Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky is a poetry collection in two acts about what can happen to a community when the military moves in to control them. It is a tale of how the ethics of those who love, desire, or harmlessly gossip, can be transformed into actors who rape, torture, and engage in murder. Read More >
Dylan Krieger’s collection, no ledge left to love, is the recipient of the Ping-Pong Free Press poetry prize of 2017, chosen by judge and poetry badass, Brian Henry. It is my extreme pleasure to share with you a sneak peek–one of my favorite poems out of this fascinating and essential collection, release date: December 1, 2017. Read More >
Kate Lutzner is also having her “soft book launch” at this reading — there will be preview copies of her new chapbook, Invitation to a Rescue, published by Poet Republik, Ltd. Her poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle and Barrow Street. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College and has been featured in Verse Daily. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as the Best of the Net Anthology.
Jameson O’Hara Laurens completed her MFA in poetry and translation in 2014, and has collaborated with artists, choreographers, and translators. She is fortunate to call a bilingual secondary literature classroom her professional home, and has recently received research sabbatical and leadership grants for teaching projects. Having grown up in the West, she has an ongoing concern for the natural world, and for all things apiary. She became a feminist writer by necessity. Her work has appeared in Enclave, Alexandria Quarterly, Hawkmoth, and Poet Republik. Medeum is her first collection.
J. Hope Stein is the author of experimental chapbooks Corner Office, [Talking DolI] and [Mary]. She is a Consulting Producer of the film Don’t Think Twice and an Associate Producer of the film Sleepwalk with Me. She is the editor of PoetryCrush.com.
Maria Garcia Teutsch’s chapbook, The Revolution will have its Sky was chosen by Heather McHugh as winner of the Minerva Rising contest in 2015. She still thinks that’s the coolest thing ever. She has published over 25 poetry books in her vast career as Editor in chief of the Homestead Review, Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature and the presses, Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. In her spare time she teaches at Hartnell College, and serves as President of the Board of Henry Miller Memorial Library.
Christine Hamm has a PhD in American Poetics, and is an editor for Ping Pong Free Press. She is currently an MFA poetry student at Columbia University. Her poetry has been published in Orbis, Nat Brut, BODY, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. She has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at Pace. The New Orleans Review published Christine’s chapbook, A is for Afterimage, and nominated her work for a Pushcart in 2014 and in 2017, Ghostbird Press is publishing an excerpt from her ongoing manuscript, Notes on Wolves and Ruin.
October 1st, 2016 at The Henry Miller Memorial Library
7:30 PM
Come join us in a benefit for Big Sur’s own literary press: Ping-Pong Free Press, published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. The evening will feature a poetry reading by Brenda Coultas; a staged reading of Henry Miller and Anais Nin’s more salacious writing entitled Miller Out Loud! featuring local actors portraying the roles of Henry, June, Anais and Rimbaud. Chicago musician and Library friend extraordinaire, Al Rose, who just dropped a critically acclaimed CD entitled, Spin Spin Dizzy will close out the evening with a musical set featuring songs that put the free in free speech. Please join us in this celebration, because we believe that without free speech there can be no human rights. Doors open at 6:30, program begins at 7:30.
Poetry Reading by Brenda Coultas
Miller Out Loud! staged reading
Al Rose in performance
Brenda Coultas is the author of four poetry collections, including The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014), The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House Press, 2008), and A Handmade Museum (Coffee House Press, 2003). Her honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.
Al Rose is a striking songwriter and musician with a unique and powerful vision that continues with his seventh and latest release (2016), “Spin Spin Dizzy”. His previous albums have received extensive airplay on AAA and Americana stations throughout the US along with a bevy of critical praise. He is a mesmerizing transformer when performing live as a solo or with any number of his band, The Transcendos, in any configuration. This drives the songs each night, but the songs have always been what drives the musicians in what The Chicago Tribune has called “one audaciously entertaining ride”.
Ron Genauer is an optometrist who has been involved in community theatre for many years. Some of his favorite roles have been Gelman, in Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass”, the Player, in Tom Stoppard’s “Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, and Charley, in David Mamet’s “Speed the Plow.”
