A tarot reading, May 11

Find your professional identity
Write all the time, be creative, develop poetic identity

Life changes coming

Legal problems coming

Let go

Find sanctuary

Detach a little bit

Be OK with tradition

Limit overly sensual pleasures: sex, food, drinks, etc.

Find intellectual pleasures

Stay away from the evil man

Ampersand

People always ask me why I have this tattoo. I have an ampersand because it serves as a personal reminder that nothing is the end, is over, is lost. We live our lives hovering on the concept of "and."

We are always on the verge of something new.

I have to remind myself of this from time to time. 
A beautiful poem, Ampersand, by John Reibetanz.
You needed a hand,/ the open-armed return of all your relations./ You wanted, harder than death, ampersand

Featured at Short, Fast & Deadly

New work up at Short, Fast & Deadly! (edited by Joseph Quintela). I was the featured poet, and the issue was focused on the theme of Place Marks -- a body being haunted by a location, or a place. Check it out!
Everything I wrote was in 140 characters or less -- so the issue is really cool, and it includes work by tons of great poets and writers, Al Ortolani, Nicolette Wong, Ray Scanlon, Jenni Rossi, and more...

National Poetry Month Day 4: Lila Zemborain

Dear Lila Zemborain,

You alone have proven the strength of prose-poetry. You alone have made me want to pour water into my mouth and eyes because I don't know why. You alone have made me want to experiment with my own writing. You alone have made me want to use ayahuasca to find my own guardians.

Guardians of the Secret was a book I purchased at the AWP Conference this year -- it was a welcome follow-up to what I was reading: Marosa di Giorgio's History of Violets, which is also a Spanish book with English translations. These books do similar things for me: their language is heavy, and yet fluttering. It seems to crawl with secrets that beg you to unravel and understand them, though never giving you so much clarity that you feel you haven't worked through something inside of yourself. Zemborain's language exists between our reality and the dream state, sometimes crossing the threshold into one and pulling the other with it. She is, most of all, able to evoke beauty and depth without sacrificing craft and her unique musical language.

Read from Gaurdians of the Secret (Noemi Press)
mesa frente a la ventana. Bonnard. / Table in front of the window. Bonnard.

Also, follow me on twitter:
@lisamariebasile
@lunaliprari

Poems Every Day // National Poetry Month

For National Poetry Month I want to give some love to my favorite poets and poet-peers. There is so much gorgeous work out there a midst so much work that sort of makes me sick, bored and wanting to save the craft. There are a lot of risks not being taken, a lot of over-used voices and tricks.

BUT!

That's what is so great about poetry: its diversity, the different opinions, the passion that still exists when Person A and Person B disagree. The day we stop hating/adoring/bleeding for/talking about poetry is the day a little part of me is going to die. I've met a lot of great poets at The New School, where I'm finishing my degree and a lot here in New York City, where the poetic climate is ever-evolving and intense. There are a lot of amazing poets within The Poetry Brothel, of which I’m a devoted member. I’ve also felt that the internet has contributed a great deal to my awareness of writing and good poets; I read a name in a literary journal and their real (virtual) self appears before me on the screen somewhere in the desert or in a sleepy town somewhere else. I can sort of make out this person through the electronic haze.

There’s so much to be exalted and admired about my generation of writers that I want to crawl inside all of their brains and hearts and sleep in there for a while. There are so many people who aren’t afraid to try something new when the pressure to be homogenized and creat something safe and cradled and easy and accessible is so prevalent. I was told “never write about God in a poem” once. I disagree. Write about God, but do it well. Here are some writers who don’t follow any set of rules, and who deserve our love for it. 

1 Kristina Marie Darling, Footnotes to a History of the Corsage, Softblow

2 Helen Vittoria, We Were Horses, PANK Magazine
3 Ocean Vuong, In Defense of Dancing, Guernica 

Review of Andalucia on Prick of the Spindle

Lisa A. Flowers wrote a gorgeous review of my book, Andalucia. It is poetic and thoughtful and makes me view my own writing in new ways. She even throws in a reference to Dario Argento, and that makes me smile.

