Baseball Haiku comes to Bushwick

Dara writes:

You are invited to mark Cor van den Heuvel's first trip to Bushwick!

The foremost proponent of haiku in this country, van den Heuvel, editor of the Baseball Haiku anthology (Norton), will read his work at Bushwick's own Storefront Gallery on May 4. Yours truly will introduce him and read a couple of her own poems. Here he is discussing the anthology on NPR.

Cor has been writing haiku since he heard Gary Snyder mention it in San Francisco in 1958. He has become an expert on the form and is a captivating reader.

Again, here are the details:

Cor van den Heuvel reads at Storefront Gallery

16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn

(3 short blocks from the Morgan Street L train stop)

Wednesday, May 4, 7:30pm

Free and open to the public

Drinks afterwards around the corner from the gallery at The Narrows

Fifth Annual Young Poets' night at the National Arts Club

Dara writes:

Please join me on Tuesday, April 26 at 8pm to celebrate the fifth annual Young Poets' night at the National Arts Club, featuring Eliza Griswold, Ben Downing, and Leslie C. Chang.

Cookies and punch follow the reading, which is free and open to the public.

Eliza Griswold, currently a fellow at the New America Foundation, received a 2010 Rome Prize from The American Academy in Rome. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, she reports on religion, conflict, and human rights. Her first book of poems Wideawake Field, was published in 2007 by FSG. Her reportage and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Republic, among many other publications.

Ben Downing has published poems, essays, and reviews in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. A book of his poems, The Calligraphy Shop, appeared in 2003. His biography of the society figure Janet Ross is forthcoming from FSG.

Leslie C. Chang's first collection of poems, Things That No Longer Delight Me, was awarded the 2008-2009 Poets Out Loud Prize and published in 2010. She has received awards and scholarships from the Academy of American Poets, the Millay Colony, and Bread Loaf. Her poems have appeared in Agni, The Iowa Review, The Nation, and other publications.

Fifth Annual Young Poets' Reading

Tuesday, April 26, 8pm

Free and open to the public

National Arts Club

15 Gramercy Park South 

For Max, at Three Weeks

The president has a plan for you
to bring order to remote shores.
You’ll sail away from school,

the neighborhood, to a land
that isn’t home, with no words
for retreat. You’ll find the nerve

to return to the room of stars.
The door is trees, the ocean,
walls. The bold dream is small.

--Dara Mandle