The Spiral Staircase

Theatre Review: Robert Icke's Hamlet at the Armory

My high school English teacher Kristine very generously gave me and my husband tickets to see Hamlet at the Armory, playing through August in repertory with the Oresteia. She did this after reading the New Yorker preview, a brilliant piece of sell side journalism that manages to lure Shakespeare fans without actually saying the show will be any good. Even though it is gauche to criticize a gift, I feel I owe my teacher a report...

Five minutes in, Ethan leaned over and whispered, “I love it so far!”

I said, “Me too!”

That was the high point of the show. Director Robert Icke is known for innovation, and he sets the play in a dystopian modern Denmark in which watchmen buzz in through security gates and the ghost haunts a bank of screens. So far, so good. The tech illuminated the way everything happening to the first family had vast ramifications for the nation. There were fun CNN-style reports of Fortinbras’s campaigns and a stylish Olympics treatment of the final fencing match with Laertes.

Contributing to the great beginning were Hara Yannis as Bernardo and Michael Abubakar as Marcellus. Such technical strength in relatively minor roles – as well as gender and racial diversity – was promising, but unfortunately the rest of the cast was uneven. Thank God for Angus Wright as Claudius or we might have left during one of the two intermissions.

It’s previews yet, and Lia Williams, the original Gertrude, had to back out due to Achilles tendinitis, a huge blow that is likely still rocking the production. Jennifer Ehle is doing a great job as a late replacement, but she still feels like she’s in a different play.

Alex Lawther makes a tiny, Justin Bieber-y Hamlet. It’s interesting casting but hard to believe he is capable of defeating Norwegians and also hard to listen to all those monologues. His halting, emo delivery kills the rhythm and drags out the run time to nearly four hours.

Ethan: “I didn’t understand a lot of what he said.”

Kirsty Rider is lovely but can’t push through the bad choices. Icke told the New Yorker that he shifted the order of the opening scenes to bring Ophelia out earlier and give more weight to the love plot. This means Hamlet goes right from his first grief-struck soliloquy to humping Ophelia on a couch, which he then hides behind, where he overhears Laertes’s parting advice. Laertes delivers this speech in an ironic manner, like he knows his sister’s “chaste treasure” has already been passed around.

All this makes no sense. If Ophelia is sexually liberated and Hamlet knows her family is trying to cock block him, what obstacle is there to their intimacy? I think we’re supposed to say, class anxiety. Peter Wight is wonderful as Polonius, utterly unfazed by the famous lines, playing it all a little bit straight as an anxious courtier trying to shore up his own position. But I did not believe this Gossip Girl version of Ophelia would have obeyed him or cared enough about him to go bat shit crazy when he dies. 

Ophelia is always problematic. It’s hard to tell if the role is misogynistic or a portrait of misogyny.

Paul Griffiths wrote an experimental novel “Let Me Tell You” composed only of the 483 words Ophelia speaks in the play. It’s a haunting little book:

“So: now I come to speak. At last. I will tell you all I know. I was deceived to think I could not do this. I have the powers; I take them here. I have the right. I have the means. My words may be poor, but they will have to do.”

The Wooster Group solved the problem in their fabulous post-modern fashion, double casting Kate Valk as both Gertrude and Ophelia. When she was Ophelia, Valk wore a blonde wig and declaimed her lines over an alt rock soundtrack. It was funny and also really good original music that I experienced as a kind of stand-in for Ophelia's sexual power.

The sound design and music in the Icke version was just awful. I think they did a Google search for classic rock songs with castles in them.

Ethan: “This is like the music you’d hear in an Applebee’s.”

Turning the final scene into a sports broadcast was another great idea, but the emotional impact of the deaths was completely undercut by having all the actors rise and join hands at the end as though reunited on a dance floor in heaven. I was sad that I wasn't more sad, but I was relieved there were no more monologues.

As we exited the gorgeous Armory, I told Ethan I would give the show a B-.

He accused me of grading on a curve because it was Hamlet.

I said of course I was grading on a curve because it was Hamlet!

I will always go out and see Hamlet, anywhere, anytime. I would see it in a boat. I would see it with a goat. I prefer when it is free but I would see it for a fee. I would see it in the rain, or in the dark, or on a train, or even at the Armory again. In fact, I'm going back for the Oresteia. Ham I am.

Two Referees at the Great Wall of China Gift Shop

Many thanks to my friend and yoga student, Jai, for giving me a place to go to finish my novel GRAVITY.

