TELLING THE TRUTH AS IT COMES UP: Alice Notley & Nick Sturm

Wednesday, December 6th, Zoom

In celebration of the publication of Telling the Truth as it Comes Up: Selected Talks and Essays: 1991-2018 (The Song Cave, 2023) by Alice Notley, The Flow Chart Foundation presented Notley reading from the collection, and then joined by editor and lecturer Nick Sturm for a discussion, presenting from Alice Notley's Paris apartment!

Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona in 1945 and grew up in Needles, California in the Mojave Desert. She was educated at the Needles public schools, Barnard College, and The Writers Workshop, University of Iowa. She has lived most extensively in Needles, in New York, and since 1992 in Paris, France. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, and of essays and talks on poetry, and has edited and co-edited books by Ted Berrigan and Douglas Oliver. She edited the magazine CHICAGO in the 70s and co-edited with Oliver the magazines SCARLET and Gare du Nord in the 90s. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Griffin Prize, the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize, a lifetime achievement award. Notley may be most widely known for her epic poem The Descent of Alette. Some more recent titles include Eurynome’s Sandals, Benediction, Certain Magical Acts, and For the Ride. And now available are Early Works, composed of Notley’s first four books along with a section of unpublished early poems; and the six-book epic, The Speak Angel Series. Notley is also a collagist and visual artist, and some of her artwork may be found in the book Runes and Chords. She is also the author of a new book of talks and essays called Telling the Truth as It Comes Up: Selected Talks & Essays 1991-2018 (The Song Cave, 2023).

Nick Sturm is a Lecturer in English at Georgia State University and Visiting Faculty in Creative Writing at Emory University. He is editor of Early Works by Alice Notley (Fonograf Editions, 2023) and co-editor of Get the Money!: Collected Prose, 1961-1983 by Ted Berrigan (City Lights, 2022). His work has been published at Poetry Foundation, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, Chicago Review, ASAP/J, Women’s Studies, and Post45.

Tracie Morris & Tongo Eisen-Martin—Poetry . Performance . Conversation .

Friday, September 22nd, 2023 Second Ward Foundation

The Flow Chart Foundation joined forces with Hudson's Second Ward Foundation to present Tracie Morris & Tongo Eisen-Martin. The event consisted of incredible performances, thought-provoking poetry, and conversation between the two authors.

The event was also live-streamed through our partner radio station, WGXC: Radio for Open Ears.

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, "We Charge Genocide Again," has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His book Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize, and won both a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His latest book, Blood On The Fog, was named one of The New York Times' poetry books of the year. In 2020, he co-founded Black Freighter Press to publish revolutionary works. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.

Tracie Morris is a poet, scholar and vocalist working in multiple media. She has performed extensively around the world. Her sound installations have been presented at numerous institutions, including the Drawing Center, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument presented by Dia Art Foundation, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Dia: Chelsea, The Kitchen Performance Space, The Museum of Modern Art, The Silent Barn, and The Whitney Biennial. Morris is the recipient of awards, fellowships, and grants for poetry and performance, including NYFA, Creative Capital, and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well MacDowell and Yaddo residencies. Her work has been extensively anthologized and recorded. Her most recent poetry collection, human/nature poems, was published by Litmus Press this year. Tracie is Professor of Poetry at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, having first been their inaugural Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry.

Flow Chart Cabaret Cinema—A Night of Neo-Benshi

Friday, September 1st, 2023 Hudson Hall

The Flow Chart Foundation presented it's fourth annual "Flow Chart Cabaret Cinema—A Night of Neo-Benshi" at the historic Hudson Hall opera house in Hudson, NY on Friday, September 1, 2023. The performers and film clips were as follows: -

Jeffrey Lependorf — Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Elissa Schappell & Rob Spillman — Detour (1945)

Alex Patrick Dyck — Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)

Nick Flynn — Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Dave King — Eaux d’artifice (Kenneth Anger, 1970)

Todd Colby — Fantastic Voyage (1966)

2023 Gathering—The Ingenious Mode: Exploring the Experimental Impulse of Poetry—NIGHT of PERFORMANCE

Saturday, July 22nd, Flow Chart Space

As part of our 2023 GATHERING weekend, we presented a NIGHT of PERFORMANCE, featuring Kimberly Alidio, Farnoosh Fathi & Darci Dennigan, Rosamond S. King, Kamikaze Jones, Carla Harryman & Co., Tracie Morris, Nate Santana, and Schoemer/Parashi, in an evening of poetry, music, film, and theatre.

