Pittsburgh has enjoyed quite the regeneration over the past decade. Its economic and cultural success has been well documented, having been profiled in New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, and by its oft-touted “Most Livable City” tag applied by multiple publications, including The Economist. To think that Pittsburgh hit its cultural stride in recent years is a great disservice to the talents and dedication of many people who have done a lot to make Pittsburgh the artistic community it is today. Among these residents is Jimmy Cvetic, who founded the weekly Hemingway’s Summer Reading Series in 1974.
Despite is Literary-inspired moniker, Hemingway’s Café in Oakland, one of the most popular college bars in the city, is the last place one might expect to find a poetry reading. Honestly, when I’ve told people where I’m off to on Tuesday evenings throughout the summer, I’m usually met with a raised eyebrow or an awkward laugh – people think I’m making a joke about an evening of drinking, when in fact, I’m off to be a part of one of the most fun and longest-running reading series in the city. Yet every Tuesday evening at 8:00pm, the back room of the bar fills up, as Jimmy and fellow series-operator Fred Peterson flip on the P.A. System and the reading begins.
Thanks in part to its storied history, the Hemingway’s Summer Reading Series enjoys a very diverse crowd each week. The line-up always features three or four featured poets, usually local artists of varying ages and styles, which helps add to the atmosphere. A waitress hustles with plates and drinks between readers, and the mood is always inviting and good-humored – 34 years of a reading series makes for a lot of regulars, and a lot of friends! The Hemingway’s Series prides itself on being inclusive, which helps create its terrific feeling of community. To this end, each week has an open mic to conclude the reading – anyone in attendance is welcomed to read a poem or two.
The Hemingway’s Summer Reading Series continues each Tuesday evening at 8:00pm through July 28. This week’s reading features Jessica Jopp, Cvetka Lipuš, and Michael Simms. There is no cover for admission.
Review by Joel W. Coggins.
July 14, 2009
July 12, 2009
Pittsburgh Lit Events July 12 - July 19
Tuesday, July 14:
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
Hemingway's Summer Reading Series
feat. Jessica Jopp, Cvetka Lipuš, and Michael Simms
Hemingway’s Cafe
3911 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
8:00pm – free – (412)621-4100
Thursday, July 16:
Pear Noir Issue 2 Release Party
Pear Noir presents Noah Cicero, Ryan Manning, and Jason
Jordan in celebration of Pear Noir #2.
Brillobox
4104 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Lawrenceville)
7:00pm - free
Friday, July 17:
Game On: Screening and Launch of INCITE! Journal of
Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetic
Aesthetics take on Athletics in this showdown/showcase of artists'
video! "Game On" also signals the local release of INCITE! Journal of
Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics, a new publication
dedicated to the discourse, culture and community of experimental
film, video, and new media.
Waffle Shop
124 South Highland Ave Pittsburgh, PA (East Liberty)
9:00pm - free
Saturday, July 18:
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Pittsburgh Small Press Festival Expo 2009 (Day 1)
Open Thread presents the SPF Expo 2009 featuring two floors of small
presses and vendors, panels, workshops, food, and multimedia events.
Come find Weave's Table at the SPF Expo and say hello!
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery
Carnegie Mellon University Purnell Center for the Arts
5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
12:00pm - free ($5 panel/workshop fee)
Sunday, July 19:
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Pittsburgh Small Press Festival Expo 2009 (Day 2)
Open Thread presents the SPF Expo 2009. Day 2 of SPF features Weave's
Laura Davis & Margaret Bashaar in a 4:00pm panel discussion of Women
in Publishing, as well as a 5:00pm Weave-hosted Writing Workshop. Don't
miss this exciting opportunity at SPF 2009!
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery
Carnegie Mellon University Purnell Center for the Arts
5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
12:00pm - free ($5 panel/workshop fee)
Carnegie Library Sunday Reading Series: Karen Lillis
Karen Lillis is the author of the novel The Second Elizabeth (Six Gallery Press)
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Branch)
Quiet Reading Room, Main Floor
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:00pm - free – (412)622-3151
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
Hemingway's Summer Reading Series
feat. Jessica Jopp, Cvetka Lipuš, and Michael Simms
Hemingway’s Cafe
3911 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
8:00pm – free – (412)621-4100
Thursday, July 16:
Pear Noir Issue 2 Release Party
Pear Noir presents Noah Cicero, Ryan Manning, and Jason
Jordan in celebration of Pear Noir #2.