Here's a scene I cut from the novel. Takes place at the gift shop at the Great Wall of China. Our heroine, Gravity, has lost her fight in the Women's World Boxing Championships, but is still in the running for the Rio Olympics...

***

Gravity never noticed referees too much, unless they were really bad. Like that old guy who had taken a bullshit point away from her for cuffing in the Junior Olympics, or that mousy lady who officiated in the Golden Gloves and looked terrified to get too close to the action.

The two refs she ran into in the Great Wall of China gift shop must have been okay, because she couldn’t remember anything about them. One was fat and one was skinny. The fat guy was white and American and had thin, sandy hair and glasses. The skinny guy was black and Canadian and bald with a mustache. They would have made good spies, because they had the kind of mild faces that blended into the gift shop crowd. Nobody would ever stop them at airport security to search their luggage. They were just sort of there, like telephone wires.

She browsed the display of post cards while listening in on their conversation out of the corner of her ear. The fat referee was telling the skinny referee that they needed to have something called a “catchphrase.” The skinny referee was arguing with him.

“Catchphrases are unnecessary,” said the skinny guy. “You already gave the fighters their instructions in the dressing room. All you need to do in the ring is clarify what constitutes a low blow.”

The fat ref gestured with a Great Wall snow globe. “You need to assert your authority in the ring. A tag line announces your presence.”

“A good referee is someone you don’t notice,” said the skinny ref.

The fat referee said, “Come on, Warren, do you really want to spend your whole life not being noticed? You’re the best goddamn ref in Toronto, and everybody knows it. I’ve seen how hard you work. That stoppage on the Stevenson undercard? Perfect. Everybody else was shitting their pants about that ring death in Edmenton, but not you. You let ‘em fight!”

Gravity stole a look at Warren. She could tell he was pleased by what the fat ref was saying, but he was trying to hide it.

“And the way you handled that head butt on the undercard?” the fat ref continued. “So authoritative.”

“Thanks, Herschel,” said Warren. “I have been studying Carlos Padilla’s work in the Thrilla’ in Manilla. It’s helped with my rhythm.”

“See!” cried Herschel, pounding the snow globe. “Who else does that? You eat, sleep, and breathe officiating. It’s time you were recognized for it.”

Warren picked up a snow globe and shook it. “They did give me that nice plaque last year.”

Herschel shook his head. “I’m not talking dinky little plaques, Warren. I’m talking big time. There’s supposed to be a PBC card soon in the Bahamas. Amy told Donna that the network guys said they need a ref they can trust for the main event, and Lynn said the commission suggested you.”

Warren looked up. “Really? Me? On a televised main event in the Bahamas?”

“But you need a catchphrase,” Herschel said gravely. “All the big time guys have them. Joe Cortez has ‘I’m fair but I’m firm.’ Kenny Bayless has ‘What I say you must obey.’ Old Mills Lane’s got ‘Let’s get it on.’”

“Mills Lane!” Warren picked up a Great Wall coloring book and leafed through it. “He was a prima donna. Steve Smoger doesn’t have a catchphrase.”

Herschel reached a fat pale hand to pat Warren’s skinny dark one. “Let’s be honest, Warren, neither of us are a Smoger.”

As the two men touched, they looked over and met Gravity’s eyes. She looked away, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping, but the men seemed delighted to see her.

“Gravity Delgado!” cried Warren.

“How you feeling today?” said Herschel. “You all recovered from that bout with China?”

“I’m fi-”

“Mind if we come chat a little?” asked Warren.

“Um…”

But they were already hurrying over to the display of post cards to talk to her.

“Congratulations on winning Continentals,” said Herschel, patting her on the back so hard she choked a little.

“We knew you would make it,” said Warren. “From the first time I reffed one of your fights, I said, ‘She’s a future continental champion. Didn’t I, Herschel?’”

“You did,” agreed Herschel. “And after I reffed for her, I saw just what you meant. Remember I came up to you after the fight and congratulated you and told you that you could be the next Million Dollar Baby?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gravity said. “That was really nice of you, thanks.”

It was a little embarrassing how well both men seemed to know her. The truth was, she had no memory of either of them ever officiating for her, and people were always mentioning Million Dollar Baby to her, so that didn’t ring any bells. She hated that movie. She didn’t understand why the girl boxer in there had to get crippled and die. It was kind of sexist when you thought about it. Rocky didn’t get crippled or die. Neither did Creed. 

