Dennis Nurkse reads from The Border Kingdom

In “Ben Adan,” a stunning poem in the opening sequence of the collection, we witness the stirring drama between a captor and the prisoner commanded to dig his own grave (“perhaps in a moment / he will lift me up / and hold me trembling, / more scared than I / and more relieved”). “After a Bombing” examines children’s drawings as deep symbolic reactions to 9/11. The subtly majestic “Lament for the Makers of Brooklyn” builds the poignant case for a lost world: “Where is Policastro the locksmith now?” the poet asks. “Half-blind, he wore two pairs of glasses / held together by duct tape, / . . . / afterward the key turned / for you but not for me.”

A poet of unique force and sensitivity, Nurkse refuses to pass over the marginal characters and corners of the world, attuned to the scraps of beauty or insight they might offer up in the midst of moral darkness. In The Border Kingdom he has given us an exceptionally powerful collection of poems—unfailingly rich in imagery, undaunted in subject and spirit.

Elizabeth Royte

reads and discusses Bottlemania

(at Old First Church)

In the follow-up to Garbage Land, her influential investigation into our modern trash crisis, Elizabeth Royte ventures to Fryeburg, Maine, to look deep into the source—of Poland Spring water. In this tiny town, and in others like it across the country, she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that have made bottled water a $60-billion-a-year phenomenon even as it threatens local control of a natural resource and litters the landscape with plastic waste.

Moving beyond the environmental consequences of making, filling, transporting and landfilling those billions of bottles, Royte examines the state of tap water today (you may be surprised), and the social impact of water-hungry multinationals sinking ever more pumps into tiny rural towns. Ultimately, Bottlemania makes a case for protecting public water supplies, for improving our water infrastructure and—in a world of increasing drought and pollution—better allocating the precious drinkable water that remains.

(a.k.a. the 4^th Wednesday of the month)

Modernist Book Club meets

Stay tuned for this month’s book! Or better yet, come on August 27^th @ 7:30 p.m. for a discussion of Absalom, Absalom! and help the group decide what’s next!

Mark Lilla

reads from The Stillborn God

Mark Lilla is Professor of Humanities and Religion at Columbia University. He was previously Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. A noted intellectual historian and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern.

THE PAKISTAN/USA FREEDOM FORUM

INVITES YOU TO COME HEAR

TARIQ ALI

SPEAK ON HIS NEW BOOK

THE DUEL

Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

Born and raised in Pakistan, Mr Ali  is a widely published author and film-maker. In his new book, out this week, he describes the way in which American support for corrupt civilian presidents and undemocratic military rulers has been ruinous for Pakistan’s political life throughout its 60 years. At a moment when the United States is openly mounting attacks inside the borderlands of Pakistan, Mr Ali’s book is both timely and important. It has already been warmly praised in the Washington Post.

Where: Pakiza Restaurant, 1026 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn New York 11230 (nearest subway is the B or Q to Newkirk Av)

When: Saturday September 20th at 7.00pm

Food will be served

For more information please contact Mr Comrade of the Pakistan/USA Freedom Association on 917 280 0840

Community Forum Night
Meets to Discuss:

 How Does NYC Government Work,
and How the Heck Do You Get Things Done?

Moderated by Craig Hammerman

How many times have you wished you could “Just do something about . . . .” or “Just find out how to . . . .”  Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman is graciously joining us to moderate a quick trot throught the wonderland of NYC Government.  Come armed with concerns, issues, questions and wishlists.  We can help steer you to solutions and resources, and we’re also hoping to generate a list of future Community Forum topics.

Craig Hammerman has been the District manager since February 1993.  Community Board 6 includes the “Brownstone Brooklyn” neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Columbia Street District, Gowanus, Park Slope and Red Hook – some of the most vibrant and sought-after destinations in New York City.

Josh Barkan

reads from Blind Speed

(a.k.a. the 2^nd Wednesday of the month)

Books Without Borders Book Group meets to discuss

Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya

The first of exiled Honduran novelist Moya’s eight fictions to be translated in the U.S., this crushing satire has at its center a feisty young unnamed writer in penurious political exile from an unnamed Latin American country. It opens as he explains the daunting and dangerous freelance job he has taken in an also-unnamed neighboring state: to edit a 1,100-page report prepared for the country’s Catholic archdiocese that details the current military regime’s torture and murder of thousands of indigenous villagers. The writer despises the Church, but is moved and agitated by the disturbing testimonies of the survivors, at once unspeakable in their horror and unforgettable in their phrasing: “the more they killed, the higher they rose up”. More or less one long rant, the book’s paragraphs go on for pages as the writer gives way to paranoia, and to a sexual longing that his loneliness and powerlessness make nearly unbearable, and that he expresses profanely. It’s Moya’s genius to make this difficult character seem a product of the same death and disorder documented in the report, as the survivors’ voices merge with his own. 

 senslessness_handout_pdfdoc

Joshua Henkin

reads from Matrimony

“Elicits a passionate investment in the fate of its characters – truly an up-all-night read.”

                        - The Washington Post

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, MATRIMONY is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. In its emotional honesty, its luminous prose, its generosity and wry wit, MATRIMONY is a beautifully detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone–to do it when you’re young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.

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(a.k.a. the 1^st Wednesday of the month)

Community Bookstore Knit Night

Join the Community Bookstore Knitters for an evening of socializing and crafty creativity. Beginners are welcome, we love to help! Crocheters too!