o-winston-link

January 29th: Remembering John McWhinnie (1968-2012)

JOHN MCWHINNIE

Andrew H. Walker/Getty Image

Movie Logic
by Erik La Prade

For John McWhinnie (1968–2012)

Narrative and plot don’t move
In the same time frame. Jump cuts
Cue up style and motive.

The director’s vision arcs
Through everything, apparent
When some coincidence or deliberate
Accident makes an exit or sparks

Disaster. Is it cinematic truth
Or our own suspension of disbelief
We’re watching? It doesn’t matter.
We sit here awaiting the inevitable.

From Erik La Prade's forthcoming poetry collection of the same title.

January 29, 2013, New York, NY -- John McWhinnie, rare-book expert and art dealer in New York, "champion of words and images on paper in an age of electronic reading" would be 45 today, had he not been killed in a snorkeling accident in the British Virgin Islands last year on January 6th.   Mr. McWhinnie who began selling rare books as a Boston College student was the director of John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, a rare-book shop and gallery at 50 ½ East 64th Street in Manhattan. He met Mr. Horowitz at a book fair as a graduate student and subsequently managed Mr. Horowitz bookshop and gallery in South Hampton, Long Island.  The Manhattan store opened 2005.  As a bookseller, Mr. McWhinnie specialized in the 20th and 21st centuries, concentrating in particular on the Beats. As a gallerist, Mr. McWhinnie exhibited well-known contemporary artists like Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, as well as up-and-coming artists. With Mr. Horowitz, Mr. McWhinnie also ran a small publishing imprint, JMc & GHB Editions, which produced artists’ books and exhibition catalogs. He is survived by his wife, Maria Beaulieu,  his sister, Lisa Paradis, and his  parents, John and Betty McWhinnie. [source: NYTimes]

The smell of the paper, the design of the cover, the tattered pages and convenient cocktail napkin employed as a bookmark, all experiences before the reading, remain the hallmarks of John, as presentable and gracious a fellow as ever walked Park Avenue.

-- Charlie Finch, ArtNet.com

Chocolate Waters & Elaine Sexton Jan 29 @ Bluestockings

Chocolate Waters

I'm delighted to be reading from my new book and from earlier work at Bluestockings in NYC and happy to share the bill w/Elaine Sexton, this Tues. Jan 29 @7 p.m.

"Chocolate Waters's The Woman Who Wouldn't Shake Hands is a romp with a gymnast of poetic wordplay. Waters' wit can leave you in stitches one moment, only to reveal the sardonic undertones of her meaning in the next, turning you warm to chilled with the simple flip of the wrist."

 ~ Chavisa Woods 

Elaine Sexton continues to explore text as “evidence,” the poem as a collage of spent things, words and images reconstituted to make fresh shapes. She is the author of Sleuth and Causeway, both published by New Issues.

  

Women's & Trans' Poetry Jam

@ 

Bluestockings 

172 Allen Street 

(between Stanton and Rivington) 

212.777.6028 

Host by Vittoria Repetto

I look forward to seeing YOU there.

Chocolate Waters

* * *


Host Vittoria Repetto is the author of "Not Just A Personal Ad" (Guernica Editiions, 2006) and "Head For the Van Wyck" (Monkey Cat Press, 1995). She has been hosting the Women's & Trans’ Poetry Jam at Bluestockings Bookstore since its opening in 1999. 

An open mic for women and trans introduces the featured readers. 

A suggested donation of $5 helps to support our features.

The Women Who Wouldn't Shake Hands by Chocolate Waters
(Poets Wear Prada, 2011)

Copies of Ms. Waters latest collection will be available for purchase and signing.  Books can also be purchased online at Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and B&N.

A Midsummer Reading w. Jack Cooper ~ July 25 ~ 7pm

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Times, run softly till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of New York I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Times, run softly til I end my song.
Sweet Times, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
-- T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

HAPPY SUMMER!

And, a cool evening of poetry Wednesday, July 25, 7:00-9:30pm * * The Green Pavilion Poetry Event * * * (The Gala event for poetry. Have dinner with the Muse, all 9 of them!) * 4307-18th Ave. Bk * * * (F train to 18th Ave. station. Last car coming from Manh, right staircase to street. You will be only about 1/2 block away from rest., same block you will be standing on.) * Join Us. Come read your work, or your favorite poet under the chandeliers! * * One of the longest running poetry venues in the NYC area.