Excerpt:
Lisa Marie Basile’s Andalucía is the story of a pathologically exotic land out to lure its visitors, siren-like, into the sea that borders it, enticing with the heady perfume of tropical flowers and epicurean promises of just What A Little Moonlight Can Do. As Zeus made himself into a swan and gave chase to Leda, so here does a city transmogrify into a flesh and blood lover who stalks all who try to leave it…turning the classic “I Left My Heart In...” tourist T- shirt into a shirt of Nessus as skintight velvet evening gown. As a subjective and universal chronicle of lineage and identity, the book is a backwards flamenco into the origin of species, a film dissolve of whirling white petticoats to churning white Darwinian sea foam. M otherland becomes birth mother, and all goes back into the ocean from whence it came. But in that whale’s belly, where Jonah might have huddled in darkness, Basile dances herself to the liberating frenzy of a blowhole.

Read more. 

There are writers in the sky

...flying to AWP!

I'm going to be at AWP this week. I'll be co-hosting the Patasola Press/ Atticus Books event, Literary High Jinx. I'll also be reading at The Poetry Brothel's Traveling Medicine Show. There's a lot I plan to do, like meeting my publishers Kristy Bowen at Dancing Girl Press and Gloria Mindock with Cervena Barva Press. I will be at the Weave Magazine table, and downing drinks at the airport. . .

PANK posted an interview with me about the 4 poems they published from Andalucia. It's pretty neat.  There's some stuff about sex and bones.

I'll have poems and prose-poetry published at Connotation Press in May, and I'll be the featured poet at Short, Fast & Deadly in April, where the theme is  [Place Marks]. SUBMIT! They're seeking poetry and prose about the places that haunt your life and work. (Deadline: February 19)

I released Patasola Press' Literary Sampler last week. I wanted to sample our wares and showcase some of the awesome poets and writers we've had or are having published: Rae Bryant,  J. A. Tyler, Mimi Ferebee, Kiely Sweatt, Judith Skillman, Joseph Quintela, T.M. De Vos and Mary Lou Buschi.

ANNNNND COMATOSE by J. A. Tyler is coming. It's debuting at AWP it's super amazing. 

I Escaped a Botticelli Painting: My Chapbook Andalucia, Reviewed

Carina Finn, a wonderful poet, wrote a lovely review of my chapbook, Andalucia (Brothel Books) on her blog. It is also reposted at The Poetry Society of New York's blog.  She said that a lot of books make her want to vomit, but she also says nice things about my work. I like both of these statements.

You can purchase my book here.

#Updates #poems #doves

We Who Are About To Die recently profiled me in their We Who Are About To Tweet series -- writers who use Twitter.

Two new poems - On Fear / On God - are up at elimae, a journal I really, really love. 

I have some new poems up at Eunoia Review. Gael I. Gael II. Sea. Untitled.

I just started reading what I think is my new favorite book by Catalan writer Merce Rodoreda. Rodoreda lived in Barcelona, and her book is called "The Time of the Doves," or "La Plaça Del Diamant." I picked up the book, its spine out inside the shelf, without really noticing any other book or knowing why I picked it up. It's strange and beautiful, because when I went to Barcelona, I became a little bit entwined with doves and their mythology. There is the tomb of Saint Eulalia in Barcelona, and it is said that a dove flew from her neck after decapitation. (She was killed by the Romans for failing to give up her Christianity.) I had known about Rodoreda before, and knew she had been endorsed by Marquez and Rios and Cisneros. Obviously amazing.

A line I love:

And when he started kissing me I saw our Lord up above in his house inside a puffed up cloud with bright orange edges that was changing color on one side, and Our Lord spread his arms wide --they were very long--and he grabbed the sides of the cloud and shut himself up in it like it was a cupboard.

Jeanette Winterson on Henry Miller

“The question is not art versus pornography or sexuality versus censorship or any question about achievement. The question is: Why do men revel in the degradation of women?”

The Patasola Review & New Poem from Andalucia

I have a new poem at mediterranean poetry, edited by the gracious Anders Dahlgren. It's a pretty site, with lots of poetry about the ocean and the sun.  This poem comes from my book, Andalucia, which can be bought here.

J. A. Tyler-Comatose, Patasola Press

In other news, I have just started work on The Patasola Review, Patasola Press' online magazine component. It'll be quarterly, published on each solstice. We're gearing up to release J. A. Tyler's Comatose, and it's just amazing. I'm really lucky to have worked with it because it's world unto itself and it speaks to the strengths of prose-poetry.

We're looking for very innovative work that takes risks and plays with language. We're looking for poems that can beat other poems up. See the site for guidelines.

Nostalgia is Another form of Obstructionism: Safety in Poetry

As a poet, I have a tendency of becoming nostalgic. Sometimes I fall so into memory I can't make anything new out of my words. I like this quote by Gloria Steinem and the bit afterward, written on this article in The Atlantic Cities.


