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Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Alan Bernheimer and Jean Day

Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 6:30 pm, Dia Chelsea

Event Details
Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 6:30 pm

Dia:Chelsea
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York City 

Readings in Contemporary Poetry curator, Vincent Katz provided an introduction for the evening's reading.

Free for Dia members; $10 general admission; $6 admission for students and seniors 

Advance ticket purchases are recommended. Tickets are also available for purchase at the door, subject to availability.  

Alan Bernheimer’s new collection of poetry, From Nature, is forthcoming from Cuneiform Press in 2019. Recent work has appeared at Across the Margin and in Delineator, Equalizer, and Hambone. Born and raised in New York City, he has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s. He produces a portrait gallery of poets reading on flickr. His translation of Philippe Soupault’s memoir, Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism was published by City Lights in 2016.

BREAKFAST

Forgetting words
The moment you
Hear or read them

Is one way to avoid
Plagiarizing but just
Keep their flavor

And then try
Expressing that
In your own words

As if you could
Own words
You can't even

Keep thoughts
From slipping away
They’re the slipperiest

Of all the slippery
Things in life
The hotel elevator

That rises way
Past the roof
And slips across

A higher landscape
A different neighborhood
Why not ask

If any of these
Places will be
Open for breakfast

Jean Day is an editor, a poet, and a union activist, whose Triumph of Life was just published in 2018 by Insurance Editions. Recent poems can also be seen in Across the Margin, Breather, Chicago Review, Delineator, Jongler (French), and Open House, as well as in her Daydream, published last year by Litmus Press. Earlier works include Early Bird (O’Clock, 2014) and Enthusiasm (Adventures in Poetry, 2006), among other books. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, including the recent Resist Much/Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017) and Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK (Reality Street, 2015). She lives in Berkeley, where she works as managing editor of Representations, an interdisciplinary humanities journal published by University of California Press.

FROM A DISTANT STAR

Sectarian quiet is a myth. 

I knew it would be like this:

Milky sky of late
wild turkeys in traffic
an earlier and earlier dinner.

It pays to be smart
                        in any universe.

But we are down to the final call
                        for volunteers

–from The Triumph of Life

 

 

Books

Photo: Don Stahl

Readings in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology

View details

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