Perfect Sense Reading Series

06/13/2014

Perfect Sense Series is very pleased to announce a reading at Cornelia Street Cafe with four wonderful poets on June 25th--Nicole Cooley, Rocco de Giacomo, Jacob Scheier, & Jaime Warburton!

04/05/2014

Perfect Sense Series is very pleased to announce a reading with three wonderful poets on April 23rd--Kathleen Ossip, B.K. Fischer, & Anne-Marie Fyfe!

02/09/2014

Mark your calendars for February 26th at Cornelia Street Cafe with Jo Sarzotti, Deborah Fried-Rubin, Chris Hansen-Nelson, & Elizabeth Onusko!

12/20/2013

A Costa Rican eco-poetry retreat!

Join poet Hila Ratzabi on an inspiring eco-poetry retreat in one of the most magical places on Earth: Nosara, Costa Rica. Located on the Pacific Coast, Nosara is known for its stunning beauty, biodiversity, and pristine white sand beaches. In this generative poetry workshop, geared toward all levels...

12/13/2013

COMELY SUBSTITUTIONS by Stephanie Strickland

Gibbs gifted Maxwell with a plaster cast
the size of a fist. Locked in its grip

each & every history of water; the cast, a grandsire
node on the traceroute of legible images of total time.

Talan made a movie, ni**le tree of Nowhere, Ingenstans,
Sweden’s riverbank where the children drowned,

children run over by a boat—by a bot. Why seek
to tell them apart ( children and bots ) reliably

or fast? To keep polls ( clicks ) unpolluted, discount
ersatz million hits. People suck at this, too slow,

run over; so, yes, an automatic application : you play,
it gets smarter. Talan cites Duchamp, Network of Stoppages.

•

Cortical CPU network body—angled upon it, slices
and shadows, assembled, loom by torchlight; comely

substitutions, cool, as-if-new, code-views expose-
distort, as they blow up, manifolded-ness-entanglement.

Jeremy’s, volumetric; Talan urges tesseractic. No more!
Reverse-engineering ‘nature’? Nature, please, is Disney—

Reverse instead reverse-engineering’s computational
feat—or drive it forward, for we tire, conscious

choice, of the sea on fire—we cannot chance
that the oil would stop without it, without simulation.

The deep water drilling didn’t start without one.
Apocalypse, how long? Eleven-million years or so

ago, sonar probes, ping-echoing easy-pass dolphin bands
began to sentinel-haunt, to test, to re-shape the coasts.

12/06/2013

from Young Tambling by Kate Greenstreet

Light by six.
Like everyone, she's simple.

I understand her crazy trust.
But how can these tricks work?

Parks
at night

are always dangerous.
And our will. Free will.

She cuts herself. I never got close
to that.

The dog
has seen it all.

11/20/2013

Forgotten Ballet
--Kamilah Aisha Moon from SHE HAS A NAME

She used to walk on tiptoes
everywhere,
a braided ballerina
in flip-flops or Keds.

Her airborne heels
seemed natural, until

trained to walk
like the ‘regular’ kids –
a plodding,
ill-fitting gait
that continues to confound.

11/20/2013

Upcoming PERFECT SENSE READING SERIES events:

***TOMORROW**November 20th-- Thomas Heise, Kamilah Aisha Moon, & Alyssa Yankwitt

December 18th--Kate Greenstreet, Stephanie Strickland, Jenny Browne, & Deborah Poe

11/13/2013

from New York City
--Thomas Heise

There’s nothing latent in my wireless
imagination where everything, even
the heart’s muscle, is public. Give
me one more love song and I’ll
destroy it. Orpheus looked over his
shoulder because he wanted Lili Brik
to disappear, the only way to save
himself for the poems he thought
he’d write before thirty-six arrived, a
shock in its chamber. Oh mother. Oh
love. Beauty enters wrapped in furs
and the whole train to Moscow
suddenly unsure of itself, the
revolution suspended between
wheels: “Down with Symbolism.
Long live the living rose!” The
moment the chimp recognized he
was human, he began to paint over
the mirror. These days, mystery
floating in the recesses of the plaza,
a memory of green sky high above
us like glamour and the history
surrounding us forgotten for a
minute, then we’re cold. Every
woman begins as a description. A
brochure. A leaflet. Love made into
origami. This one’s now for July. This
one’s now for August. This one’s
now in the wave pool, buoyed by the
chlorine and sense of possibility, as
if the water were in me and churning
and could this feeling last forever
and that seagull, you don’t have to
think. Sometimes you have to be
shot in the heart in order to stop
dreaming. These days of false
humour and sequins, like Jean
Nouvel’s windows, we look in from
the outside because we’re fortunate
to be poor and part of the city. Every
city begins as an accident and soon
becomes a need.

11/07/2013

Avoid Adapting Other People's Negative Views
by Sharon Dolin

after Epictetus


To gaze upon the fatal
without commiserating gloom:

what every friend should be—
not one who rends her coat of doom

nor one who lets her ankle rankle
nor her dogged love to the hounds.

Be the cat in catastrophe
who survives eight more dives.

Though in the clutch of damage
a dame must age,

in the crazy-quilt of guilt
it was never your fault.

In the company of morose
always pull out the rose.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23742?utm_source=PAD%3A+Avoid+Adapting+Other+People%27s+Negative+Views+by+Sharon+Dolin&utm_campaign=poemaday_110613&utm_medium=email .Wdmx3Iip.dpuf

after Epictetus To gaze upon the fatal without commiserating gloom: what every friend should be— not one who rends her coat of doom nor one who lets her ankle rankle nor her dogged love to the hounds. ...

11/05/2013

The Intimacy Junkyard

One told me—leave your boots on.
One had a wife.

One loved my “gypsy eyes.”
One thought I tasted of forbidden stars.

One said I had too many dimensions.
One was July, lingering.

One taught me how to play the drums.
One never knew that I faked it.

One was a Gemini.
One never held me in the aftermath.

One thought my name was a mantra,
repeated it violently into my belly.

One plotted the details of my murder.
One asked if I’d ever write a poem about us.

One used dichotomy and encapsulates
to describe our lo******ng.

One liked the taste of my blood, licked
my many wounds.

One almost loved me.
--Alyssa Yankwitt
Originally published in Stone Highway Review

https://www.facebook.com/events/662414810459478/

10/23/2013

PERFECT SENSE SERIES Upcoming Readings:

TONIGHT!!-- Sharon Dolin, Victoria Redel, Candice Reffe, & Salita Bryant

November 20th-- Thomas Heise, BK Fairchild, Kamilah Aisha Moon, & Alyssa Yankwitt

December 18th--Kate Greenstreet, Stephanie Strickland, Jenny Browne, & Carmen Jimenez-Smith