Gloria Steinem: "Nostalgia is another form of obstructionism."

If we keep holding onto the past, we’re not going to move forward. I think we look at these signs, and we remember our childhood, we remember the products our mothers bought. We remember ourselves in a time when we were much more vital, younger, much more limber, able to scale the sides of walls to get on roofs, take these photographs a little easier. In that respect, I think people have a little nostalgic yearning that these signs sort of fulfill.

I think I need to move on. Even my work becomes stilted. I start obsessing on the same themes, the same pains, the same perceived roadblocks. What if I'm too scared to move on to new things because certain topics feel safe to me. I can write about parents. I can write about fear. Is it every poet's responsibility to try new things, or is it better to "write what you know"? More, is it best to reinvent knew ways of approaching the same topic? Maybe I'm scared?

Literary Goodies & New Publication at Thrush

Awesome post by my friend and poetic colleague, Carina Finn at HTML GIANT, where she interviews the lovely Ariana Reines. This is a good piece.

Gorgeous chapbook, Havoc, by the amazing Kristy Bowen of Dancing Girl Press.  I love her, love Dancing Girl Press and adore the aesthetic artistically. Also, she'll publish my chapbook, Triste, this year! Also, as my friend Laura E. Davis (wonderful poet and editor of Weave) wrote on her blog, Bitch Magazine recently mentioned Dancing Girl Press, saying, "These slim, beautifully curated, and lovingly handmade editions by emerging women poets reflect a cross-section of the newest talent..." 

Mary Stone Dockery, an amazing poet, is judging submissions over at Medulla Review. Check out Jennifer Hollie Bowle's work and her journal and press, Medulla Review. All amazing. Also, Mary Stone Dockery's chap will be out with Dancing Girl Press this year too. See her amazing work, Flightologies, at Everyday Other Things.

I've also been working hard on finishing the next few collections coming from Patasola Press, including J. A. Tyler's Comatose (which makes me basically cry thinking about how amazing it is — with crazy awesome cover design work by Alban Fischer) and Mimi Ferebee's gorgeous Seraglio. Cannot wait! This summer, we've got work by Kiely Sweatt coming too, with Origin of. How lucky I am to work with such talented people.  And, just to brag because it's 2012, when I started Patasola Press in 2011 I had no idea how amazing the journey would be. Rae Bryant, Patasola Press's first author (The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals) and my very talented friend who never, ever fails to amaze me (she's a talented and courageous writer, and intelligent woman and a very fine editor) was mentioned on BIG OTHER when her book was listed in the Best Short Story Collections. Yes!

Lastly, my newest poem, Rahway River, has been published on the beautiful THRUSH, edited by Helen Vitoria and Walter Bjorkman.

Poems. Life. New Book!

Andalucia, my new chapbook!

I haven't updated in a bit, mostly because so much has been happening. Rarely do I write personal information on a blog, but I like to think that the Universe somehow hears us when we do. I mean that in the most sincere of ways and not at all in the way of Enya.

I like to think of writing as a priority, and mostly it is an existential priority. But sometimes things take precedent: your health (I was diagnosed with Uveitis) your paycheck, your family. We all know this. I'm not really in a different boat but sometimes I don't see the shoreline. I'm the most in the midst of change now than I have ever been. I've been searching for a career that I will love (and luckily have some hope) but that doesn't mean I'm not tired. Writing can be very solitary. Graduate school doesn't afford all the dreams that hopeful writers have, necessarily. I didn't go into it thinking that it would, but there's a certain level of reality-check when you're nearing the end of your study, and you wonder what next? Well, in all reality, I know I'm lucky to go to an overpriced, private school in Manhattan. I'm know I'm swimming in debt. I know my family is poorer and more distressed than they've been in a long time, and Christmas isn't really going to be Christmas, but I guess I'm lucky to be alive. So what's next? is a valuable question, coming in second after how to stay sane?

Sometimes I feel so gutted I forget the pleasure in thinking of an adjective or working on a line break. I swear to god, a challenging line break is a welcome distraction. Life has been so busy I haven't had the time to sit down and write much. Stability is sometimes the key, though I used to think otherwise. I'd love a life where I could balance the wildness of poetry with the stability of the daytime. Finishing up this MFA and working for almost no gain, and searching for direction, I feel like a cheesy teenager just saying it.  I feel like I'm writing the worst poem ever. It's long and slobbering and digresses and has no shape. Then again, maybe that is its beauty! Oh, isn't that a cliche? I have had the good fortune, amidst monetary, health and family issues, to continually be immersed in a creative community, and to have had some work come out lately. 

