Attention New Yorkers!!
Tonight is InDigest 1207, again. We've got two great readers tonight: James Hannaham, author of God Says No [McSweeneys, 2009] and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, who has a couple of poems that will appear in the very next issue of InDigest.
As always, the revelry starts at 6pm and the reading will start at 7pm at (le) Poisson Rouge on Bleecker.
Showing posts with label InDigest 1207. Show all posts
Showing posts with label InDigest 1207. Show all posts
11.04.2009
9.29.2009
J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul
In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog.
In the fourth and final installment of J.C. Hallman's series of essays about his forthcoming book The Story About the Story he discusses what makes the essays in that book stand apart from traditional literary criticism. Thanks to Tin House Books and J.C. Hallman for partnering with InDigest to bring you this series of essays.
J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul
The essays in The Story About the Story differ from traditional literary criticism in many ways. They contemplate rather than argue. They do not artificially sublimate subjectivity. They preserve mystery instead of dissecting it. And often they expand the scope of what they are willing to address so as to speak to the basics--the history, the process, the purpose--of literature itself.
I didn't quite mean to do this when I started collecting pieces for the book, but the essays in The Story About the Story add up to a solid century's worth of literary wisdom--straight from the horses' mouths.
In the fourth and final installment of J.C. Hallman's series of essays about his forthcoming book The Story About the Story he discusses what makes the essays in that book stand apart from traditional literary criticism. Thanks to Tin House Books and J.C. Hallman for partnering with InDigest to bring you this series of essays.
J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul
The essays in The Story About the Story differ from traditional literary criticism in many ways. They contemplate rather than argue. They do not artificially sublimate subjectivity. They preserve mystery instead of dissecting it. And often they expand the scope of what they are willing to address so as to speak to the basics--the history, the process, the purpose--of literature itself.
I didn't quite mean to do this when I started collecting pieces for the book, but the essays in The Story About the Story add up to a solid century's worth of literary wisdom--straight from the horses' mouths.
This wisdom takes a number of forms.
Cynthia Ozick ("Truman Capote Reconsidered") begins with an elegant aphorism: "Time at length becomes justice." Similarly, Nabokov ("'The Metamorphosis'") introduces Kafka with a rapid-fire definition of art, "Beauty plus pity," a maxim that a few pages later is met with Camus' insistence ("Herman Melville") that Melville is the furthest thing from Kafka but still offers "inexhaustible sources of strength and pity."
Other contributors suggest trends. Michael Chabon ("The Other James") recalls that "all stories...descend from the fireside tale, told with wolves in the woods all around..." and Frank O'Connor ("An Author in Search of a Subject") contrasts Katherine Mansfield with "Joyce and Proust, who in their different, more worldly ways were also attempting a magical approach to literature by trying to make the printed page not a description of something that had happened but a substitute for what had happened."
The book's essays often seek to make the effect and purpose of reading a visceral experience. William Gass ("In Terms of the Toenail: Fiction and the Figures of Life") describes beginning a book ("How easy it is to enter. An open book, an open eye, and the first page lifts toward us like a fragrance...") and Susan Sontag ("Loving Dostoevsky"), on ending one, is "purged, shaken, fortified, breathing a little deeper, grateful to literature for what it can harbor and exemplify."
On the stakes of literature, Robert Hass ("Lowell's Graveyard") finds a metaphor for a poem's capacity to change life irrevocably: "Poems take place in your life, or some of them do, like the...day the trucks came and the men began to tear up the wooden sidewalks and the cobblestone gutters outside your house and laid down new cement curbs and asphalt streets." Charles D'Ambrosio ("Salinger and Sobs") unapologetically articulates why he reads at all: "Admittedly, wanting practical advice is a pretty primitive idea of what a book should do, but...I didn't know any better, and probably still don't."
Walter Kirn ("Good-bye, Holden Caulfield. I Mean It. Go! Good-Bye!") reveals the true life of books: "People tell me that the mark of a great book is the way that it sticks with you, stays vivid over time, but I disagree. The best books fade into the scenery, dissolve into instant backdrop, return to dust. But that dust is never the same; it's changed forever." And E.B. White, writing of Thoreau, proposes that the reader-writer relationship is much more than a contract: "He is a better companion than most, and I would not swap him for a soberer or more reasonable friend even if I could."
