NEW DATE: Prey Of Tigers, Prey Of The Heart--Open Mic On Love And Its Various Destinations

Due to poor weather, Open Mic at Barnes and Noble's annual reading in honor of Valentine’s Day has been rescheduled for this Monday evening, February 15, emphasizing a broader and more fundamental spin from past gatherings. This year, program coordinator Frank Chambers challenges contributors to deliver “unconventional love poems directed at subjects other than people, [be it] to the laying down of arms, to equality… a couplet to your dog, cat, iguana… [or] a sonnet to Trump (if you must).” 

How what we invest our affections in molds our concepts of love, whether an ideal, a social or political affiliation, or something more visceral and individual in its satisfactions, like impassioned devotion to a sport or hobby--all contribute to the numerous sides of that one emotion prized for its uniquely energizing and unpredictable appeal since the beginning of human experience.

Prized, but also cautioned against in instances when two forms of love become conflated, or come into conflict, played out to most gruesome effect in Shakespeare’s ever-relevant tragedy, Titus Andronicus, wherein the demands of nationalism, vengeance and custom embody a virtual arranged marriage between the individual and the state. The play’s eponymous Roman general, over a career marked by indiscriminate devotion to patriarchy and empire, sacrifices almost all his 25 sons in battle (in one instance, even personally dispatching a son for disloyalty) and, ultimately, sees Lavinia, his sole daughter, raped and maimed, only placing primary devotion to what’s left of his family when betrayed by the incoming Emperor, Saturninus.

Anthony Hopkins takes his cinematic turn as the cruel, yet pitiable general in Julie Taymor’s contemporized 1999 film version, Titus: 

Love’s persistent ability, however, to establish a presence even when having nothing material to be projected upon, be it home, country or family, forms the universal basis for faith and mysticism in a life of unknowns, as cogently expressed by Matthew McConaughey's pop-theologian Palmer Joss to uber-empiricist astronomer Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster in this scene from the 1997 Robert Zemeckis adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact:  

Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic Poetry takes place (usually) on the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

 Barnes& Noble

100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06906

203-323-1248

Neddy Smith: A Widening Of Musical Gates

This Wednesday at The 9th Note Jazz Supper Club in Stamford, Neddy Smith and the East/West Trio will perform selections from Blue Monday, his more laid-back follow-up to 2013’s Mood Swing.

 A spirited delver into Jazz, Funk, Latin and other Western musical forms, with Blue, Neddy casts the net wider than ever for cosmopolitan inspiration. “The blending of various sonic expressions from the Orient, mixed with Middle Eastern influences… combined with my Jamaican/Caribbean roots and other (influences)… has prepared me for this album,” Neddy enthuses, a PoemAlley participant who operates NedGJean International Inc., his Norwalk-based recording studio, out of which he also maintains his own label. An instructor and coach, Neddy is a member of the Recording Academy and AFM Local 802.

Neddy has led TransWave, Neddy Smith and Friends and other ensembles over the years in his energetic forays into different genres. Below is a video of "Bursting Out" (2011), recorded live at Smash Studios in New York City:

 

 

Tracks like “The Eastern Gate” and “The Lotus Tree” (a live performance) bespeak the meditative approach Neddy sought for his new release, a departure from Mood Swing’s pronounced “rhythmic overdrive”. At the same time, the process of creating the CD, itself, communicated its divergent form, with the input of his friend and past collaborator, pianist Dr. Michiro Negishi and flutist Maddy Hertz: “the subtle melodic lines… defin(ing) the mood of (the) majority of the tracks… directed me more towards a Trio sound,” including Neddy's own signature bass contributions.

Click here to learn more about Neddy and his work; you can listen to album selections and order Blue Monday at CD Baby here.     

When:

8pm
February 3, 2016

Where:
The 9^th Note Jazz Supper Club
15 Bank Street
Stamford, CT 06901

Contact:

203-504-8828

Facing The Branch-Points Of Life

Sharon Charde, retired psycho-therapist and highly-accoladed poet, reads this Tuesday at Curley’s Diner from numerous chapbooks and publications reflective of the economical and sensitive style for which she is known.

Sharon most recently earned first prizes both in the Arcadia Press 2014 Ruby Irene Chapbook Contest (deadline for the next round is November 15) and the Broad River Review’s Rash Awards competition. Her work has appeared more than sixty-five times in Calyx, The Paterson Literary Review, Ping-Pong (literary organ of the Henry Miller Memorial Library), Poet Lore and many other journals and anthologies. In addition, she has seven Pushcart nominations to her name. 

Sharon has edited and published I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, containing the work of the adjudicated teens she has volunteered with since 1999 through the creative writing program at Touchstone, a residential treatment center in Litchfield, Connecticut for girls ages 12 through 18. A devoted writing teacher for twenty-three years, Sharon has been awarded fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center For The Creative Arts and The MacDowell Colony.  

Yaddo Gardens entrance

She has released several prize-winning chapbooks, such as Bad Girl At The Altar Rail (Flume, 2005), Four Trees Down From Ponte Sisto, (Dallas Poets Community Press, 2006) as well as 2008’s Branch In His Hand, a full-length collection from Backwaters Press, later adapted for radio by the BBC in 2012. Described as a requeim in poetry, Branch recalls with sparse but unflinching eloquence the death of Sharon's son in 1987 during a trip to Italy and the transformative effect the freak event had on herself and her family.       
      
After Blue, for which she won honorable mention in Finishing Line Press’s 2013 chapbook contest, was published in September 2014. She’ll be at Yaddo, the famous artists’ retreat in Sarasota Springs, New York, this spring.