“Cardinal Points” Launch Party Oct. 17!

Where, if not from the center of all things cultural, would you launch a literary journal called “Cardinal Points”? The English language version of a fine recent addition to the literary scene (the Russian Storony sveta, masterminded by poets Irina Mashinski and Oleg Woolf), will be deservedly celebrating its impressive inaugural issue you know where, at 6:30pm this Sunday. More broadly conceived than a journal of translation, this issue includes poetry and prose from the leading lights and most interesting new voices of our times, in both original and translated English: Alicia Ostriker, Glyn Maxwell, Polina Barskova, Ilya Kaminsky, Robert Chandler (guest editor of this issue), Annie Finch, and many, many more. It is an issue-cornucopia, and I expect the evening of celebration will match, since many of its contributors will be in attendance.

Mikhail Youzhny’s U.S. Open Secret?

Roman and Youzhny

How was it that 12^th-seeded Russian tennis start Mikhail Youzhny was able to get the better of “marathon man” Stanislas Wawrinka and surge into the semi-finals of the U.S. Open yesterday (see article here)? It may be that he had the necessary reserves of strength and agility because he eats his kasha—at the Samovar! “It is terrific kasha,” I thought I heard Youzhny commenting to the media. “But that was just getting into semi-finals. I want more.”

Not just a reading--it's a MULTIPLE book launch! TONIGHT!

This just in, folks: everything you need to know about tonight's reading at the Sammy, complete with varying font shapes and sizes,  a healthy helping of bold, and more white space than you can shake a stick at:

Tuesday, September 7, at 7 PM

Russian Samovar Arts Club

          Please join poets

ANDREY GRITSMAN

CARMEN FIRAN

RICHARD MILAZZO

ADRIAN SANGEORZAN

       for the launch of their recent books & poetry readings

 

LIVE LANDSCAPE (Cervena Barva Press)

and GREATEST HITS (Pudding House Press) by Andrey Gritsman

 

ROCK AND DEW by Carmen Firan

Translations into English by Adam J. Sorkin, Andrei Codrescu, Isaiah Sheffer

(Sheep Meadow Press, 2010)

 

EASTERN SHADOWS

Translations into Romanian by Adrian Sangeorzan;

(bilingual edition English- Romanian,  Scrisul Romanesc Press, 2010)

and KEATS DYING IN YOUR ARMS

(Editions Passage St.-Hubert, Brussels) by Richard Milazzo

THE ANATOMY OF THE MOON by Adrian Sangeorzan

Translations into English by Razvan Hotaranu;

 bilingual edition English- Romanian,  Scrisul Romanesc Press, 2010

Russian Samovar

Arts Club, Second Floor

256 W 52nd STREET, by 8 Ave., NEW YORK, NY 10019, 212-7570168

Andrey Gritsman – Russian-American poet and essayist, he has been living in the US since 1981. Author of several collections of poetry in English and in his native Russian.

He edits poetry magazine INTERPOEZIA and runs reading series at Cornelia Street Café in New York City.

Carmen Firan – born in Romania, she has been living in New York since 2000. She has published twenty books including poetry, novels, essays, and short stories. Among her most recent books are Words and Flesh, novellas and essays, Talisman Publishers, 2009 and Rock and Dew, selected poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2010.

Richard Milazzo – poet, essayist, art critic & curator, editor and publisher, he is the author of many books, including two major monographs ( Saint Clair Cemin, Brent Sikkema Editions and The Paintings of Ross Bleckner, Editions Alain Noirhomme) and volumes of poetry : Small China Moon, Keats Dying in Your Arms, and The Fishmonger’s Door. He lives and works in New York City.

Adrian Sangeorzan - is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and memoirs, including the poetry books Tattoos on Marble and Over the Lifeline (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and the most recent Vitali, a novel, and The Anatomy of the Moon, 2010. He is a Romanian born living in New York since 1990.

Samovar Set to Simmer in September!

The Russian Samovar, after its annual week-long fall cleaning, is all burnished and shiny and ready to receive you. The post-Labor Day re-opening (Tuesday, September 7) features...that’s right, a poetry reading! This one is in English and Russian, and if I knew who was reading I would tell you. Anyway, it is sure to be festive, and wouldn’t you like to be the first to set foot on the freshly polished dance floor?

Tomorrow! Vladimir Gandelsman, 7pm

A rare chance to hear one of the best of his generation reading his own poetry, and, who knows, perhaps some of his beautiful translations into Russian of some of the best English language poets (Auden, Stevens, Lewis Carroll...). Expect the evening to be electrifying--after all, the poet graduated from Leningrad Electro-technical Institute! You can have a look at his own web site here, and see you there.

Joseph Brodsky's 70th Birthday

Start all the clocks!

Hook up the telephone!

Allow the dog to bark without a juicy bone!

Hmmm... Anybody have a really joyful birthday poem? Please let me know, I’d like to read it the next time I’m at a birthday gathering in honor of a beloved person no longer with us.

Joseph Brodsky was not just the poet and co-founder of the Russian Samovar who would have turned 70 this past Monday, May 24th. He was the man who claimed that the rise of free thinking in the Soviet Union began not with Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but with the series of Tarzan movies that were part of the cache of "trophy films"captured by the Soviets in WWII and subsequently screened all over the USSR. Who authorized that, I’d like to know?! If you have a fresh look at those films, as I have and recommend you do, you may see that they are an object lesson in rejecting the norms of society, retreating to one's individual paradise, living for the present, and returning meaning to language. Johnny Weismuller, as Tarzan, wastes no words: “Jane swim now!” he says. And, of course, "Uhhhh-ee-uh-ee-uhhh-ee-uh-ee-uhhhhhh! (hear it here) as he swings through the air from vine to vine.

Tarzan’s was one lesson Brodsky took to heart. He quit school, went on expeditions to god-forsaken places, devoured every poetic influence he could get his hands on, chased girls, got in trouble with the law, did hard time, emigrated to the United States, taught at Mount Holyoke, became a New Yorker, married a princess, and frequently brooded or laughed in the back corner of the Samovar with friends from all over the world. All while writing poetry and prose, some of which will surely stand the test of time and continue to be read and enjoyed as long as people still do that sort of thing.

On Monday night, the tribute to Brodsky came in poetic and musical forms, from the sound of his own voice recordings to new and old translations of Shelley and Auden, to music by Grieg and Schumann and Bloch. Two Davids, Lehman and Rieff, said neat things about Brodsky. Sunny von Bülow, poor thing, looked in briefly as a mute shade. Vasily Kolchenko performed his own lovely setting of Brodsky’s early “Воротишься на родину” [You come back to your homeland] for bard and acoustic guitar. And with that, more or less, everybody headed upstairs to remember Brodsky in more gustatory fashion. O, the kulibiak (a long pastry filled with cabbage, meat or fish)! O, the shining vodkas and non-alcoholic cranberry drinks! O, the kilometers of salads of every shape, color and form! As Hamlet may or may not have said, depending on which folio we go by, and meaning precisely what, we know not/naught, “O, o, o, o!”

Spring got you down?

There is always poetry at the Samovar to cheer you up. This Sunday at 6:30pm, for instance, you can have Ina Bliznetsova's poetry delivered directly to your ears by the means of her very own (incredible, earthy) voice. Wishing you had time to brush up on your classical mythology and art history? Let Ms. Bliznetsova evoke it all for you in sculpted stanzas, while you sip ambrosia. Here's a link to some published work.