Check out this podcast of Kim Addonizio interviewing a number of Henry Miller aficionados about Henry’s life in Big Sur, California. Featuring interviews with Miller’s son Tony, as well as yours truly.
Listen Here:
Playing Ping Pong with Henry Miller – an illuminating BBC podcast on how Big Sur transformed Miller.
“Henry at Henry” by Maria Garcia Teutsch
Henry Rollins has rocked my world for as long as I can remember. When I first heard him sing with Black Flag my body hummed for hours afterwards. Read More >
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.
Howl! Happening reading and launch party!
Join us for a night of poetry, prose, performance and music to celebrate the publication of Ping-Pong journal of literature and art and the launch of Ping-Pong Free Press.
On April 15th at 7:00 pm, Ping-Pong Free Press and the Henry Miller Memorial Library invite you to an evening of reading, ranting and raving to celebrate the release of their magazine and launch of their free press. Readers include: Jean-Paul Pecqueur, Susan Lewis, Alexander Cigale, Sheila Maldonado, Cathy McArthur, Kate Lutzner, Sarah Sarai, Kostas Anagnopoulos, Stephen Boyer, Christen Clifford, Amanda Davidson, Dia Felix, Matthew Sharpe, Robert Marshall, Laurie Stone, Pamela Sneed, J. Hope Stein, Christine Hamm, Maria Garcia Teutsch and Magnus Toren. Special thanks to our east coast curators: Joanna Fuhrman and Shelley Marlow!
(Last) Letter from the editor 2015
Greetings wonderful reader,
First of all I would like to say that after 10 years of presiding over this wondrous journal of art and letters I am resigning. It’s not that I don’t love the editing process, I actually do. For reals: I edited my undergrad lit journal, The Atlantis, and my grad school journal, The Cold Mountain Review. Then when I moved out to California in 2000, I began editing the Homestead Review out of Hartnell College in Salinas, where I accepted a position on their faculty. 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.
Henry Miller Memorial Library announces “Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary: Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial”
Friday, November 7th at Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles
Henry Miller is responsible for — to quote scholar James Decker — “the free speech that we now take for granted in literature.” It began fifty years ago when Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” was deemed not obscene by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur and its literary magazine Ping-Pong, will be throwing a party at the Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles to honor this landmark event while ruefully acknowledging that free speech is once again under siege.
“Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary of the Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial” will celebrate this historic win for free speech by bringing together writers, poets, and authors who will read or display a piece of art/prose/poem/song that was banned and that effected them in a transformative way. Participants will also read or sing an original piece. Read More >
Dorothy’s Gallery, American Center for the Arts, is co sponsoring « Aller Retour Paris, an exhibition, May 6 to 10, and a festive evening, May 7, dedicated to the legendary American writer Henry Miller.
The Henry Miller festival is organised in collaboration with :
– The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California.
– Shakespeare and Company,the historic parisien english language bookstore
– Mary Duncan, Director of the Paris Writers Group and Paris Writers Press
Special Evening – MAY 7 at 7pm
Join us at Dorothy’s Gallery for a reception/celebration with talks by speakers from three countries with a film, food and wine on May 7 at 19:00.
Poetry readings with: Maria Garcia Teutsch and J. Hope Stein
Music, Al Rose
Mary Duncan will give a talk on the live recording of Henry Miller.
Aller Retour Paris (May 4-12, 2014): a week of art, poetry, film, and music celebrating the city’s role in shaping Henry Miller as a writer and raconteur, hosted by yours truly,
The festival will be anchored by a pop-up bookstore at the legendary Shakespeare & Company that will include an exhibit of rare manuscripts, letters, and books. We’ve already lined up some amazing events including a screening of Michael Polish‘s acclaimed film “Big Sur,” the “best of” the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series, dinner parties, an opening nighty party hosted by Ping-Pong, our literary magazine!
more details to come . . .
Ping-Pong journal of art and literature will have a table full of arcania from the Henry Miller Memorial Library at the AWP Conference in Seattle, Washington from February 27th-March 1st. You will also find our submission guidelines, beautiful limited edition posters from our concerts, as well as directions to Ping-Pong and Poetry Crush’s offsite reading on Thursday night!
You can find us in the North Hall, table N20, dogleg left at our compatriot’s table, the Paris Review. Rascal and raconteur, we think Henry and George would be proud . . .
Photo Credit: Michelle Magdalena