Warren leaned in and lowered his voice. “As the third man in the ring, we must of course maintain a certain hermetic remove, so if I haven’t been more forthcoming with accolades, it’s not for lack of esteem.”

“Um, thanks.” She had no idea what that meant.

“You’re the bee’s knees,” said Herschel.

“Thanks!” She didn’t know what that meant either, but bees could sting you, so it must be good.

“Do you think referees should have catchphrases?” asked Warren.

Both men looked at her eagerly. They seemed to care a whole lot what she thought, which made her feel embarrassed again, because the truth was she had no opinion at all.

“I think,” she said carefully, selecting a few post cards of the Qinhuangdao skyline for Auntie Rosa, “that as long as you’re fair, it doesn’t really matter too much what you say.”

“Hah, see!” cried Warren.

Herschel shook his head. “When you go pro, Gravity, you’ll understand. Boxing is a business. It’s not enough just to be technically skilled. You have to make the television audience remember you. You have to be a brand.”

“I’m not sure I’ll change my mind when I go pro,” Gravity said, frowning. What the fat referee had said made her feel sad for some reason. She thought about Andre Vázquez back home, always handing out stuff that said PLASMAFuel, about how Boca tagged everything on Facebook #bocacrewforever, about how they both treated Monster like he was a racehorse or something. Gravity didn’t want to be a brand. She just wanted to box. “But I guess if you think it would help your business or whatever to say a catchphrase, you should. I mean, nobody really listens to referees anyway.”

Warren coughed. Herschel shuddered. Gravity became aware of a sudden chill in the air of the gift shop. She tried to backtrack.

“I mean, I didn’t mean nobody listens. Just that, you know, the boxers are so focused on their fight that it just sort of…rolls over them, you know?”

That only made it worse. Gravity picked up one of the rubber birds from the display case next to the post cards labelled “Shrilling Chickens.” When she squeezed it, it let out a horrific wail.

Warren stood up very straight and said, “Boxers are not the only ones who are focused.”

“There’s three people in that ring, you know,” said Herschel. “And one of them never gets any credit.” He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and began to furiously polish his glasses.

Gravity felt bad. She was still trying to think of what to say to apologize when Warren took his friend’s arm with great dignity.

“Come on, Herschel,” he said. “Let’s go pay for our snow globes.”

 

 

 

 

Terminal 2

I'm killing six hours in Charles de Gaule while I wait for Annie to fetch me. Paris, where everyone looks beautiful and even being sleep-deprived in an airport feels luxurious.

I met Annie five years ago in the Paris metro. I was unsure which option to select on the ticket machine, so I went to the window and said to the man working there, in my weirdo French, "It's been a long time since I've done this."

The man laughed and said, "Me, too. It's been a long time since I've done this."

He and his female colleague both came out of the little booth. It seemed like they knew my mom and I would be good for a laugh. The man spoke English, so Mom pounced and was soon asking him if he was Jewish. (He was, from Algeria. Mom asked every vaguely Semitic Parisian if they were Jewish. It was embarrassing but led to some good conversations.) 

Meanwhile, the woman told me her name was Annie and that she was from the West Indies. I said, "I coach boxing in a West Indian neighborhood in New York."

She said, "I coach kickboxing! I was the featherweight champion of Paris."

I told her I had been the featherweight champion of New York for a second. I went and trained with her fighters, and we've been friends ever since. This seemed like a good time to throw myself on her hospitality.

Air France delivered on the flight over with ample wine and a delightful selection of classic Disney movies. I hadn't seen Beauty and the Beast in ages and was kind of blown away by how beautifully it's constructed. 

I remember watching Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete in high school French class. When I came home from school, Mom said, to my horror, "Great movie. Beast represents the penis, and Beauty is the vagina." 

This was too much information for a fourteen-year-old, but it certainly shaped my future critical output. 

Lyrics by Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS just before the film's release. 

 

Tale as old as time

True as it can be

Barely even friends

then somebody bends

Unexpectedly

 

Just a little change

Small to say the least

Both a little scared

Neither one prepared

Beauty and the beast

 

Ever just the same

Ever a surprise

Ever as before

Ever just as sure

As the sun will rise

 

Tale as old as time

Tune as old as song

Bittersweet and strange

Finding you can change

Learning you were wrong

 

Certain as the sun

Rising in the east

Tale as old as time

Song as old as rhyme

Beauty and the beast

 

 

Malingerings

My summer project is to get out of the city as much as possible, ostensibly to write my boxing novel but so far just to procrastinate, hence this blog post, and malinger, which is my new favorite word. 