CAT’S MEOW AT KITTY’S GARDEN: Summer Reading Series

Wayne Koestenbaum & Adriana Tampasis Trio ft.

Meghan Mercier & Justin Geyer

Friday, July 7, 2023 5:30–7pm

Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, Notes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s & Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation, and Jackie Under My Skin. The Queen’s Throat, praised by Susan Sontag as “a brilliant book,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and appeared this year in French translation. His novel, Circus, was reissued in July 2019 with an introduction by Rachel Kushner. His essays and poems have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. Koestenbaum has exhibited his own paintings in solo shows. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017, and he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, and the Renaissance Society. He won a Whiting Writers Award, and was a co-winner of the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Justin Geyer is a pianist, keyboardist, composer and educator active in the jazz and experimental scenes as well as working with various rock groups.  An aspiring music therapist, Justin is passionate about sharing music in ways that are healing and uplifting. He believes that music can be a catalyst for growth and change as well as a powerful vehicle for bringing people together.

Currently residing in Chatham, NY, Meghan Mercier is a born-and-raised Hudson Valley composer and cellist. She is a graduate of Bard College, where she studied composition with Joan Tower and Matt Sargent, Meghan was the co-recipient of the Bard Class of 2020 Jacob Druckman Memorial Prize. In her compositions and her performance, Meghan is interested in collaboratively creating affective sonic environments through improvisation.

Adriana Tampasis is a Hudson Valley-based composer, performer, and poet. She has composed for solo, chamber, and large ensemble groups, integrating traditional and nontraditional notations including narrative and graphic scores into her compositions. Her work is inspired by the fusion of jazz, chamber, and literary arts, employing both improvisation and through-composition. She has held a recent residency at Westben as a Performer-Composer and is currently recording an album with her jazz-fusion quartet, Pocket Merchant.

Note: Paolo Javier was scheduled to appear but unfortunately taken ill and unable to appear.

Megan Fernandes & Christian Schlegal

Friday, June 30th, 2023 5:30–7pm

Megan Fernandez is a writer living in NYC. She was born in Canada and raised in the Philadelphia area. Her family are East African Goans. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.  Her book Good Boys was a finalist for the Kundiman Book Prize, the Saturnalia Book Prize, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was published with Tin House Books in February 2020. Her newest book, I Do Everything I’m Told, is coming out from Tin House this June. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical theory. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

Christian Schlegal is a poet and teacher. He has written two books of poetry: Honest James (The Song Cave, 2015) and Ryman (Ricochet, 2022) and his work has been published in The Volta, Lana Turner, West Branch Wired, Harvard Review Online, and elsewhere. His ongoing project, a researched-then-improvised series of talk poems, derives from the methods of David Antin; recent talks have taken up artistic "maintenance" and the problem of reality in art, along with a single line from a Shakespeare sonnet. His talk today will begin with the career of the artist Lee Lozano. He lives in New Haven and teaches grades 2, 7, 9, and 11 at Pierrepont School.

Todd Colby & Bianca Stone

June 23rd, 2023 5:30pm

Toddy Colby is a poet and visual artist. He has published five collections of poetry, including Tremble and Shine (Soft Skull Press, 2004), Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Poems (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Flushing Meadows (Scary Topiary Press, 2013) and SPLASH STATE (The Song Cave, 2014). Earlier this spring, Spiral Editions published the chapbook It's Okay to See Ghosts Now. His writing and art have recently appeared in The Believer, Bomb Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Poetry Magazine. His art is shown regularly at The Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY. 

Bianca Stone is the author of the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and poetic study at the Ruth Stone House (501c3) where she is editor-at-large for Iterant magazine and host of Ode & Psyche Podcast.

Edwin Torres & NewBorn Trio (Katie Down, Miguel Frasconi, Jeffrey Lependorf)

June 9th. 5:30pm

Edwin Torres is a NYC native, and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). His current book Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (Roof Books) received a 2022 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation. Other books include: Xoeteox: the collected word object (Wave Books), The Animal's Perception of Earth (DoubleCross Press), and Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press). Multi-disciplinary collaborations with a wide range of cultural nomads have contributed to the development of his bodylingo poetics. He has received fellowships from NYFA, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The DIA Foundation, among others. Anthologies include: New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archives, The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, and Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement.

NewBorn Trio (Katie Down, Miguel Frasconi, and Jeffrey Lependorf) formed specifically to perform for Kosovo’s first national day of independence—NewBorn Day. This unique ensemble combines handmade and found glass instruments, traditional Asian flutes, plucked strings, and odd sound-making objects to evoke unimaginable musical textures.

