Friday, November 8, 2024

Spoken Word Poetry Album/Audiobook of "God in Her Ruffled Dress"


My publisher, What Books Press, kindly gave me permission to release an audiobook/spoken word poetry album version of God in Her Ruffled Dress. I chose Findaway Voices by Spotify to distribute it, rolling it out late July to more than 20 global distributors plus Spotify Audiobooks.

Eleven of the 41 poems in the book had been previously released on albums with music. I worked with handpan artist and percussionist Gary Muszynski, drummer Brian Fishler, pianist Ben Flint, and percussionist Brent Sunderland at Pajama Studios, in Oakland, California, to create empathetic, interactive background music for the rest of the poems.

Check out excerpts from each of the book's four sections here along with a list of linked audiobook vendors. Selected vendors are featured below. 

What a joy to reimagine these poems first written for the page as performances, with these simpatico musicians and my fabulous engineer-collaborator, James E. Gardiner!

I'm looking forward to promoting this version of the work more intensively via podcast interviews and other tools. At this writing, I've been busy wrapping up the book tour with readings in Santa Cruz, Calif. and New York City, then diving into sharing it as a Grammy submission in the fairly new category of "spoken word poetry album" (a cumbersome title but one that covers the bases). I can't wait to focus on spreading its reach. 

The response from my fellow Grammy members shocked me: they embraced it! Their reactions gave me faith in the power of pure poetry in this format, an intimate presentation of mainly duos with creative musicians.

rent Sunderland Recording Percussion for "God in Her Ruffled Dress" at Pajama Studios, Oakland, Calif.
Brent Sunderland Recording Percussion for God in Her Ruffled Dress at Pajama Studios, Oakland, Calif.
_________________________________________________________________
A playful, soulful, feminist imagining of how we experience the sacred” - Broad Street Review, Best of 2023
A book of deep seeingalso a book of intense listening... a series of divine pleasures - D.A. Powell
“From its provocative title to the last sentence, this...heretical book surprises, devastates, and delights” - Calyx

“A dazzling lyrical demonstration…from the highs of great jazz performance to the zen of blood testing for diabetes” - Lawrence R. Smith

“Stunning…weaves together body, spirituality, politics, and the world we live in…will stir your mind and bring you into beauty” - Kelli Russell Agodon

_________________________________________________________________

Selected Platforms to Stream or Download God in Her Ruffled Dress
Selected Platforms to Stream or Download God in Her Ruffled Dress
_________________________________________________________________

Spotify
_________________________________________________________________

Google Play

_________________________________________________________________

Libro.fm
_________________________________________________________________

Apple Books

_____________________________________________________________
AudiobooksNow



Insta Attention for "God in Her Ruffled Dress"

I joined Instagram only last December, and I've come to enjoy its tone, more image-centric of course than Facebook or Twitter (as I still call it) and more hectic, at least to me. 

Since my book had just come out, and I was returning to the poetry community after somewhat of a hiatus, I connected with a range of poets. Here are a few poets and poetry-lovers who went out of their way to support God in Her Ruffled Dress.


The Bookish Mama included "God in Her Ruffled Dress" in her Sealey Challenge Readings
The Bookish Mama included "God in Her Ruffled Dress" in her Sealey Challenge Readings



The Bookish Mama Holding An Autographed Copy of "God in Her Ruffled Dress"


The Poems about Diabetes Spoke Most to The Bookish Mama
The Poems about Diabetes Spoke Most to The Bookish Mama




The Elul Poetry Challenge, more or less the month of September, was created by Tree Smith Benedikt to follow August's intensive poetry readings as part of the Sealey Challenge
The Elul Poetry Challenge, more or less the month of September, was created by Tree Smith Benedikt to follow August's intensive poetry readings as part of the Sealey Challenge

This Reader, As a Jazz Fan, Loved the Poems About Jazz
She Loved the Poems About Jazz


 
"Provocative Poetry"






This excerpt from "Without Poetry" from Susan L. Leary, author of "Dressing the Bear," made me see the poem in a new way
This excerpt from "Without Poetry" from Susan L. Leary, author of "Dressing the Bear,"
Made Me See the Poem in a New Way



Thursday, November 7, 2024

"Wedding past with future, history with fantasy": Follow-up Blog by Bethany Reid on My New Poetry Book

Prolific poetry blogger Bethany Reid not only generously reviewed God in Her Ruffled Dress recently in Calyx, the journal of literature and art by women, but also posted this follow-up blog. 

Check out Reid's other reviews there too! 

She includes a poem from the book that I haven't foregrounded much: "Emily Dickinson at Work."