 * * Our two featured readers for the evening, don't miss:
* J O S H U A M E A N D E R * * * J A C K C O O P E R * + o p e n r e a d i n g *                   *                              *                                    

* $5.00 min. toward rest. (an inexpensive & diverse menu, have dinner, snack, or wine with your poetry.) * $3.00 suggested donation. Your hosts: Evie Ivy, Cindy Hochman *

Coming Soon:
"The Venetian Hour" . . . Dinner with the Muse Part II- as before, those who have attended the venue, or have featured are welcome to submit to the anthology.

Some BIO Notes: John Jack Jackie (Edward) COOPER is the author of Ten (Poets Wear Prada, 2012), preview of his forthcoming “Aphorithms.” His American-English translation of Wax Women (Paris: International Art Office, 1985), with French texts of the original poems by Jean-Pierre Lemesle and photographs by Henry Jacobs, drew acclaim and dedicated full-window display from the Gotham Book Mart—legendary fishing hole to the “wise”—in New York, released in the United States the following year. His work has appeared online (exitstrata.com), forthcoming in the Unbearables' new anthology next year; his reviews, in Publishers Weekly and The Book Review of The Sunday New York Times. He has read manuscripts for Farrar, Straus & Giroux; served the Modern Language Association (MLA) as Research Associate; taught English, and counseled adult immigrants and refugees, in the ELESAIR Project, in Manhattan, for eleven years, financed by federal, state, and municipal grants—editing The Quilt, an anthology of student writings published by the Human Resources Administration (HRA). Content Producer at the GROW Network, a McGraw-Hill company, he edited Extensible Markup Language (XML), the evolving lingua franca linking human being to machine. Currently he is co-publisher and Production Editor of Poets Wear Prada.

Joshua Meander Most known as the host of Nomad's Choir Open Mic. and Publisher of a poetry journal with the same name. When he recites a poem he invokes the actor within. He takes a great pride in enhancing other artist to shine. A main stay on the poetry scene and a dear friend to his peers. A world traveler, he was in Egypt one month before the riots and last year he visited Romania and was not bit or impaled by Dracula. Just recently a friend from 25 years ago contacted him and Joshua informed his friend that he wrote a play based on his friend and the self-published book is entitled: Kept Away From The Shade. Joshua has been featured every year at the Green Pavilion since 1992 so, thanks to a generous an insightful and host and an equally supportive audience this is the 20th time his has been featured. Thank you all for continued support and if he didn't work week nights on the graveyard shift in Manhattan he would be a regular as this reading series. Host's note (Joshua has a lovely poem in the Green Pavilion Anthology – one of the “romantic ones” Vintage Comfort)

Kiwanis Summer Gazebo Readings Raise $$$ for Summer Camp; June 11: Teller, Savino, Cooper, Siegal and Goldstein Feature

SUMMER GAZEBO READING SERIES 

monday evenings 7-8 p.m. 

June, July and August

SCHOOLHOUSE GREEN
on Foxhurst Road
(just east of Long Beach Road
across from the Firehouse)
Oceanside, New York

FEATURING ON MONDAY JUNE 11TH:

Gayl Teller   Robert Savino   Jack Cooper

     Herbert Siegel   Gail Goldstein

HOST:  Tony Iovino

Free & Open to the Public
Bring Your Own Lawn Chair.

http://www.facebook.com/events/400692499973137/

Jack Cooper [Credit: Jay Franco, Inspired Word]

 

John Jack Jackie (Edward) COOPER is the author of "Ten" (Poets Wear Prada, 2012), preview of his forthcoming “Aphorithms.” His American English translation of "Wax Women," with French texts of the original poems by Jean-Pierre Lemesle and photographs by Henry Jacobs (International Art Office, Paris: 1985), drew acclaim and dedicated full-window display from the Gotham Book Mart in New York—legendary fishing hole to the “wise”—released in the United States the following year. His work has appeared online (exitstrata.com), his reviews in "The Times Book Review" and "Publisher's Weekly." He has read manuscripts for Farrar, Straus & Giroux; served the Modern Language Association (MLA) as research associate;  taught English for eleven years to refugees for the federally funded ELESAIR Project; and was an XML specialist and content production editor for McGraw-Hill/GROW Network. Currently, he is co-publisher and production editor for Poets Wear Prada, a small literary press based in Frank Sinatra's hometown, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Robert Savino

