Network News - March 2023

New York Festival of Song is thrilled to share their new recording of a rare musical collaboration between two literary greats: Paul Bowles and James Schuyler. A Picnic Cantata is an unpublished vocal chamber piece with music by Bowles and a libretto by Schuyler, and NYFOS Records recently released the first recording of the piece since its debut in 1953. The term “hidden gem” gets tossed around with some frequency, but the crazily inventive Picnic Cantata truly earns that descriptor. I've attached the press release, and if you'd like further information there are expanded liner notes online. The album is available to stream or you can order a physical copy here. The entire work is under 30 mins, but if you just have time for a taste, NYFOS recommend starting with track 3—when the ladies finally tuck into a feast worthy of Zabar’s.

Maureen Owen's new book, let the heart hold down the breakage   Or   the caregiver's log is out now from Hanging Loose Press; Cassandra Gillig has written a review of it for the upcoming issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter.  

Stéphane Bouquet's Common Life, translated by Lindsay Turner - three poems, one play, and three short stories - is out now with Nightboat. Boutquet's poem 'Without', translated by Turner, has been Poem of the Week (Jan 25th) at The Yale Review, and you can read it here.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs & Anne Waldman read at the Poetry Project on Wednesday, March 29 at 8:00 pm. What counter-geographies and subterranean archives does the poet assemble? In their recent works – Village and Bard, Kinetic, both out with Coffee House Press – LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Anne Waldman trace related constructions of place and memory, the imperiled and essential wavelengths at the edge that propel and hold our communities across time.

Nick Sturm will be talking with Anne Waldman about the mimeograph print culture at The Poetry Project on Friday 10th March at 4pm ET to celebrate the release of three new small press bibliographies from the Among the Neighbors pamphlet series. More info // register here: http://library.buffalo.edu/among-the-neighbors. 

Evan Kindley's group biography of the New York School, Still in the Published City, telling the intertwined stories of Ashbery, O'Hara, Guest, Koch, Schuyler, and Baraka, has been acquired by Knopf.

John Godfrey, Vincent Katz, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, and Anne Waldman read at the Guggenheim in celebration of Alex Katz’s engagement in theater, dance, and poetry, which was on view in two exhibitions, Alex Katz: Theater and Dance, at the Colby College Museum of Art, and Alex Katz: Gathering, the retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

City Lights Press will be publishing Clark Coolidge's Crystal Text in November 2023.

Finally, The Flow Chart Foundation's Ashbery Resource Center (ARC) -- a custodian of large portions of the John Ashbery archive and collections, and a repository for items and objects relating to his work -- is building its critical papers collection. They are seeking:

1. Paper print outs of dissertations and theses -- preferably permanently bound -- that focus on or have substantial engagement with Ashbery and his influence, or the New York School and its influences in general. These will be formally cataloged and shelved and will be accessible for in-person user research. Please MAIL dissertations or theses to the below address - if you would like to also include a PDF version, please send to [email protected] (Please Note: to be formally cataloged, your dissertation or theses must be printed and mailed to us, preferably in a permanently bound format)

The Flow Chart Foundation
Attn Jeffrey Lependorf
348 Warren Street
Hudson, NY 12534

2. Electronic PDFs of published critical articles that focus on or have substantial engagement with Ashbery and his influence, or The New York School and its influences in general. Please email digital PDFs to: [email protected].