Jan 31 – Marisa Labozzetta & Tsaurah Litzky read at Bluestockings
Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Tuesday Jan 31th 7PM – 9PM
Feature Writers: Marisa Labozzetta & Tsaurah Litzky
In Marisa Labozzetta’s new collection of stories, Thieves Never Steal In The Rain, love and the supernatural drive these linked stories about the intertwining lives of five female cousins, who learn that loss, from the trivial to the most painful, is a constant force to be reckoned with.
Tsaurah Litzky’s second poetry collection Cleaning The Duck is a must have for anyone who believes in the redemptive power of poetry.
Bluestockings Bookstore
$5 suggested donation
Hosted by Vittoria repetto – the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
Open mike – sign-up at 7 pm – 8 minute limit
Bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word.
Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store
untitled – an exorcism
1
the one thing
my family did good
was cook
esp. dad
it was his job
ravioli
lentil soup
osso buco
bollito misto.
2
sunday dinners
the arguments
the silent chewing
in between
dad said
it was easier
to clothe nonna
than to feed her
the gulf stream
i was fat
mama was ignored.
3
sometimes
nonna would get mad
enough was enough
ma basta*
the gulf stream
one or two times
but too much
un insulto
basta
dad would continue
next sunday.
4
he said
you’re fat
he said
have some ravioli
you’re fat
have some gnocchi
you’re fat
have some cheese
you’re fat
have some torta
fat
panettone
fat
cioccolate
fat
fat
fat
fat.
5
when i was twenty-eight
i exercised like
no tommorrow
two hrs. on the bike
three times a wk.
three hrs. of wts. and nautilus
three times a wk.
two hrs. of martial arts
three times a wk.
i was
one hundred thirty-three lbs.
no fat
pure muscle
washboard abs.
dad never said
how good
i looked.
6
we’re eating dinner
he cooked for me
ravioli
roast baby lamb
with potatoes
i take another potato
he says
ma no, basta
you’re too fat
i lose it
i throw my plate
take the serrated knife
grab his hair
pull his head back
cut
cross the jugular
the cartoid
ear to ear
as he lays bleeding
i smash the four sets of dishes
hammer the copper pots
pile it all on top of him
i set the apt. on fire
i stand outside the door
i sing a greek chorus.
@1996 _Vittoria repetto
Tues 11-29 Kelli Dunham & Phyllis Capello at Bluestockings
Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Tuesday Nov 29th 7PM – 9PM
Feature Writers: Kelli Dunham & Phyllis Capello
Kelli Dunham, comic, writer & ex-nun on the run, will be reading from Shut Up and Be Devastated, a work in progress about why grief sucks.
Phyllis Capello’s poems and stories are about women and their work. They often have mythological references or origins.
Bluestockings Bookstore
$5 suggested donation
Hosted by Vittoria repetto – the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
Open mike – sign-up at 7 pm – 8 minute limit
Bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word.
Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store
you don’t need the financial times
on canal st.
packed w/ tourists from theMidwest& south
looking for knock-offs
the fake cashmere scarves
that sold for ten bucks
drop to seven even before Christmas.
copyright -2009 – Vittoria repetto
Review of A New Way: The Poetry Of Migrant Writers in Italy
A New Map: The Poetry Of Migrant Writers in Italy Edit by Mia Lecomte and Luigi Bonaffini (Legas-2001)
This anthology is a bilingual edition of poetry by migrant writers living and working in Italy. These migrant writers hail from places like Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Romania, Holland, Brazil and Albania.
This excellent anthology is important in its potential to redefine Italian poetry. These poets are changing what constitutes an Italian voice.