I recently had some poems published at PANK. They also come with an audio component, and they're from my brand new chapbook, Andalucía, which you can purchase at Amazon or here. Plus, it has amazing art from artist Ernie Sandige.

Kathleen Rooney, a tremendously talented poet, said of Andalucía: 
"Drunk and dolorous, talkative and handsome, Lisa Marie Basile’s chapbook Andalucia is a perfect confection of decadence decorated with hounds and leopards. Sweet and old-fashioned like an exotic candy you can’t quite place, you will want to devour it. “You don’t need a sea to be happy / do you?” No, you just need to read Andalucia by Lisa Marie Basile."

Some of my other work can be seen in The Scrambler and YB Journal (YB actually put out an issue about animals, and it's great. You can access their work on Kindle and online). A poem about my trip to Barcelona (well, an imaginary facet of my trip to Barcelona) was recently printed in The Literary Bohemian, as well.

The amazing Peripheral Surveys just told me they've accepted a piece of mine soon! I'm excited because Ian Lennart Surraville is a talented editor, and they just released a piece by Rae Bryant, my friend and Patasola Press author. Incredible. You can buy her book, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals here. 

Some of my friends are having books released soon! Ansley Moon's How To Bury The Dead is available here from Black Coffee Press.  Also, the wicked smart editor of Weave Magazine  - Laura Davis - will have her book Braiding The Storm come out from Finishing Line Press! Also, I'm just really digging Jennifer Tamayo's Red Missed Aches.

More soon.

PATASOLA READING SERIES INAUGURAL EVENT

About
The Patasola Reading Series has a few goals: to promote 4 excellent poets and writers each time (and other performers, at times), typically with a featured reader.

Though the series is associated with Patasola Press, the series does not exclusively feature our own published poets and authors; we strive to promote the arts in our community, as per Patasola Press' mission.

We encourage frenzied and wild discussion and question about the work read, and we promote the buying (or trading) of books and chapbooks at every event. We will always provide an opportunity to sell our readers' merchandise. Patasola Press and the Patasola reading series are run by Lisa Marie Basile.

Readers
RAE BRYANT's short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, released from Patasola Press, NY in June 2011 and has been nominated for the Pen Hemingway award. Her stories have appeared in BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review), Opium Magazine, and PANK, among other publications and have been nominated and short-listed for ‘Best of,’ StorySouth Million Writers, and Lorian Hemingway Short Story awards. She has work forthcoming in Story Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, and Gargoyle Magazine among other journals. Rae has received Fellowships from the VCCA and Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a Masters in Writing and the Outstanding Graduate Award. In summer 2011, she attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and JHU Conference on Craft in Florence, Italy as a JHU Fellow. She teaches multimedia and creative writing in The Johns Hopkins University Master of Arts in Writing program.Rae lives outside Washington D.C. where she is the founding editor of Moon Milk Review, a nonprofit print and online literary and arts journal.

STEPHANIE BERGER received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and her BA in Philosophy from the University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared most recently in Coconut, HoboEye and pax americana. She is “The Madame” and Artistic Director of The Poetry Brothel (www.thepoetrybrothel.com). Her chapbook, In The Madame's Hatbox, was recently released by Dancing Girl Press.

JOSEPH A.W. QUINTELA writes. Poems. Stories. On Post-its. Walls. Envelopes. Cocktail napkins. Twitter. Anything he gets his hands on, really. His last chapbook, This is not Poetry. #poetry, was published by The Red Ceilings Press. Other work has appeared in The Collagist, ABJECTIVE, GUD, Bartleby Snopes, and Existere. As the senior editor at Deadly Chaps Press, he publishes both an annual series of chapbooks and the weekly eReview, Short, Fast, and Deadly. His work at Sarah Lawrence College revolves around integrating the disparate yet rapidly dovetailing fields of Conceptual Poetry and Eco-Criticism. As such, he is an acolyte of intra-action, hash tags, and the Oxford comma.

LENEA GRACE is a Canadian writer, teacher, and avid kitchen-dancer.
Her work has appeared in such reputable mags as The Toronto Quarterly, Commonline, Playground Journal, Gulper Eel, Grain, EVENT, and ditch. She lives in New York City.

