Grolier Poetry Bookshop

The Grolier Poetry Book Shop  and the Democracy Center had a wonderful event on May 9th with four poets

Khin Aung Aye, from Burma

James Byrne,  From England

Adrie Kusserow,  From Vermont

and Zeyar Lynn,  from Burma

 Khin Aung Aye 
 

Adrie Kusserow and Zeyar Lynn

Friday, May 31st 7:00 P.M.

Reading and Signing

 Anis Shivani

Reading from

My Tranquil War

Anis Shivani will read from his debut book of poetry, My Tranquil War and Other Poems, recently released by NYQ Books. His short fiction collection, The Fifth Lash and Other Stories, has just been published by C&R Press, and his novel Karachi Raj is forthcoming in October 2013. His other books include Anatolia and Other Stories (2009) and Against the Workshop (2011). His recently completed projects include a book of sonnets called Soraya and a book of criticism called Literature at the Global Crossroads. Currently he is working on a new poetry book called Empire, a novel called Abruzzi, 1936, and a new book of criticism on “plastic realism” in recent American fiction. His work appears in Boston Review, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Epoch, Fence, Boulevard, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, George Review, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, Subtropics, Verse, Quarterly West, and many other journals. He is a graduate of Harvard College, and lives in Houston, Texas.

When I first plunged into Anis Shivani’s My Tranquil War, I had the impression two of my most admired dead poet friends were one-upping each other in the afterlife—Tom Disch with his straight-faced drop-dead virtuoso satire of literary and political pretension and Aga Shahid Ali with his eloquent, global, polyglot formal legerdemain—both of them knowing more about history and about literature than ninety-nine percent of their readers. But Shivani’s poems are no phantoms, they are vibrant, new, knowledgeable, daring, and welcome.

—Marilyn Hacker

 Tickets to this event are available on Event Brite

http://grolierpoetrybookshop.eventbrite.com

Suggested donation is $5:00

Spot light on Poet  Ko Un

Ko Un was born in Korea in 1933.   He has written more than one hundred volumes of poetry, short stories, and criticism.  He is considered by many to be the preeminent poet of Korea.  Ko Un has seemed to live many lives. He has been described as a political activist, monk, nihilist, drinker, literary critic, and passionate writer.  At one point he worked with a street gang of taffy vendors.   Ko Un did spend time in a monastery after witnessing the effects of the Korean war on the people of Korea.  He later left the monastery feeling somewhat despondent and then became an activist which, in 1980  led to a stay in prison.  For many years Ko Un has been working on Ten Thousand Lives an ongoing work to describe every person he has ever met.   He started writing the work while in prison.

In an interview with Tae Yang Kwak he said:

“There were no windows in my cell.  It was so dark you couldn’t even see the urine bucket in the corner of the cell when the lights were turned out.  The darkness was like a dream, and in that darkness and isolation people from my past came to visit me-my parents, grandparents, friends, people I’d met in passing, people I had never met at all, historical figures I spoke with these faces that came to me. I wanted to record every one of them as a poem. At the time I thought I was going to die, but I swore if I should live I would write a poem for each of them. It was this mission that gave me the strength to carry on.”

Maninbo as it known in Korea, is now in its 20th volume.  Green Integer published selections from the first ten volumes of Ten Thousand Lives.

Un’s  poetry is passionate and quiet at the same time.

“What remains just remains

like the mother and her baby,

I saw it

shimmering as a phosphorescent light

and then gone.”

From My resume

The Three Way Tavern Selected Poems

translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg

Gary Snyder wrote the foreword to the The Three Way Tavern, Selected Poems (University Press 2006).

Synder said that he read with Ko Un in the 1990’s in Northern California to a small audience.  “I read his poems in English with a bold out-loud voice and then he read them in Korean, his voice almost a whisper, sharpening peoples ears and making us all alert.  His otherworldly voice made the even poems more powerful.  That was my first lesson, of many, from Ko Un.”  Alan Ginsberg, also knew Ko Un and described him as “a magnificent poet, a combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.”

