8 PM, Thurs. Jan 15
The Idiom Book: Collected Works Release Party
Reading/Live Music
Chris McIntyre, Steve McNamara, Mark Brunetti
Chris McIntyre's writing is bothself-refelective and keenly observant of the world around him. He notices things like park benches going out of style and the anger he feels for Walt Whitman both the man and the bridge. He can ride mechanical bulls for a pretty long time. Steven McNamara is a retired ferris wheel operator. His poetry focuses on the eternal aspects of life derived mainly from his time spent crossing the country, seeing a groundhog predict the weather 10 years in a row, and some time in Peru building houses for people. Mark Brunetti is the publisher of The Idiom Magazine. He won the 2007 Do-It-Yourself Book Competition based out of Los Angeles California for his poetry chapbook, "Airplane Lies and other Poems Without a Home". His lines are simple and concrete, while still attempting to be lyrical and poetic.
The Idiom Magazine is going into its 4th year of publication. It won the London Book Festival: Magazine Category in 2007 and was banned from Rutger's zine festival for obscene material and a 4 1/2 foot paper-mâché volcano which attracted a lot more attention than expected. The Idiom Book is $18 but the Idiom is sympathetic to economical strain.
7:30 PM - 9:30, Sat. Jan. 17
The Rapscallion Club
Alex Dawson
Book Release Party
What do French fry contests, moustache mugs, banana dogs, and the lost art of bumbershooting have in common with ancient magic, pirate ghosts, island treasure, and an underground tunnel to Peru? Find out!Due to vast fields of compressed pancake ice, Malaysian pirates along the Strait of Malacca, the repeated ramming of a truculent humpback, and the slow recovery of a captain stung by a deadly jellyfish known as the Sea Wasp, the Dutch Fluyt delivering the book, while originally slated to drop anchor five days before Christmas, will not arrive until the morning of the party. Once the Fluyt makes port, a steamer trunk containing the books will be freighted from an unspecified Weehawken dock to downtown Metuchen in the rumble seat of a rented 1925 Kissel Gold Bug Speedster. The trunk will be wound and bound in heavy chains and hung with a big black lock the size of a bear trap. Upon entry to the release party, each guest will receive a skeleton key. Only one key turns the lock. The person with the right key will be awarded his/her very own edition of The Rapscallion Club for FREE!
The event will also feature relevant entertainment and refreshments: a Scottish bagpiper, a fencing maestro in full regalia, a Bartitsu demonstration (an Edwardian martial art otherwise known as self-defense with a walking stick), Peruvian musicians Daniel and Pocho on quenna and djembe, theatrical readings from the novel, and South American snacks such as chichi morada, sweet purple juice made from black corn, and churros, a long fluted donut that gets its name from its shape, which resembles the horns of the Churro sheep. For more info or to pre-order the book, please visit rapscallionclub.blogspot.com/ The Raconteur turns four!
8 PM, Fri. Jan 23
THE RACONTEUR ANNIVERSARY PARTY
w/Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet PAUL MULDOON
Reading/Signing
Join us in celebrating our fourth anniversary with a magnum of Baron Albert Brut and Irish poet Paul Muldoon.Carlos Fuentes claims the luck of the English language consists of someone Irish coming along every generation and reinventing it. Muldoon--reared in Northern Ireland, long resident at Princeton, recently professor of poetry at Oxford--is today's reinventor. Many of his poems distinctly take up the poetic tradition yet skew it with half-rhymes and unlikely subjects for classical forms (Ulster gangsters, suburban New Jersey, pub crawls, Warren Zevon), and his voice, with its taste for meaty unpronounceables and querulous urgencies, is like no other in contemporary poetry. With signature wit, Muldoon is preoccupied with the passage of time, the ways things change and stay the same, the distance between one culture and another, and the narrowing gap between high art and popular entertainment.
He has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War." Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now a professor at Princeton University and Chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts. In 2007 he was appointed Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. Influenced by John Donne and Seamus Heaney as well as rock music and advertising, he has described himself as a "prince of the quotidian". FREE! Comp Brut, wine, and stout so thick it drinks like a meal. Books on sale at event.
8 PM, Fri. Jan 30
Cool Women
Reading/Signing
Audiences have come to expect “hot” poems from the Cool Women. Even the poets themselves don’t know, until their jazz-like ensemble begins a performance, which poems will be shared. They tune like musicians around a theme--first to their audiences, always to each other, making each reading unique. Habitués know to expect the unexpected. Though they perform widely in the NY metro area, Cool Women began as a critique forum; members continue to meet monthly. Members have mentored gifted young women poets at the YWCA of Princeton. Several are Poets in the Schools, under the auspices of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as ‘Dodge Poets’ with the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation. All have a broad range of books and publications to their credit—prose as well as poetry. Three Cool Women anthologies, plus a CD, were created by audience demand. A fourth is in the making.
Members include: Eloise Bruce (Lawrenceville); Juditha Dowd (Sergeantsville); Joyce Lott (Rocky Hill); Lois Marie Harrod (Hopewell;) Betty Lies (Montgomery); Judy Michaels (Hillsborough) and Penelope Schott (Portland, Oregon). Maxine Susman (Highland Park) and Gretna Wilkinson (Somerset) have recently joined the group, bringing new energies and perspectives.