This week I have imposed myself on my former writing teacher in idyllic Amagansett. Steve Friedman is one of those people without whom I would have given up writing. He hired me to assist on Scott Jurek's memoir Eat and Run, despite the fact that I was due to donate a kidney midway through, and he once told me, a propos of my love for the essay form and lack of computer skills, "You are a young dinosaur," which I still use as an affirmation.

"Me Slag no like anything!" 

When I was little, kids used to tease me by calling me "tri-Sarah-tops," which really hurt my feelings but now doesn't seem so bad. Although I lack the distinctive facial horn, I am low-to-the-ground, combative, and nearly extinct.

Here's some other chestnuts from Steve Friedman:

Funny stuff comes in threes.

Things have more power when they remain unnamed.

Write what you write best, rather than reaching for what you admire in others.

I especially needed that last one. We undervalue what comes easily, but the reason it comes easily is because it is ours. For example, I look up to my friend Shahirah, because her writing displays such timeliness and astute political understanding, but I know better than to try to write like that.

Shahirah also keeps me from giving up writing. I have pined for her greatly since her removal to Chi-town, but she is most excellent on the texteses and today inspired me with some words about Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose morning schedule makes me feel marginally better about myself:

CHART
MISS MILLAY
Dec. 31, 1940

Awoke 7:30, after untroubled night. Pain less than previous day.
7:35- Urinated- no difficulty or distress
7:40- 3/8 gr. M.S. {morphine shot} hypodermically, self-administered in left upper arm…
7:45-8- smoked cigarette (Egyptian) mouth burns from excessive smoking
8:15- Thirsty, went to the ice box for a glass of water, but no water there. Take can of beer instead which do not want. Headache, lassitude…
8:20- cigarette (Egyptian)
9:00- “
9:30- Gin Rickey (cigarette)
11:15- Gin Rickey
12:15- Martini (4 cigarettes)
12:45- 1/4 grain M.S. & cigarette
1.- Pain bad and also in lumbar region. no relief from M.S.

I think I like the word "malinger" so much because it somehow feels onomatopoetic, although it can't be, since malingering is pretty much a silent activity apart from the sound of your fingers on the keyboard as you Google your frenemies and the occasional sigh of self-pity.

Claudia Rankine (who is sighing for a much more legit reason) writes:

"To live through the days sometimes you moan like a deer. Sometimes you sigh. The world says stop that. Another sigh. Another stop that. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control these sighs than that which brings the sighs about."

Citizen is a brilliant, beautiful, compressed, genre-defying book that I read on the recommendation of my husband, the misogynist, who sighed a whole lot while he was being trolled.

I'll eventually stop calling my husband "The Misogynist," but not yet, because it's still too much fun. He took a while to stop calling me "The Replicant" after my jump rope injury put me in an orthopedic boot that he claimed made me look like a robot from Blade Runner. This was actually a compliment, though. Because look at Pris.

Coincidentally, I sustained the jump rope injury aboard the same ill-fated jazz cruise on which Ethan became a misogynist by interviewing Robert Glasper. Although maybe it wasn't so ill-fated as we once suspected, because, while I iced my leg and malingered, he spent the cruise composing a suite of music for a new Mark Morris dance called Pepperland that just premiered in Liverpool to great acclaim.

I was lucky enough to catch a dress rehearsal, although without Elizabeth Kurtzman's fabulous costumes. The music is beautiful and strange, for voice, theramin (!!!), piano, harpsichord, trombone, soprano sax (Sam Newsome!), and drums. The dance, like all of Mark's work, is both simple and deep, funny and sad. I can't wait until it comes to BAM.

There are actual roosters crowing as I blog, which reminds me that "cock-a-doodle-do" was the example my sixth grade English teacher, Ferne, gave when I asked her what "onomatopoetic" meant. When I touched down in Paris for the first time, a passenger on my plane cried out "Cocorico!" which is how roosters crow in French. 

My Sanskrit teacher, Vyas Houston, said all of Sanskrit was like that, the sound of the words matching the essential vibration of the objects they signified, even for abstract nouns like satya or ahimsa. I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know that Vyas lived in a world of enhanced connection to sound. In a weekend seminar of 40 people, he would have everyone's name memorized by the end of the morning session, and it wasn't some cheap memory trick. He matched the sound of your name to who you were. When you ran into him years later, he still knew your name. 

