Larissa Shmailo's Blog, page 3

Delighted to be featured tomorrow on NOT YOUR MOTHER'S POETRY, CKXU RADIO, Sat 2/15 Noon EST, MT 10 am.
www.ckxu.com

The children at the border have evaporated the commercials show happy banks surely everything will stay the same and I will not be affected the documents about the children at the border have evaporated on the commercials the banks are happy surely I will not be affected I am small and will stay that way I AM AFRAID I didn't mean it when I said never Trump but Sheila did and she doesn't think we are happy and the same take her I am here in the happy bank it chimes so jovially the children at the border are no longer there we would care if they were the banks are happy jovially chiming and the commercials are the same happy happy and nothing will change as long as I stay small.

A reading tomorrow at the landmark Jefferson Market Library, Sixth Avenue at 10th Street, 6:00 pm FREE!
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/...

Read Charles Rammelkamp's review of Sly Bang, which appears in the current issue of edgy print journal Into the Void.
Sly Bang by Larissa Shmailo
Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
“Sly Bang”
Novel
Spuyten Duyvil, 2019
$18.00, 198 pages
ISBN: 978-1-947980-98-3
Larissa Shmailo’s novel feels like a mash-up of William Burroughs’s paranoid mind-control fantasies and the kaleidoscopic space fantasies of superhero comic books. Indeed, the “sly bang” in the title alludes to the plot to destroy the universe by the – mad scientist? sui generis bad guy? – Prince Eugene (Genya) Ouspensky that the protagonist, Nora (as in Ibsen’s Doll House), aka, Larissa Ekaterina Anastasia Nikolayenvna Romanova, is determined to thwart. But this is not a traditional what-happens-next narrative, though by the end it does “feel” like a resolution has been reached.
But people die and come back to life all over the place, so who can tell, and we are often treated to flashbacks to World War II era concentration camps and Soviet gulags. Ouspensky pursues Nora/Larissa through the whole strange space-time warp of this science-ficitiony world. Ouspensky can read Nora’s mind, trying to control her. But “Larissa artfully dodges sex with Ouspensky by role-playing Anna and Vronsky, Lara and Zhivago, and he enjoys this.” Nora is an FBI agent (not necessarily a good thing, more sinister than salubrious) with telepathic, comic book superhero powers of her own.
Speaking of “sly,” Shmailo often makes these amusing, satirical references to the cornerstones of western civilization, from Heidegger and Nietzsche and Tolstoy to John Lennon and Patti Smith. “Hillary Clinton lay on the table wriggling, bound and gagged.” Johnny Depp provides occasional voiceover.
Shmailo uses a variety of literary forms in the construction of her novel. The book opens up, stage drama-like, with stage direction and setting and off-stage voices, as we encounter Nora masturbating on a leather couch. As in a play, the dialogue is written:
MICHAEL: Hey there!
NORA: Hello, Michael, are there walls between us, buildings, I hope?
MICHAEL: Yes, and I’ve triple-locked the door and bound my feet…
The writing then moves to a more conventional style of an omniscient narrator voice moving the story along. But don’t get used to any particular style! Shmailo seems to be having fun subverting readers’ expectations.
For just as easily, Shmailo will burst out into poetry, including sublime lyrics like HOW MY FAMILY SURVIVED THE CAMPS, Nora’s poem.
Was micht nicht umbringt, macht mich starker:
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
Nietzsche said this about other things.
Not this.
How did my family survive the camps?
Were they smarter, stronger than the rest?
Were they lucky?
Did luck exist in Dora-Nordhausen,
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen?
This comes from an episode involving Nora’s mother, Leda, in which we read in Nora’s backstory, reminiscent of the “origin story” of so many comic book superheroes. Leda, we learn, conceives Nora in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg in 1946 “with the last sex she will ever have.” Of course, Leda’s resentment about this is a factor later on.
But it’s best not to give away the plot, spoiler-like, especially as the plot, like a dream, is subject to the interpretation of every reader, which may be the ultimate point of Shmailo’s satire. Still, after so much gore and blood and guts and sexual perversity, it’s hard not to smile at the fairy tale ending when the character Bensinck “dropped to one knee and took her hand” like Prince Charming swooning over Cinderella. Dim the lights. Shine a soft spot on the dude. With what seems the sincerity only an earnest fairy tale prince can display, he says to her, “No more undercover, no more faking it. Just us, and a quarter of the world’s land mass.” Hah!
And Nora, God bless her, having just a moment before read through a story she’s written about killing Ouspensky after he has an orgasm inside her (“ He starts fucking her with his tiny dick and Nora starts fantasizing about killing him and it turns her on.”), smiles sweetly and responds: “And create a world safe for our children, Albert? Or am I going too fast for you?”
But wait, that’s not all! The story is followed by APPENDIX; NORA’S SLAA SEXUAL HARMS INVENTORY (FRAGMENT). Her sexual ideal? “I have sex with a man whom I love and respect and trust and am attracted to and who loves and respects and trusts me and is attracted to me as part of a committed relationship and as a byproduct of sharing and partnership. Our sex is creative, playful, imaginative and hot. [following pages illegible]” There follows a series of fragments about various men and her “reasons for getting involved.”
Do you get the uncomfortable feeling that Shmailo is playing the reader, having us on? It’s this discomfort that’s finally at the heart of the writing, masterful satire whose object is constantly shifting and, yes, may be you. You just have to read Sly Bang yourself and come to your own conclusions. You won’t regret it.
Charles Rammelkamp

Iranian poet Mohammad Mostaghimi (Rahi) has translated a number of my poems into Persian. Below is his translation of my poem "Vow." POETS WANT PEACE!

