Babble Presents: Ben Brindise and Rotten Kid

Last week I got to review Ben Brindise's new chapbook, Rotten Kid, in The Public. The book, out from Syracuse-based Ghost City Press, contains a fresh mix of fiction and poetry, focusing mostly on memory, the process of finding a voice, and an exploration of a voice's limitations.Ben asked me to serve at MC for the night - a great honor, as I got to introduce the poets Eve Williams Wilson, Ten Thousand, Tom Dreitlein, Sam Ferrante, Megan Kemple, and Justin Karcher. I had the most fun introducing Ben, though. In honor of his serious slam chops, I decided to do some "spoken word" of my own.https://youtu.be/3_mQaTVMu7EEarlier in the evening I read two of my poems. The first was an old one, "On Tuesday nights I watch the news on her set," from Foundlings Vol. One. I read this because of my friend Brian Castner's important piece in yesterday's New York Times, "Still Fighting, and Dying, in the Forever War." Then I read "At the funeral of an atheist I didn't know," the poem that Janet McNally selected to win this year's Just Buffalo Member's Writing Competition. You can watch them below:https://youtu.be/kdh4AQE0wVo