your peripheral annogram

 
Out of Sequence

I’m thrilled that my poem, “Trinity,” has been selected for Out of Sequence, an anthology of poems based on the Shakespearean sonnets, to be published by Parlor Press this summer.  Out of Sequence will be a 154-part publication with an editorial introduction both online and in print.   Edited by D. Gilson, the anthology will feature poems, essays and visual art.  Some sonnets still need remixing—see below!

Le Héros in Eleven Eleven, Exchanges and Inventory

Hélène Sanguinetti

My translation of Chapter 11 of Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008) by Hélène Sanguinetti currently appears in Eleven Eleven.  Chapter 8 will also debut in the winter issue of the University of Iowa’s Exchanges translation journal.   December welcomed publication in Princeton’s Inventory, January in California College of the Arts’ Eleven Eleven and now University of Iowa.  As Hélène herself wrote me, “Ouahhhoooouuuuu!” which I believe is French for “Woo-hoo!”

The Manhattanville Review

Isn’t great to get an email that says, “We love your work”?  That’s how I learned that The Manhattanville Review has accepted my poem, “Trackside Commissary,” for its upcoming issue.  Stay tuned for details.

More anthologies debut

If you’re going to AWP, you’ll be able to purchase Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place (Sundress Publications, 2014) and The Widow’s Handbook (Kent State University Press, 2014).  The latter has a series of recent blogs in Best American Poetry.  The Rabbit Ears TV channel, now up and running, features my video poem, “Velocity,” and The Cancer Poetry Project 2 (Tasora Books, 2013) is also live on YouTube.  Cities (Chuffed Buff Books, 2014) is now available on Amazon UK and on Kindle.

Periphery as new center

Anne Sexton with Maxine Kumin

This essay by Ozone Park Journal Editor Eric M. B. Becker bears reading.  Have you ever felt like there is a glass ceiling to your chosen art form?  Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) wept when he realized his own poems could never be like those in The New Yorker.  Poet Maxine Kumin (1925-2014), once a 1950s housewife, worked on the phone with pal Anne Sexton (1928-1974), laying down the handset for hours and then speaking into it to share drafts. And folk icon Pete Seeger (1919-2014) left Harvard to find his true calling in an encounter with Lead Belly in Greenwich Village.  The periphery has always been the center of creativity.  These great American artists would tell us to rejoice in the margins and occupy them.  Fully.

Lovrien Gregory

You love Lovrien – Part 3

My grandmother, artist Lovrien Price Gregory (1888-1972), settled down at 3 Church Lane in Scarsdale in a home designed by my grandfather, Julius Gregory (1875-1955).  The all-stone house, like a small castle with its turret and interior wood ceiling beams, was featured in magazines such as House and Garden and House Beautiful.  Julius wrote architectural columns for these journals, so no surprise his home would be featured in them.

The Times highlights Lovrien's design work

Lovrien complemented Julius’s work with murals or paintings within many homes he designed.  Alas, many works, selling online, are disappearing into private collections.  She also painted murals for the Children’s House at St. James the Less Church across the street, where she and Julius were parishioners.  When the Depression hit, heartache of heartaches, they had to sell the house and move to a small apartment in New York’s Tudor City.  I’ll complete her story in the next annogram.

Deborah Coulter Art Exhibit

Deborah Coulter

Deborah Coulter once again astonished art lovers with extraordinary collages and charcoals last month at the Marjorie and Norman Alexander Gallery at the JCC of Midwestchester.   Her collages blend common images in such a way as to make their original meaning vanish in service to a complex whole.  The charcoals deliver intriguing, soft brush-stroke patterns that seem to move.  Collectors take note: her work is being snapped up fast!

‘Lucky Them’ preview

Thomas Haden Church and Toni Collette

What fun to preview “Lucky Them,” a romantic comedy written and produced by Emily Wachtel, at Sarah Lawrence College last month.  Toni Collette stars as a journalist who must locate her former lover, a Jim Morrison-like singer, or risk losing her job at a rock magazine.  Teamed with a nerdy millionaire brilliantly played by Thomas Haden Church, she sets out to find the missing musician.  Find out why audiences at the Toronto Film Festival went wild for this wistful midlife coming-of-age story when it comes out in May!

Maxine Silverman’s Transport of the Aim

Congratulations to award-winning poet Maxine Silverman on the publication of her long-awaited Transport of the Aim, poems on the lives of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Celia Thaxter (Parallel Press, 2014).  Maxine will read from Transport on Friday, March 7 at 5:30pm at the Discover Portsmouth Center; Sunday, March 23 at 2pm at the Nyack Library; and Sunday, April 27, 1:30 pm at JCC-on-the-Hudson.

 
Poetics of Work Workshop in Paris

This intimate look at writing with imagination and form with poet James Navé will take place March 21-22 in Paris (Métro: La Motte-Picquet Grenelle).  Email Navé at nave@jamesnave.com or call/text +1-919-949-2113. Tuition is 300€ – Limit 15.  Thanks to Francophile Susan Seligman for sharing this!