Robert Savino is a native Long Island poet and practicing retiree.  Among Savino's publications are a full-length book of poetry, Inside a Turtle Shell (Allbook Books, 2009), and a chapbook,  fireballs of an illuminated scarecrow (Good Japan Press, 2008).   Widely published his work has also appeared in a multitude of literary journals, Angelflesh, Avenging Spirit, Axe Factory, Babylon Review, Backstreet Quarterly, Black Book Press, Bone & Flesh, Conflict of Interest, Creations Magazine 2007, 2008, 2009, Ellipsis, Fan Magazine, Fulva Flava, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Home Planet News, In My Shoes, Incoming, Jerseyworks, Long Island Quarterly, Long Islander, Mad Poets Review, Mobius-The Poetry Magazine, Negative Capability, North American Review, Oberon, Poetry Motel, Poetry Superhighway, Rogue Scholars, Skyline Magazine, Skyline Review, Sport Literate, Surreal Underground, Tapestries, The Equinox, Urban Beat, Wooden Head Review, Xanadu, and several anthologies, Babyboomer Birthright (PoetWorks Press, 2013), Toward Forgiveness (Writers Ink Press, 2011), examination anthology (Local Gems Poetry Press, 2010), Long Island Sounds (The North Sea Poetry Scene Press, 2009), Long Island Sounds:2008 (The North Sea Poetry Scene Press, 2008), primal sanities (Allbook Books, 2007), The Light of City and Sea (Street Press, 2006). His awards include the Oberon Poetry Prize in 2008 and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society's 15th Annual Poetry Competition in 2005.

Gail Goldstein is a retired teacher who works with autistic children. She is published in numerous poetry anthologies and literary magazines ("Toward Forgiveness," "Mobius," "PPA Literary Review," "Long Island Sounds," etc.) and has won various poetry awards (Mobius, Farmingdale, Princess Ronkonkoma). She is on the editorial staff of several poetry anthologies. "Whispers and Shouts," an anthology of poetry written by women from Long Island, will be Gail’s first book. It is coming out later this year. Gail’s other passion is music. A percussionist, Gail is part of the drUUmatics, a West African drum ensemble performance group. Visit www.druumatics.org for more information.

Gayle Teller

Nassau County Poet Laureate (2009-2011), Gayl Teller received an MA from Columbia University and another MA from Queens College, CUNY.  Her poetry collections include "At the Intersection of Everything You Have Ever Loved," "Shorehaven," "Moving Day," and "One Small Kindness."  Her most recent poetry book, "Inside the Embrace," was selected in national competition to be published by WordTech/Cherry Grove. For 14 years,  director and founder of  Mid-Island Y JCC Poetry Reading in Plainview, NY, a reading sponsored in part by the NYSCA,  she's taught in the English department of Hofstra University since 1985.  Finalist for Nassau County Poet Laureate in 2007, she has conducted numerous poetry workshops and seminars and been the feature reader at many universities, poetry centers, and libraries.  Her work has received the Edgar Allan Poe Prize, the Peninsula Library Poetry Prize, a National Federation of State Poetry Societies Prize, a National League of American PEN Women Prize, and The Connecticut Writer Prize; "One Small Kindness" was a finalist for the Blue Light Poetry Prize.  Her poems are widely published and anthologized, and her book reviews have appeared frequently in "Small Press Review."

Herbert Siegel

Herbert Siegel, Ph.D., has been a CEO of major public companies and is the recipient of numerous professional certifications and awards. He also holds degrees in business and international law.  He has published four books of poetry including “Poems From My Drawer” (2007), “Poems For The Universe” (2009) and his most recent "Life Through My Glasses: Collected Poems, 1950–2011" (Trafford Publishing, 2011).  New York State Senior Poet Laureate (2009), he has received multiple awards for his poetry including the Ellen La Forge Foundation Poetry Prize, published by Grolier of Cambridge; Sketchbook; the Voice of the Bards; and the 2010 Award of Excellence from the Poetry Institute of Canada.Visit him online at  http://www.HerbSiegel.org.

