Prayer in a Bottle

Dara writes:

Last night I had the honor of participating in the final performance of Cage Transmitted, the conclusion of a year long celebration of John Cage organized by Jason Andrew's Norte Maar. 

I was joined on stage at the English Kills Gallery (114 Forrest Street, Bushwick) by Jason Andrew, John Driscoll, Mika Gellman, Rebecca Goyette, Andrew Hurst, Julie Fotheringham, William Powhida, Paradise Club, Reverend Vince Anderson and DJ jojoSOUL

A short section of the forty-five minute performance is above. As part of the reading, I included some of my original work, and I am delighted to publish one of them for the first time here. 

PRAYER IN A BOTTLE
by Dara Mandle

I'm calling Walt Whitman,
curve and shelter,

calling river and silt
I rinse from my skin.

I'm calling Virginia Woolf,
young monarch, from milkweed.

I'm calling a flock of rooks
to flight, calling Frank O'Hara,

each August, from Long Island
Must call Henri Bergson

and Vergil, must call Keats
before tomorrow morning.

What we hope ever
to do with ease, we may learn

first to do with diligence,
wrote Samuel Johnson,

whom I call,
each day I call.

Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the National Arts Club

Dara writes:

Please join me as I host the Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the famous National Arts Club on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 8pm. This event is free and open to the public. The National Arts Club is located at 15 Gramercy Park South (20th Street between Park Avenue South and Irving Place). Number 6 Train at 23rd Street

This year's reading features Dan Chiasson and Brenda Shaughnessy.

Dan Chiasson is the author of four books, most recently a book of poetry, Where’s the Moon, There’s the Moon (Knopf, 2010). He is the poetry critic for The New Yorker and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Chiasson received a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph. D. from Harvard University. He is Associate Professor of English at Wellesley College.

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Human Dark with Sugar, which was a finalist for the 2008 NBCC Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy. Her third book, Our Andromeda, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, McSweeney's, The Nation, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Yale Review and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor at Rutgers-Newark and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and daughter.

UPDATE! 

Thank you everyone who came out for this special evening!

Dara introduces the Sixth Annual Young Poets' Reading at the National Arts Club. 

The poets Brenda Shaughnessy and Dan Chiasson with host Dara Mandle at the National Arts Club. 

Berlin Stills

BERLIN STILLS
by Dara Mandle

On a makeshift stage
in the park, three men
rap about not working:

los, los, wir arbeitslos.

                []

Lindens in sequins
shimmy in the breeze.

                []

Sally blends brandy
and egg yolks with a look
that breaks us.

                []

Hot pink peonies
on the plain white desk
before the window open
onto S-Bahn tracks.

                []

Each night late
on the arty channel
Gerard Depardieu
smells his fingers.

                []

Casablanca at the Kino Blow Up
and I forget what else.

                []

Anxiety, old projectionist,
parts the little curtains.