http://pollybresnick.com pollybresnick.com Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:27:44 +0000 http://pollybresnick.com en http://pollybresnick.com/nonfiction http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/nonfiction Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:27:44 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4640878 <img src="http://payload117.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4640878/Etta-James-2.jpeg" width="400" height="267" width_o="400" height_o="267" src_o="http://payload117.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4640878/Etta-James-2_o.jpeg" data-mid="24706291" border="0" align="left"/> You can read nonfiction by Polly Bresnick online at The Brooklyn Rail (film criticism), The Boogie Woogie Flu (music criticism), Freerange Nonfiction (personal essay), and Moments of Seeing (film criticism). You can read nonfiction by Polly Bresnick online at The Brooklyn Rail (film criticism), The Boogie Woogie Flu (music criticism), Freerange Nonfiction (personal... http://pollybresnick.com/writers-reading-to-writers-listening-to-writers-reading-to-writers http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/writers-reading-to-writers-listening-to-writers-reading-to-writers Wed, 28 Nov 2012 11:37:47 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4516419 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4516419/EL_WritersReading_IMG5.jpeg" width="640" height="425" width_o="640" height_o="425" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4516419/EL_WritersReading_IMG5_o.jpeg" data-mid="23989682" border="0" align="left"/> Writers Reading to Writers Listening to Writers Reading to Writers is a monthly reading series. It started in November 2010. It has since moved to Brooklyn. Upcoming events: JUNE 22ND Amber Sparks, Dan Magers, Dolan Morgan, and Lauren Early. Unnameable Books Prospect Heights (600 Vanderbilt, at St. Marks) Past readers include Scott McClanahan, Chelsea Martin, Benjamin Hale, Amelia Gray, Adam Robinson, Jenny Zhang, Zachary Schomburg, Janaka Stucky, Nelly Reifler, Robert Lopez, Shelly Oria, David Hollander, Anne-E. Wood, Paul Legault, Bianca Stone, Evan Rehill, Paige Taggart, Sasha Fletcher, T Kira Madden, Adam Wilson, Daniel Long, Amy Lawless, Jeff Simpson, Avram Kline, Mitchell S. Jackson, Justin Taylor, Joseph Riippi, Joshua Henkin, and Jesse Seldess. Read about this reading series at Electric Literature's The Outlet and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Research/"like" this reading series here. Email submissions, questions, comments, and fan letters to polly.bresnick@gmail.com Writers Reading to Writers Listening to Writers Reading to Writers is a monthly reading series. It started in November 2010. It has since moved to Brooklyn. ... http://pollybresnick.com/MIRROR-POEMS http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/MIRROR-POEMS Mon, 26 Nov 2012 23:02:42 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4506430 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506430/mirror poems.jpg" width="670" height="252" width_o="2048" height_o="771" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506430/mirror poems_o.jpg" data-mid="23929122" border="0" align="left"/> MIRROR POEMS (O'Clock Press, December 2012) is a selection of antonymic translations of Patricia Delmar's Poemario Rouge. From the translator's note: A “mirror poem” is an act of mimicry distilled into the shape of a shadow on a page. It is a compliment of the original, like a color added to another color to dazzle the eyes. You can buy it at the O'Clock Press website. You can read about it at HTMLGIANT and The Poetry Foundation. MIRROR POEMS (O'Clock Press, December 2012) is a selection of antonymic translations of Patricia Delmar's Poemario Rouge. From the translator's note: A “mirror... http://pollybresnick.com/Hide-and-Seek-novel-in-progress http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/Hide-and-Seek-novel-in-progress Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:54:03 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4506400 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506400/hide-and-seek.jpg" width="377" height="250" width_o="377" height_o="250" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506400/hide-and-seek_o.jpg" data-mid="23929024" border="0" align="left"/> Hide and Seek is a novel I am in the middle of writing. It is The Odyssey meets Thelma and Louise. It is a quest story. It is about "love" and "revenge" and "other things." Here is a short excerpt from the beginning: The winter clouds watered long enough for a lakey summer that year. Puddles splashing in witchy ways. Wet wind spanking cheeks till they blushed. Everybody's lawns boggy. We ate overstuffed deli sandwiches and watched the Falls glory down into the ropy braid of river. We watched till the white water at the top grayed and then got particular and then became a scrolling sheet unraveling and then showed us what water was really and then hypnotized us deeper and then we got back to our sandwiches and our normal ways of looking at the world. My normal way of looking at the world is different from Linda's, and also different from the way it used to