Sven Birkerts ("On a Stanza by John Keats") sets out to question the whole business of writing about reading--"Is beauty that has been made out of words impervious to other words?" To which Phyllis Rose (an excerpt from The Year of Reading Proust) offers an answer: "No matter how full we make our accounts of reading...what we produce is less than the text it describes."
But of course, what's at stake in the writing life is more than just chat. Seamus Heaney ("Learning from Eliot") reminds us that a writer's life means "the disciplining of a habit of expression until it becomes fundamental to the whole conduct of a life."
The Story About the Story is full of such-disciplined souls.
__________________________________
Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.
J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.
J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.
9.18.2009
J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung
In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog. Thanks very much to Tin House and to J.C. Hallman.
J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung
The essays collected in The Story About the Story
assault the institution of literary criticism.
The problem with literary criticism is not that critical actions conducted on literary texts do them damage--the problem is the way in which critical actions tend to be conducted. There's a basic contradiction built into the system: dry, soul-deadening, derivative, entirely dispassionate prose is used to dissect literature that is supposed to be inspiring, passionate, creative, and unique. Worse, this critical doublespeak has become the way in which we expose literature to new readers, to kids. The insidiousness with which literary criticism has infected the culture and targeted children recalls the basic marketing strategy of religious cults and tobacco companies. The present low status of serious reading should not surprise anyone. The Story About the Story wants to believe that this hobbling of our collective soul is like a smoker's lungs: if we quit the bad habit of setting out to write poorly about good writing we can heal ourselves.
The collected essays approach the problem in a number of ways.
James Wood, in an essay from The Broken Estate, offers a novel description of "interrogating" texts. The interrogation strategy--familiar to anyone who has attended an English department meeting or scholarly conference--is as worthy of Edmund Wilson as Abu Ghraib: "Having been caught out," Wood writes, "the poem is triumphantly led off in golden chains; the detective writes up his report in hideous prose, making sure to flatter himself a bit, and then goes home to a well-deserved drink."
Not all in The Story About the Story are quite so angry.
As a schoolboy, Seamus Heaney ("Learning from Eliot") was left scrambling for metaphors to describe initial exposure to T.S. Eliot. "But, of course," he laments, "we were not encouraged to talk like that in English class."
Wallace Stegner ("On Steinbeck's story 'Flight'") notes that literature swarms with interconnected images, but warns against a tendency to go beyond simply noting and enjoying those connections. "The ingredients are all there, and must be noticed, for they are the literal instruments of both truth and suspense. But let us not take them apart, and let us not imagine that when we have become aware of them we have 'explained' the story, or laid bare the mystery of its composition."
Which is what Robert Hass worries about in "Lowell's Graveyard." Not only do literary critics attempt to explain poems, he claims, they project meaning where there is none. Wondering whether "In the Quaker Graveyard" contains imagery of crucifixion as redemption, Hass decides that "three or four pages of [tedious] theological explication could put it there, but it isn't in the poem."
Some take the problem downright personally.
Virginia Woolf ("An Essay in Criticism") equates her annoyance with Hemingway--he's too macho--with literary criticism in general, leaving her eloquently befuddled: "But what reason there is for believing in critics it is impossible to say. They have neither wigs nor outriders. They differ in no way from other people if one sees them in the flesh. Yet these insignificant fellow creatures have only to shut themselves up in a room, dip a pen in the ink, and call themselves 'we,' for the rest of us to believe that they are somehow exalted, inspired, infallible....No greater miracle was ever performed by the power of human credulity."
Geoff Dyer hits an even more fevered pitch. On the occasion of being given a collection of critical essays on D.H. Lawrence (in an excerpt from Out of Sheer Rage), Dyer frets his way to the perhaps hyperbolic theory that criticism and book burning are synonymous: "How could it have happened? How could these people with no feeling for literature have ended up teaching it, writing about it? I should have stopped there, should have avoided looking at it any more, but I didn't because telling myself to stop always has the effect of egging me on. Instead, I kept looking at this group of wankers huddled in a circle, backs turned to the world so that no one would see them pulling each other off....Then I looked around for the means to destroy his vile, filthy book. In the end it took a whole box of matches and some risk of personal injury before I succeeded in deconstructing it."