EMILY DICKINSON AT WORK

she pulls
the thread
through the linen
on the embroidery frame
and at her writing table
through the white packet
of paper poems
the next morning tapping
the keyboard
piecing together
the html
<br> <br/>
marking and closing
the breaks
a figure in a white dress
silent under
fluorescent lights
at her place at the long table
beside the other programmers
listening to the enclosing
emptiness a white
pillow invisibly
holding the lines of code
on her screen
where she glimpses
her own
reflected smile

“I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight—when I am strong—
Till then—dreaming I am sewing”
the shape of God walking
through it like bird’s feet
tracks in the snow
“I’ll begin to Sew
When the Birds begin to whistle—”
a song hummed
under her breath
a bare small wind
she painstakingly places
the letters and brackets
she for whom
“Success in Circuit lies”
here and now are not
where everything
that ticked has stopped
no part of her shaven
instead tick by tick
her mind the mind
forming the frame



Here's a small quote from the Calyx review:

Excerpt from Calyx review of "God in Her Ruffled Dress"
Excerpt from Calyx review of God in Her Ruffled Dress

"Surprises, Devastates, Delights": "God in Her Ruffled Dress" Reviewed in Calyx, Publisher of Art and Literature by Women

Calyx's newest digital issue includes reviews of books by Rebecca Faulkner, Judith Barrington, Molly Kugel, Debra Magpie Earling, and me!

Cover of Recent Issue of Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women
Cover of recent issue of Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women

Reviewer Bethany Reid, an excellent poet herself, captures the book with sensitive insights. Some excerpts: 

"Toward the beginning of God in Her Ruffled Dress, the poet is commanded, Write me, write me, write me, and Lisa B writes—lines clenched between her teeth like a bridle’s bit or the pit of a sour cherry. From its provocative title to the last sentence, this...heretical book surprises, devastates, and delights.

God is one central theme of the book, but not so much the One Dad God as the body created in God’s image. Even in the first poem, a prayer, God is the bodies of all the men I’ve loved, but also breasts, and unpronounceable / …carved in stone / particles of sand and granite adhering into a tablet / a forgotten language (“God No. 2”). Bodies are fallible and magical at once. If God is found in human bodies, then also in the bodies in mass graves.
Subsequent poems take up the question of what it means to live in a body. A Jewish body with its genetic storehouse / in the back of her neck (“The Contract”); a body with Type 1 Diabetes with its white hem of cells. The context expands and contracts, keeping us off balance. In “Watching the Sea,” testing one’s blood sugar is like looking into the ocean:
I’m doing what a patch of cells
forgot to do.
A still underpart of a cave in my body
forgot to be part of the sea.
For an instant I am inside that sea.
A face above peers through the water,
its huge eyes green,
alert and round,
the face vague and then clear
through the waves, the stillness, the waves.
Lisa B is also an accomplished jazz and groove musician with seven albums, and she is a trained psychic. No wonder then that we encounter musicians here, with their melodious bodies; no wonder that the poems dive so deeply into one consciousness after another. [such as] In “Trane’s Ride (Naima),” [about] jazz great John Coltrane...
God in Her Ruffled Dress insists that we, too—despite (and because of) our sexy, smoky, moldering, disruptive bodies—are part of the body of God, and that God is not who we think she is."
This journal is particularly important to me because it is among the first literary publications to publish my poems, more than two decades ago. Coincidentally, the issue includes work by Gail Wronsky, a member of the collective What Books Press, the publisher of my new book. 
Cover of the Issue of Calyx including My Poems More Than Two Decades Ago
Cover of the Issue of Calyx including My Poems More Than Two Decades Ago

Contributors to Calyx Vol. 8, No. 3 Years Ago
Contributors to Calyx Vol. 8, No. 3, Years Ago

Yes, the shot includes my unadorned toes... Well, why edit them out in a review about this book dwelling so much on the human body?  




Images from Poetry Reading at Bryant Park Outdoor Reading Room, August 2024

Poetry Reading Online Flyer, 8/24 Bryant Park, NY NY
The Bryant Park Reading Room Series Provides Lovely Promo Materials

More Online Promo for the Bryant Park Poetry Reading by Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) and others, 8/24
More Online Promo for the Bryant Park Poetry Reading by Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) and others, 8/24

New Yorkers Love Bryant Park in Summer, Where Reading Materials Can Be Checked Out Free
New Yorkers Love Bryant Park in Summer, Where Reading Materials Can Be Checked Out Free


Poets with New Books: Jenny Factor, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), Tom Sleigh, organizer Jason Schneiderman, and Daisy Fried, at the Bryan Park Reading Room, NY, 8/24
Poets with New Books: Jenny Factor, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), Tom Sleigh, organizer Jason Schneiderman, and Daisy Fried