Katie Down is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound designer and music therapist. Her soundscores have been heard at BAM, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theatre, La MaMa, and many other venues in the US and abroad. Katie lives and works in Brooklyn and in the Hudson Valley.

Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser whose instrumentarium includes glass objects, electronics, and instruments of his own design. He has composed numerous operas, chamber works, dance scores, and has worked closely with composers John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney and Jon Hassell.

Jeffrey Lependorf is a composer and visual artist. He is also Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation and directs the Art Omi: Music international musicians residency program. A master player of the shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute), he also performs with a variety of other Asian flutes and various objects.

DOOR: Ann Lauterbach reading and in conversation with The Brooklyn Rail’s Managing Editor

May 14th, 3pm, Flow Chart Space

Ann Lauterbach read from her 11th poetry collection, Door, following by a conversation with Charles Shultz, Managing Director of The Brooklyn Rail.

Ann Lauterbach is the author of ten books of poetry and three books of essays, including The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience and The Given & The Chosen; her 2009 collection, Or To Begin Again, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Lauterbach’s work has been recognized by fellowships from, among others, the Guggenheim Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Ruth and David Schwab II Professor of Languages and Literatures at Bard College. A native of New York City, she lives in Germantown, New York.

Charles Schultz is a writer based in New York City. He is the Managing Editor for The Brooklyn Rail.

The Muriel Rukeyser Era: A Discussion with Eric Keenaghan & Rowena Kennedy-Epstein

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 Zoom

When examining history, The Flow Chart Foundation tends to focus on the era of poetry created by the New York School, John Ashbery in particular. For this event we shifted our gaze, re-examining the so-called "Pound era" to engage with the work of the increasingly important poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser. This event celebrated the publication of The Muriel Rukeyser Era: Selected Prose (Cornell University Press, 2023), which makes available for the first time a range of Muriel Rukeyser's prose, a rich and diverse archive of political, social, and aesthetic writings. Eric Keenaghan and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein assembled a selection of unpublished and out-of-print texts, demonstrating the diversity, brilliance, and possibilities of mid-twentieth-century women's intellectual life and sociopolitical engagement. We heard selections from the book and discussed Rukeyser's contributions and importance. The event was made possible in part from support from the New York State Council on the Arts, Spark of Hudson, and Friends of The Flow Chart Foundation

Marjorie Welish & David Grubbs in Conversation and Performance

Saturday, November 11th, Flow Chart Space

The Flow Chart Foundation presented a conversation between artist/poet Marjorie Welish and composer/musician David Grubbs in conjunction with the "Of the Sign: Art by Marjorie Welish—Paintings/Artist Books/Provocations" exhibition at the Flow Chart Space, followed by an improvised performance music along with a recitation from Oaths? Questions?, a collaborative artist book by Welish and James Sienna.

(PRECARIOUS PARENTHESES)

James Schuyler + Architecture and the NY School

Thursday, November 9th, 2023 Zoom

On the occasion of the James Schuyler centennial and the publication of Poetry, Architecture, and the New York School: Something Like a Livable Space (Palgrave MacMillian), Dr. Mae Losasso, the book's author, offered a presentation on Schuyler's idiosyncratic use of parentheses and was then joined by The Flow Chart Foundation's Executive Director in a general discussion about her book and the ways in which "the poems written by the first generation intersect with the theories and practices of architectural design, construction, and use.

Sustaining Air: The Life and Poetry of Larry Eigner

October 16, 2023

On Monday, October 16th, 2023 poet and author of "Sustaining Air: The Life and Poetry of Larry Eigner" (Univeristy of Alabama Press) discussed Eigner's life and work at The Flow Chart Foundation's Flow Chart Space in Hudson, NY, the very first event to take place in Flow Chart's newly ADA-compliant space.

The event was made possible in part with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Spark of Hudson, and the Friends of The Flow Chart Foundation.

On Sustaining Air: The Life of Larry Eigner

The poet Larry Eigner (1927–1996) was a key figure in New American poetry, which grew out of the Black Mountain School and San Francisco Renaissance, and a major influence on the Language poets. Eigner also had cerebral palsy as the result of an accident at birth. It is fortuitous that the poet lived his life in two locations vibrant in both poetics and disability activism. Except for brief periods attending camp and school, he lived with his parents in Swampscott, Massachusetts, until the age of 51. Later, he moved to Berkeley, California, at the height of the disability rights movement. In the 1950s, Eigner attended Camp Jened, which later became famous in the film Crip Camp.