So should criticism simply be chucked, as Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels prescribe for theory-based criticism in "Against Theory"? No. In fact, all the essays in The Story About the Story conduct a critical action (even Out of Sheer Rage occasionally reads like straightforward analysis). Collectively the message is this: serious criticism contextualizes itself in the critic's subjective perception--the subject is the writer, as much as it is the text. In "Mr. Pater's Last Volume" Oscar Wilde offers a miniature manifesto for the critical enterprise, long forgotten: "The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure."
In other words, good writing about literature is unique, passionate, inspiring, and creative. Robert Hass captures the debate in a single line: "You can analyze the music of poetry but it's difficult to conduct an argument about its value, especially when it's gotten into the blood."
Which should be the whole point, shouldn't it?
_________________________________________________________
Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.
J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.
J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.
J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung
The essays collected in The Story About the Story
assault the institution of literary criticism.The problem with literary criticism is not that critical actions conducted on literary texts do them damage--the problem is the way in which critical actions tend to be conducted. There's a basic contradiction built into the system: dry, soul-deadening, derivative, entirely dispassionate prose is used to dissect literature that is supposed to be inspiring, passionate, creative, and unique. Worse, this critical doublespeak has become the way in which we expose literature to new readers, to kids. The insidiousness with which literary criticism has infected the culture and targeted children recalls the basic marketing strategy of religious cults and tobacco companies. The present low status of serious reading should not surprise anyone. The Story About the Story
wants to believe that this hobbling of our collective soul is like a smoker's lungs: if we quit the bad habit of setting out to write poorly about good writing we can heal ourselves.The collected essays approach the problem in a number of ways.
James Wood, in an essay from The Broken Estate, offers a novel description of "interrogating" texts. The interrogation strategy--familiar to anyone who has attended an English department meeting or scholarly conference--is as worthy of Edmund Wilson as Abu Ghraib: "Having been caught out," Wood writes, "the poem is triumphantly led off in golden chains; the detective writes up his report in hideous prose, making sure to flatter himself a bit, and then goes home to a well-deserved drink."
Not all in The Story About the Story
are quite so angry.As a schoolboy, Seamus Heaney ("Learning from Eliot") was left scrambling for metaphors to describe initial exposure to T.S. Eliot. "But, of course," he laments, "we were not encouraged to talk like that in English class."
Wallace Stegner ("On Steinbeck's story 'Flight'") notes that literature swarms with interconnected images, but warns against a tendency to go beyond simply noting and enjoying those connections. "The ingredients are all there, and must be noticed, for they are the literal instruments of both truth and suspense. But let us not take them apart, and let us not imagine that when we have become aware of them we have 'explained' the story, or laid bare the mystery of its composition."
Which is what Robert Hass worries about in "Lowell's Graveyard." Not only do literary critics attempt to explain poems, he claims, they project meaning where there is none. Wondering whether "In the Quaker Graveyard" contains imagery of crucifixion as redemption, Hass decides that "three or four pages of [tedious] theological explication could put it there, but it isn't in the poem."
Some take the problem downright personally.
Virginia Woolf ("An Essay in Criticism") equates her annoyance with Hemingway--he's too macho--with literary criticism in general, leaving her eloquently befuddled: "But what reason there is for believing in critics it is impossible to say. They have neither wigs nor outriders. They differ in no way from other people if one sees them in the flesh. Yet these insignificant fellow creatures have only to shut themselves up in a room, dip a pen in the ink, and call themselves 'we,' for the rest of us to believe that they are somehow exalted, inspired, infallible....No greater miracle was ever performed by the power of human credulity."
Geoff Dyer hits an even more fevered pitch. On the occasion of being given a collection of critical essays on D.H. Lawrence (in an excerpt from Out of Sheer Rage), Dyer frets his way to the perhaps hyperbolic theory that criticism and book burning are synonymous: "How could it have happened? How could these people with no feeling for literature have ended up teaching it, writing about it? I should have stopped there, should have avoided looking at it any more, but I didn't because telling myself to stop always has the effect of egging me on. Instead, I kept looking at this group of wankers huddled in a circle, backs turned to the world so that no one would see them pulling each other off....Then I looked around for the means to destroy his vile, filthy book. In the end it took a whole box of matches and some risk of personal injury before I succeeded in deconstructing it."