Brillobox
4104 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Lawrenceville)
7:00pm - free
Friday, July 17:
Game On: Screening and Launch of INCITE! Journal of
Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetic
Aesthetics take on Athletics in this showdown/showcase of artists'
video! "Game On" also signals the local release of INCITE! Journal of
Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics, a new publication
dedicated to the discourse, culture and community of experimental
film, video, and new media.
Waffle Shop
124 South Highland Ave Pittsburgh, PA (East Liberty)
9:00pm - free
Saturday, July 18:
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Pittsburgh Small Press Festival Expo 2009 (Day 1)
Open Thread presents the SPF Expo 2009 featuring two floors of small
presses and vendors, panels, workshops, food, and multimedia events.
Come find Weave's Table at the SPF Expo and say hello!
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery
Carnegie Mellon University Purnell Center for the Arts
5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
12:00pm - free ($5 panel/workshop fee)
Sunday, July 19:
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Pittsburgh Small Press Festival Expo 2009 (Day 2)
Open Thread presents the SPF Expo 2009. Day 2 of SPF features Weave's
Laura Davis & Margaret Bashaar in a 4:00pm panel discussion of Women
in Publishing, as well as a 5:00pm Weave-hosted Writing Workshop. Don't
miss this exciting opportunity at SPF 2009!
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery
Carnegie Mellon University Purnell Center for the Arts
5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
12:00pm - free ($5 panel/workshop fee)
Carnegie Library Sunday Reading Series: Karen Lillis
Karen Lillis is the author of the novel The Second Elizabeth (Six Gallery Press)
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Branch)
Quiet Reading Room, Main Floor
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:00pm - free – (412)622-3151
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
July 6, 2009
Review: Lowering the Body by Stephen Murabito
At their best, poems derived from childhood memories offer powerful insight about our world. In his most recent collection of poetry, Lowering the Body, Stephen Murabito offers this best. By sifting through the aspects of memory to paint a picture of a working-class family in upstate New York, Murabito succeeds in depicting a struggling world filled with resilience and a quiet pride.
In the book’s first poem, “First Prophecy, 1962" where we are introduced to a young boy who will be the voice of witness in the rest of the collection:
Once upon a time
On the corner of West Eighth and Oneida
A six-year old boy
Stood up on a coffee table,
Kicked aside issues of Look and Life
And shouted Giants, Giants, Giants.
The gathered Sunday clan
Of diehard Yankees fans.
Paused, stunned in salted Planters and cold Genessee.
These opening lines introduce us to a young boy who is different from his family. And indeed, it is this difference that comes into play for the poems that follow where a young boy is able to spin stories from both the concrete images of winter landscapes and hard, physical work and the more surreal images of family ideals and religious beliefs.
Family takes center stage in this book. Often, there are stories from a child’s point of view of family hardship. For example in “A White Baldness” the poet explains:
The only time I ever saw
My proud, strident, reserved mother
Run like a schoolgirl toward my father
Was the night he lumbered up the porch
And peeled open the screen door
With his left hand, the right bandaged
And dangling — a white baldness.
Certainly, a sense of urgency infiltrates this poem, with the persona is shocked by his mother’s fear. However, a quiet contemplation marks many more of the works. For example, in “Parents Sleeping” the young boy examines his parents in bed, asking, “Who were these exhausted people, these dead/Beauties the white covers muting their form?”
It’s in the landscape of the New York snowbelt where Murabito tries to answer this question. We see harsh winters where the world seems to be holding its breath and spring baseball games where fathers and sons enjoy the gentle breeze of competition and stadium hot dogs. But we see even more. In the poem “Delivering Sfogliatelle to Cousin May” we witness a world “Where soot and spit were tough enough/To still the Oswego River.” And in a closer, more domestic scene, the poet chronicles a fight where “Uncle Mickey beat a man up onto his front porch and out his side door, leaving him to bleed/Into the last green of that year’s tomatoes.”
But the main setting in this collection is the family grocery store, a world most completely described in “Four Quarts, Four Loaves” during a snowstorm:
During the Blizzard of ‘66
The only thing that wasn’t white
Was the inside of our house
At last, after the two-hour trek
To get bread for his customers,
My father emerged from the front door,
Itself gone white around him.
This world of a family store (and the struggles found within its isles) is the main backdrop of many of these poems. Its conclusion is found in the last poem of the collection titled “Saby Closes the Store, January, 1969" where the persona contemplates the final hours of a store by saying, “I’d like to think he wasn’t alone/When he locked up, rounded Eighth, and came home.”