In 2005 Ko Un was a finalist for the Nobel Prize in literature.  Now in his eightieth year he is still writing.  

 Peter Thabit Jones

Please Join the Grolier on Friday, March 22

for a reading

at 7:00 P.M.

Featuring

Maria Bennett
Sultan Catto
Kristine Doll
Peter Thabit Jones
Bill Wolak

There will be a reading and a discussion.

Yesterday, I saw a bicycle outside the Grolier that looked forlorn. It had been abandoned. Today when I came in all that was left of the bike was the seat on the ground.

Bicycle

Locked to the fence, the chain links
overgrown with ivy, the handle bars,
seat, front fork, spokes, tires all
in a snare of green leaves and blue buds.
Tires soft, almost flat. Rust forming
where the frame’s chipped and scarred.
Even the lock, caked with orange, seems
impossible to undo. Each day as I pass you
locked in the grip of the dense vines,
I miss the banking and turning, following
the wind one moment, fighting it the next,
keeping an eye on the clouds, planning
where to lock you in case of rain.
The breeze lift’s the morning glories
from your blue metallic frame. Small
consolation, this retirement
among the sprawling, leafy vines
and abundant blossoms. You’ve become
a trellis: no longer a moving thing,
but a thing moved upon.

From: This Rented Body
by Seido Ray Ronci
Pressed Wafer

The Grolier Poetry Book Shop would like to thank all of our friends and supporters for a successful AWP week.
We had three dynamic readings, and launched the Grolier Poetry Press Discovery Award and Established Poets series. We had great experiences at the Grolier table and at the store. So thanks to all who made
the event wonderful. Stay tuned for some wonderful readings this Spring. The Grolier could not do it without YOU so please come by the store to say hello.

From The Paris Review

The Paris Review Writes About The Grolier

From Poets and Writers

Ifeanyi Menkiti Talks about Boston’s Literary Scene in Poets and Writers

Poetry News

Richard Blanco read at President Obama’s Inaugration

Richard Blanco

The New year started off well with James Arthur reading from his new book Charms against Lightning
(Copper Canyon Press 2012)
James’s poem “Distracted by an Ergonomic Bicycle” was chosen for PBS News Hour’s weekly program audio series
Distracted by An Ergonomic Bicycle

Poet Sharon Olds wins the TS Eliot Prize for Stag’s Leap

The Grolier Poetry Book Shop would like to thank all of our customers for a wonderful Holiday season.
We Have some exciting events coming up. We will be posting our reading series for the new year shortly.

Kaminsky was born in Odessa, the former Soviet Union in 1977. He is tall, lanky and very youthful looking. His youth has not prevented him from winning many awards. His book Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) won the Whiting Writers award, The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, The Dorset Prize, and The Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry Magazine . Kaminsky was also awarded the Lannan Foundation’s literary fellowship in 2008. In 2009, poems from Kaminsky’s manuscript Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry Mgazine’s Levinson Prize. Kaminsky was in town to read from Dark Elderberry Branch: poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Branch ( Alice James Books) Kaminsky and Jean Valentine worked together to translate Tsvetaeva’s poems.

David Ferry said of the book Dark Elderberry Branch “This is a radiant work. They chose the right poet to fall in love with, and her poems responded.” The reading at the Black Smith House was indeed radiant. Kaminsky and Valentine both seemed to be in tune with Tsvetaeva. Kaminsky read in Russian his voice singing and Valentine read the English.
“You must write as if God were watching you” -Marina Tsvetaeva.

“To know/ the spirit is my beloved. To arrive on earth-swift
as a ray of light, or a look.
To live as I write:spare-the way God asks me-and friends do not.”
Marina Tsvetaeva

Kaminsky has also translated Polina Barskova a book called This Lamentable City Poems of Polina Barskova, he is the editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins,2010) He teaches at San Diego State University.

Tags: poetry, translation