Jenny Factor, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), Daisy Fried, and Tom Sleigh at the Bryant Park Outdoor Reading Room Poetry Series, NY NY, 8/24
Jenny Factor, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), Daisy Fried, and Tom Sleigh at the Bryant Park Outdoor Reading Room Poetry Series, NY NY, 8/24

A Gorgeous Early Eve in Bryant Park, NY NY, for a Poetry Reading
A Gorgeous Early Eve in Bryant Park, NY NY, for a Poetry Reading

The Famous Fifth Ave. Branch of the NY Public Library with Two Lions in Front, Adjacent to Bryant Park, with Poet-Singer Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)
The Famous Fifth Ave. Branch of the NY Public Library with Two Lions in Front, Adjacent to Bryant Park, with Poet-Singer Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)

 

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Reading Poems at the 2024 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Now that I'm soon to be "skyin' up" (as a good friend of mine would call it) in a flight to New York City for more poetry readings, in this year of launching my new poetry book God in Her Ruffled Dress, I realize that I never blogged about going down to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB) in mid-April to read on the poetry stage.

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
 
What a choice gig! Two full days of 20-minute sets by poets with new books out that year on the beautiful USC campus. And the chance to stay for the cost of less than the usual fortune, because of conference rates, at the gorgeous, historic Millenium Biltmore hotel in downtown LA (DTLA), in an unusually large room with a window that opened. 

I loved hearing so much poetry. And I really loved the festival overall, not only because it featured many events with authors from all sectors of publishing and all genres, but also because it was free and attracted thousands of attendees -- strikingly diverse and excited about books, strolling the many aisles of book-related booths. A rare chance to be among a teeming crowd there for book culture.  

A homey thrill was connecting with Bay Area poet friends and organizers Joyce Jenkins, of Poetry Flash, and Jennifer Joseph, of Manic D Press, whom I'd known for decades but not talked with much in the last decade or two, who had a booth together. Ironic that we connected in LA.

The festival was a well run machine, the organizers on top of their jobs at every step. For instance: providing not just a green room but an entire green building for all the presenters, whose enthusiasm was palpable. Gaggles of panelists partook of the generous buffet along with famous actors and entertainers who had published recent memoirs. These prose writers and book business people were sociable and chatty. 

On the USC campus for the LATFOB, poet-singer Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) 

BUT I confess that on this second visit to DTLA, after a vacation there with my sweetheart five years earlier, I concluded that I just didn't vibe with the neighborhood. Big, windy, no there there. (Ironic, as that's the phrase that Gertrude Stein assigned to my current longtime hometown Oakland.) It seemed to offer the familiar but strange combination found in big U.S. cities today of expensive warehouse space converted into condo lofts and their stylish residents juxtaposed with down-on-their-heels addicts and homeless folks. But without that feeling of personal excitement or rubbing shoulders that one finds in NY. 

And I was lonely traveling alone this time, especially as a COVID-cautious holdout amid people gaily eating indoors unmasked. I did enjoy discovering pockets of old L.A. and ethnic culture -- that alley street filled with 10 different Greek restaurants, the old Fashion District, the Jewelry District. The largely Mexican-American staff of the hotel were courtly in their old-fashioned uniforms and warm.
   
Underlying my sense of isolation was the feeling of not being in the poet in-group. Maybe that's inevitable for all poets whether they show it or not, usually being introverts. Yet it was clear that my situation was rare among the other poets: the scene has become strikingly more academic since my first book, The Transparent Body, from Wesleyan University Press's prestigious New Poets Series, was published in 1989, and I was not an academic. 

The past three decades-plus brought an explosion of graduate creative writing programs along with proliferating poetry prizes and contests. Getting a book published now fulfills the academic need to publish, and winning a prize or award is even more helpful to a professor's career. In this way, the book becomes a function of the academic career. Not that I blame poets; it's good to be able to have a poetry job. But I was not a player in this particular game. And I could taste the flavor of the academy there and in many of the poems no matter how subversive the content. A big vibe shift for me in this return to the scene since this second book of mine came out the previous October: feeling like an outsider.

In between my two books, I kept writing poetry and publishing it in excellent literary magazines and anthologies, but the bulk of my artistic focus veered to becoming a singer (no small feat) and producing and releasing my original jazz/groove music over seven albums. Over this period, the music business kept changing rapidly, with independent CDs in reach for indies rather than the requirement to go through gatekeeper major labels, then the advent of mp3s, then streaming. This was a lot of figure out in a lot of ways. 