LAUREN HUNTER received her MFA in poetry from The New School and reads as Harriett Van Os with The Poetry Brothel. She has recently joined the team at Telephone Books as their Emperor of Ice Cream. Her new chapbook, My Own Fires, was released by Brothel Books.

11/18/11 Inaugural Kickoff Event

Join Lady Patasola in a cozy, red-lit, grotto-like Mediterranean dungeon-lounge (perfect for autumn) for readings by some of best poets and writers we know and love.

Event starts at 8:00pm, be there by 7:45. We will raffle off one copy of The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals! Any poets & writers who attend are given consideration to read at future events. Books and chapbooks will be sold and/or traded. All attendees are welcome to sell their books as well.

Scrambler to Publish a few of my poems!

The Scrambler is awesome. They've done or will publish books by a few of my favorites, like Neila Mezynski (I'll be reading with her later this year!) J.A. Tyler (with whom I'm working for his book due out by Patasola Press) and Helen Vitoria, one of my absolutely favorite poets. Jeremy Spencer, the editor, kindly emailed and accepted a few of my pieces. I'm thrilled. They'll be up soon on their site.

PANK Magazine to publish 4 poems & my Obsession with the Spanish Language

Before I went to Spain, I thought a lot about culture, the Spanish language, and my desire -- this pounding desire -- to go to Spain. Last night I heard the poet/writer Ben Lerner talking about his latest novel, Leaving the Atocha Station; his narrator said he had the ability to romanticize everything when spoken in Spanish (not a direct quote.) I understand that. But I also know the Spanish language has an almost meditative flow, a lack of contractions, sound that is fluid and sensual.  There is something about the Spanish language poets that, for me, solidified the power of language. I learned to appreciate imagery Spanish language poets use, to appreciate the use of Spanish language as a tool to build anything: the phonetic nature of the language allows you to build words from little parts, emphasizing each sound and roll.

I have been inexplicably drawn toward countries. Could it be the language? Could it be the place? Could it be that it was different? I have been thinking about a couple countries as if they're people I've met before, in a past life, people whose names I can't quite recall. People who I know I'll see again. I think a lot about location as a character. PANK Magazine has accepted four poems of mine, in a set called Andalucia. I started writing these before seeing Spain and finished them after seeing the country. The poems explore obsession and desire, by looking at place and ourselves. They'll run in December 2011. That magazine, of course, has always been so high quality and so stunning, so I'm honored.

Poems & Fiction Coming: The Molotov Cocktail & Right Hand Pointing

Two poems are coming from Right Hand Pointing, a journal that I'm very in love with, and that is pretty badass. Their whole Submissions Guidelines page (a video about what not to submit, what to submit, how not to suck completely) is amazing.  They took two of my poems, Las Meninas and Nude, both of which will be included in my upcoming book, A Decent Voodoo from Cervena Barva.

Recent issues have included Nathan Holic and Hall Jameson and a really great story by Andrew Wilson called The Coffin Maker's Son & Snake Girl. 

And! The Molotov Cocktail, an awesome site of great fiction, will be taking a story of mine called Orpheus Today, which may or may not reimage a rock star as mythological Orpheus. So many great writers have been here, like C.L. Bledsoe, Helen Vitoria, Howie Good, Len Kuntz and so many others...

Upcoming Readings & Ventrakl

 (a very clever blog title, huh?)

Reading a couple of times in the next few weeks:

Polestar Reading Series — Siamese Dream (Smashing Pumpkins) inspired poetry (yes).
October 2, 5pm, Cake Shop, NY

BOWWOW Reading Series 
November 3, 10pm (my birthday), Bowery Poetry Club, NY

Renegade Reading Series
October 13, 7:30pm, LaunchPad in Brooklyn, NY

Reading Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey. Amazing. Ugly Duckling Presse, always awesome. Hawkey "translates" Georg Trakl's work in numerous ways, writing his life from photograph, splicing poems, interjecting poems, connecting with the spirit of Trakl through writing. It's a haunting and incredible book that proves storytelling can be made of many mediums.

Polestar Poetry Series: Smashing Pumpkins + Poems

Why, yes, I am part of this awesome night of poetic readings inspired by the songs of Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream album, put together by Melissa Broder. I remember being about 15, sitting on a deck, swinging my knobby knees off the deck of my father's apartment down in the odd pine barrens on New Jersey, listening to this album on a CASSETTE. What! I was thinking 'this is the only music that will save me from....' You know, everything, all those demons of age and life.