VOW
We will love like dogwood
Kiss like cranes
Die like moths
I promise
©2007, Larissa Shmailo

لاريسا شمايلو 2007

پيمان بهار

ما عشق خواهيم ورزيد

مثل زغال اخته

بوسه خواهيم زد

مثل درناها

خواهيم مرد

مثل پروانگان

من نويد مي‌دهم

گزاشتار: محمّد مستقيمي(راهي)

Wednesday, February 5, 2020, 6 p.m.
PROGRAM LOCATIONS:
Jefferson Market Library, First Floor
Avenue of the Americas at 10th Street, NYC
ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing [email protected].
Wednesday, February 5 at 6 pm
The Poetry in Prose, the Prose in Poetry: Blurring the Lines
A Reading featuring:
Larissa Shmailo
Alan Baxter
Bonnie Walker
Dean Kostos
Presented in the first floor Willa Cather Room. All events are free and open to the public.

Thanks to ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association, for listing our AWP event, Translating the the Untranslatable: A Reading of International Experimental Poetry with Marc Vincenz, Helene Cardona, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Michele Gil-Montero and moderated by me, on their blog.

Translation Events at AWP20
Posted on December 11, 2019 by rcldaum
Planning to come to San Antonio from March 4 – 7, 2020 for the Association for Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference to enjoy North America’s largest literary conference? Then be sure to check out this list of translation-related events! Take a peek and get planning today.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

9:00 am to 10:15 am

Room 211, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level. Translating the Untranslatable: A Reading of International Experimental Poetry. (Larissa Shmailo, Marc Vincenz, Hélène Cardona, Michelle Gil-Montero, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs) From the manifestos of Breton to the wordplay of Stein to the fantastical lines of Borges, avant garde movements have always driven poetry into revolutionary directions. This panel offers a panoramic view of international experimental poetries by noted world translators from French, German, Korean, Russian, and Spanish (Latin American) poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. Intercultural and intersectional issues in translation will be discussed as panelists read from a range of avant poetries.

What a whirlwind year 2019 has been ! I have been honored to read with amazing poets and wrtiers this year at AWP and on tour for my new novel, SLY BANG. We blew up sex writing in Portland with Thaddeus Rutkowski, Jonathan Penton, Cecilia Tan, and the iconic Erica Jong; we auteured poetry editorship with Kwame Dawes, Marc Vincenz, Michael Anania, and Sam Truitt.
Wonderful Russians and Americans alike helped me celebrate SLY BANG this year - supporting my "psychosexual feminist ebullience " were readings by Annie Finch, Ron Kolm, Irina Mashinski, Anton Yakovlev, Regina Khidekel, Don Yorty, Anna Halberstadt, Andrey Gritsman, Thaddeus generously again, Dean Kostos, Michael T. Young, Stephanie Strickland, Alexander Veytsman, Elizabeth L. Hodges and the late great Steve Dalachinsky, who read on my birthday and picked (of course) the most experimental section to perform, brilliantly. Deep thanks to all the SLY BANG reviewers, incuding Jeff Hansen, Baron Drave, Kimberly Rae Lorenz-Copeland, and MCQ Michael W McHugh!
Many great pubs, including Annie Finch's upcoming blockbuster anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, Bernard Meisler's Sensitive Skin anthology, Anna Halberstadt's Russian edition of the Cafe Review, the St. Petersburg Review, KGB Lit, and many more. And unexpected and wonderful, thanks to Marie C Lecrivain for nominating me for Sundress Best of the Net in creative nonfiction!
Deep respect and love to my co-ediitor and legendary Russian translator, Philip Nikolayev, for his contributions to our new anthology, From Pushkin to Pussy Riot: Russian Political Poetry and Prose, as well as to our remarkable poets, essayists, and translators; blessings upon Virginia Konchan of www.MatterMonthly.com for hosting us wild Slavs.
Next year brings new forays into international experimental poetry, immigrant literature and the politics of resistance, more SLY BANG events, and vigorous political activism. Until then, happiest of holiday seasons and best literary wishes!

#TPQ5
https://thepoetryquestion.com/2019/11...

#TPQ5: LARISSA SHMAILO
Ulysses – James Joyce
I imitate him; if I have any originality, it comes out, and if not, what could be better than more hydraheaded Joyce?

Mark Twain
His story, “”How I Edited an Agricultural Paper,” lifted me out of a clinical depression.

Anna Karenina – Tolstoy
I love how the writer in T, the great writer, made this novel more than the morality play he first intended; I fantasize Anna, brilliant and innovative, alive, if T could have take the next step.