And further resourcefulness was demanded of me as I learned to navigate the music world, because even in jazz and its sister genres, I was unique, with my songs including both sung and spoken verse, the latter more poetic than the rap-grounded verse more common in this music. 

Before entering the indie music business, I was quite grounded in the literary poetry scene. After earning a master's degree in creative writing/literature at San Francisco State, I cofounded a literary magazine in the '80s in San Francisco, including all the work of outreach and editing and even running a reading series over a few years. I kept my eye on the ins and outs of the national poetry scene. I even spent two years teaching and serving as Associate Director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State, where I'd received my master's only eight years before taking that job. During those two years, I also began writing and recording music as well as studying to become a psychic reader. A hectic, exciting time. 

Yet by 2023, my artistic community had shifted to the jazz-and-beyond universe within the music business. In this universe, while some jazz musicians also have academic jobs, they are by no means largely academic in style or art; many still play in clubs and are still connected with the Black culture that is the foundation of the art form. And music, even indie jazz-and-beyond by someone stretching genres as I was, is released, distributed, and promoted within a commercial framework. The goal was to sell it, even at the pitiful streaming rates we now face, or at least chart or otherwise gain traction with the public so as to be able to get gigs. Reviews, radio play, and other promotion were fast-paced and even garish compared with the more genteel context for publishing and publicizing poetry books.  

And suddenly, after a number of smaller readings with just a few other poets (in LA, Miami, Berkeley, San Francisco, Venice) here I was in a large concentration of poets of 2024. 

Not only poets, but also poetry professors. I was maybe one of three poets among over 50 poets there who was not teaching creative writing and/or literature in a college or university. Certainly not one who had been attending the profession's big annual gathering, the Association of Writers and Writing Progams's (AWPs's) annual conference, over many years.

These folks were mainly nice to me, but they tended to already know each other and to want to hang around with each other rather than me. Even some of the poets published by my LA-based publisher, What Books Press. Also, my style as a performer was different -- influenced by my experience on stage in clubs as a singer-poet and bandleader, not to mention my work as a psychic reader and coach intent on communicating on a different wavelength from that of the cloistered poet or the professor.

Poet-singer Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) at the LATFOB

The art of poetry is solitary by nature, not collaborative. Poets are a lot more private and inward-directed, and more in their heads, relative to musicians, who live and work more in their bodies and are more oriented outward toward performance, even entertainment. These obvious differences hit me as I stayed close to the poetry stage area for two days, feeling a bit like someone returning to a country that she had once known well, but no longer did.

The readings were good but mostly they still felt as if they were being delivered by non-performers. And that's fine. I don't feel comfortable in the more performance-oriented poetry slam scene either, as the craft is so different from what I crave from poetry; it's just that sometimes more literary poets don't do justice to their own work in presenting it. Being a good writer and being a good presenter of one's writing are two separate skills.  

This is not to say that I have not often experienced the dichotomy between poet and performer within my own being. Was I Emily Dickinson or Barbra Streisand, to choose two iconic figures?  Here in this group the dichotomy was made external and even clearer. I had always maintained that in ancient cultures, the poet and the singer and the shaman/spiritual leader were often one and the same person, so why not claim and seek to inhabit all those spheres? But being at the LA Times Festival of Books, especially in the ultra-vividness of emerging into big crowds after the long retreat of the initial pandemic phase, it was dramatically clear that the scene was not ancient culture. At that moment, literary poetry existed in a distinct world. 


Still, I had fun just being there, feeling isolated or not. And I bridged the dichotomy of my two art forms for myself by including some a cappella singing in my set. The singing drew people into the audience from the farther reaches of the festival. I should have done more earlier rather than later in my set. Always more to learn.
 
The day after the festival ended I drove out of multi-lane, multi-freeway LA to see my pals in 29 Palms, where I've visited many times. Ah, the clarifying desert. The stimulation and comfort of long friendship and rich conversation. A pool in which to find my inner compass tilting toward true north again. 

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) at the Joshua Tree National Park

It's been wonderful to have an excuse to travel after the pandemic isolation I felt was necessary, even though I continued to mask (using a semi-transparent N95) during the previous poetry readings I gave, which were indoors. As a type 1 diabetic who has kept up with the data on the ravages of COVID, I remain cautious. I loved that this festival, being outdoors, allowed me to present my poetry without a mask on. 

Once home, I bridged the feeling of isolation by writing all of the other poets who had read there. From the safety of our homes and the privacy of writing and replying online, we made connections (most of the time) and traded books (some times). A good feeling. 

And I'm off in a couple of days to two more outdoor readings in the noisy, accessible glamour and dense contact of the Big Apple! The joy of sharing my work and reading with other excellent poets, in the city of my ancestors, promises to be a homier experience.