Tuesday Jan 31^th 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

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.

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

Tuesday Nov 29^th 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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com

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

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

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.

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