David Markson
The erudite one-sentence wonders of his unique narratives partly inspired my short story -poem – genre bending “Mirror, or a Flash in the Pan.”

John Donne – “Go and Catch a Falling Star”
Beautiful masculine trochees; I love Donne’s dirty prosody.

Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, editor, curator, and critic. Her new novel is Sly Bang; her first novel is Patient Women. Her work is included in the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian. Please see more about Shmailo at www.larissashmailo.com

Thanks to Marie LeCrevain of poetic diversity-the litzine of LA, for publishing "FITNESS."
https://www.poeticdiversity.org/main/...

The definition of fitness in genetics is to reproduce successfully. I have no genetic fitness. I did once: my genetic material was carried by my sister’s daughter, my godchild and niece, Irene, whom I raised and let down. She committed suicide at the age of 35. She was a psychiatrist who knew pharmacology well and a determined individual who said that if she were to kill herself, she would do it so that no one would know. And so she did.
As a young woman, I seemed to want to get pregnant pretty badly. I had many boyfriends and did not use birth control. Mentally ill and quite alcoholic, I had three abortions, two by a kind brilliant father and one by either of two men, a pockmarked writer or a mediocre bassist. It never occurred to me to tell the kind brilliant father, with whom I had a long-term relationship, about the pregnancies; my mother said he would not want to know and I accepted that. It turned out she was right.
I had a complete nervous breakdown at the time of my third abortion, with a vivid hallucination of a brown, curly-headed fetus, the subject of my poem “Abortion Hallucination”:

Abortion Hallucination

A vision of a snake with glowing red eyes
formed by the light of garbage trucks and screeching new cars
driven by men who had once bought me dinner
then hated me when I didn’t want to fuck them twice.

Carlight passing late at night on a street of an ugly
precinct lying deceiving the unwary who think it leads home

It is late so dark it is almost light that time of night when
the light hits the metal and the glass of summer windows left ajar
make me want something someone I don’t know who

The metal gate to the yard refracts this message via Queens boys who
drive too fast too late at night refracts this message to the window where
I watch from the couch

In the corner of the basement where my father used to lie I

Watch, interested, as the snake
grows larger and more menacing I am
taken slightly aback but remember him remember that I like
handling snakes and smile
and as always he softens grows smaller
becomes a hippopotamus I have won again I have stared him down
made him warm
and the Nile gives up its life to me
animals carnivorous and calm come home to me
two by two

I watch for the longest time
until the largest fills the window with his face
black as light
Agnus Dei

for this man’s baby for this man’s baby for this man’s baby
came the flood.

I contented myself with being my niece’s crazy aunt, and she idolized me as a child. Later, as she saw my feet of clay, the hero worship ended and she became more distant, going about med school and being married and becoming rich. Around then, in my thirties, sober and functioning on a successful med combo, I saw I might have the chance not to totally wreck a poor child’s life. I had an intense desire to have a child. The problem was that I would need to come off my teratogenic medications. I tried: I was stark raving mad for three years until I finally gave the idea up.
I became more committed and involved as a poet and sublimated my reproductive instincts. And there was still my niece, brilliant and successful. Until the call in the middle of the night in October twelve years ago from my sister: “Lora, Irene is dead.” Dead. I was sober and I couldn’t smoke, but my sister and I hit every IHOPS in the suburbs of San Francisco, eating ourselves into a coma during the funeral and the wake. I gained 50 pounds that autumn.
My pen doesn’t flow for Irene – the ink drips slowly and meagerly, like clotted blood. I am aware that I am not her mother and don’t have a mother’s right to grieve. But I can still feel her tiny hands pulling on the hairs of my arms as I cradled her infant form to sleep, can remember baptizing her, remember telling her the plot of Hamlet when she was five, watching her read all of Dickens (why Dickens?), hearing her call out “help me, Mama!” during a brutal depression, seeing the cut marks on her teenaged wrists.

Aerial View of the Rockies

The gods like to trace their fingers in the world;
like leaves from a primordial tree, landforms
bare their veins. Clever of her to suicide this way
leaving no one but me to know. Impassive as
the dead face she wanted no one to see, clouds
hide rigor in the lines, purposeful or not, below.
In winter, sunrise looks like sunset in this distant
land, soon to be nearer, nearer, soon.

Near the end of her life, my mother, given to bursts of anger, carefully prepared and delivered a measured speech to me and my sister, to each of us separately. She quietly and sincerely stated that if she had it to do over, she would not have had children. It was important to her that her daughters know this. I thought for a moment that perhaps she was consoling me for my childlessness, but that would have been another woman, not my Mama.
I have no nuclear family now – Mama, Papa, my sister Tamara, and my niece and godchild Irene are dead. I quickly sold the family home last year, but am haunted by it in my dreams. And I have no fitness, no genetic material except my cousins’ daughters, bright, pretty, too distant for me to care. I have buried everyone, and have no one to bury me; I counted on Irene for that, and she would have done me proud. But I suppose when the time comes, I won’t be in the condition to mind.

Larissa Shmailo's latest novel is Sly Bang.