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  • AMERARCANA 2012: A Bird & Beckett Review - $15.00
    The Third Annual, featuring the words of Bill Berkson, Justin Desmangles, Joanne Kyger, Rodrigo Lira (translated by Rodrigo Olavarría & Thomas Rothe), Duncan McNaughton, Jackson Meazle, David Meltzer, Sarah Menefee, Jason Morris, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Erik Noonan, Cedar Sigo, Will Skinker, Tisa Walden & the editor Nicholas James Whittington, with artwo […]
  • The Cuban Drumbeat, by Piero Gleijesis - $15.00
    In waging a long war against oppression and misery in the third world, Castro's Cuba sent more troops into battle on foreign soil in defense of besieged populations than all but the U.S., Russia and a few Western European countries. Gleijeses wonders what's next for a post-Castro Cuba. […]
  • Two Underdogs and a Cat, by Slavenka Drakulic - $17.00
    Drakulic, well known to readers of The Nation, the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, ponders the fate of the communist idea through three stories: "An Interview with The Oldest Dog in Bucharest," "A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism" and "A Cat Keeper in Warsaw" […]

  1. Jazzy Easter Weekend

    April 3, 2012 by Eric

    Coming up in April at Bird & Beckett

     

    which way west?
    Sunday concert series
    always 4:30-6:30 pm

    Joel Forrester on April 8th (Easter Sunday)

    April 8:  Joel Forrester:  He’s a jazz cat through & through and he’s coming out west on an Easter weekend swing from NYC to play a little solo piano accompaniment for a Buster Keaton silent and some classic cartoons on Saturday down Saratoga way.  Then, he’ll grace us with a couple of sets on Sunday…

    When in New York, you can often catch Joel at a lovely brunch gig out at the northern tip of Manhattan at the Indian Roads Cafe, or Sunday mornings at Grace Gospel Church in the South Bronx.  Mondays when he’s in town, it’s the Brandy Library in Tribeca, an experience unlike any other…  Sometimes it’s Cleopatra’s Needle on the Upper West Side or the Gershwin Hotel on 27th Ave. or the Manhattan Inn out in Greenpoint in Brooklyn…  He does get around a bit… the French say he’s the world’s foremost accompanist for silent films… lucky Saratogans!

    He’s also renowned for his work with the Microscopic Septet and for composing the “Fresh Air” theme you hear before all those Terry Gross interviews on WHYY!

    We’re always happy when Joel comes out to play.

    Read a little more about Joel here, we think you’ll find it most enlightening…

     

    John ColtraneOn Sunday, April 15th,
    a John Coltrane date with
    the Anthony Brown Trio

    The remarkable young reed player Masaru Koga joins master percussionist/composer/musicologist Anthony Brown to explore the music of John Coltrane.

    The two sets of trio music start at 4:30, following a 2:30-4:00 pm panel discussion by Drs. Tommy Lee Lott, Herman Gray and Anthony Brown, all contributors to the recent book John Coltrane and Black America’s Quest for Freedom (Oxford University Press).

     

    April 13:  Jimmy Ryan Quintet + Daisy Rockwell’s Little Book of Terror

     

    Category: B&B Events, jazz in the bookshop, Literary events, Music events, which way west? Sunday concertsTags: , , , , , | Comments (0)

  2. Q R Hand and Arisa White

    March 19, 2012 by Eric

     Monday, March 19, 7 pm

    Poets! Arisa White & QR Hand

    Open Mic Follows

    Youth and experience go hand in hand… Arisa White’s debut poetry collection is Hurrah’s Nest.  QR’s life in poetry is sketched out in the book Whose Really Blues.

    Hurrah's Nest, by Arisa White (poetry)Hurrah’s Nest:  A vivid and varied collection that addresses family loyalties, dysfunction, violence, and differences, Hurrah’s Nest is White’s imaginative and emotionally honest exploration of growing up the second oldest, first daughter of seven siblings.

    Childhood experiences are looked at with rawness, sensitivity, and crafted with precision: be it the cutting of her dreadlocks, mother’s abortion, drug trafficking, or her sister’s developmental disability, the language is tender and startling.

    Hurrah’s Nest—from the confusion of our lives—asks us to make meaning and good from what we’ve bargained and haven’t bargained for.

    Arisa is a Cave Canem fellow, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess and Post Pardon; she was selected by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List. Member of the PlayGround writers’ pool, her play Frigidare was staged for the 15th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival.

    whose really blues, q r hand (poetry)Whose Really Blues:  As it steps from stage to page, the poetry of Q. R. Hand never stops testifying. That the poet has led and continues to lead a full life in a real world crammed with real ignorance as well as actual light these trembling pages make clear. In the title poem of this exciting collection, the poet asks a question:

    how do we know the real robert johnson

    met the real devil at the real cross roads

    just ’cause he says so and his blues intone scripture for the 21st century.

    Like a Mobius strip but also like a DNA strand, Q’s heaven and hell twist and stick and wrap themselves around another: a cool but sweaty doo-wop dance pair, coupled to outlast the night.

    The poems in this book—as they whisk and yank and ease you through ‘that certain place at / that certain time’—speak directly to the body that houses heart, mind and soul. As they eyeball human cruelty, greed, delusion and color prejudice, dogma of every stripe (campus- or street-triggered), poverty, social justice, science and social philosophy, time as history and time as time, personal geography (Brooklyn, Harlem, Oakland, San Francisco Bay), love’s unchartable behavior and misbehavior—these tough, caring, wayward poems take it all and everything. Forever at play in the fields of the word, Q. R. Hand is a homegrown American original.

    Place this book to your ear and hear: ‘All those beautiful fine / all those fine / all those who spread their love along the line / that stretches through heart beat and heart ache.’—Al Young, Poet Laureate of California

    Category: B&B Events, POETS!Tags: , , , , | Comments (0)