Bartlett’s biography covers every significant phase of Eigner’s life: his childhood and young adulthood when he began typing poems with one finger on the manual typewriter that was a bar mitzvah gift; his first publications and the maturation of his poetic interests through correspondence with poets of the era; and after his move to Berkeley, the ever-expanding circle of friends, poets, caretakers, and collaborators he established there. The result is a deeply insightful account of an utterly distinctive voice whose influence widens and deepens with each new generation that encounters him

Jennifer Bartlett is the author of four books of poetry. With Sheila Black and Michael Northen, she coedited Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Bartlett’s poetry, nonfiction, and curatorial work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Typo, among many other places. With George Hart, she edited Momentous Inconclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner.

Charles Bernstein’s most recent book is Topsy-Turvy (2021) from the University of Chicago Press. His work was the subject of The Poetry of Idiomatic Insistences, edited by Paul Bove, the Fall 2021 issue of boundary 2. Along with co-editor Hank Lazer, his series at the University of Alabama Press published both the Eigner biography and an Eigner Selected Poems, for which he wrote a foreword. He lives in Brooklyn and Valatie, NY. [photo: Paul Stephens]

THE ASHBERY BRIDGE: POETRY AND PUBLIC SPACE

July 28, 2023

An Ashbery poem is strung across a pedestrian bridge in Minneapolis designed by sculptor Siah Armajani. The bridge dramatically inserts poetry into the public sphere, inviting users to contemplate where they are even as they move toward somewhere else. Poet/critic Eric Lorberer offers a multimedia “guided tour” of Armajani's structure and Ashbery’s poem showing how they work together as public art. This program was presented on what would have been John Ashbery's 96th birthday.

[ u n t i t l e d ]

And now I cannot remember how I would have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place. The place, of movement and an order. The place of old order. But the tail end of the movement is new. Driving us to say what we are thinking. It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand and think of going no further. And it is good when you get to no further. It is like a reason that picks you up and places you where you always wanted to be. This far. It is fair to be crossing, to have crossed. Then there is no promise in the other. Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence, small panacea and lucky for us. And then it got very cool.

[This poem was commissioned by the artist Siah Armajani for use on his Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, built in 1988 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on commission from the Walker Arts Center. The words of the poem are affixed to the upper lintels of the span and run in each direction across the bridge.}

From Hotel Lautréamont (© 1992, 2017 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)

Eric Lorberer is editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books. His poems and essays have been published in numerous newspapers, magazines, and literary journals from American Poetry Review to Volt. He lives in Minneapolis.

[photo: Jennifer Simonson]

JOHN ASHBERY: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY—A Discussion with Jess Cotton - June 7, 2023

Scholar/writer Jess Cotton's biography of John Ashbery has been published by Reaktion Books as part of their prestigious "Critical Lives" series. Jess Cotton joined Jeffrey Lependorf, The Flow Chart Foundation's Executive Director, in a conversation about capturing the life and work of the poet of whom Harold Bloom wrote "No one writing poems in the English language is likelier than Ashbery to survive the severe judgements of time."

This new critical biography offers "a legible and accessible map of Ashbery’s work that draws connections between the poetry, the New York art and literary world, and the political climate of the middle decades of the twentieth century."

Jess Cotton is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She works on twentieth-century American and English literature and has published on modernism, American poetry and loneliness.

Celebrating Ten Years of Andrew Epstein's LOCUS SOLUS blog, June 14, 2023

Andrew Epstein's Locus Solus blog, the "go to" first stop for all things New York School of poets & artists, celebrated ten years!

The Flow Chart Foundation marked the occasion with a conversation between writer, scholar, and blogger Andrew Epstein and critic, publisher, and Flow Chart Board President, Mandana Chaffa.

Andrew Epstein is a Professor of English at Florida State University. He is the author of Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry, Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture, and the Cambridge Introduction to American Poetry Since 1945. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Contemporary Literature, American Literary History, Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other publications. He blogs about the New York School of poets at Locus Solus.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Nowruz Journal, a periodical of Persian arts and letters, a finalist for CLMP’s Best Magazine: Debut; and an Editor-at-Large at Chicago Review of Books, Mandana Chaffa’s writing has appeared in a variety of publications. She serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, where she is VP of the Barrios Book in Translation Prize; and also serves as Board President of The Flow Chart Foundation. Born in Tehran, Iran, she lives in New York.