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  Damon Runyon Theater - Dancing...

  Damon Runyon

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  The Damon Runyon Theatre Hour.  Damon Runyon is acknowledged as one of the great writers to come out of twentieth century America.  Runyon's short stories are almost always told in the first person by a narrator who is never named, and whose role is unclear; he knows many gangsters and has no job that can be gleaned from his musings, nor does he admit to any criminal involvement; He’s a bystander, an observer, an average street-corner Joe.  Runyon described himself as "being known to one and all as a guy who is just around".  That line seems to say a lot about Runyon and his life.  It was like you were with him on some street corner hustle or some shady dive and he was filling you in on all the angles, all the gossip, all of life. He was who so many people wanted to be with……or so many people wanted to be.  Of course, the cliché about newspapermen and writers is that they are heavy drinkers, chain-smokers, gamblers and obsessively chase women with a sideline in the gathering of stories and facts and actually getting something written just before the deadline hits. That seems like Damon Runyon and his life summed up in one sentence.  His stories became legendary ways of looking that bit differently at America, of soaking up the atmosphere of a glamorous and rip-roaring age and distilling it into a black and white type or, in our case, The Damon Runyon Theatre Hour.

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  Multitudes

  Margaret Christakos

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  Poet Margaret Christakos, throughout her eight previous poetry collections, has created ruptures and splices inside of and against the limits of the confessional lyric, often using recombinatory procedures, cyclical and serial structure, and enmeshing intimate vernacular with highly aestheticized language in writing that explores maternality, sexuality and intimate address.
   
  In her new collection, Multitudes –Â?Â? where cellphone tweets snipe 'y wd I nd/ 2 spk 2 u?' alongside echoes of aria, chant and dirge –Â?Â? Christakos freshly pairs Whitman's 'Song of Myself' with an inquiry into the subjective thresholds of digital social media, where individuals conduct flamboyant acts of self-Â?portraiture, testimonial, self-Â?commodification, erotic selfÂ?-dispersal and indelible spectacle.
   
  Multitudes is a moving, witty, poetic foray into a modern frontier of public spaces (city hall square, park, cemetery, bicycle path), poetic forms, private longings and virtual relocations. With her trademark linguistic sonar, Christakos amplifies the capacity of language to discern an almost inherent swingdoor between 'moaning' and 'meaning,' while casting a discouraged eye on how human discernment is used to rigidify recognitions, inviting citizens to turn from ethical social activism to snitch on their Facebook friends after an urban hockey riot.
   
  'Alphabetic dismantling, syntactic play, essaying words backwards and 4words (as she might say), Christakos manifests forensic clarity and telegraphic fortitude in this unsettling work.' Â?– Rachel Blau DuPlessis

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  Delight in Disorder

  Robert Herrick

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  Robert Herrick (baptised 24 August 1591 – buried 15 October 1674[1]) was a 17th-century English lyric poet and cleric. He is best known for his book of poems, Hesperides.Herrick never married, and none of his love-poems seem to connect directly with any one beloved woman. He loved the richness of sensuality and the variety of life, and this is shown vividly in such poems as Cherry-ripe, Delight in Disorder and Upon Julia’s Clothes. (Summary from Wikipedia)

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  Rhyme A Dozen A - 12 Poets 12...

  Michael Drayton, Ivor Gurney,...

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  ‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded gathering, maybe even an essential guide, from the knowing pens of classic poets and their beautifully spoken verse to the comfort of your ears. 
   
  1 - A Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poems, 12 Poets, 1 Topic - Ballads - An Introduction 
  2 - The Ballad of Agincourt by Michael Drayton 
  3 - Ballad of the Three Spectres by Ivor Gurney 
  4 - The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly by James Joyce 
  5 - The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate by Anne Askew 
  6 - The Water Ballad by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
  7 - The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear 
  8 - Ballade of An Omnibus by Amy Levy 
  9 - La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats 
  10 - John Barleycorn, A Ballad by Robert Burns 
  11 - Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe 
  12 - A Ballad of Hell by John Davidson 
  13 - A Ballad of Death by Algernon Charles Swinburne

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  Priest and His Disciples (Shaw...

  Hyakuzo Kurata

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  At the age of twenty-six (at the height of the Great War in Europe), the religious pilgrim and maverick Kurata Hyakuzo wrote a profoundly philosophical play called "The Priest & His Disciples" ("Shukke to sono deshi").  This stage play is based on the life and teachings of the 13th century Buddhist priest Shinran (1173-1263) and quickly became immensely popular.  Shinran, the historical founder of the True Pure Land School of Buddhism (Jodo Shinshu), encounters the poor family of Hino Saemon and his wife Okane, and converses with them about how to live in circumstances of change and turmoil and hardship.  Most of the ideas represented as Shinran's are really Kurata's own philosophies, an amalgam of Eastern and Western ideas adapted by his own iconoclastic spirit to the tumultuous times of early twentieth-century Japan. - Summary by Expatriate

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  Bessie's Resurrection

  Kimberly A. Collins

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  Bessie's Resurrection gives voice to Richard Wright's fictional character Bessie Mears from his novel Native Son (1940). These poems offer Bessie room to articulte her experiences as an African American woman and how she suffes in her unenviable position, powerless and unseen. Here, Bessie's fictive character is self actualized by two historical African American trailblazers: Bessie Coleman and Bessie Smith who lived during the same time period when Bessie's story takes place. These poems, which reimagine their lives, are a microcosim of the lived experiences of African American women who face violence, limitations and challenges, Their voices and bodies are resurrected to articulate their ideas of worth to claim a space to speak not only for themselves but also for their sisters who are voiceless. Their lives become three songs which are analogous to the sections in Wright's novel: Fear, Flight and Fate. While Bessie Mears supplies the soundtrack to Bigger's story, it is Bessie Smith's blues sung by Colie Aziza which serve as the soundtrack for Bessie's Resurrection. This collection of poems, written for all three Bessie's, honors Black women as the necessary backbone to the fight against their voices and their bodies being buried alive.

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