It’s been an incredible time for Calypso, thanks to the warm reception of our first title at our book launch organized by our Brooklyn-based founding member Bryan Patrick Miller. We’re already in the second printing of our first book, a new translation of Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need, which also received attention last week in the National Review and the New Yorker‘s online editions.
On her flight home, our Seattle-based founding member Beth Myhr whipped up a report on Calypso’s launch. With her poet’s eye for detail, Beth brings us through Calypso’s beginning. Special thanks to poets Ilya Kaminsky and Polina Barskova for adding their voices to this incredible evening.
When I come up the stairs from the Q Line it’s dusk on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. The air is cold and the snow on the corners is full of trash and grime. Fourth Avenue is a main drag through Brooklyn and I am a lonely white face in a sea of dark skin and dark clothes, puffy jackets and people tired after a long hard day’s work, or a day looking for work, a bag of groceries here, a hand pulling a scarf closer there, the graffiti on the storefronts saying a kind of neighborly hello, a church on the windy corner. New York is tired from a long, cold winter, and I am tired from walking all day in the city in the cold, then coming through the subway system at rush hour. I turn up 4th unsure of which way to go. I stop and ask which way the numbers go up. A stranger points me in the right direction. I walk, not knowing how far away or how near I am to the Pacific Standard Bar and Tolstoy at Chin Music. I am 3,000 miles from home in a strange city, in the twilight of a recession, while half a world away the citizens of Egypt are insisting that Mubarak leave. Mubarak has said no. I walk toward a reading of old and new Russian literature in my own country—a country still in the middle of its own, quieter disaster.
*
Jon and John from the San Francisco Bay Area started Pacific Standard as a way of bringing a piece of California to Brooklyn. They serve California microbrews and people can bring food in from other places. It is six o’clock. The bar is long and dimly lit and nearly empty. I see the outline of Bryan in the lounge at the back of the bar. He’s dressed in a shirt printed with thin red and white stripes with an orange button placket, the colors of fire and movement, checking, in minute detail, everything. “Dude! How are you?! So good to see you!” We hug and he smiles a big, wide, warm Bryan Patrick Miller smile. I instantly feel revitalized.
He goes back to work checking every unfolding minute of the evening in advance. Who was going to sit where. The seating chart. It keeps changing. The audio equipment. The video equipment. The book table. The lighting. How the chairs and tables are arranged. What he is going to say. Bryan’s intern, Curtis Rogers, looks tired. He’d been working alongside Bryan. I introduce myself again and Curtis and I chat. Then he heads out for food, comes back with KFC chicken, sits at the bar and eats in silence. I order a glass of white wine. They carry exactly one vintage from exactly one winemaker and it is a good one. I also order chips and salsa. Five bucks for the glass of wine. Five bucks for the chips and salsa. People start trickling in.
I chat with one of the bar owners, John, about the bar. Then a lone patron comes in. He is wearing a red hat. He walks up to the bar. Gets a beer. Then sits by the front door and doesn’t talk to anyone. He’s waiting for Russian literature.
*
I set up my laptop at the book table. Bryan is still messing with the seating arrangements. Ilya is to sit next to Polina. I am to sit next to the reviewer from the National Review. There are Martin’s parents and a friend’s seats. Boris is going to sit over there. I make a mental note. We have to find an outlet that works for the laptop. There are Christmas lights strung along the floor. It makes it easy to find the electrical source. A smart idea that looks good too.
*
Among a swirl of faces I meet Boris. I had imagined a big Russian guy, someone with short, straight blond hair and a big overcoat. I am wrong. He is a man of slender build, with lovely curling hair and beautiful pale eyes of a color that does not automatically announce itself in dim light. Green perhaps. A portrait of a romantic poet flashes through my mind. I see Polina come in with friends. There is Russian floating in the air, mingling with the English conversations. Jackets, scarves, bags begin to drape every available table and chair.
Everyone is here but Ilya. People are starting to sit down. The show starts in three minutes. Ilya is running late. Bryan and Curtis and I are fidgety about it. Bryan goes outside and calls Ilya. He’ll be there in a few minutes. The crowd is giving off a warm but serious tone.
*
Bryan gets up and gives his introduction, thanking everyone and talking about the press. His enthusiasm and sincerity are palpable
Ilya reads first. He hands out the poems to the audience. Copies on paper. Work in progress. The room is full and warm and the light is on Ilya, who is very tall and dressed in a navy blue v-necked sweater and a pair of slightly rumpled cotton trousers. As he begins reading the room fills up with his strange music. The first poem is about what we’re doing to each other with money in this country. He’s right on target. The rest of the poems are about a train conductor and his pregnant wife. About two people having sex in the snow in front of an oncoming train. About telling stories in a deaf republic. About speaking to people who have forgotten how to hear. We hear. The reviewer from the National Review is turning the pages, is paying attention. He leaves quickly after the reading is over. He carries the Tolstoy with him.
*
Polina reads next. She is wearing a lovely brown and red knit sweater and her curly brown hair is drawn back by a deep red headband. She looks for all the world like an earthy mother. Until she speaks. Her mind erupts in a steely sense of knowing and of command. She is serious and it is the best kind of serious. She recites from inside of the soul of her bones. Her poems ask questions, they argue, they demand. To say they are intelligent is to be trite. When she reads in Russian the words move and move and move and then she puts a blade down on the last word, like an ax into wood. It is a deeply satisfying music.
*
All three poets read last. It is Tolstoy presented in Russian, then English. Ilya, Polina and Boris read the various parts in Russian. Then Boris reads the Tolstoy in English. He is calm. The words are simple. The storytelling has begun.
*
Pakhom is just getting into trouble when Boris closes the book. We want to know where the story goes. And so does the audience. They come to the book table and buy every copy we have. I talk with the New Yorker reporter about the press. She is interested and asks many questions and we talk about her work for the New Yorker, what it’s like to be involved. She leaves with both Boris’ and Polina’s books in hand.
*
Thirty-three thousand miles in the air, headed back to Seattle, I turn on my laptop. Mubarak has resigned. The people of Egypt are ecstatic.