In this anthology, there is a blending of different literary traditions such as the oral and the political. Here is Ndjock Ngana Yogo Ndjock’s “Lullaby”
The falconet nibbles
Nibbles
the baby sparrow nibbles
nibbles;
the owlet suffers hunger
quipping
momma will return and then I’ll eat
macbo and manioca
even without spices tia o tia o tia o
tja
Tja o, tja o tja o tja
And here’s Pap Khouma’s “Absurd Ballad”:
But quickly
because you could miss the best
part of the nigger hunt
knife in the back
and with not pity
this dirty Italian nigger who stinks
too much of macaroni
and never stays in his own place
Here is a blending of different languages such as this piece by Barbara Serdakowski’s, which mixes French and Spanish w/ Italian
Mi tempo se habia va perdido
My time was already lost
Yesterday when I knew today I would do that nothing
Et je creuse en termite dans les trous de l’inconscience
And I bore like a termite in the holes of unconsciousness
Here are poems of longing for the country of origin, of wonder about a different life such as this poem by Ubax Cristina Ali Farah:
“And I recall when you said that perhaps, the role of the Somalian
intellectual was not really suited for you, that you would have
fared better leading herds of camels in the North, in your
small town.
Here are poems about being in a new land such as “Sawson” by Thea Laitef:
She goes round the streets of Rome
hoping to discover the valley
reading how strange it is, this city
At the beginning
it has been down there,
under a tent of shining grief
then, the conflagration raged.
Let Sawson
Ask the divinity for mercy,
Following the changes of the seasons
And let her steal onefrom thesummer
To bring it over to us later.
Here are poems about differences in sexual customs as this poem “Split” by Ubax Cristina Ali Farah whose father as Somali and mother Italian:
A nimble adolescent,
On the sand, among friends,
I fall down split.
Watch out you’ll tear yourself!
You’ll drip blood.Ceeh
I won’t find a husband
I’m not pure, closed , beautiful
Those little hanging lips
Are ugly.Caado
,
As this is a bilingual edition, one needs to talk a little about translating.
When one attends discussions on the art of translation, one hears the Italian saying traduttore – traditore: translator – traitor. For translation is not a simple swapping of one language to another. If it were just a simple swapping, then online translators would be putting professional translators out of business.
In the translation of poetry, there is always the question of what word conveys the very feeling, image or rhythm that the poet wants to convey. Here is an example of changing a word from the literal to a more idiomatic word conveys an image better by Gezim Hajdari translated by Michael Palma
“scende una neva lenta
dai nostril corpi”
An online translator may translate this as “a slow snow coming down from our bodies.”
Palma translates this as:
A gentle snow falls
From our bodies.
Palma’s translation better follows the feeling and rhythm of the original without the stiffness of a literal translation.
To my ear, the excellent translators like Bonaffini and poets / translators like Fagiani, Vitiello and Pallitto in this anthology do not betray the work of these migrant writers.
Vittoriar@aol.com
Review of Overnight by Paul Violi – Published in Italian Americana Summer 2010 issue
In his eleventh book of poems, Overnight, Paul Violi experiments with what a poem can be.
He sets up everyday happenings as the basis for poems and then constructs it w/ the unusual as in his poem “Counterman” where in the first part, the counterman keeps not hearing what the customer doesn’t want on his roast beef sandwich and then the next order is given artistic pretensions
The lettuce splayed, if you will
In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus
And the roast beef thinly sliced, folded in a multi-foil arrangement
That eschews Bragdonian pretensions
Or in “A Podiatrist Crawls Home in the Moonlight” where he forms the poem from minimalist descriptions:
Right knee left foot
Left Knee right foot
Right ouch
Asphalt
Elbow knee
Elbow foot
Knee foot
Foot slip
Face hurt
And yet gives us the complete picture.
He plays with different visual constructions such as “The Art of Restoration “where he designs a poem in the form of the yin-yang symbol; a hard task for most poets but Violi pulls it off writing not just one poem but two different poems; one on the yin side, one on the yang side; a grand total of three poems. Bravo!!
