Cutting Out To Cut A Rug of One’s Own

Following-up on her December appearance, Susan Cossette-Eng will be sharing work this evening at Barnes and Noble's Open Mic in Stamford from Peggy Sue Messed Up… and other poems, her latest chapbook coming out this fall.

As the eponymous sample below conveys, Susan’s writing often invokes a self-determinate rebuke of the frustrations of love, rejection, loss, as well as middle-age, borne of the denaturing demands—especially upon women--of growing up in the upscale suburban environment of her native Darien, where, appropriately enough, much of the original Stepford Wives was filmed in 1975 (see the movie trailer at the end of this entry).

Deemed lacking in sufficient “Stepfordosity” to play an extra even in the more tongue-in-cheek Nicole Kidman remake shot in New Canaan nearly thirty years later, Susan currently works in town as a fundraiser. 

Peggy Sue Messed Up

Maybe it was the crinolines…

Which itched.

I dunno.

Or the unrealistic expectations of perfection—

The ideal girl, with her Aquanet curls.

I gave up.                                 

I ditched the dance,

Dumped the dude in the sharkskin suit—

with his flask in the ass pocket,

his whiskey breath and mindless promises

and his cock

pressed against me during the cha cha cha.

I gave up.

Took my yellow Edsel ,

Golden chariot–

drove clear cross town

To the bluffs of Ithaka,

 overlooking the crashing sea

The glittering lights

From the heights

Of the world before me—

The prom queen is complete.

She is done.

You, Neptune, take my tiara.

I never wanted it.

I give up.

Susan is a two-time recipient of University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Prize for Poetry (where she earned her MA in English studying with James Scully) and has done post-graduate work at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Besides Scully, some of her major writing influences include Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Constantine Cavafy. Keep up with her writing and thoughts at her blog, MusePalace.     

Hosted by Frank Chambers and PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes & Noble's Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month in the cooking section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Down Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06901

203-323-1248

UUSIS To Host PoemAlley's "Café Night: One-Night Stand for the Arts" This Saturday Evening

Revel in an authentic mix of live music and poetry, presented on the front steps of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford!

Chris Belden

Open to all and free of charge, Café Night: One-Night Stand for the Arts represents a distinctly casual option from customary summertime entertainment, showcasing the live music of multi-instrumentalist Chris Cortigiano and screenwriter/novelist Chris Belden (2012’s Carry-On is his well-received second title; Songs About Anything and Camouflage are two albums of original songs). 

Regional poets Faith Vicinanza, Mar Walker, "Professor” Arturo Pfister and Linsey Morse provide engaging and varied spoken-word counterpoints.

Faith Vicinanza

Founder of Bethel’s popular Wednesday Night Poetry Series, Faith has penned several collections, including Husband (2008) and In the Thick of It (1996), both from Hanover Press, her own Newtown-based publishing house.

Touching plays an elegant dual role, both in the tactile and emotional sense, in “Confession”, which is used as a case study of Faith’s creative methodology in this interview with Poetry Liner Notes’ Robin Elizabeth Sampson:

Confession

When I would lie jumbled across the length of you –
all that was lost between us a little more or less
each day, or pushed aside – always arching
over the not-lost, the not-pushed-aside –
I pretended not to lean to the curve of sorrow's belly,
your hand on my knee, your tongue in my mouth
and then we would stumble, or is it that I stumbled
and nothing ever changed, black always claiming
to be something paler, cherry blossom pink perhaps
or simple yellow. I do not miss holding myself apart,
a defense against your pointed intellect. Oh, but I miss
your wicked sense of humor. I don't miss wanting
something more, or thinking there was something
more to be wanted. I miss my head on your shoulder.
Please forgive me. For this, it is too late to make amends.
For the rest of everything that faltered between us,
I forgive us both.

Copyright 2008, Faith Vicinanza

Faith’s friend, poet/painter/songwriter Mar Walker was editor of the Bent Pin Quarterly from 2007-2009, which is archived here.

Mar took part in the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a member emeritus of the Shijin Poetry Troupe (Undone Poems by Shijin appeared in 2008 via Hanover). A devout agnostic, Mar considers matters of dogma and disbelief in her latest chapbook from 2011, Tabernacle of Bees. Enjoy this reading of “What Is”, originally written for PA's April 2012 Mysteries of Light presentation (also at the UUSIS), where Mar butts the evanescent trials of human pro-/regress against the abidance of Nature and time with a forthright, yet reassuring intimacy:

Besides producing several collections, Mar has placed individual pieces in Common Ground Review, Connecticut River Review and Fairfield Review, among other publications.

“Professor” Arturo Pfister embodies the humor, pathos and unique spice of the Big Easy in his collection My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry and Other Jazz (Margaret Media, 2009), as well as in this representative performance from 2007:

Learn more about Arturo and his storied hometown at his blog.

Linsey Jayne Morse

A former Poetry Editor on Mason’s Road, the Fairfield University online literary journal, and Founding Editor of Spry Literary Journal, Linsey Jayne Morse contributes her own brand of sympathetic, psychologically acute material to Café Night like the sample below:

Girls

learn at very young ages
that outer beauty is the water-
oasis in the desert they crave.

They are taught
to smile in plaster of Paris,
hypocrites behind closed doors.
They cut themselves in secret, starve
for passion.

Each young lady
feigning optimism
and poise, accepts her place
below male fantasies,

above the unsightly.
They learn to heave aside the weak, to shun the strong
and not to trust anyone,
in a world of facades,
mascara
and hair spray.

Copyright 2009, Linsey Morse

Funded through a CAPP grant from the City of Stamford, Café Night is co-sponsored by The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education. Donations welcome.

Where:

UUSIS, 20 Forest Street (directly across from the Avon Theatre)

When:

6-8 PM, Saturday, August 10, 2013

Contact:

Nick Miele at 203-504-1027; nmiele@aircastle.com