So should criticism simply be chucked, as Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels prescribe for theory-based criticism in "Against Theory"? No. In fact, all the essays in The Story About the Story
conduct a critical action (even Out of Sheer Rage occasionally reads like straightforward analysis). Collectively the message is this: serious criticism contextualizes itself in the critic's subjective perception--the subject is the writer, as much as it is the text. In "Mr. Pater's Last Volume" Oscar Wilde offers a miniature manifesto for the critical enterprise, long forgotten: "The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure."In other words, good writing about literature is unique, passionate, inspiring, and creative. Robert Hass captures the debate in a single line: "You can analyze the music of poetry but it's difficult to conduct an argument about its value, especially when it's gotten into the blood."
Which should be the whole point, shouldn't it?
_________________________________________________________
Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.
J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.
J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.9.10.2009
Dana Rossi Added to InDigest 1207 in October
Dana Rossi, a freelance writer and stage manager, who has written for Time Out New York, Broken Pencil, and New York Press will be reading along with J.C. Hallman on Wednesday, October 7 in InDigest's monthly reading series, InDigest 1207.
Rossi recently won a New York Press Association Award for a feature article she did on actors understudying celebs on Broadway. Her blog is Party in the Back and it compares current events, trends, and news to 80s movies. On the theater side, she has most recently stage managed at Manhattan Theatre Source and at Soho Playhouse in the NYC Fringe Festival and Encore Series (where she also sound designed her first show). When she's not stage managing, writing articles, or comparing the state of the economy to Back to the Future Part II, she works as a story analyst for Sony Pictures Television.
For more info, go here.
7.21.2009
InDigest Under Construction
As you can tell by the lack of content on the site the last month or so, we're taking a little break. This is not (only) because the summer has finally come to New York and we are out playing Frisbee in the parks. It's because InDigest is currently under the knife, getting a major face lift. We have brought on board a very talented designer and programmer and they are doing amazing things with the look and feel of the magazine, which we hope to unveil sometime in August.
Until then, take this time to catch up on some of the content you didn't get a chance to read and/or look at the first time around. How about these amazing poems by Ada Limón, "61 Trees" and "Rest Stop"? These poems will be included in a book coming out with cinematheque press later this summer. And Ada was recently in The New Yorker; her poem "Crush" found its way into the summer fiction issue.
Maybe fiction is more your thing. How about a story from the early days of InDigest by Sam Osterhout? Sam is currently the host of Radio Happy Hour, a live old-timey radio show that welcomes special guests, such as Norah Jones, Michael Showalter, and Andrew W.K., to perform as themselves in the script. The show is getting all kinds of attention. You can subscribe to the free podcast here.
If you've read everything there is to read on InDigest, then check out our blog, which is still being updated while the magazine is under construction. There are new features like "What's New This Week," which gives a concise list of the week's best releases in books, music, theater...really in everything, and "What We've Been Reading," which highlights some of the books the InDigest crew has been reading.
And of course there is always InDigest 1207 Reading Series, which keeps gaining momentum as the months go by. In August alone we'll welcome John Wray, Marlon James, and Ronaldo V. Wilson. And on the schedule for the fall already are the writers Neil Smith, J.C. Hallman, and James Hannaham, and the musician Franz Nicolay (of The Hold Steady). (Read a review of John Wray's Lowboy by James Wood in The New Yorker, here, and reviews of Marlon James' latest, The Book of the Night Women and J.C. Hallman's book of stories, Hospital for Bad Poets, here and here, respectively.)
As always, thanks for reading. Please be patient as we make InDigest better. We promise it will be worth the wait.
David and Dustin
Editors
Until then, take this time to catch up on some of the content you didn't get a chance to read and/or look at the first time around. How about these amazing poems by Ada Limón, "61 Trees" and "Rest Stop"? These poems will be included in a book coming out with cinematheque press later this summer. And Ada was recently in The New Yorker; her poem "Crush" found its way into the summer fiction issue.
