JEAN ARP Read More >

In May of 2014 I participated in Aller Retour Paris:  a week of art, poetry, film, and music in the heart of Paris, celebrating the city’s role in shaping Henry Miller as a writer and raconteur. Ping-Pong literary journal hosted the opening night party at Shakespeare and Company. Reading poetry while looking at Notre Dame Cathedral is kind of wondrous. I hope I never get to that place where I think that isn’t the coolest thing on earth, cuz it kinda is. I figured since I was in Paris I’d see about interviewing one of my favorite poets, Alice Notley, who kindly agreed. J. Hope Stein, my friend and newest poetry editor at Ping-Pong also came along, and together we had tea and conversation with a woman who makes life itself an art, like Henry says is the trick of the whole thing. What follows is a shortened version (you have to buy the print copy of Ping-Pong to read it in its entirety).

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
the (partial) interview with Alice Notley

by: Maria Garcia Teutsch and J. Hope Stein
May 2014 at a café in Paris, France

MGT

I find a playfulness with language and punctuation in your writing with the things that bind our language and in some ways release them. And I’m wondering if in English you find there are more boundaries on the language than you do in the French?

Alice

No (laughs). No, because English is my first language and for me it has no boundaries. But I don’t think one has more or fewer boundaries than the other.

MGT

In French everything is gender, and I know in German everything is gendered.

Alice

In English a lot is gender and nobody notices it.   And if you speak a language you don’t notice it. I don’t notice it so much in French. Mostly I strive to master it so I can speak the language. The words you expect to be feminine are never feminine.   It never works the way it’s supposed to. It all comes from Latin. I took Latin in high school and I know that gender is always unexpected. (Laughs) Read More >

This month’s Poet Republik feature is another poem from Jean-Noel Chazelle’s first collection of poetry, Le Sang de L’Étoile / Star-Blood. Poet Republik Ltd. is proud to publish his debut in a bilingual translation. Special thanks to Brooke Petersen for translating. Jean-Noel is already an accomplished artist whose paintings have been exhibited around the globe. Below is a sampling of the outstanding poetry in this collection. You can see the influence of his painterly mind in the lush images in his poetry. Enjoy! Read More >

Are the children opening mouths like hungry saxophones
Clamoring for bread from my bread music? Read More >

Well, almost. The Henry Miller Memorial Library’s journal of literature and art will host an evening of poetry, music and wine at the world renown bookstore, Shakespeare and Company in Henry’s old stomping grounds, Paris, France.

Featured Readers:

J Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks: Talking Doll (Dancing Girl Press), Mary (Hyacinth Girl Press) and Corner Office (H_ngm_n). Her poems are published or forthcoming in Verse, HTML Giant, Tarpaulin Sky, Everyday Genius, Ping Pong, Talisman, and Poetry International. She is also the editor ofpoetrycrush.com and the author of the poetry/humor site eecattings.com.

 
Jean-Noël Chazelle is a Paris-based painter who will read French poetry from Ping-Pong, as well as some of his own work.

 
Maria Garcia Teutsch will be reading from the new bilingual (French and English) edition of Pussy/Chatte, as well as from her new manuscript: Whore-son, poems written in response to the underlined sections of Jean Genet’s The Balcony. She has or will be published in: Otoliths, The South Carolina Review, Prairie Schooner, The Lullwater Review, The Cold Mountain Review, The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, The Sierra Nevada Review, Women’s Arts Quarterly, and Whole Beast Rag.

Shelley Marlow wrote the lyrics to UnKnot Turandot, performed at La Mama Theater NYC. Marlow presented International Witch Stories at the 48th Venice Biennial. Her writing and visual art is published in the St. Petersburg Review; LTTR (Lesbians to the Rescue); Drunken Boat; as a cover of The Literary Review; saint-lucy.com; zingmagazine; Girlfriends Magazine; Sandbox Magazine; Log Illustrated; New Observations; and in various art catalogues.  Marlow collaborates with performance artists, exhibits paintings and drawings, and writes fiction. Marlow resides in Brooklyn.