New Website

Metro Rhythm has a new home: http://metrorhythm.wordpress.com.

Metro Rhythm Reading III

Friends, Romans, Poets:

Join us once again at Blue Angel Wines in Brooklyn for another night of readings and drunken revelry. The reading will begin at 7:30 PM and last until all hours of the night.

Saturday, May 15th @ 7:30

Blue Angel Wines
638 Grand St
(between Leonard St & Manhattan Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Neighborhood: Williamsburg - South Side

This time our readers will include:

Monica Ferrell

Ben Mirov
Bianca Stone
Ben Pease
Anwyn Crawford

Admission is FREE, and since this event is at a wine SHOP rather than BAR, you can just buy a bottle of wine for $10 instead of paying $8 for a glass.

After-party chez Bianca Stone.

RSVP Here.

Become a fan on our facebook page.

Check out Monica Ferrell here.

Also, you can buy Mirov's new book here.

May Reading

Tentative date: May 7th

Not-so-tentative place: Blue Angel Wines, Brooklyn, NY

Line up: To be announced soon...

metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com

facebook

Metro Rhythm & Ugly Duckling Presse

Metro Rhythm is teaming up with Ugly Duckling Presse for a brilliant reading in Brooklyn this September. Details to come...

Metro Rhythm Still On

Okay, so there's a blizzard and all.  So what?  Metro Rhythm is still in full swing, and still on for this Friday night at Blue Angel Wines in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Metro Rhythm Reading Series

Friday, February 12th 

8:00 PM @ Blue Angel Wines

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC

Meghan O'Rourke

Mark Bibbins

Caitlin Dube

Christie Ann Reynolds

Eric Burg

RSVP on facebook.

Where is this place? 

Blue Angel Wines

Questions?  Shoot us an email at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com, or send a facebook message to John James and/or Keegan Lester.

Anyone interested in reading in the future should send 3-5 poems or up to 8 double-spaced pages of prose to metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.  Please address cover letters or comments to John & Keegan.  <3

J.D. Salinger

How about a moment of silence for one of the best American fiction writers of the 20th century?  R.I.P. J.D.

Mark Bibbins & Meghan O'Rourke @ Metro Rhtyhm 02.12.10

Metro-Rhythm's second reading will feature:

Meghan O'Rourke *

Mark Bibbins * 

Caitlin Dube
Christie Ann Reynolds *

Eric Burg

and also
a ton of wine and PBR.

Ps. it is also my b day, so there will be an after party in my apartment like last time! 

Please bring friends, and boy friends and girl friends, moms and dads and siblings are fine too. 


The venue is right off the L train, a few blocks from the Lorimer stop. Come down to Brooklyn and nestle in our cozy wine shop for some poems, then expect a lot of dancing in my kitchen.

Hope to see you there

♥ 
Keegan and John 



RSVP

Blue Angel Wines

The Facebook Group

Anyone interested in reading in the future, please send 3-5 poems or up to 8 double-spaced pages of your most brilliantly wrought prose to John James and Keegan Lester at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.

Metro Rhythm Reading 02.12.10

Metro Rhythm's first event of the new year is scheduled to take place on Friday, February 12, 2010.  More information to come soon...

Anyone interested in reading in the future should send 3-5 poems or up to 8 pages of double-spaced prose to John James and Keegan Lester at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.  

John James @ Cornelia Street Cafe 01.26.10

John James (me) will be reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010. 

I realize that I am also reading at Earshot this coming Friday, January 22nd, so I'll try to read a different set. I would love it if my awesome friends could come to both!!!



Please come out and support me...

and enjoy some poems! ♥ 



Cornelia Street Cafe

6:00 PM
Tuesday, Jan. 22nd

29 Cornelia Street
Greenwich Village 
New York, NY 10014

Cafe: (212) 989-9319

Me: (502) 751-3502

http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/home.asp

Sample Poem:

For the Black Widow Spiders of Southern California

 

 

Because we go without a trace,

& there is sweetness in the mimicry

of transubstantiation, when I saw

a black widow dangling in the nursery dark,

her black belly, fat & red with the swivel

of an hourglass, reminded me of warm blood.

Someone called the teacher & she came

with a plastic shovel, scooped the spider

from the playhouse rafters

& stamped its lights out with her shoe.

 

At the chemical plant in L.A.

where my father worked maintenance,

he saw the spiders too. They bred in the hot dark – 

The male mounted the female from behind,

then lent his body to thrashing.

Once he was dead, the female would gorge herself,

nourishing the children with their father’s remains.

Finished, she would spin a sac of web,

plant the nest beneath the boiler

or behind the tool chest

in the maintenance closet.

There they would lie, incubating.

 

It is best to remain calm if bit.

When excited, the heart’s palpitations

distribute venom more quickly

through the bloodstream.

Soon the symptoms settle in –

Fever of 104°, violent twitching,

tightening of the jaw. I can almost hear

the molars grinding in the back row.

 

The last time I saw a black widow

was a hot day in Kentucky.

