“Start a genital uprising,” Robert Glück writes early in I, Boombox (Roof, 2023), an “autobiography in which he dreams on the page.” If, like in the classic example of the Freudian slip, mistakes in what anybody reads and hears are a thinly veiled index of desire, then Glück treats that slippage as something social, public and collectively authored rather than a marker of individual perversion. Glück aligns with Megan Milks’s writing in the shared understanding that it’s the world that’s sick, although you might be the one experiencing the symptom. Milks’s fiction and essays assign a queasy eroticism to everyday life—but it probably was there anyway, so thank god they noticed it for you.
We hope you can join us at 7:00PM for a reception before the event. The reading will begin at 8:00PM. Masks will be optional while enjoying drinks and company during the reception but will be required once the reading begins.
In the late 70’s, Robert Glück and Bruce Boone founded New Narrative, a literary movement of self-reflexive storytelling that combines essay, lyric, and autobiography in one work. Glück is the author of two story collections, Elements and Denny Smith, and three novels, Jack the Modernist, Margery Kempe, and About Ed, which will be published by NYRB in 2023. His collected essays, Communal Nude, was published by Semiotex(e) in 2016. His books of poetry include Reader, La Fontaine with Bruce Boone, In Commemoration of the Visit with Kathleen Fraser, and I, Boombox, published by Roof Books in 2023. He made an artist book, Parables, with Jose Angel Toirac and Meira Marrero Díaz, and he prefaced Between Life and Death, a book of paintings by Frank Moore. With Camille Roy, Mary Berger and Gail Scott, he edited the anthology Biting The Error: Writers Explore Narrative. Glück served as director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. He was co-director of Small Press Traffic Literary Center and associate editor at Lapis Press. Glück lives “high on a hill” in San Francisco.
Megan Milks is the author of the novel Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body, named a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction, and Slug and Other Stories, a revised edition of their award-winning first collection Kill Marguerite. Their personal history of early online fandom, Tori Amos Bootleg Webring, is part of Instar Books' Remember the Internet series. They are co-editor of the anthology We Are the Baby-Sitters Club and Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, and teach writing and gender studies in New York.
Masks are required at all Poetry Project events unless otherwise specifically noted. If you forget to bring your mask, we are happy to provide you with one. We also encourage all event attendees to take a rapid test the day of the event before heading to the church.
This in-person event will also be livestreamed via The Poetry Project's YouTube. Livestream captions will be available via a StreamText link or the CC button on YouTube's player.
Open CART captioning is scheduled for most in-person events.