"Writing is writing," says Steve, when I tell him all I did today was blog. "Even not writing is writing."

 

 

 

Our Existence Is Resistance - Yoni ki Raat

2015 Yoni ki Raat cast, via Facebook

I was mildly dreading the South Asian Vagina Monologues, but Rati got me a ticket. So I drank some gin and hunkered down for the two-hour show. 

My dread was three-fold. 1. I was already sort of depressed and didn't want to sit through sad monologues about sexual abuse that would make me face my deep inner feelings. No. Deep. Inner. Feelings. 2. I didn't want to hear poems about people's vaginas being beautiful flowers or their menstrual cycles being flowing rivers, because that makes me throw up in my mouth. 3. I didn't want to experience weaponized identity politics that recalled jazz trolls.

But Rati is a refined and soothing presence, my sister from another reality. As she and I settled into our seats at Dixon Place and read the trigger warnings in our programs, the gin and company began to improve my outlook. 

Word had spread about Yoni ki Raat, now in its third year. Audience members traveled from as far as Boston and Philadelphia to hear this "transformational storytelling performance project that seeks to give space for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean people experiencing gender oppression to share our stories."

My dread evaporated as Kirin took the stage, a cherub with a soft bare midriff. She performed a beat poem on the beauty of queer love that borrowed mischievously from Christian hymns.

Miranda peeled skeins of colored gauze from her wrists and dropped them to the floor as she lamented shedding her Guyanese accent to fit in with American schoolmates.

Benaifer, whose bio informed us that she was one of approximately 190,000 Zoroastrians in the world, spoke of being abused as a girl and how it trained her to hold her body in a way that hid its femininity. I thought of my own mother and my private theory that getting abused made Mom raise me to be more masculine: If I didn't present as feminine, I wouldn't be in danger. Benaifer recounted a fresher abuse, this time transforming it into a triumphant revenge fantasy, complete with costume change.

Sabrina took the stage, holding a jar of honey, which she compared to sex: It's sweet. You can have it. It never goes bad. The nonviolence and simplicity of the image made me wistful. 

The power of Yoni ki Raat's collaborative process lifted up these individual stories, which had been workshopped over a period of months. The material was well compressed, and the stronger performers strengthened the weaker. Sure, certain aspects of the show made me roll my eyes, like the snapping to indicate approval and the mandatory sharing circle at the end, but I also kind of dug them. It was like being back at Brown, except with better costumes. And there were no poems about the menstrual cycle.

My favorite was Dee, whose preferred pronoun is "they" and who began with, "My girlfriend was sucking my dick the other day..." and proceeded to recount humiliating childhood visits to a waxing parlor and humiliating encounters on the street with strangers who shame Dee for having a mustache. 

Amazing how memories of psychological pain linger in the body. It made me think of the book Citizen by Claudia Rankine. She writes brilliantly about the racism Serena Williams has experienced on the tennis court, how each new bad call jolts Serena out of tennis time and into some old dead zone:

Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness -- all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games. 

Under the influence of new bad calls, Serena reacts as if to older ones. "She says in 2009, belatedly, the words that should have been said to the umpire in 2004...Now Serena's reaction is read as insane."

The question is, how do we break out of that nauseous loop? How do we play each point as it happens?

I think it has something to do with recreating the moment of insult, except safer, bound, witnessed. This time, you vow, you will connect instead of dissociating. Boxing can be about that. So can sex and storytelling.

Yoni ki Raat wasn't exactly art. It was a collective ritual of healing. Everyone was invited.

The other day, my friend Chris and I were talking about whether it's okay for a white author to write from the point of view of a person of color. Chris was saying that being a woman was, in itself, an inherently incomplete identity. Nobody ever feels like they are woman enough.

This was something of an epiphany for me. I've always felt like I am not a real woman, but I had never actually considered that *every woman* feels this way. Chris said he thought it was the same with being black or Dominican or South Asian: There is no monolithic experience of race or gender. Authenticity is a myth used to manipulate and demoralize us.

When the performers of Yoni ki Raat clasped hands and took their curtain call, I marveled at the assembled beauty, which represented so many ways of living and loving. Draped in red, black, and gold, their bodies were indistinguishable from what they held. Victory, at least for the moment. 