be before the accident, though I couldn't tell you exactly what the differences are. I asked Linda if she'd seen Big Early around. It had been about a week since Earl had slipped from my grip. He was boyfriend, then lover, then nothing. I was just starting to see that he wanted to be nothing. It wouldn't have gone like this if I'd had anything to say about it. I had tried to squeeze, remembering from some animal science class that the more the prey struggles, the tighter the snake embraces, but he squirmed out and away and he hid himself out of sight. He was probably at his mom's house. I knew the house, but had never been inside. It was at the end of a dead end called Possum Place at the wooded edge of town. It always had a sleeping or barking dog chained to a tree out front and blue tarp over half of its roof. His dad had worked as a roofer until he died, in the apartment of no one anyone knew, filled to the brim with heroin. His dad was bad but loved. His death was a ragged tragedy that whispered through the town. I'd seen him in his van when I was a kid. I remembered it, white and dirty. His face dark with stubble and the shadow of a greasy hat. But I'd never met him. Never had the chance to love him or not. I looked at the road. One way slipped like a needled ribbon into a thick curtain of pined shade, the other way was shiny and long, the scaled back of a black snake. It led eventually to the gas station and the deli, where we'd walked from, and if you kept going it would take you to the coast-hugging highway, and to California. I thought it would be fun, now that I wasn't a kid anymore, to play hide and seek in a space as wide and crannied as a country, or even just a coast line. Linda lit a cigarette and squinted down at the water. Spit. Watched her spit grow a tail as it fell. I thought it looked like sperm but didn't say. Linda said, That man'll shame every last speck of a female out of his life until he was one lone lobo. She talked like this. Like we lived in the desert. It took the damp out of the quiet messes of our lazy, waterlogged, Pacific Northwestern lives. Said she'd seen it happen to greater and lesser gals than she and I, which I already knew but enjoyed hearing it anyway. Said, We'd best let the poor chase sick till he's doggy. And I was happy to hear her put it that way because it made my parts fall away from each other a little. Loose from the center knot. Unravel. I remembered the pot we'd smoked. I was feeling it I guess. And if that didn't work, she said, We might could try something drastic. I nodded and looked down at the mess of white water that had it easy. All it had to do was fall. Hide and Seek is a novel I am in the middle of writing. It is The Odyssey meets Thelma and Louise. It is a quest story. It is about "love" and "revenge" and "other... http://pollybresnick.com/FRANK-completed-novel http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/FRANK-completed-novel Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:50:17 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4506375 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506375/frankenstein.jpg" width="569" height="449" width_o="569" height_o="449" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4506375/frankenstein_o.jpg" data-mid="23928928" border="0" align="left"/> FRANK is a novel I wrote. It needs a home. Here is a short excerpt of it: I was in kindergarten, and my parents thought I was old enough to be OK with some of the presents turning up under the tree before Christmas morning. This was easier for them, I guess — they wouldn't have to hide things in the basement, they wouldn't have to do all the wrapping late at night after too many boozy eggnogs. At the time, though, it just seemed to me like a fun game. I studied the growing stacks of shiny squares and rectangles. Thought carefully about which ones could be removed and not missed. My parents didn't seem to ever really pay much attention to the presents. I did. I spent a lot of time. Just gazing at them, touching some to feel the different textures of the wrapping papers. Eventually, there were a lot, and when my parents weren't in the living room, it occurred to me to slip one of the smaller boxes out from underneath the others. I rearranged everything back to the way it looked before. I hid the one I’d selected under my shirt, felt my guilty pulse thump softly in my ears, and took the shiny gift back to my room where I closed the door, by this point sweating, trembling with jerky, criminal energy flooding through my limbs, and tore the paper away to see what the gift was. I saw the gift, maybe smiled or gasped with muted joy, and quickly shoved it all under my bed. I kept doing this until I got caught with a big one, that year's doll. Every Christmas, my father, a cultural Jew who participated in Christmas unenthusiastically, gave me a porcelain-faced doll, chosen with the help of my shiksa mother. It was always the capstone gift, the most special one. Alone in my room with the doll, I gently lifted her from her coffin-like box, her eyes wide and intent. There was something about the heft of her that made me feel calm and warm, something about the smooth, cool curve of her hand that