New York Is a Poem: An Evening with Andrei Codrescu

One of the greatest poets of our time, American bard ANDREI CODRESCU is coming to the Romanian Cultural Institute on Murray Hill for an evening of brilliant verse, sparkling conversation, and irresistible charm. The prodigious author, who was born in Romania and moved to the United States while still a teenager, will converse with a formidable literary duo made out of Romanian-American poet and novelist CARMEN FIRAN and American poet and academic SHARON MESMER. The event is occasioned by the publication of Andrei Codrescu’s latest book, no time like now (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), a must-read, bittersweet hymn to glorious New York City.

“I wrote my first book of poems, License to Carry a Gun (Big Table, 1970), when I first lived in New York City, 1967-1970. Those were troubled times and I was 21 years-old. Decades later the city has changed and the times are still troubled. These poems, 2016-2018, try to find out just how changed my dear city and how troubled my days.”– Andrei Codrescu about no time like now

“In his newest collection of lyric poems, the brilliant Andrei Codrescu reveals himself yet again as our funniest/saddest contemporary bard. Newly returned to New York, the city of his youth, Codrescu the flâneur observes the daily disjunctions of Manhattan life in all their absurdity. Astonishingly honest, bittersweet, hilarious, and heart-breaking: no time like now is a book you must read!” – Marjorie Perloff

ANDREI CODRESCU was born in Sibiu, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. He is the author of numerous books: poems, novels, and essays. He is the founder of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life & Letters (1983-2016), http://www.corpse.org/. His book, So Recently Rent a World: New & Selected Poems, 1968-2012, was a National Book Award nominee. Codrescu has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered since 1983, has received a Peabody Award for his film Road Scholar, and the Ovidius Prize in poetry. He has reported for NPR and ABC News from Romania and Cuba. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University. The writer lives in New Orleans, the Ozarks, and New York.

CARMEN FIRAN is a Romanian-born New York-based poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and screenwriter. Her writings have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Canada, U.K., and the U.S. She is a member of the editorial board of the international magazine Lettre Internationale and associate editor of Interpoezia Magazine. She is a member of the PEN American Center and The Poetry Society of America. Her recent books in English include: Words & Flesh. Selected works of fiction & essays (Talisman Publishers, 2008), The Second Life (short stories, Columbia University Press, 2005), The Farce(Spuyten Duyvil, 2003). She is co-editor of several poetic anthologies, the most recent one being Born in Utopia. An Anthology of Romanian Contemporary Poetry (Talisman Publishers, 2006).

SHARON MESMER is a Polish-American poet, fiction writer, essayist, and professor of creative writing. A former student of Allen Ginsberg in the Brooklyn College MFA poetry program, she is the author of many poetry collections, among which: Greetings From My Girlie Leisure Place (Bloof Books, 2015), Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2008), The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose Press, 2008), Vertigo Seeks Affinities (chapbook, Belladonna Books, 2007), Half Angel, Half Lunch (Hard Press, 1998), and Crossing Second Avenue (chapbook, ABJ Press, Tokyo, 1997). Her fiction collections are Ma Vie à Yonago (Hachette Littératures, Paris, in French translation by Daniel Bismuth, 2005), In Ordinary Time (Hanging Loose Press, 2005), and The Empty Quarter (Hanging Loose Press, 2005). She teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs of New York University and The New School and lectures and performs her work widely. Sharon Mesmer was one of the earliest practitioners of flarf poetry, the first poetry movement of the 21st century.

Our events are free and seating is available on a first-come-first-served basis. We generally overbook to ensure a full house.