Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y

"That voice has made Nguyen a standard-bearer in what seems to be a transformational moment in the history of American literature, a perspectival shift pressing the truth that the only difference between the heroic journey of the Pilgrims to the New World and the voyage of the Vietnamese boat people was that the Pilgrims did not have a camera to record them as the foul-smelling, half-starved, unshaven, and lice-ridden lot that they were. It’s a voice that shakes the walls... of the old literary comfort zone wherein the narratives of nonwhite immigrants were tasked with proving their shared humanity to a white audience." Viet Thanh Nguyen's new novel, THE COMMITTED, a follow-up to THE SYMPATHIZER, is reviewed in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com//how-viet-thanh-nguyen-turns-fic Join us Thursday (3/4) at 7pm US Eastern for an evening with Nguyen: https://www.92y.org/event/viet-thanh-nguyen

"I had never before seen such a lavish bouquet. What was it for? It wasn't as if I'd just displayed any particular artistry. Was exile like a sort of tightrope walking, a feat worthy of reward?" This week on #ReadByPod, Monique Truong reads from Yko Tawada's MEMOIRS OF A POLAR BEAR, a novel which "evokes the warp and weft of another way of existing, achingly familiar yet different and strange." Pick up the episode under 92Y's Read By wherever you get your podcasts, or stream it on our website. https://www.92y.org//fea/poetry-center-online/read-by.aspx

Explore Gilgamesh's special fascination for translators and contemporary poets with Michael Schmidt, author of GILGAMESH: THE LIFE OF A POEM, in a two-session course starting April 1: https://www.92y.org/class/reading-gilgamesh

Short Speech to My Friends By Amiri Baraka A political art, let it be tenderness, low strings the fingers... touch, or the width of autumn climbing wider avenues, among the virtue and dignity of knowing what city you’re in, who to talk to, what clothes even what buttonsto wear. I address / the society the image, of common utopia. / The perversity of separation, isolation, after so many years of trying to enter their kingdoms, now they suffer in tears, these others, saxophones whining through the wooden doors of their less than gracious homes. The poor have become our creators. The black. The thoroughly ignorant. Let the combination of morality and inhumanity begin. 2. Is power, the enemy? (Destroyer of dawns, cool flesh of valentines, among the radios, pauses, drunks of the 19th century. I see it, as any man's single history. All the possible heroes dead from heat exhaustion at the beach or hiding for years from cameras only to die cheaply in the pages of our daily lie. One hero has pretensions toward literature one toward the cultivation of errors, arrogance, and constantly changing disguises, as trucker, boxer, valet, barkeep, in the aging taverns of memory. Making love to those speedy heroines of masturbation or kicking literal evil continually down filmy public stairs. A compromise would be silence. To shut up, even such risk as the proper placement of verbs and nouns. To freeze the spit in mid-air, as it aims itself at some valiant intellectual's face. There would be someone who would understand, for whatever fancy reason. Dead, lying, Roi, as your children cane up, would also rise. As George Armstrong Custer these 100 years, has never made a mistake. https://www.poetryfoundation.org//short-speech-to-my-frien

Join Hilary Holladay, author of The Power of Adrienne Rich, a New York Times’s Top Book of 2020, for a two-session dive into Rich’s life and extraordinary poems. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Rich’s correspondence and in-depth interviews with numerous people who knew her, Holladay portrays the internationally renowned poet, feminist and lesbian icon in full dimension. Starts Tuesday, March 16: https://www.92y.org/class/reading-adrienne-rich

Ode to Herb Kent by Jamila Woods Your voice crawls across the dashboard of Grandma’s Dodge Dynasty on the way home from Lilydale First Baptist. You sing a cocktail of static and bass. Sound like you dressed to the nines: cowboy hat, fur coat & alligator boots. Sound like you lotion every tooth. You a walking discography, South Side griot, keeper of crackle & dust in the grooves. You fell in love with a handmade box of wires at 16 and been behind the booth ever since. From wbe...z to V103, you be the Coolest Gent, King of the Dusties. Your voice wafts down from the ceiling at the Hair Lab. You supply the beat for Kym to tap her comb to. Her brown fingers paint my scalp with white grease to the tunes of Al & Barry & Luther. Your voice: an inside-out yawn, the sizzle of hot iron on fresh perm, the song inside the blackest seashell washed up on a sidewalk in Bronzeville. You soundtrack the church picnic, trunk party, Cynthia’s 50th birthday bash, the car ride to school, choir, Checkers. Your voice stretch across our eardrums like Daddy asleep on the couch. Sound like Grandma’s sweet potato pie, sound like the cigarettes she hide in her purse for rough days. You showed us what our mommas’ mommas must’ve moved to. When the West Side rioted the day MLK died, you were audio salve to the burning city, people. Your voice a soft sermon soothing the masses, speaking coolly to flames, spinning black records across the airwaves, spreading the gospel of soul in a time of fire. Joycetta says she bruised her thumbs snappin’ to Marvin’s Got to Give It Up and I believe her. See more