made me put it in my mouth and close my eyes, pressing my tongue against molded plastic that tasted like factory and also maybe, faintly, the hand of the person who had made her. My mom walked in, gasped, and called my father’s name. I let the hard hand slip from my mouth, like a loosed peppermint or a useless excuse. Before my father arrived she said, “Have you been opening the presents?” I, of course, sealed my lips, shook my head, and looked at the doll cradled awkwardly in my lap, avoiding eye-contact with my mother. Then I remember being cornered in the bathroom by my father. He filled the tiny space with his towering body, hairy neck and limbs, eyes bulging, voice monstrous and unrecognizable. My dad was pissed. Because I had lied. My mom named the doll the Truth Doll and made me promise that I'd never lie again. When my parents suspected I might be fibbing, even just a little white lie, they'd tilt their heads and remind me in patronizing tones, "Remember? The Truth Doll?" And I'd lower my head, duly humiliated, and say nothing. They took all the fun out of lying. For a time. FRANK is a novel I wrote. It needs a home. Here is a short excerpt of it: I was in kindergarten, and my parents thought I was old enough to be OK with some of... http://pollybresnick.com/see-hear-me-read-soon http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/see-hear-me-read-soon Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:21:25 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4505945 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4505945/events thumb.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="960" height_o="640" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4505945/events thumb_o.jpg" data-mid="23926885" border="0" align="left"/>Fireside Follies Saturday, May 18th 8 PM Brooklyn Fire Proof (119 Ingraham St. in Bushwick) What's special: There will be flowers! Song/Story, Song/Lit Saturday, May 25th 8 PM Unnameable Books (600 Vanderbilt Ave in Prospect Heights) What's special: There will be music. NY Fireside Follies Saturday, May 18th 8 PM Brooklyn Fire Proof (119 Ingraham St. in Bushwick) What's special: There will be flowers! Song/Story, Song/Lit Saturday,... http://pollybresnick.com/short-fiction http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/short-fiction Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:02:03 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4505864 <img src="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4505864/deer-greg-0061.jpg" width="670" height="502" width_o="1024" height_o="768" src_o="http://payload110.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4505864/deer-greg-0061_o.jpg" data-mid="23926710" border="0" align="left"/>"1001 Dates" I'd like to go on one thousand and one dates. That would be two thousand and two breasts. Two thousand and four including my mother's. I'll go on a first date and tell the girl my mother was the first lady. And the girl will say, Your father's the president? And I'll say, No. I mean something different. I'll try to explain and then I'll understand that even if the girl doesn't get the joke, I won't hold it against her. And then I'll ask her, in earnest, "If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" And she'll blush, and I'll admit, in earnest, that someone once did hold it against me, roughed me up against the broad side of a paint-chipped old barn. I'll say her aim was terrible. Couldn't hit the broad side of a paint-chipped old barn that we all imagined falling over if anything ever did manage to hit it. If I can get a first date with one of the cashier girls at Dress Barn, I'll ask her if she was raised in a barn. Read the rest of this story at The Collagist. "Deer Season" I’m not sure what I am, but I know I must be something. For now, I am Pocahontas and she is Sacagewea. Kelsey creeps through crunchy leaves a few steps ahead of me. I stop to stare at a dark damp hole at the base of a tree. I consider mining it for slugs with a twig, but look up to find Kelsey first. She’s way ahead of me. Her fleece coat a drop of red in the vast, cross-hatched tangle of the woods. I hurry to catch up, to see what she’s got, certain it’s better than slugs. I crash towards her, small and loud in the creaking silence of countless trees. They stand around like a crowd of tall chaperones, watching us not know a thing. Read the rest of this story at Monkeybicycle. "Beauty Marks" It was backwards. Usually it was my dad who travelled for business or whatever grown-ups travelled for without their families. But this night mom was out of town. I was kind of little, kind of not a kid anymore, maybe ten or maybe eight. I was sad to see my mom go, cried a little, just because I was so used to her. She gave me a bright gold cuff bracelet that smelled like her to wear while she was away. My dad didn't really know how to entertain or feed me without my mom around. He cooked popcorn for dinner in the microwave. We flipped around on the TV for a movie, found one, and lay down to fall asleep while it played. I slept in my parents' bed when my dad was out of town, so it seemed normal to do it when my mom was out of town. I didn't stop to think about it. The