Maybe fiction is more your thing. How about a story from the early days of InDigest by Sam Osterhout? Sam is currently the host of Radio Happy Hour, a live old-timey radio show that welcomes special guests, such as Norah Jones, Michael Showalter, and Andrew W.K., to perform as themselves in the script. The show is getting all kinds of attention. You can subscribe to the free podcast here.
If you've read everything there is to read on InDigest, then check out our blog, which is still being updated while the magazine is under construction. There are new features like "What's New This Week," which gives a concise list of the week's best releases in books, music, theater...really in everything, and "What We've Been Reading," which highlights some of the books the InDigest crew has been reading.
And of course there is always InDigest 1207 Reading Series, which keeps gaining momentum as the months go by. In August alone we'll welcome John Wray, Marlon James, and Ronaldo V. Wilson. And on the schedule for the fall already are the writers Neil Smith, J.C. Hallman, and James Hannaham, and the musician Franz Nicolay (of The Hold Steady). (Read a review of John Wray's Lowboy by James Wood in The New Yorker, here, and reviews of Marlon James' latest, The Book of the Night Women and J.C. Hallman's book of stories, Hospital for Bad Poets, here and here, respectively.)
As always, thanks for reading. Please be patient as we make InDigest better. We promise it will be worth the wait.
David and Dustin
Editors
4.03.2009
Big Thanks to Deb Olin Unferth and Sam Osterhout
Thanks to Deb and Sam for making April's installment of InDigest 1207 an unforgettable night.
FYI: Sam read "Gold" from Donald Hall and an excerpt from the story "Gazebo" by Raymond Carver, while Deb read "Marriage and the Family" from Diane Williams' book Excitability.
Thanks to all who came out. If you couldn't make April, make sure to check out the schedule for the next few months. We have some great readers joining us, including Jennifer L. Knox, Dorothea Lasky, and Wayne Miller in May; Rodrigo Toscano’s Collapsible Poetics Theater, Angela Ball, and Giao V. Buu in June; and John Wray in August.
FYI: Sam read "Gold" from Donald Hall and an excerpt from the story "Gazebo" by Raymond Carver, while Deb read "Marriage and the Family" from Diane Williams' book Excitability.
Thanks to all who came out. If you couldn't make April, make sure to check out the schedule for the next few months. We have some great readers joining us, including Jennifer L. Knox, Dorothea Lasky, and Wayne Miller in May; Rodrigo Toscano’s Collapsible Poetics Theater, Angela Ball, and Giao V. Buu in June; and John Wray in August.
3.31.2009
Deb Olin Unferth is Not a Fuck Up
This Wednesday, April 1, InDigest is extremely excited to welcome Deb Olin Unferth and Sam Osterhout to InDigest 1207. Here's a clip of Deb reading one of her stories, entitled "Deb Olin Unferth," followed by all the details you'll need for the reading.
See you there.
04.01.09
Deb Olin Unferth
Sam Osterhout
(Le) Poisson Rouge
New York, NY
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free
See you there.
04.01.09
Deb Olin Unferth
Sam Osterhout
(Le) Poisson Rouge
New York, NY
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free
3.04.2009
InDigest 1207 Reading tonight
Wednesday 03.04.09
InDigest 1207 Reading Series
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Paul Dickinson
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free
Strictly 21+
This is a General Admission, Gallery Bar event.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman was born in Detroit and raised in Florida. His poetry, fiction and photography have appeared in Boston Review, Court Green, NOON, Aufgabe, and Encyclopedia, among others. Educated at Bard College and Brown University, his awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation. “19 Names For Our Band” is his first book.
Paul D. Dickinson is a poet based in Minneapolis/ St. Paul. His work has appeared in City Pages, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, Request.com, and Conduit. Dickinson has read on Minnesota Public Radio, 93.7 "The Edge", KFAI, and 89.3 "The Current". He currently hosts the "Riot Act Reading Series" , a cutting edge literary event that features national and international writers. His latest spoken word CD is "Lord Byron Gets Busted" on Speedboat Records . He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UMASS Amherst.
InDigest 1207 Reading Series
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Paul Dickinson
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free
Strictly 21+
This is a General Admission, Gallery Bar event.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman was born in Detroit and raised in Florida. His poetry, fiction and photography have appeared in Boston Review, Court Green, NOON, Aufgabe, and Encyclopedia, among others. Educated at Bard College and Brown University, his awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Ucross Foundation. “19 Names For Our Band” is his first book.