Beatles 50^th Anniversary

Did you see the February 9^th program on CBS?  Jay Shulman, our resident music archivist, tells us that that “Boys,” the song that Ringo played, was originally recorded by the Shirelles.  It was Ringo’s first vocal with the Beatles, recorded in one take February 11, 1963 and released on Parlophone in the UK and on “Introducing the Beatles” in the US on Vee-Jay.

Calls for haiku, ghost stories and more

Chuffed Buffed Books is looking for haiku for an online collection; deadline is March 14.   Also, for short story writers, there will be another anthology coming up. The theme is in the vein of the 19^th century ghost story.  Details on website and more info to come over next few months.

Lunch Ticket, the online journal of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles is looking for translation, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and visual art.  For guidelines, see www.lunchticket.org. 

Out of Sequence seeks responses to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Respond to one below through a poem, essay of no more than 500 words, or visual piece amendable to .jpg formatting. Submit with your bio to outofsequencesonnets@gmail.com by March 1, 2014.  Sonnets available:  4, 33, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 46, 48, 49, 53, 62, 67, 68, 70, 77, 78, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 96, 97, 99, 102, 107, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118, 123, 124, 131, 132, 133, 139, 141, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154.

Word Soup is raising money to end hunger while publishing poetry!  To find out about the next deadline, go to http://wordsoup.weebly.com/ or read more here.  Look for Linda Simone’s poem, “New York 10016” in the current issue.

Chocolate Cherry Muffins

After Scottish novelist Regi Claire described these muffins baking in her kitchen, I requested the recipe.  What better, in this month of Presidential celebration?  We can celebrate George Washington and his mythic childhood admission of cutting down his father’s cherry tree.  In his honor, let’s be glad for our country, Scotland and the most creative Regi who added cherries for a gourmet take on a standard favorite:

4 ½ tablespoons melted butter

½ cup sugar

1 pinch salt

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

3 eggs

½ cup ground hazelnuts or almonds

4 ounces chocolate, melted

1/3 cup flour

few drops of cherry liqueur

jar of maraschino cherries

confectioner’s sugar

Regi Claire

Preheat oven to 350^oF.  Combine in a mixing bowl melted butter, sugar salt and vanilla sugar. Beat eggs and add to mix, then nuts, melted chocolate, drop or two of cherry liqueur and the flour. Spoon into muffin tins, adding four to five cherries per muffin. Bake 18-20 minutes, or until well risen and lightly firm to the touch.  Once cooled, dust the muffins with confectioner’s sugar.  Bon appétit!

Round the Net

Thanks for the following people for sending these links, events and/or good news:

ALTA list-serve for articles on translation as a performing art, Margaret Atwood on translating translation and small presses growing translation readership

The Boss and Fallon take on Gov. Christie

Congrats to Jeanette Briggs on winning a blue ribbon for a collage from the Art Society of Old Greenwich

Guitarist-songwriter Michael Cefola for this hilarious Springsteen-Fallon take on Bridgegate

My sister-in-law Elaine for sending me this song my dad used to sing at the dinner table

Daisy Fried

Congrats to Elisabeth Frost on her new chapbook, A Theory of the Vowel (Red Glass Books, 2014)

Assisi Editor Wendy Galgan for letting us know that Daisy Fried will read from Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice, March 5, 4:30 pm, at St. Francis College’s Founders Hall

Congrats to Gary Glauber on the publication of “Not For Us,” “Not For Us,” “The Snowy Owl,” and “The Snowy Owl” in Eunoia Review; “Putrid Deliquescence” in Deep Water Literary Journal, “Hitchhiker” in Agave, “Seasons of Loss” in Ozone Park Literary Journal, and “Star-Crossed” in Three Elements Review

Congrats to Cindy Hochman on her poem, “Blank White Page,” appearing in Arsenic Lobster

Poet Robert MacDowell for this advice on how to listen with empathy and validation and alerting us to for his upcoming talk, Actualization of Women and Men in the New Global Paradigm, on March 2 at the Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living

Poet Mary McCray for Tony Hoagland’s article, “Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America”

Wait for me!

Bass player Larry Schwartzman for this adorable video of a puppy trying to run with the big dog

Roof Books Publisher James Sherry for two new RB books, Erica Kaufman’s Instant Classic and Kit Robinson and Ted Greenwald’s A Mammal of Style

Poet Linda Simone for this article on the debate around Robert Frost’s character, more realistic images of women and families and this 2013 writers’ memoriam

Frost Medal Winner Gerald Stern

Congrats to Gerald Stern on winning the Poetry Society of America Frost Medal

Congrats to filmmaker Frank Vitale on his video Hitchhike 1,2,3 being featured in French Canadian magazine 24images in the issue 50 Ans d'Art Video and thanks to his sharing Episode 3 from The Metropolis Organism

Thanks to photographer Elaine Whitman for this video of Pete Seeger

Enjoy the periphery!

Ann