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Stacy Szymaszek reads from A Year from Today

I heard Stacy Szymaszek read from her new book, A Year From Today, in August at Spoonbill Books, one of the great bookstores in Brooklyn, shortly before she left to teach in Montana, a journal/journey that takes place during a year of her tenure (2014-15) as director at the New York Poetry Project, and as I listened, I remembered hearing her read at KGB a year or so ago—How fast the time goes!—from her last book, Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals, a look to discuss and sometimes simply notice what’s ugly—in the eye of the beholder of course—which can be as poignant an archive as saying goodbye to a loved dying dog, and I understood that Stacy Szymaszek has become the consummate poet journalist—she has explored and worked hard at it—pages I enjoy turning, time’s currents on which she ventures, thinks, succeeds, and sometimes wrecks, the present mesmerized, remembered, presented, all in her mind’s context, intent on telling what will happen next. I’ve scanned the first three pages of A Year From Today, including the introduction, Stacy’s succinct raison d’être, and the first two pages which begin appropriately enough at the Poetry Project looking for Anne Waldman’s scarf and give you an idea and a direction for what surprises are ahead. Enjoy.




A Year From Today is published by Nightboat Books. You can check them out here:

http://www.nightboat.org/

http://www.facebook.com/nightboatbooks/

Eileen Myles and Stacy Szymaszek

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