John Dotson is a writer/producer/director/multi-media artist with Carmel Bay Players. He also works with The Seventh Quarry Drama Group of Swansea, Wales. John’s first acting was in excerpts of Shakespeare directed by Charlotte Perry at Santa Catalina School. He performed at the Forest Theater in The Hollow Crown, directed by Marcia Hovick, and in Robinson Jeffers’ Medea, directed by Nick Zanides. At Cherry Hall in Carmel, John performed Willie in Beckett’s Happy Days, directed by Conrad Selvig. John’s three-act play, It’s Always Something, directed by Nancy Pridemore, was staged in Kingsport, Tennessee, his hometown, in 2001. He then wrote and played the leading role in Without Why, directed by Conrad Selvig. With Lisa Maroski, John has written two plays, Touching Distance and Dearly Departing, performed in the US and at the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea.
Susan Roether Zsigmond (Director) is a writer and film maker. She is a friend of the San Francisco Library; North Beach Citizens: American Film Institute; The Actor’s Studio Playwrights Unit; and the Mecahnics Institute Library and Chess room. Her recent novel “Our Lady of West Hollywood” was listed among “Best of the Independent Press, 2014” by Kirkus Review. Susan is also a member of the board of directors of the Henry Miller Memorial Library.
Maria Garcia Teutsch (Producer) The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the 2016 Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. She is a poet, educator and editor. She has published over 20 journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing online as a member of the faculty of Hartnell College. She serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and is the founder and EIC of Ping-Pong Free Press.
Deidre Mccauley has been doing theatre for over 50 years. In Philadelphia she began at Old Academy Players following in her mother’s footsteps onto the stage.
She’s performed at Western Stage, Magic Circle Theatre, The Golden Bough, Outdoor Forest Theatre and Carl Cherry Center for the Arts. Recently she starred in a film called “Laces” which debuted at the Monarch Film Festival. She is part of The Actor’s Collective which is a group of actors who love to fly without a net.
Marnie Glazier is a writer, theatre artist and educator. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing, and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies. She has directed a number of productions – professional and academic – has taught Theatre, Writing, and Communication Studies for more than ten years, and currently serves as Theatre Faculty Lead at Hartnell College in Salinas. Her scholarly writing has been presented at numerous conferences and published in Laconics and the Texas Theatre Journal, and upcoming performances include: Transpiration, at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference this fall in Minneapolis, MN. Her work is deeply embedded in social practice/physical/visual theatre, ecology, and ecofeminism.
River Atwood Tabor is a poet, photographer, philosopher and other things that begin with the letter “p.” At 20 years of age, he has helped found a press, published a book of poetry, and traveled to 5 countries, and that’s just in the past year.
I will be reading at Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach, California on March 11, 2016, with the wondrous Sesshu Foster.
Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 20 years. He’s also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. He kicks ass! Check out the Poet Republik edition where he’s featured here!
Jesse Goodman has been producing benefit concerts for the Henry Miller Memorial Library since he brought Patti Smith there in 2004. The past few years he has been bringing poets in as the opening acts of these shows, which as you can imagine, pleases us here in the Republik of poets to no end. This year he is bringing in legendary San Francisco poet, David Meltzer to open for Pink Martini in this year’s benefit on December 8th at the Golden State Theatre in Monterey, California. Get your tickets baby, they’re going fast . . . So, to honor Jesse’s mad genius we are featuring his story as well as poems by David Meltzer and his wife, the poet Julie Rogers. Scroll down for his story, but first: the poets. Enjoy. Read More >
Cheyanne Gustason wrote a wonderful review of Ping-Pong 2014 for this issue of NewPages. This issue of Ping-Pong focused on Free speech as we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the free speech trial of Henry Miller’s book, Tropic of Cancer.
Ping•Pong
2014
Annual
Review by Cheyanne Gustason
If you have ever visited the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California, you likely noticed a ping-pong table. This table, nestled amidst towering redwood trees, brings the library’s many visitors together in a single place, with a single purpose: ping-pong. It is appropriate, then, that the Library’s literary journal, Ping•Pong, unites a wide array of voices and works in a single volume, and to common purpose.
The 2014 issue of Ping•Pong centers on topics of freedom and censorship, themes central to the life and legacy of Henry Miller himself. Editor-in-Chief Maria Garcia Teutsch begins her opening letter with the statement, “speech is not free, someone has paid the tab for you.” (iii) While the journal contains a variety of poems, artwork, short stories, and more, there runs throughout its pages an appreciation of those who paid the tab and paved the way.
