Elinor Nauen

Thursday, February 4, 2009: Bob Holman and Elinor Nauen

SIDEWALK CAFÉ
6:30 [really] to 7:45 p.m. - come a little early to order off their terrific menu
94 Avenue A at 6th Street, 212-473-7373, V or F to Second Avenue stop (get off at the front of the train at 1st Ave)

Of the 6,500 languages on the planet, half will be gone by the end of the century: Every two weeks a language vanishes. There are laws to protect Endangered Plants and Animals, but who’s looking out for Whole Systems of Consciousness? Bob Holman!
Bob’s new documentary series uses the poetry of endangered languages to bring attention to this crisis. Recent trips have taken him on the griot trail to West Africa investigating tribal languages, tracking Allen Ginsberg’s time in India, and reviewing how the bully state of Hebrew is endangering Yiddish, Ladino, and dialects of Arabic in Israel/​Palestine.
Founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, Bob’s latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close, is A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture); his most recent CD: “The Awesome Whatever” (Bowery Books).

Elinor Nauen has contributed to Bob’s project by studying three dead languages, Latin, Sanskrit and Biblical Hebrew, but in general, her interests are more local. Her work reflects her upbringing in South Dakota and her long residence in New York City, two of the places she loves most in the world. She often writes about baseball, automobiles, snow and love.
Co-founder of the Prose Pros Readings, Elinor’s books of poetry include American Guys and CARS & Other Poems. She edited Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women writers on cars & the road and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women writers on baseball. In her work as a freelance writer, she gamely writes on subjects she doesn’t understand, such as plasma physics and toxic protein aggregation.

Admission is FREE, but we do pass the hat. All proceeds go to the readers.

For more information or to be added to (or dropped from) the e-mail list, contact Martha King gpwitd@​aol.com, Elinor Nauen Elinor@​ElinorNauen.com or ProsePros@​ElinorNauen.com
Visit Prose Pros on Facebook and become a friend. We’ll post schedules, photos and more information.

Coming up: March 4, Peter Schjeldahl & Sarah Schulman, April 1, Lenore Skenazy and Martha King