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Open Books: Readings
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February 2010
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14 FRIENDS OF CRYSTA CASEY
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18 SHARON BRYAN
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March 2010
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3 RENEE GLADMAN
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10 MACGREGOR CARD & BRANDON DOWNING
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Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 03:00 PM
FRIENDS OF CRYSTA CASEY
Poet, artist, and veteran Crysta Casey left behind many friends and two poetry manuscripts when she died in 2008. Floating Bridge Press has drawn poems from those manuscripts to produce the collection Green Cammie ($12). To celebrate its publication, several of her friends will read from it this afternoon. Despite its title, Ms. Casey’s book is boldly, sometimes heartbreakingly without camouflage. Her journey through the military and through numerous hospitalizations is presented in unusual, often haunting detail. Quietly powerful, her poems convey both struggle and remarkable resilience. Her work as a writer and a painter (her striking self-portrait fills the book’s cover) both arose out of and nourished that resilience – “I like to paint the flowers / of condolence. I like to paint them / before they wilt.”
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Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 07:30 PM
SHARON BRYAN
Sharp Stars ($16 BOA), Sharon Bryan's new book, begins with the wryly titled "Big Band Theory" -- "It all began with music, / with that much desire to be // in motion, waves of longing / with Nothing to pass through." The ensuing poems are intelligent, passionate meditations on the complexities of living with the awareness of dying. Her affection for music and language is presented with grace and wit, and her degrees in philosophy and physical anthropology are evident in the work. The book closes with the poem "At Last," in which she considers the eventual extinguishing of the stars to be "a reason / not to want to live / forever," the resulting night sky offering "nothing / to wish on, hitch / our wagons to, nothing / to lift us out of ourselves." This is a bright, mature, and pleasingly companionable collection.
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 07:30 PM
RENEE GLADMAN
Ms. Gladman's most recent collection is To After That (TOAF) from Atelos. She is the author of six earlier volumes, including Newcomer Can't Swim and A Picture-Feeling. A resident of Boston, she teaches at Brown University in the Program for Literary Arts and publishes Leon Works, a press for experimental fiction and cross-genre writing.
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 07:30 PM
MACGREGOR CARD & BRANDON DOWNING
Macgregor Card's collection, Duties of An English Foreign Secretary, was published by Fence Books in 2009. He lives in Brooklyn where he is co-editing an anthology of the New York School. Recent poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Aufgabe, The Recluse, KGB Lit, and Best American Poetry.
Brandon Downing's latest book is Lake Antiquity, a collection of text-collages also out from Fence Books in 2009. He is a videomaker, visual artist, and writer, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area now living in New York City, where he works as an exhibit designer and writer. His poetry collections include The Shirt Weapon and Dark Brandon.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 07:30 PM
NICK LANTZ
Nick Lantz's book We Don't Know We Don't Know received the 2009 Bakeless Prize for Poetry and will be published by Graywolf Press in March 2010. His collection The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House received the Felix Pollak Prize and will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press this spring. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
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