Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press  and Poet Republik Ltd. gathered at the Howl! Happening Gallery in the Bowery to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda. Read More >

Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press and the Henry Miller Memorial Library are proud to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda.

Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. will also feature readings from their newest releases:  Occasionally, I Remove your Brain Through Your Nose, by J. Hope Stein; Invitation to a Rescue, by Kate Lutzner; and Medeaum, by Jameson O’Hara Laurens, with presales of No Ledge Left to Love, by Dylan Krieger.

Readers include: Dylan Krieger, Brenda Coultas, Joanna Fuhrman, Christine Hamm, Kate Lutzner, Jameson O’Hara Laurens, Shelley Marlow, Eleni Sikelianos, Pamela Sneed, J. Hope Stein, and Maria Garcia Teutsch.

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project

6 East First Street (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue)

New York, NY 10003

(917) 475-1294

contact@howlarts.org

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project blog here

Henry Miller Memorial Library Blog Here

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of five books poetry, most recently The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press 2015) and Pageant (Alice James Books 2009). She served as poetry editor for Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature.

I Have a Secret Crush on Everyone in the World

When I say I have a secret crush on everyone
in the world, I mean the earth is a fur-covered
fireball, speeding into the expanding spaces
between paragliding atoms. It means I have
a crush on the way your dangling earlobes
say one thing and your elephant, anxious
hips say another– the way you dial the same
number six times before you build up the nerve
to finish. And yes, it means I am seriously
crushing on your chipped gold nail polish,
the way it signifies a desire to make the world
more beautiful, but also the way it displays
a fuck-you approach to beauty. I was going
to email to say I have a crush on your pre-
apocalyptic recipe poems, but it’s 2016
and according to twitter only old folks
use email. Is there anything more crush-
worthy than a manifesto spelled out in
lightly frosted snickerdoodles, or an essay
floating in a lagoon-shaped swimming pool?
I have a public crush on the number 8 bus,
alfresco Thai brunches and dirty Brooklyn
swans. I love all errors and eras equally.
I have a repressed crush on New Jersey
pollution, the way its oil refineries remind
me I have a nose. To have a crush is to crush
out doubt so thoroughly its green, leathery
skin becomes your own, to taste another’s
DNA so purely Januaries dissolve into vats
of frothy vanilla egg creams, spilling into
the cracks of your spine and your loose brain
jelly, into old feet and the cold twitch of your
jaw. To crush is to slide into the neural network
where our wires are made of bird songs
and magenta-colored loss, is to feel the floor
open and the reverberating metallic shivers after.

This poem first appeared in Apogee Magazine

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 >

I will be reading with Donna de la Perriere and Joanna Fuhrman

at the legendary Moe’s Books

Donna de la Perriere, Joanna Fuhrman, and Maria Garcia Teutsch (that’s me!) Wednesday, September 23rd

Donna de la Perrière is the author of True Crime (Talisman House, 2009) and Saint Erasure (Talisman House, 2010), a 2011 NCIBA Book of the Year Award finalist. The recipient of a 2009 Fund for Poetry Award, she teaches in the creative writing programs at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, and curates the Bay Area Poetry Marathon reading series in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Kindergarde: Avant Garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children (Black Radish Books, 2013), No Gender: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press, 2009) and Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), as well as journals such as American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Interim, New American Writing, and Volt. Her chapbook, “First Love,” is part of the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange collection at San Francisco State University, and she has work forthcoming in the upcoming anthology, Manifesting the Female Epic (Lark Books, 2016). She is currently working on a third full-length manuscript, Second Person.

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press 2015) and Pageant (Alice James Books 2009). She teaches poetry writing at Rutgers University, in her Brooklyn apartment and through Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Poets House.

Maria Garcia Teutsch, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, winner of the 2015 Minerva Rising chapbook contest, Judge: Heather McHugh, is editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong Free Press published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California where she serves as President of the board.

PING PONG & POETRY CRUSH CROSS-POLLINATE AT THE BUTTERFLY LOUNGE
(inside Grimm’s)

7-10pm, Seattle, Washington

Start off your Thursday night with a mysterious and intimate reading experience at Seattle’s Butterfly Lounge –The dark wood & walls of glass-cased butterflies are sure to inspire courageous & metamorphic readings.  Arrive as larva, depart as butterfly.

Readers include:  Kim Addonizio, Tara Rebele, James Harms, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Joanna Fuhrman, Joe Hall,  Cheryl Quimba, Adeena Karasick, Amy Lawless, James Maughn, Sampson Starkweather, Dan Shapiro, J. Hope Stein, Rauan Klassnik, Janaka Stucky, Maria Garcia Teutsch, Peter Kline and Brittany Perham.

Check out the post on Poetry Crush here

Dear Reader,
Once again you’re doing that thing that’s most important, reading this literary journal. Some smart people say that print journals are a thing of the past, but I say–as I listen to a blue vinyl Radiohead album–not so mon frère. Those of us who love paper, who love words, who love the crack of a spine will always reach for a book. Not to disparage all the multimedia at our fingertips. I have a teenage son, I know what’s up with all that stuff, and I love being able to slip a tiny electronic device into my carry-on when I’m flying all over this blue marble. Sometimes all I need is to read a poem by someone whose voice I need to hear that day on that island or on that train. Read More >

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up this magazine. Inside you will find a world of wonders. If you are like most people you will flick through and look at the art first. We are proud to feature gallery prints from iconic photographer Kim Weston. The art editor and I met Kim a few years ago at the Henry Miller Library over dinner, and have been trying to get his beautiful photographs in our magazine ever since. It is thanks to the dogged tenacity of River Tabor that we are able to feature work by an astounding member of the Weston dynasty. Read More >