i can't really sing, so

Our calendar listing for our reading at Robin's is up on their website. Check it out HERE .

Alice Notley, prominent poet from the 2nd generation of the New York School, will be reading at Rowan University on Monday, April 26th in the Rowan Art Gallery in Wesby Hall at 7pm. This event is both FREE and OPEN to the PUBLIC. If you are in the area, you should probably attend. Visit the official link on the Rowan website HERE . It advises you to contact Bill Friend at friend[at]rowan[dot]edu for more information. In honor of continuing our "poem a day" posts for National Poetry Month, I would like to guide you to the poets.org site on Alice Notley. There are six audio recordings of her reading here as well as two text versions of her poems. Check it out HERE . I read the Selected Poems of Alice Notle y earlier this year, and I started my copy of her collection Disobedience this weekend in honor of her Monday reading, I recommend strongly that you get your hands on a copy of her work. I would, personally, like to own Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 . I on...

With National Poetry Month coming to an end, Gigantic Sequins would like to remind all of our poets out there that our submission period will end on JUNE 30th. This gives you plenty of time to edit all of the poems that you’ve written and decide which are appropriate to send to our magazine. Please see our submission guidelines link to the right of this update for more specific guidelines. In addition to encouraging our poets to submit, we would like to remind everyone else, also, that the deadline to submit for our 2.2 issue is JUNE 30th. TIPS from the GiGANTiC SEQUiNS EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF … 1) Proofread your work by reading it out loud to yourself and your dog or having a friend look over it for errors. A simple misplaced apostrophe can throw or turn a reader off from your work. 2) Send us multiple pieces! We will read up to five pieces per author per reading period. Send three poems, one short story and one essay! Send five poems! Send five essays! Send away! 3) BUY a copy of Gigantic S...

9 poems by 9 authors better known for something that isn't poetry 1) James Joyce -- best known as an author of novels, including Ulysses and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. A Flower Given to My Daughter Frail the white rose and frail are Her hands that gave Whose soul is sere and paler Than time's wan wave. Rosefrail and fair -- yet frailest A wonder wild In gentle eyes thou veilest, My blueveined child. 2) D. H. Lawrence - best known as the author of novels such as Women in Love and Sons and Lovers . Self Pity I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. 3) Denis Johnson - best known as the winner of the National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke . Surreptitious Kissing I want to say that forgiveness keeps on dividing, that hope gives issue to hope, and more, but of course I am saying what is said w...

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 is for sale! $8.50 - Gigantic Sequins 1.2 $17.00 - Gigantic Sequins 1-YEAR subscription $20.00 - Gigantic Sequins 1-Year subscription + 1.1 buy it!

Today, I will post three poems for three days in NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. All three poems are by Elizabeth Bishop. I have been reading selections of the beautiful FSG paperback I have of her Complete Poem s for awhile now. Her poems can be both simple and complex simultaneously, her imagery is vivid and clear, and her ideas are always immensely human. The first and last in this set of four are among a few of my favorites by her, though I do recommend that you check out this link , which contains the text of "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore" in its proper formatting. I have yet to figure out how to properly 'indent' on this blog. Please enjoy the following four poems by Elizabeth Bishop. Some more of my favorite Bishop poems that are not featured in this blog post are: "From the Country to the City", "The Man-Moth", "Sleeping Standing up" and "Late Air". Be sure to check them out after you enjoy those featured here today! Insomni...

SATURDAY APRIL 17!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8pm!!!!!!!!!!!!! 255 McKibben St. #507!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gigantic Sequins 1.2 will be celebrated. raffle : booze : music : poetry : prose : prizes : fun 8PM//////SEQUINS READING featuring: Leigh Alexander Jeff Laughlin Lucrecia Zappi 10PM////PARTY TIME MUSIC with: GunFight! Quiet Loudly Pet Ghost Project & more to come... ENTRY - Just $1 ! We'll be selling raffle tickets, and all we ask is that you buy at least one. But for $5, you get 7 tickets AND a copy of GIGANTIC SEQUINS 1.2. For $4, you just get 4 tickets. That's it. Raffle prizes will include books, CDs, and booze!

John Keats "Bright Star" ---> here . Denis Johnson "Heat" ---> here . A movie about Keats came out recently that I did enjoy. It was titled "Bright Star" and paced oddly, slowly, but the movie felt appropriate for its subject-matter: poetry. Keats is a romantic poet from early nineteenth century England. In high school, you may have been made to read his "Ode to a Grecian Urn". This sonnet, also, is rather famous, very romantic and also precise. I like it. Denis Johnson wrote the book of short stories Jesus's Son as well as a few great novels, one which recently one the National Book Award. I have only read Jesus's Son and Already Dead , but I hear the NBA winner, Tree of Smoke , is stellar. Johnson, also, is one of those rare writers who can successfully and without any frustrating overlap write both excellent poetry and excellent fiction. "Heat" is one of my favorites. It's a "sonnet", where "Bright ...

FOR Easter, today, I give you e.e. cummings , one of my personal favorites. THE Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds (also, with the church's protestant blessings daughters,unscented shapeless spirited) they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things-- at the present writing one still finds delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D .... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.

Our national poetry month poems for today and yesterday are both rather short and both from Richard Brautigan. You can read about him here . He is pretty wonderful. He was born January 30th, 1935 and died September 14, 1984. His poems are gems that were ahead of their time. TWO poems by RICHARD BRAUTIGAN from "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster" Man With his hat on he's about five inches taller than a taxicab. Sir Comma and Creeley Comma It's spring and the nun like a black frog builds her tarpaper shack beside the lake. How beautiful she is (and looks) surrounded by her rolls of tarpaper. They know her name and they speak her name.

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 was released last month, and we will have a few events in the upcoming months to celebrate! Tentative NYC Celebration of Release: April 17th, @ the McKibben Lofts also... Reading in Boston, on a day in May still tbd , @ Trident Bookseller & Cafe on Newbury St. AND Reading in Philadelphia, on a day in May still tbd, @ Robin's Bookstore on 13th St. This information right now is rather vague and readers and/or bands are still TBD, but we wanted to let everyone know that we will be having these events in April and May. As soon as we have more information, more information will be posted!

Dear Faithful Readers, April 1st marks the first day of National Poetry Month , and this is no joke. As a celebration of this month-long event, I, your wonderful editor-in-chief, am going to post a poem-a-day on this blog. I also am participating in the challenge to write a poem for each day of the month -- these, though, will not be posted to this page. I prefer, for the writing part of the challenge, to write them longhand in a notebook. I also do not give myself certain prompts for each day. I have done it this way for all of the years that I've participated in the celebration of National Poetry Month, and I know that part of something I love about writing is the kinesthetics of it-- the feeling of pen to paper, the way my handwriting looks, crossing things out (as opposed to making them disappear with the backspace key). For April 1st, our poem is " To You " by the famous late nineteenth century American poet, Walt Whitman. In the Norton Critical Edition of Leaves of...