30 May 2008

The Reanimation Library is thrilled to be co-sponsoring the following event:

READING, DIALOGUE, AND BOOK RELEASE PARTY FOR NEW BOOKS BY JEN BERVIN, ROBERT FITTERMAN, AND NAYLAND BLAKE

Monday, June 9
7 pm

Studio 21, Fourth Floor
94 Ninth Street (between Smith Street and 2nd Ave)
Carroll Gardens / Park Slope Brooklyn, NY 11215
View Map

G or F train to Smith and Ninth,
or R train to 9th Street in Brooklyn

Chilled wine, ice cold lemonade
Free, open to the public
Elevator accessible

This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA, Proteus Gowanus, and The Reanimation Library.

In THE DESERT (Granary Books 2008), poet and visual artist Jen Bervin continues in the tradition of composition by erasure--by sewing. Taking John Van Dyke's prose celebration of American wilderness The Desert (1901) as a point of departure, Bervin has sewn, row by row, across more than a hundred facsimile pages of Van Dyke's prose, creating an elemental poem that shares Van Dyke's close attention to visual phenomena. She writes: "The great get on with the least possible and suggest everything by light." Evoking Bervin's earlier work with the sonnets of William Shakespeare from which she culled her own minimal Nets, Bervin here uses fields of pale blue stitching to construct poems "narrated by the air"--"so clear that one can see the breaks."

NO PRESS is thrilled to announce the publication of a suite of chapbooks of conceptual writing by ROBERT FITTERMAN and NAYLAND BLAKE. Produced in editions of 60 copies, these 3 chapbooks are available only in tandem with each other (in numbered editions) for $25.

THE SUN ALSO ALSO RISES by ROBERT FITTERMAN When I was 13, my brother gave me a copy of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". It was my first foray into real literature and I hated it. Even with little or no way to enter the novel, I dutifully slugged through it (I mean, what is cog-nak anyway?) Now, I have returned to revisit my relationship with that novel. In this version, I have erased my way through Hemingway's original text, leaving behind only the phrases that begin with the pronoun "I". - Robert Fitterman

MY SUN ALSO RISES by ROBERT FITTERMAN "My Sun Also Rises" is a parallel companion to the The Sun Also Also Rises, which translates the previous erased version of the Hemingway original into my own experience of moving to downtown Manhattan in 1981.

ALSO ALSO ALSO RISES, THE SUN by NAYLAND BLAKE In November 2007, I was invited to perform at the KGB Bar Reading Series. Having just completed the two Hemingway pieces, I was eager to perform them but I needed a second voice, a Hemingway. Happily, Nayland Blake agreed to read the Hemingway part, and we alternated chapters. In the process of rehearsing and thinking about this project, Nayland suggested that he might write his own version. His text, "Also Also Also Rises, The Sun" is a beautiful, minimalist version that further opens the conceptual possibilities for the piece.

Robert Fitterman is the author of 10 books of poetry, including 3 installments of his ongoing poem "Metropolis": "Metropolis 1-15" (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), "Metropolis 16-29" (Coach House Books, 2002), and "Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (Edge Books, 2004). His most recent book "War, the musical" (Subpress), is co-authored with artist Dirk Rowntree. Forthcoming books include: "rob the plagiarist" (Roof Books) and "Sprawl: Metropolis 30A" (Make Now Press). He teaches writing at NYU and at Bard College.

Nayland Blake is an artist, curator, educator, writer and investigator who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery New York, Fred London, Gallery Paule Anglim San Francisco. Since 2001 Blake has been the Chair of the International Center of Photography / Bard Masters Program in Advanced Photographic Studies.

Poet and visual artist Jen Bervin's large-scale sewn composites of Dickinson's fascicle marks and other works have been exhibited in the US and France. Her recent books include The Desert (Granary Books 2008), A Non- Breaking Space (Ugly Duckling 2005), and Nets (UDP 2004). Her work has been featured recently in Esopus and Double Change. Jen Bervin is a 2007 Poetry Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts and has received fellowships in art and writing from The MacDowell Colony, Centrum Arts, and The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. She is a contributing editor for jubilat and lives in New York.

28 May 2008

Next Saturday is my last official work day at the library for the year. Proteus Gowanus is shutting down for the summer and I figured that it would be a good time to take a little break from cataloging and work on my bowling. The library will remain open by appointment and will resume regular weekly hours in September. In the meantime, you can probably find me either here or here.