The Kiwanis Club on Oceanside raises dollars to send children to summer camp through advertising sponsorships, program patronships and the sale of raffle tickets.

To date the following businesses are sponsoring this year's reading series with their corporate pledge of $150:
 

21st Century Appraisers

Bondi Iovino & Fusco, Attorneys-at-Law

Aaron Rappaport, D.D.S., P.C. & David Rappaport, D.M.D.

Anthony J. Santino, Councilman

Bonbino's Pizza & Restaurant

Dee's Nursery

Friedberg Jewish Community Center

Herb & Marion Brown

Home & Hearth Real Estate

Mary Jane McGrath, Attorney

Michael Schamroth and Family

Municipal Credit Union

Nassau Financial Federal Union

Oceanville Mason Supply

South Nassau Communities Hospital

Tower's Funeral Home

Westron Lighting

Advertising Sponsorships and Program Patronships are still available! Sponsorships are $150 and include the sponsor's business name and logo on signs, posters and the thousands of fliers the club distributes, as well as on all announcements (including every email the club sends).  Individuals can also participate as "Program Patrons" for $25.  "Program Patrons" will have their names listed on the programs the club will be distributing each week.

If you, or anyone you know, would like to become a sponsor or a Program Patron, send your check made payable to "Oceanside Kiwanis" to Tony Iovino at the address below-- email or include your logo and the listing you want us to print.

Tony Iovino
68 Yorktown Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
Home: 516-763-1667
Work: 516-741-8585
Cell: 516-459-3262
tonyiovino@gmail.com

Mon 6/11 Peter Chelnik's Go Cat Go! Poetry w/ George Wallace at Gracie's Corner Diner in Yorkville, NYC

Monday, June 11th

6:45 PM - 9 PM

Peter Chelnik's GO-CAT-GO! Poetry Event

~featuring~

GEORGE WALLACE

@

Gracie's Corner Diner

352 E 86th St

(First Avenue)

New York, NY 10028

Neighborhoods: Yorkville, Upper East Side

(212) 737-8505

http://graciescornerdinernyc.com

FREE!  Open Mic for Poetry

your food/beverage purchase helps support the venue

George Wallace, first Poet laureate of Suffolk County, professor at Pace University in New York, is the author of twenty chapbooks published in the US, UK, and Italy, Jumping Over The Moon (Boone's Dock Press, 2011), Poppin Johnny (New York: Three Rooms Press, 2009) and Summer of Love, Summer of Love (Shivastan Press, 2008), the most recent. A  full-length poetry book, Incident on the Orient Express, was just released by Nirala Publications, Nepal. Winner of the CW Post Poetry Prize, Wallace is  editor of poetrybay.com, poetryvlog. com, Long Island Quarterly and "Walt's Corner" in the Long Islander newspaper. An author whose work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Bengali, Russian, and Macedonian, he has traveled extensively to perform his work and to teach poetry workshops. Described as "Poetry's Rock Star" (Samantha Weiner, Long Island Examiner), Wallace is a a well-known and highly regarded poetry promoter.  He hosts monthly poetry readings at The Poetry Café at The Conklin Barn, Huntington and co-hosts the Go-Cat-Go Poetry Event with Peter Chelnik at the Greenwich Village Bistro.  Wallace was name 2011-2012 Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

 

Peter Chelnik

Publisher/Editor Roxanne writes a little bit about the host of Go Cat Go!:

Peter Chelnik is responsible for getting me to read my work in public.  In 2003 I went to hear him read at The Back Fence at Dee Anne Gorman's invitation.  I had never met him before. There was this big burly "all-American" guy at the mic wearing his trademark Pendleton plaid wool shirt, baseball cap, glasses, mustache. reading list poems and what lists he read.  It sounded like jazz rants. No music.  But he was making music with his words.And his words were filled with American people and American scenes. big and real just like him. He was terrific.  Then after the reading broke up, Bridgid Murnagham, reading curator and our waitress for the day, dragged Dee and me on to the stage to read from our notebooks while Chelnik, along with his brother and nephew cheered us on.

We became fast friends, and Herb and I had the pleasure of publishing a chapbook of his poetry,  "Paradise Highway," four years later in 2007.