Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 16:35:19 -0500 From: angelo verga Subject: end of March update Cornelia news -L8 Thanks to all who came to the fun-filled "Laureate" installation on March 15th, especially ML Liebler, Fielding Dawson, and the cafe's culture czar Robin Hirsch. Many old and new friends attended making the evening one I'll never forget. (Besides, I have a printed and framed oath to remind me.) I'm very grateful to all who came or send messages. For those who keep count, 21 copies of were purchased. I've sent "the profits" from those sales to The Poetry Calendar, whose publisher the remarkable Dallas Galvin deserves and needs our poetry community support. Bronx homeless shelter teen writing program: Another big thank you for all your ideas concern interest and help, everything from teaching suggestions to possible financial backing for the program. The recruitment slam held at Hostos Community College on 3-18 went very well, about 30 young people attended or participated. 3-26 5 PM A Gathering of The Tribes I'm on the program with Alice Pero at Steve Cannon's amazing East Village venue. call Jen at 212 674 3778 for more info. also email jenabrams@mindspring.com there's an open mike. bring a poem. bring a friend. Tribes is at 285 E 3rd St betw C-D. Loisaida. Alice Pero's website includes some great stills from a dance video she made a few years ago. check it out: http://home.earthlink.net/~pero/ I'll be sending an extensive April newsletter in about a week but while I have your ears (eyes?) I'd like to recommend a new book by Martin Espada called < A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen> from Norton. Yusef Komunyakaa: "Martin Espada's A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen shatters the expected plot lines of the modern world.... There is a patriotic love in these poems that demand we right our wrongs, that we reshape our lives together into a republic of justice and democratic beauty....." Espada's Title poem is achived at search the index umder his last name. Also in a powerful poem for death row prisoner-journalist-poet Mumia Abu Jamal (which was commissioned by National Public Radio which then refused to air it) Espada writes: "the executioner's needle would flush the poison/ down into Mumia's writing hand/ so the fingers curl like a burned spider." Espada will be at The Cornelia Street Cafe on May 7th. That's it for now. Please look for the event-jammed April news in about a week. Angelo