Indeed, many of Murabito’s poems are sobering. Still, this collection is not without humor. For example, who could not at least smile at the small boy in “Eating Pepperoni on Good Friday” who takes “the magic stick from my father’s meat case” so he can sneak to the roof where “only God, above the oaks, can spot me.” Or laugh out loud at the images in “My Mother Joins the Hippies” where the mother “Dark Polish face hardened from beauty to political outrage” leaves her store to protest “our own Mrs. Thompson” who was banned from teaching because she was pregnant.
In essence, Murabito’s collection is a work of landscape. Through his words, we feel the ice cold of upstate New York, we smell the food from a family grocery store, and we see the tired lines in the people’s faces and smiles. But through this collection, we also have poet chronicling a world of family owned businesses, intimate gatherings, and an America that seems to be fast disappearing.
Review by Karen J. Weyant
Lowering the Body by Stephen Murabito was published by Star Cloud Press.
Karen J. Weyant lives and teaches in western New York. Her first chapbook of poem, Stealing Dust, has recently been published by Finishing Line Press. She blogs at www.thescrapperpoetwordpress.com
In the book’s first poem, “First Prophecy, 1962" where we are introduced to a young boy who will be the voice of witness in the rest of the collection:
Once upon a time
On the corner of West Eighth and Oneida
A six-year old boy
Stood up on a coffee table,
Kicked aside issues of Look and Life
And shouted Giants, Giants, Giants.
The gathered Sunday clan
Of diehard Yankees fans.
Paused, stunned in salted Planters and cold Genessee.
These opening lines introduce us to a young boy who is different from his family. And indeed, it is this difference that comes into play for the poems that follow where a young boy is able to spin stories from both the concrete images of winter landscapes and hard, physical work and the more surreal images of family ideals and religious beliefs.
Family takes center stage in this book. Often, there are stories from a child’s point of view of family hardship. For example in “A White Baldness” the poet explains:
The only time I ever saw
My proud, strident, reserved mother
Run like a schoolgirl toward my father
Was the night he lumbered up the porch
And peeled open the screen door
With his left hand, the right bandaged
And dangling — a white baldness.
Certainly, a sense of urgency infiltrates this poem, with the persona is shocked by his mother’s fear. However, a quiet contemplation marks many more of the works. For example, in “Parents Sleeping” the young boy examines his parents in bed, asking, “Who were these exhausted people, these dead/Beauties the white covers muting their form?”
It’s in the landscape of the New York snowbelt where Murabito tries to answer this question. We see harsh winters where the world seems to be holding its breath and spring baseball games where fathers and sons enjoy the gentle breeze of competition and stadium hot dogs. But we see even more. In the poem “Delivering Sfogliatelle to Cousin May” we witness a world “Where soot and spit were tough enough/To still the Oswego River.” And in a closer, more domestic scene, the poet chronicles a fight where “Uncle Mickey beat a man up onto his front porch and out his side door, leaving him to bleed/Into the last green of that year’s tomatoes.”
But the main setting in this collection is the family grocery store, a world most completely described in “Four Quarts, Four Loaves” during a snowstorm:
During the Blizzard of ‘66
The only thing that wasn’t white
Was the inside of our house
At last, after the two-hour trek
To get bread for his customers,
My father emerged from the front door,
Itself gone white around him.
This world of a family store (and the struggles found within its isles) is the main backdrop of many of these poems. Its conclusion is found in the last poem of the collection titled “Saby Closes the Store, January, 1969" where the persona contemplates the final hours of a store by saying, “I’d like to think he wasn’t alone/When he locked up, rounded Eighth, and came home.”
Indeed, many of Murabito’s poems are sobering. Still, this collection is not without humor. For example, who could not at least smile at the small boy in “Eating Pepperoni on Good Friday” who takes “the magic stick from my father’s meat case” so he can sneak to the roof where “only God, above the oaks, can spot me.” Or laugh out loud at the images in “My Mother Joins the Hippies” where the mother “Dark Polish face hardened from beauty to political outrage” leaves her store to protest “our own Mrs. Thompson” who was banned from teaching because she was pregnant.
In essence, Murabito’s collection is a work of landscape. Through his words, we feel the ice cold of upstate New York, we smell the food from a family grocery store, and we see the tired lines in the people’s faces and smiles. But through this collection, we also have poet chronicling a world of family owned businesses, intimate gatherings, and an America that seems to be fast disappearing.
Review by Karen J. Weyant
Lowering the Body by Stephen Murabito was published by Star Cloud Press.
Karen J. Weyant lives and teaches in western New York. Her first chapbook of poem, Stealing Dust, has recently been published by Finishing Line Press. She blogs at www.thescrapperpoetwordpress.com
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