We Live in the Age of the Feuilleton

My bff, a beautiful writer concerned with serious matters, is forever forwarding me articles like 17 Dicks You Wish You Could Get Your Hands On and Why I won't date hot women anymore. I try to keep from clicking, but I can't resist.

I was trying to explain to her why this makes me want to throw my laptop through the window, but I can't do better than this quote from The Glass Bead Game. Hesse writes in the voice of futuristic historians:

...in the course of the aforementioned Age of the Feuilleton, men came to enjoy an incredible degree of intellectual freedom, more than they could stand. For while they had overthrown the tutelage of the Church completely, and that of the State partially, they had not succeeded in formulating an authentic law they could respect, a genuinely new authority and legitimacy. Ziegenhalss recounts some truly astonishing examples of the intellect's debasement, venality, and self-betrayal during that period.

We must confess that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. It would seem, moreover, that the cleverer among the writers of them poked fun at their own work. Ziegenhalss, at any rate, contends that many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. Quite possibly these manufactured articles do indeed contain a quantity of irony and self-mockery which cannot be understood until the key is found again. The producers of these trivia were in some cases attached to the staffs of the newspapers; in other cases they were free-lance scriveners. Frequently they enjoyed the high-sounding title of "writer," but a great many of them seemed to have belonged to the scholar class. Quite a few were celebrated university professors.

Among the favorite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore titles such as "Friedrich Neitzsche and Women's Fashions of 1870," or "The Composer Rossini's Favorite Dishes," or "The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans," and so on...When we look at the titles that Ziegenhalss cites, we feel surprise that there should have been people who devoured such chitchat for their daily reading; but what astonishes us far more is that authors of repute and decent education should have helped to "service" this gigantic consumption of empty whimsies. Significantly, "service" was the expression used; it was also the word denoting the relationship of man to the machine at that time.

tr, Richard and Clara Winton  

Whiplash

My husband really gets into it about jazz drumming and race over at Do the Math. 

Tonight he plays in the solo piano showcase at the Village Vanguard, part of an exciting week of programming coordinated by Jason Moran to celebrate the 80th anniversary of that hallowed dive. I used to be scared to go to the Vanguard because the owner was so mean. Now it's my favorite place to hear music. I guess it wouldn't be a treasure if it didn't have a dragon.

Thanks to everyone for your support about the fire. Still no progress on our place, and we've got crash pads lined up through April. 

 

When I walk in the door of the boxing gym, I always feel better. I never know what kind of questions the young people will ask me. I've got a poetry student, a meditation buddy, an aspiring essayist, a kid slogging through pre-calculus, and yesterday Donovan brought in some linear equations. Meanwhile, our elite fighters continue to kick ass in the Golden Gloves. Last night Chiquito made it to the finals at the Barclays Center. Shu Shu is in, too. Tonight Africa, Big Black, and Omar fight. 

As Ray Arcel told Thomas Hauser, "The important part of boxing is not that youngsters realize their dreams, but that they can dream. Every day in the gym they're somebody special. They're a fighter."

Guest Post: Charles Bane

 

the air burned like
an end of days but
it was only the luxury
of deep, deep love
spiraling in me and
colliding into you and
tonight I pledge that
we are not transient
but latched to eternity
by starry keys.

 

aug. 28

 

Charles Bane, Jr. is a widely published poet on the web, print and in anthologies. His collection, The Chapbook: Poems By Charles Bane, Jr (Curbside Splendor, Chicago), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. An amateur fighter, Bane likes to work on the outside; while writing poems, he works inside.

Back to School

Autumn is in the air!

I'll be at the Village Vanguard every night through Sunday, soaking up the sounds of Tootie Heath with my husband Ethan on piano and Ben Street on drums. Their new album is my favorite in a long, long time. Nate Chinen got it right.

PHOTO: John Rogers

My husband's blog has an incredible interview with the Vanguard's manager Jed, the power behind the throne. Some legendary backstage stories in there.

Manwhile, I've been hard at work on profiles of two badass Japanese ladies.

Misato Kamegawa, three-time NYC Golden Gloves champ, took time to chat with me for Stiff Jab.

 

And Kelly Shibari is a BBW pornstar I'm profiling for Penthouse Forum. The research for this one has been fun...

 

Poetry in Motion

This is my favorite subway poem in a long time. 

 

VOYAGER 

I have become an orchid

washed in on the salt white beach.

Memory,

what can I make of it now

that might please you --

this life, already wasted

and still strewn with

miracles.

 

-Mary Ruefle