In his “Acknowledgments” poems, he plays with the time honored tradition of the acknowledgement page and instead of just listing magazines where he has been published, lists favorite poems and non-literary magazines:
“The author wishes to express profound gratitude to the following publications in which some of these works previously appeared: Architectural Digest: “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”; Teen Life: “On the Death of Chatterton”; Cosmopolitan: “Constancy to an Ideal Object”; Bon Appétit: “Drinking versus Thinking,” “The Eagle and the Tortoise”; La Cucina Italiana: “Fire, Famine and Slaughter”; House Beautiful: “Kublai Khan,” “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”; Better Homes and Gardens: “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”…
Not all the poems in this book are experimental; Paul Violi is also a capable poet when it comes to more formal pieces such as “Written in a Time of Worry and Woe” or “To Dante Alighieri” that are in sonnet form or “Pastorale”. In short, there is much in this book to delight readers of good poetry.
Vittoria repetto
Italian American Writers Assoc.
Tues 10-25 Geri DeLuca & Yu Yan Chen at Bluestockings’ Women’s/Trans’ Poetry Jam
Women’s & Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Tuesday Oct 25th 7PM – 9PM
Feature Writers: Geri DeLuca & Yu Yan Chen
Geri DeLuca is a writer and a former English professor, who is completing a novel about three women who started their life in Italian-American Brooklyn in the 1950′s.
Yu Yan Chen’s debut collection Small Hours is imbued with her at once intense but refreshing insights about family, home, identity and the quest for inner strength. From New York to Istanbul to China and beyond, It transports the readers to a passionate conversation about the essence of being alive.
Bluestockings Bookstore
$5 suggested donation
Hosted by Vittoria repetto – the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
http://www.bluestockings.com/
Open mike – sign-up at 7 pm – 8 minute limit
Bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word.
Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store
Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com
The 9th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival presents Pears, Prose & Poetry
Monday July 11 7pm-9pm
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street (off7th Avenue)
New York,NY
With
Austin Alexis
Joel Allegretti
Dorothy Friedman August
Davidson Garrett
Melinda Goodman
Dean Kostos
Michael Montlack
Carol Polcover
John Marcus Powell
Jessica Reed
Vittoria repetto
Jason Schneiderman
Sinclair Sexsmith
Chocolate Waters
Chavisa Woods
Richard Marx Weinraub
with hosts
Roxanne Hoffman & Robert Urban
Please come and support us! Limited edition of chapbook anthology of the readers’ poems will be made available for sale at the event. As well as signed books and CDs
Tues July 26 Raphael Moser & Stephanie Schroeder read at Bluestockings
Women’s & Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Tuesday July 26th 7PM – 9PM
Feature Writers: Raphael Moser & Stephanie Schroeder
Raphael Moser’s poetry investigates the world as a chaotic layering of subtext and conflict, it evokes a painterly or sculptural sense of the tension in relationship. The individual committed to a greater community is beholden to a transformation of the self to demarcate an ethical stance which explores the balance in justice.
In Stephanie Schroeder’s darkly humorous and sometimes perverse memoir, Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide, she chronicles 20 years of misadventures as a transplanted Midwestern lesbian with undiagnosed Tourette Syndrome and bipolar disease in turn-of-the-millennium New York City. From being staffer in a shelter to being locked in a ward, it is a raw account of fifteen yrs both marred and informed by mental illness.
Bluestockings Bookstore
$5 suggested donation
Hosted by Vittoria repetto – the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
Open mike – sign-up at 7 pm – 8 minute limit
Bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word.
Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store
the illusion of fate
the duchess
early 80’s
a curly headed teenager
checks out a dyke bouncer,
waits for her friend
talking inside
to a parent.
when the friend returns,
the bouncer says your wait is over
the 16 yr old giggles
“i’ve been waiting for you all my life.”
and the two giggle
and blush their way out the door
decades later, they meet again
one suggesting the meeting
the other keeping the secret
a few dates
a failed experiment
edith piaf sings
“non je no regrette” on the cd
a year later
peace march
her curls blow in the breeze
as she watches
the once bouncer climb a hill
call someone on her cell.
the bouncer wonders
what does she think
what does she think
© 2006 –Vittoria repetto