Paul D. Dickinson is a poet based in Minneapolis/ St. Paul. His work has appeared in City Pages, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, Request.com, and Conduit. Dickinson has read on Minnesota Public Radio, 93.7 "The Edge", KFAI, and 89.3 "The Current". He currently hosts the "Riot Act Reading Series" , a cutting edge literary event that features national and international writers. His latest spoken word CD is "Lord Byron Gets Busted" on Speedboat Records . He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UMASS Amherst.
2.15.2009
Paul Dickinson to Read at March 1207
We've just added Paul Dickinson (from Electric Arc Radio) to the March reading!!!! Awesome!!!
Other upcoming readings:
April 1st: Deb Olin Unferth
May 6th: Jennifer Knox
June 3rd: Rodrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater
Other upcoming readings:
April 1st: Deb Olin Unferth
May 6th: Jennifer Knox
June 3rd: Rodrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater
2.13.2009
March 1207
The March installment of InDigest 1207 is going to be very special, so don't miss the next reading. We have a reading from Jibade-Khalil Huffman and a special author TBA. But, on top of that, we are going to have a free absinthe tasting from 6-7pm. Free drinks and a reading?
Can't beat that.
InDigest 1207 presents
Jibade-Khalil Huffman & TBA
6pm absinthe tasting
7pm reading
at (Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker St.
2.07.2009
Feb. 4th, 1207
A big thanks to Meakin Armstrong and Erica Wright and everyone who came down to (Le) Poisson Rouge on Wednesday.
In InDigest 1207 we ask readers to, along with their own work, bring in some pieces by other writers who have influenced them and read those as well. Just like the last reading, we're going to make it a habit of ours to post what the readers read up here. So here you are:
Meakin Armstrong read two selections from Padgett Powell's novel Edisto.
Erica Wright read from James Wright's Selected Poems (edited by Robert Bly and Anne Wright).
In InDigest 1207 we ask readers to, along with their own work, bring in some pieces by other writers who have influenced them and read those as well. Just like the last reading, we're going to make it a habit of ours to post what the readers read up here. So here you are:
Meakin Armstrong read two selections from Padgett Powell's novel Edisto. 
Erica Wright read from James Wright's Selected Poems (edited by Robert Bly and Anne Wright).
2.04.2009
Tonight @ InDigest 1207
Don't forget to come down to (Le) Poisson Rouge tonight for InDigest 1207.
Tonight features fiction writer Meakin Armstrong and poet Erica Wright. There are drinks to be had, no admission to be paid, and words to be heard. 6pm doors and 7pm reading.
See you tonight.
Tonight features fiction writer Meakin Armstrong and poet Erica Wright. There are drinks to be had, no admission to be paid, and words to be heard. 6pm doors and 7pm reading.
See you tonight.
1.24.2009
InDigest 1207 Photos - January 7th, 2009
Check out the photo album from the January InDigest 1207 reading with Ada Limon, Sam Osterhout, and Jess Grover.
(Thanks to Taya Mueller and Ada Limon for the photos)
 |
| InDigest 1207 Reading Series - January 7th, 2009 |
(Thanks to Taya Mueller and Ada Limon for the photos)
1.22.2009
Our Friends at Guernica Magazine Praised by Esquire
Guernica Magazine, where I am the Blog Editor, got a little praise from Esquire for our fiction section. The Fiction section editor, Meakin Armstrong, has been published twice in InDigest and will be reading at our second InDigest 1207 on Feb. 4, along with Guernica's Poetry Editor, Erica Wright, who we've also published a couple times in InDigest.
Well played, Meakin.
Well played, Meakin.
1.18.2009
1.13.2009
InDigest 1207 in February
We haven't really posted anything official about the InDigest 1207 February reading, and that's too bad. You should know about that reading; it's going to be great. Here are the specifics:
02.04.09
InDigest 1207 Reading Series featuring
Meakin Armstrong
Erica Wright
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free (as always)
InDigest 1207 takes place on the first Wednesday of every month at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
158 Bleecker St.
New York, NY
Come have a drink and enjoy some of our favorite writers with us.