movie turned out to be a little more grown-up than was appropriate for me, but that was normal. My parents treated me like an equal, didn't forbid certain movies like other parents. They thought nudity and sex in art was important to know about, to be comfortable with, I guess. My parents once dragged me to a film festival and the only one I remember was Italian. It had all kinds of bare breasts and hairy vaginas and girls kissing girls. I was too young for it, but it tickled me, and, now that I'm pretty much grown-up I can safely bet it tickled the grown-ups too. It made me feel precocious -- short, but wise. Read the rest of this story at elimae. "The Apple Girl" Over the backyard fire, the girl’s marshmallow sagged at the end of the stick like a runaway’s bindle. She let the flames have their way with it, devouring it in a quick hush of inky black rot. Her father arrived from somewhere beyond the fire’s halo. He sat beside her, his breath and sweat cidery. He called her Red Delicious. He bared his teeth, white like a promise that he’d bite. He said it was time to press. Tomorrow, he said, and sat too close. Read the rest of this story at Dossier. "Nose" Kara’s dad’s car stunk. It was the same smell as the houses of friends whose dads were hunters or plumbers or fishermen or carpenters. What I understood this exotic smell of Kara’s dad’s car to mean was indoor smoking and/or evening can-beer drinking and/or non-news television-watching and/or frequent threats of minor violence that no one seemed to take that seriously, which is to say that I didn’t know much about what it meant, but I was afraid of Kara’s dad because of his beard and the rough voice that came out from behind it. Read the rest of this story at decomP magazinE. "1001 Dates" I'd like to go on one thousand and one dates. That would be two thousand and two breasts. Two thousand and four including my mother's. I'll go on a... http://pollybresnick.com/Old-Gus-Eats http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/Old-Gus-Eats Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:50:42 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4480651 <img src="http://payload109.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4480651/Old-Gus-COVER-246x300.jpg" width="246" height="300" width_o="246" height_o="300" src_o="http://payload109.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4480651/Old-Gus-COVER-246x300_o.jpg" data-mid="23926319" border="0" align="left"/>Old Gus Eats (Publishing Genius Press, 2012) contains stanzas fourteen through twenty-three of the The Odyssey by Homer, translated visually from the ancient Greek. Bresnick’s process involves looking at the foreign shapes and symbols of the Greek in search of familiar, English words. This has been termed eye-rhyming, bad lip reading, or Rorschach writing. Here, the Greek and English are placed side-by-side so that the reader can judge the visual translations. You can buy it here. Excerpts of the complete project have been published or are forthcoming in The Agriculture Reader, The Fiddleback, Bling That Sings, and The Offending Adam. You can read about it in the Kenyon Review and at HTMLGIANT. Old Gus Eats (Publishing Genius Press, 2012) contains stanzas fourteen through twenty-three of the The Odyssey by Homer, translated visually from the ancient Greek.... http://pollybresnick.com/Moby-Dick-Marathon-Reading http://pollybresnick.com/following/pollybresnick.com/Moby-Dick-Marathon-Reading Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:34:49 +0000 pollybresnick.com 4473097 <img src="http://payload108.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4473097/moby-dick-full-3_2.jpg" width="508" height="700" width_o="508" height_o="700" src_o="http://payload108.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4473097/moby-dick-full-3_2_o.jpg" data-mid="23728381" border="0" align="left"/>Moby-Dick Marathon NYC After hosting a much more modest marathon reading of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as an undergraduate at Bard College many years ago, I decided to make it happen in NYC. It got big. With the help of Amanda Bullock and our combined fanaticism, over 150 readers (including Paul Dano, Rick Moody, Sarah Vowell, Mark Kurlansky, Jonathan Ames, and Touré) participated in NYC's first ever marathon-style reading of Moby-Dick. Read all about it in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Huffington Post , and DNAinfo.com. More info about the how/where/who is available at the official event website. Check out photos from the event here. Limited run posters, designed by Bianca Stone and Paul Tunis, are still available. Please send an email to mobydickmarathonnyc(at)gmail(dot)com for more information. asdfasd asdf<img src="http://payload108.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4473097/mobydick-poster.jpg" width="300" height="393" width_o="300" height_o="393" src_o="http://payload108.cargocollective.com/1/8/286065/4473097/mobydick-poster_o.jpg" data-mid="23928781" border="0" align="left"/> Moby-Dick Marathon NYC After hosting a much more modest marathon reading of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as an undergraduate at Bard College many years ago, I...