She had spun her web in the transom space

above the back door to our school.

Her legs were long & slender, & her abdomen thin,

not like the one years before whose thick bulb

of a belly appeared in the dark

as if she may have been pregnant.

I moved beneath her, scanning her under-belly

for a blood-lit patch of red.

But summers grow humid in Louisville,

& the spiders, they like a dry heat –

They fashion their threading in the San Fernando,

where the air is always hot, & the wind is arid.

Where smog grows thick, & the city spans for miles

beneath the missing & innumerable stars.

Columbia Gallery Reading 01.21.10

FIRST GALLERY READING OF THE SEMESTER

It's too cold to be clever, so we'll just tell you come out to the

first Gallery Reading of the new year, and hear these writers read

from their work:

Aaron Allen (Fiction)

Anwyn Crawford (Poetry)

Sasha Fletcher (Poetry)*

Harvest Henderson (Nonfiction)

Lauren Spohrer (Fiction)

Liz Topp (Nonfiction)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

8 PM

501 Dodge Hall

Columbia University

Broadway & 116th St.

Campus Map

John James (Me) Reading @ Earshot! 01.22.10

EARSHOT!

Friday, January 22nd @ 7:30 PM
@ Rose Live Music
Special Guest Host: Gregory Crosby
$5 + one free drink

Featuring:

Rachel Levitsky (Neighbor and Under the Sun)
Andrew Lundwall (klang and honorable mention)
John James (Columbia University)
Ryan Doyle May (The New School)
Jenna Telesca (Queens College)

Rose Live Music is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://roselivemusic.com.

Earshot NYC

Blog on Hiatus

Friends, this blog will be on winter break from now (12/17/09) until mid January (sometime around 1/15/09). Thanks for reading, and in the meantime, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza -- or, well, whatever you celebrate -- and please have a very Happy New Year!

John

Copper Nickel

Among recently established magazines - "recently" referring to the past five years or so - Copper Nickel, of the University of Colorado, Denver, is certainly among the most notable.  The magazine is run almost entirely by students, and led by editor Jake Adam York, who for the last few years has pushed the magazine forward, and even revived it when necessary (As of October 2008, the magazine had exactly 0 subscriptions!).  In the past, the magazine has featured plenty of big names, such as Bob Hicock and George Kalamaras to name a few, as well as many up and coming (soon-to-be big name) writers, such as Jericho Brown in the most recent issue.  They have also given break-through exposure to many new talents (including myself), many of whom have yet to publish elsewhere on the national market.  Furthermore, the magazine has been receiving recognition from, well, the powers that be: recent contributor's work has appeared on such sites as Verse Daily and Poetry Daily four times in the last month.  Plus, let's face it, the design for issue 13 is bangin'.  

So, to get a little political here, if you are thinking of investing in a literary magazine, don't waste your money on Poetry or The New Yorker, both of which you can read online anyways.  Instead, invest in a young journal, brimming with new talent, where the work is fresh, and the journal could really, really benefit from your support - plus, right now the magazine is holding it's Year-End sale, and subscriptions are going for less than nothing!  Look into Copper Nickel, and look into it now.

Copper Nickel

Mark Bibbins & Mary Jo Bang @ KGB Bar 12.14.09

KGB Poetry: Mark Bibbins & Mary Jo Bang

December 14, 2009

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

KGB Bar

85 E. 4th St.

New York, NY 10003

Mary Jo Bang is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including Elegy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.  She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she teaches in the writing program at Washington University.

Mark Bibbins is the author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon Press).  His poems have appeared in the Paris Review, Poetry and the Yale Review.  He teaches at Columbia University and The New School.

KGB Bar

Columbia Journal Panel Discussion Tomorrow

Hang Together or Hang Apart?

Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Arts in the Era of Mixed-Media

(A Panel Discussion)

Thursday Dec. 10, 7 p.m., Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St. at Stanton

In today's mixed-media ferment, how can artists and writers

collaborate across genres to create innovative forms of art? Can

the arts excite a “post-literate” generation? Panelists

are novelist Siri Hustvedt, artist Jon Kessler, poet/painter Marjorie

Welish, filmmaker Michael Almereyda, novelist/poet Terese Svoboda,

and writer Alix Ohlin. Moderated by Gideon Lester. Hosted by

Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.

A critically acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist, Siri Hustvedt has published three volumes of essays, one of poetry, and four novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and her recent The Sorrows of an American. Among many other themes, her work explores art, perception, and the permeable boundaries between genres and media.

Sculptor, photographer, and mixed-media artist Jon Kessler combines centuries-old craft with digital and video technology to create “kinetic sculptures” that explore consumerist, fearful, post-utopian society. With sprawling pieces such as The Palace at 4 A.M. he has won acclaim over three decades and been featured at the Whitney Biennial, Carnegie Institute, Deitch Projects, P.S.1, and MOMA.