(Thanks again to Peter Silberman from The Antlers for the poster. Again, if you haven't heard them yet go take a listen, they are great. They were also just named, by Earfarm, as one of the "Ten Brooklyn Bands You Need To Hear Right Now." And you do.)
02.04.09
InDigest 1207 Reading Series featuring
Meakin Armstrong
Erica Wright
6pm doors | 7pm reading
Free (as always)
InDigest 1207 takes place on the first Wednesday of every month at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
158 Bleecker St.
New York, NY
Come have a drink and enjoy some of our favorite writers with us.
(Thanks again to Peter Silberman from The Antlers for the poster. Again, if you haven't heard them yet go take a listen, they are great. They were also just named, by Earfarm, as one of the "Ten Brooklyn Bands You Need To Hear Right Now." And you do.)
1.08.2009
InDigest 1207
The first installment of InDigest 1207 was a success on all fronts. A very special thanks to Ada Limon, Sam Osterhout, and Jess Grover for reading, and to all those who came out and hung out with us.
In InDigest 1207 we ask readers to, along with their own work, bring in some pieces by other writers who have influenced them and read those as well. There were some requests after the reading last night for us to post those read by Ada, Sam, and Jess. So, here you are:
In InDigest 1207 we ask readers to, along with their own work, bring in some pieces by other writers who have influenced them and read those as well. There were some requests after the reading last night for us to post those read by Ada, Sam, and Jess. So, here you are:
Ada read "One Art" Elizabeth Bishop from her collection, Complete Poems 1927-1979 and "Faint Music" by Robert Hass from, Sun Under Wood.
Sam read from William Stafford's book Kansas Poems. Poems: "North of Liberal," "At Breaks Near the River," and "Key of C--An Interlude For Marvin."
Jess read "Centaur" by Srikanth Reddy from his book Facts for Visitors, "In the Clear Long After" by Olena Kalytiak Davis from her book Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities, "Boot Theory" by Richard Siken from his book Crush and "Wind in a Box" by Terrance Hayes from his book Wind in a Box.
Thanks again everyone. Hope to see you all at the next 1207 on Wed. Feb. 4 when we will proudly be welcoming Meakin Armstrong and Erica Wright.
Lastly, a special thanks to LPR for offering a gorgeous space for this series...And amazing drink specials for all in attendance!
Watch for pictures from last night coming soon.
12.31.2008
12.13.2008
One-Year Anniversary Reading Update: Peter Bognanni Added to the All-Star Line-Up
Hey everyone,
We're very excited that our good friend Peter Bognanni has agreed to read at our anniversary reading on Friday, December 19. Peter will be joining Lech Harris and Meggie Elder, as well as Crack in the Damn, which is the musical incarnation of those fine young gentlemen Paul Engels, Ryan Thompson, and Dan Lehn.
Should be a good time had by all.
Here's a little more info on Peter:
Impressive.
We're very excited that our good friend Peter Bognanni has agreed to read at our anniversary reading on Friday, December 19. Peter will be joining Lech Harris and Meggie Elder, as well as Crack in the Damn, which is the musical incarnation of those fine young gentlemen Paul Engels, Ryan Thompson, and Dan Lehn.
Should be a good time had by all.
Here's a little more info on Peter:
Peter Bognanni is a native Iowan, and a former student of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first novel, The House of Tomorrow is forthcoming from Amy Einhorn Books (Putnam/Penguin). His short fiction and humor pieces have appeared in Gulf Coast, The Bellingham Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Monkeybicycle, and Stop Smiling Magazine. His work was listed in the "100 Distinguished Stories of 2006" in The Best American Short Stories 2007, edited by Stephen King, and he is 2008 Pushcart Prize nominee. In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction, he is also a screenwriter. He was a quarter finalist for the Nicoll Fellowship in Screenwriting in 2007.
Impressive.
12.11.2008
Our New Flier & The Antlers
Check out our nice flier for the first reading in the InDigest 1207 series. This was designed by Peter Silberman, who has a great band named The Antlers. They are playing a few shows in the next week on the east coast, if you happen to be on the right-hand side of the country you should check them out. They are playing on the 16th at the Cake Shop in New York with some Minneapolitans named Dark Dark Dark who are also really great.
That's all.
InDigest out.
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