Poets House, Lower Manhattan

Why go to Poets house?

Poets House boasts 50,000 volumes of poetry in an open, eco-friendly environment that affords a view of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. Founded by the American poet Stanley Kunitz, the space is ideal for reading, studying, and writing. Expect books. No public computer terminals. The computer terminals are for catalog access only. You can either read your own book or a poetry book available from the shelf. There are even typewriters available for the budding writer to practice her craft. There is a room specially reserved for quiet in the back. It has couches!

I go on Saturdays sometimes. The last time I went they served free wine and beer!

Best for poets and writers or people who want to be inspired creatively. A very inviting space. The staff is especially courteous.

Where: 10 River Terrace,  Lower Manhattan, Battery Park City
Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 11am–7pm, Saturday, 11am–6pm | Children's Room: Saturday, 11am–5pm
Contact: www.poetshouse.org info@poethouse.org  (212) 431-7920
Directions: Subway: 1, 2, 3, A, C, or E to Chambers St., or the R to Cortlandt St. (northbound only)

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Lance: A Fragment Poem

Wrapped in a green

T-shirt, I try to ollie — 
Is that a name?
Skateboards, he says.
It’s a move, dad —
Low riding jeans
I want to dress how
I want to dress
Do you think I'm shallow?

Water towers tower; we talk like men
when you are thirteen
You’re not as much a man
As you would want to be in your
Mind’s eye
Don't have it figured
Out?
You ain’t right
In the head

When do you first realize
What love is? Is it when:

He stirred the coffee with
A Donald the Duck spoon
Staring intently at the newspaper
As if to read it?

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Diagram of Two Sonnet Forms

In this post, I present a diagram of two popular sonnet forms.

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When Seeing the Devil is Not a Matter of Good Versus Evil

I Saw the Devil
(2010) Directed by Jee-woon Kim
Starring Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik Choi and Gook-hwan Jeon

    It was an incongruous pairing for me this weekend: Jim Hensen's muppets and a Korean film depicting gory revenge. After previewing Hensen's charming eight minute exploration on resisting time (at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria), my buddy Airplane and I took in the last film showing offered in the museum's theater. I Saw The Devil is most certainly not a sight for Miss Piggy. Or for Kermit.
    If one takes Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to the next level it might be close to this movie. At the outset I knew it would be bloody and disturbing. The first few minutes is a graphic abduction and beheading of the protagonist's fiancé.
    Protagonist may be too strong of a word. The film calls into question the concept of villain and hero. The narrative runs revenge style. Man kills man's love so man seeks out to destroy man. The movie takes us on this horrific journey but twists it to the extent that at the end we are not sure who is good or who is bad.
    Neither apologetic nor dogmatic, director Jee-woon Kim's impeccably filmed story of sadism and torture is not a movie for the faint of heart. Hoping to rest on a human ending, this tale ends with questions disturbingly left unanswered about man's inhumanity to man.
    Revenge is bad is the film's mantra. The typical good versus evil movie usually ends with evil overturned by  the good. Not this movie. [spoiler alert] While evil does get vanquished by the plot's end, so does good.
    It seems to me after a couple of hours of maiming, blood lust, and chopped up corpses, all we are left with is the question why?
    The gist seems to be a Chinatown addendum where the path down the rabbit hole leads to only one place: a seizing, inescapable void.

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C-

Image credit: filmdeviant

Aesthetic Thursday: City Hall Station

City Hall Station, IRT Lexington Avenue Line

(Image credit: John-Paul Palescandolo, Fred Guenther)

Take the Local 6 Train

If you take the local 6 train in Manhattan to its southern terminus at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station, don't get off the train even though it's the last stop. Stay on the train. More than likely you will be the only one in the car. The train will start up again and venture forward through the tunnel. What you may not know is that the local tracks at this station form a loop. 

The Remains of the First New York City Subway Station

Along the route are the remains of the former City Hall Station. It was the inaugural station of the city's first underground transportation system. As the train loops around, you will be able to see it — and if you are lucky the train may stop, or slow down enough, to get a good glimpse of the station's architecture. The station was built in 1904 and served the New York City subway system's IRT line until 1945 — when it was shuttered to make way for new trains that could not fit the older station's tight curve. The station had become redundant and has laid dormant for seventy-five years. 

Imagining a Turn-of-the-Century Gem Come to Life

Unlike other abandoned stations in the system, the City Hall station has remained protected from graffiti vandalism. Seeing the station while riding the loop is not as good as seeing it on foot, inside the station, with the lights turned on, but for a moment imagine the once touted travertine-tiled ceiling are aglow with the gas-lit chandeliers that once filled the space with illumination. When the New York City subway first opened back in 1905, it originally went from City Hall to what is now Grand Central station, but it turned west along what is now the 42nd Street shuttle, and at Times Square the line ran north, where it eventually meandered to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. I imagine I am one of those original straphangers, paying the five-cent fare, wearing a black coat, a top hat, white collared shirt — the same get-up one notices if you happen to like looking at men's attire from the turn-of-the-century.

What's your favorite subway station? What makes it your favorite?

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Jacques Derrida in the News

For fun and laughs, I like to search "Jacques Derrida" in the Google News search engine to see if the posthumous philosopher has made any recent headlines.

I found something today!

He is referenced in a New York Observer article by Jonathan Liu on architecture and performativity (07/12/2011):

The talk about architecture as performance must conjure up the 1980s and deconstruction:

Meanwhile, Peter Eisenman spent the 1980s conceptualizing deconstructivist architecture with Jacques Derrida and the naughties building a stadium for the Arizona Cardinals.

Does this stadium look "deconstructed" to you?

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Lemme know what you think in the comments below.