A renowned poet, painter, and art critic, Marjorie Welish has published eight volumes of poetry, exhibits her paintings at the Baumgartner Gallery and Bjorn Ressle Fine Art, and has received numerous awards in both fields, including fellowships from the Gottlieb and Djerassi Foundations. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry series and in many anthologies, and her work was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the University of Pennsylvania.

A wildly diverse filmmaker and writer, Michael Almereyda directed the film Hamletstarring Ethan Hawke, wrote and directed documentaries on photographer William Eggleston and playwright Sam Shepard, and has published many essays and criticism on film. One of his most recent films is the post-Katrina love story, New Orleans, Mon Amour. Among other awards, he has been decorated for “expanding the possibilities of experimental film.”

A prolific novelist, poet, translator, and documentary filmmaker, Terese Svoboda has published a dozen books, exhibited her films on PBS and at  MOMA, and debuted her opera WET at the Disney Theater in Los Angeles. She has won numerous awards, including an O. Henry, a Pushcart, a Jerome Foundation Grant in video, a John Golden Award in playwriting, and the Iowa Prize in poetry.

An exhilarating young voice, Alix Ohlin has received acclaim for her debut novel The Missing Person and debut collection Babylon and Other Stories. She has often commented on the relationship between music and fiction, and her work has appeared in the Best New American Voices and Best American Short Stories series.

A dramaturg, artistic director, and writer, Gideon Lester was until recently Acting Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre. His translations include plays by Brecht, Buchner, and Marivaux, and his stage adaptations include Kafka's Amerika and Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. He teaches courses on theater, adaptation, and interdisciplinary collaboration in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

Metro Rhythm Facebook Fan Page

Please join us now on facebook, where we've recently created a Metro Rhythm fan page!  This way it will be twice as easy to keep up with events, announcements, or contact us.

A Public Space Issue Release Party 12.10.09

December 10: Issue 9 Launch Party!

We hope you can join us at BookCourt to celebrate the launch of Issue 9. Drinks, merriment, and readings by contributors Brian T. Edwards and Idra Novey. There will be issues and totes for sale, plus subscription discounts!

Bookcourt

163 Court Street

Brooklyn, NY

7:00 PM

If you don't know about A Public Space, it's a really great magazine based in Brooklyn. Check out their website here:

A Public Space

Mark Bibbins & Keegan Lester @ Earshot this Friday! 12.04.09

December 4 // 7:30 PM
Mark Bibbins, Christopher Martin
Keegan Lester, David King, Taryn Andrews

Earshot is located at Rose Live Music in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Rose Live Music
345 Grand Street (b/w Havemeyer & Marcy)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 599-0069

The cover for this event is $5, but that includes a free drink, which costs $5 anyways!

Earshot NYC

Rose Live Music

John Ashbery at NYU 12.03.09

So!  In my personal opinion, John Ashbery's work more recently hasn't been his greatest - BUT! - here is your (and my) chance to see a giant of American Poetry as he reads from his new book Planisphere.  The event will be held at Vanderbilt Hall, Tishman Auditorium, in Washington Square.

December 3rd @ 7:00 pm 

(But with this one, it's probably best to be early!)

Vanderbilt Hall

Tishman Auditorium

40 Washington Square

New York, NY 10012

facebook

NYU Creative Writing

Cornelia Street Graduate Poetry Series 11/24/09

November 24, 2009

6:00 p.m.

Cornelia Street Cafe

29 Cornelia St.

New York, NY

Come listen to four amazing emerging poets in MFA programs in NYC.

Ben Pease is an MFA candidate in poetry at Columbia University where he once leapt with joy upon finding a library book he thought he had lost and and would have had to pay a $100 late fee on top of the cost of the book. A couple weeks ago, in the midst of being lost on his bike en route to a reading, Pease was flagged down by an old Hasdic man who begged him to enter his house and turn on his air conditioner. Pease complied. He has most recently been commissioned by a team of sage editors (who wish to remain anonymous) to pen a living mythology of the Wichman, an ordinary man with a big heart who wished his name in the record books with an asterisk beside it.

In December, Janlori Goldman will receive an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. For a zillion years, she's worked as a civil rights and privacy advocate in Washington D.C. and New York, and has a lucky job teaching at Columbia University. She lives in New York City with her teenage daughter, and is laboring with joy on her first book of poems.

Elsbeth Pancrazi lives north of here, in Inwood, NY; works in a bakery slightly to the west and across one river, in Englewood, NJ; and is an MFA candidate at NYU. In other words, the shape of her life is a large triangle.

facebook page

Metro Rhythm Reading a Success!

Hey guys,

I just wanted to write to thank everyone who came out last night.  We had a blast and the reading was really, really successful.  I don't think it could have been better.  We recorded the reading and a friend of ours took photos, so we should be posting that stuff soon.

In other news, the venue did quite well, we were pleasant enough, and we have indeed been invited back.  We are looking to hold another reading on December 11th.  As always, anyone interested in reading then, or sometime next calendar year, please contact Keegan and I at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.  

Adios,

John