Join us on Wednesday, May 24 at 7pm PT when Kimberly Reyes joins us to celebrate the release of her book, Vanishing Point, with Desiree Alvarez and Jennifer Hasegawa at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/ertcp9GHCm8?feature=share
Praise for Vanishing Point
“Kimberly Reyes has written an innovative and magnetic book. Each poem spirals beautifully by itself but when I finished reading, I realized I had encountered and entered new architecture. Here, thinking radiates to illuminate the ‘absorbing ghosts’ of the self and the familial and the ‘living shadows’ of oppressive historical forces. Here, the language is lyrical, layered, and spectral. Here, the ‘hyphen is a rejection of negative space.’ Reyes is an astonishingly gifted poet and this book enlarges and complicates what the page can hold back, reveal.”—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine
“Reyes insists that we remember the histories and identities erased by the work of empire and patriarchy. Traversing continents, oceans, and historical eras, Reyes utilizes archive, video poems, séance, and an unrelenting lens that refuses ‘a cozy invisibility.’ This collection affirms the need to preserve histories on the precipice of being consumed and forgotten. Through the visual use of gradient text, Reyes amplifies and conjures what is at risk of being sent into the silence of white noise. Be it in California, Ireland, Puerto Rico, or popular culture, Reyes calls our attention to the ‘ivory-stroked / false purity—’ and the ‘misappropriation // of American gothic / how blackness sits / unbound // darkest places unimaged.’ Amid all the weight, there is a tender cradling of the lyric that re-animates a sense of home and a refusal to be displaced: ‘we are still / we are memory.’ Vanishing point is rich in language and it is a gift to follow Reyes as she delves into what must be known and what must be spoken to sculpt and imagine a new cartography.”—Anthony Cody, author of The Rendering
About vanishing point.
A collection by award-winning poet Kimberly Reyes that explores erased histories.
Through her latest collection, Kimberly Reyes navigates the physical, hereditary, and liminal worlds between land, time, and memory. The poems in vanishing point. take us to San Francisco, Ireland, and the Atlantic Ocean, reclaiming and examining contested space as the poet seeks to revive left-behind histories, reconsider what we see, and reveal what we cannot see.
About Kimberly Reyes
Kimberly Reyes is a poet, essayist, and the author of the poetry collections vanishing point. and Running to Stand Still. Her book of essays Life During Wartime won the 2018 Michael Rubin Book Award. Her work has been published in various outlets including the Atlantic, New York Times, Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Village Voice, ESPN the Magazine, Film Ireland, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland, and Best American Poetry Blog. A doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Kimberly spends her time between New York City and Lincoln.
About Desiree Alvarez
Desirée Alvarez is a New York based poet and painter. Her work has received grants and awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Foundation for Contemporary Art. Her second book, Raft of Flame, 2020, received the Lake Merritt Poetry Prize from Omnidawn. Devil’s Paintbrush, her first book, received the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Her work is recently anthologized in Other Musics: New Latina Poets (University of Oklahoma Press), Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press), and What Nature (MIT Press). As a visual artist, Alvarez exhibits internationally and has recently done projects with Brooklyn Botanic Garden and New-York Historical Society. She teaches at CUNY and The Juilliard School.
About Jennifer Hasegawa
Poet, performance artist, and photographer Jennifer Hasegawa grew up in Hilo, Hawai’i and lives in San Francisco, California. The manuscript for her debut poetry collection La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living (2020) received the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the collection itself was longlisted for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. In a review of this book for his blog, Rob McLennan writes, “Hasegawa’s lyrics write slant on home and displacement, from the traveller to the immigrant to the notion of the alien (both immigrant and extraterrestrial). … This is an impressive debut, and Hasegawa’s poems are remarkably vibrant, as the performance elements resound from the page with a force enough to echo, refusing to lay flat but to spark and sparkle with energy.”
A collection by award-winning poet Kimberly Reyes that explores erased histories.
Through her latest collection, Kimberly Reyes navigates the physical, hereditary, and liminal worlds between land, time, and memory.
A painter and poet, Desirée Alvarez engages with the powerful forces of lyric and rhythm to create a collection that moves across time and place.
From the small towns strung along the coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i to the land-locked landscapes of Paraguay to the volcanic surface of Venus, this collection of poetry is a field guide to flora, fauna, and mineralia encountered, real, and imagined. Jennifer Hasegawa scans across physical and mental planes to reveal their inhabitants.