Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

OUP NYC Poetry Reading Series with Paty, Schoonebeek, Dimitrov, & Landau

On February 23rd, Oxford University Press in New York will host four poets reading together on one night. Their poems span a broad range of forms and aesthetics, from collaborative short poems and plainspoken lyrics to a sequence of post-apocalyptic epistles. A wine reception will begin the evening at 6 p.m., with readings from the poets afterward. Oxford University Press associate editor Kristin Maffei will host the event and read a selection from her own poems. If you are a poetry fan/lover please join us. To wet your appetite for the event, we have a few selections of poetry below.

TORCH SONG: SHIPWORM
By Allyson Paty and Danniel Schoonebeek

Was a time what I took from you
I took into myself. My mouth
full of wood. Full of your bulk.
Now when I move, I remove you.
Nothing happens in which I don’t.

Where do I stand now the jetty
has buckled? Have heart, take after
the water. How it breaks against
itself and won’t wear out. Even this
scrap of wood—Taste. Just salt.


TORCH SONG: HOLY DAY
By Allyson Paty and Danniel Schoonebeek

Our woman of black knees
in the dirt she is singing
sweetheart spit your teeth
into my hand and for you
I will play the finest rattle

The gossip about god was
he’s a woman drinks rotgut
no camisole sees the veins
in his husband’s eyelids says
hallelujah this is all my fault


DARLING
By Alex Dimitrov

The days fall out of your pockets one after the other.
Soon you’ll need a new jacket with tougher leather

and seams no one has felt. Soon you’ll bring
the old books into your bed and sleep easy

and alone. It must be December again.
This must be the part of the story where you

refuse to say how the bodies you’ve walked toward
continue walking in you. With heavy black boots

in a calm procession of darling and honey
they walk up and down the narrow streets of your heart.

RSVP to the OUP Poetry reading here on Facebook.

Allyson Paty is the author of the chapbook The Further Away. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, DIAGRAM, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Awl, Colorado Review, and InDigest, among other publications.

Danniel Schoonebeek’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in in Tin House, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, The Kenyon Review, La Petite Zine, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, and elsewhere. He curates the Hatchet Job reading series at Public Assembly in Brooklyn, NY.

Alex Dimitrov’s first book of poems, Begging for It, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in early 2013. He is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize for younger poets from The American Poetry Review and the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Yale Review, Slate, Tin House, and Boston Review.

Deborah Landau is the author of Orchidelirium, which won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and The Last Usable Hour. Her poems have appeared recently in The Paris Review, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and TriQuarterly. She directs the creative writing program at NYU.

Kristin Maffei is an associate editor at Oxford University Press. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA student at NYU, she is also co-founder of the collaborative ‘zine Call & Response. Her work has been featured in The Little Jackie Paper, Quarrsiluni, and In Flux, and she once wrote a book on horses.

Recent Comments

There are currently no comments.