Some of this appreciation is obvious, like the discussion and inclusion of works by Russian poets including Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky, who were mercilessly persecuted in early 20th century Russia. Works by these two, and some of their peers, have been translated into English included in this issue of Ping•Pong. These pieces, surrounded by modern works, raise questions about the nature of censorship and its cost, to both individuals and society. Many of the translated Russian pieces have a surreal slant, which makes it all the more biting when they depict cruelties and violent ironies that are all too real. In an excerpt from “Wild Honey Is a Smell of Freedom,” Akhmatova writes “Wild honey has a scent – of freedom [. . .] But we have learned that// blood smells only of blood.” (100) Written in Leningrad in 1934, one can hear the echoes of revolution, of strong spirits and stronger institutions, and the realities of censorship and the importance of the creative voice are made all the more resoundingly clear.
The issue is not all heavy-handed. Quite the contrary. There are many pieces that are not only thought-provoking, but artfully elicit smiles and laughter, both bitter and mirthful, as well. Yet even these lighter pieces explore themes of censorship and material that might be condemned if not for our forefathers of free speech. Jeanine Deibel’s poem “A-Team: Swinging the Lead” is a delightful trip through the possibilities of alliteration. Some favorite lines: “My power animal is an antelope/ I worship Angus idols/I curse in my alphabet soup.” (36) Even this- to curse in alphabet soup, is that not a subversion of a comfortable classic? Is such subversion necessary, imperative, even just plausible, to bolster artistic freedom? Throughout Ping•Pong, even moments of levity harbor serious and thought-provoking undercurrents.
Resting at the end of the issue is an interview with poet Alice Notley. It is a fitting finale, as Notley discusses many themes pertinent to the other works and the issue in general. She mentions her work with Allen Ginsberg, who was no stranger to issues of censorship and artistic freedom. She discusses her process, sharing her work (or not), and differences between France, the United States, and Germany in both language and acceptance. At one point she claims, “Sometime [sic] I suspect the French of not liking poetry at all.” (196)
Ping•Pong is host to many styles of writing and expression, and a wide array of authors, which makes it a dynamic petri dish of creativity (and a lot of fun to read). Some pieces brought tears to my eyes (I won’t say which, you’ll have to guess). Others had me shaking my head, or my fist, at either the content, or the way it would once have been (or still might be) suppressed. There is humanity, beauty, heartbreak, and elation, as well as (sometimes disturbing) profanity, sexuality, and violence; and all have a voice in the poems and fiction seen here. The art included in this issue is also intriguing and thought provoking, fitting nicely with the themes and emotions displayed in the written pieces. In fact, I would look forward to seeing a bit more visual art included in Ping•Pong’s next issue.
Appropriately, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made Henry Miller’s classic Tropic of Cancer legal to read and sell in the United States. While Miller’s persecution may not have equaled that of writers like Ahkmatova and Mayakovsky, it is also not so long ago that Miller’s work was verboten in our “land of the free.” Ping•Pong, much like the library that publishes it, perpetuates the legacy of Henry Miller’s work, which includes the freedom of all writers and artists to be seen and heard. This edition of the journal explores and expands on these themes, making it not only an enjoyable read, but an important one as well.
Originally published on NewPages here.
Henry Miller Memorial Library blog here.
Author Bio:
Cheyanne Gustason is a writer and artist living in Los Angeles, California. She has written for Backstage Magazine and is currently working on her first children’s book. She has Bachelor of Arts degrees in Film & Media Studies and History, and recently earned a Juris Doctor.
On Sunday, November 9th from 3-5 pm the following artists are donating their wondrous talents to benefit the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, as a part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration beginning Friday NIght at the Coagula Curatorial at 7:00 pm, then continuing on Saturday from 3-5 with Magnus Toren’s talk on Free Speech and Miller’s legacy and ending with perhaps the pièce de résistance, acoustic sets by the following artists:
Paz Lenchantin (Pixies and Entrance Band)
Emmett Kelley (Cairo Gang)
Christian Wargo (Fleet Foxes)
Pearl Charles and Lauren Barth
plus more TBA
All proceeds will benefit the Henry Miller Memorial Library, champions of free speech for 40 years.
Dear Reader,
Let me begin with a meditation: speech is not free, someone has paid the tab for you. This year we mark the 50th anniversary of the 1964 overturning by the Supreme Court of an earlier ruling which found the Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller to be obscene. Henry says:
It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! (Tropic of Cancer) Read More >
