Monica Youn is the kind of poet that turns up everywhere. Or she simply has a very memorable name. It probably helps that is also located in New York. Youn read poems from her book Ignatz, a comic strip about a cat that probably has more fame now that she wrote a book about it.
Then she read some poems about bad sex because, as she said, there are lots of poems about good sex, but in life, we have a lot more bad sex. Fair point.
She was followed up by Stephen Burt who offered up an entertaining performance reading from I Am Not a Toddler and Other Poems by Cooper Bennett Burt. Burt made me laugh, which I think is probably always a good sign, though I’ll be honest I’m never quite sure the marks of a good poem.
The whole event took place in the new bookstore Singularity & Co., a DUMBO based retailer dedicated to science fiction. Speculative fiction. Fantasm. Whatever you want to call it, that’s what they do. Singularity & Co. also is trying to bring back out of print books from the genre.