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Unread 12-23-2018, 06:07 PM
Allen Tice's Avatar
Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Default NYC loses Cornelia Street venue

The Cornelia Street Café, a West Village fixture since 1977, is set to close January 2.

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news...o-close-121218

Those in the New York poetry community who have read at its features, listened at its features, or eaten there will Moan. The below-ground auditorium was tunnel-like, cramped and had mediocre ventilation, but it was one of the places to Go To. I read, I Moan.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 12-24-2018 at 09:49 AM. Reason: ,
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Unread 12-24-2018, 11:45 PM
Erik Olson Erik Olson is offline
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I live far from New York but this establishment left a strong enough impression on me, even from my one chance visit, that I can lament the loss. I stumbled on the literary refuge visiting the city. I had the pleasure to hear a poetry reading down the cramped stairs, an improbable narrow subterranean lounge carved out like a speakeasy. A shady scrooge of a landlord, if this article is to be believed, jacked the rent up sky-high until something had to give: This one really hurts.

Last edited by Erik Olson; 12-25-2018 at 01:25 AM.
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Unread 12-25-2018, 11:29 AM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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What Allen said—along with the Bowery Poetry Club and a few other places, absolutely essential.
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Unread 12-26-2018, 11:14 AM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is online now
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Not surprising. In the mere twelve years I have been here, so many favorites have gone. For me, the worse was the closing of Cafe Yaffa.

I did my first ever reading at Cornelia (with Rick Mullen!). Here is a poster with me looking young and beautiful. Now I am older but also still beautiful (fake humility is not humility).
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Unread 12-27-2018, 06:56 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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x
start something new. turn over an old stone.
x
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Unread 12-27-2018, 08:09 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Walter, you crack me up. You are annoyingly fine-featured though.

This seems sad. Then I realised I've never even been to a poetry reading, which made me sad in a whole different way.
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Unread 12-27-2018, 02:32 PM
James Brancheau James Brancheau is offline
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I've been to a fair number of readings, tho not recently. Some of which were graduate school semi-requirements. Reading poetry is what's surprisingly difficult. (Well, attending some can be difficult too.) I've only done that once in my life. And it was terrible. And was asked to do recordings from a couple places, and, well, one of them was actually posted... CK Williams reading For the Union Dead is a pretty good example, for me. Not to stray too much from the topic. Sorry that a place with such history is closing.
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Unread 12-28-2018, 08:59 AM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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"start something new. turn over an old stone"

Easier said than done, Jim, and a bit glib as a response methinks. The closing of this venue needs to be taken in the context of a New York City in which dozens and dozens of venues have been recently closed, thus changing the whole fabric of the arts in the city--there is no fabric at all with so many threads gone missing. And it is nearly impossible to re-weave them as the high rents means that mere money rules, and the internet has entirely replaced live interaction for many folk. All of which bodes ill for innovative, non-mainstream performance.

For me it has come to a point, alas, where "something new" means simply quitting the increasingly tone-deaf city. Which I have done. But I am old, not young. I wish the young could have inherited the vibrant underground arts community that I knew in New York City for so many years.

Yet it's true, things change, you can't stop them.
And I guess every "old stone" has a new side.
But howls of protest are in order as well!

Nemo
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Unread 12-28-2018, 09:40 AM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is online now
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To add to Nemo's post, it is not so much that the city changes but that the city changes in such an uninteresting direction. The high rents mean that what survives is mainstream and homogenous or survives for a few years tops. There are still a few pockets of resistance (Bonnie Slotnick!) in lower Manhattan, but they become fewer. In the outer boroughs, Williamsburg long ago turned into an outdoor mall, and the new Amazon headquarters will no doubt destroy Jackson Heights and Astoria, those wonderful Italian, Greek, and South Asian neighborhoods. Frankly, I think the city is now saved only by its immigrant communities. Everything else is corporate America and terrible.
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Unread 12-29-2018, 10:41 AM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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I can speak to “starting something new”—I was, for many years, involved in organizing the Carmine St. Metrics reading, indeed with Nemo in an earlier incarnation. As such, by my count, the reading has had to move a half-dozen times, generally as the hosting venues were repeatedly priced out. At this point, there just aren’t as many places that can do it, or will bother, or see live performance as their demographic. It’s happening in most major American cities to one degree or another, not the worst effect of out-of-control income inequality, but a very real one nevertheless, which also has the effect of giving the MFA programs (often facing their own pressures from corporatizing universities) in greater control.
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