Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Pete’s Candy Store has been the host venue for a more-than-tolerable virus of poetry readings. Recently, Sommer Browning passed her occupational torch as Pete’s curator to the abundantly accomplished Dorothea Lasky (Jason Schneiderman just reviewed a recent Lasky release). The new series, held on Friday nights at the Williamsburg sandwich-beer-liquor-cocktail-quiz hangout, is called “The Multifarious Array.” The host blog marks it as a “poetry reading series with mad pronunciation.”
Pete’s Candy Store is an interesting venue, as it has music every night of the week, yet its performance room is more like a submarine bunker or fugitive hideout than a bar hall. The show and poetry area would suffocate more than fifty people but is quaint enough for thirty people, especially for a weekly bundle of storytelling, lectures and poems. It’s an exclusively exceptional place and isn’t afraid to partner your dirty glass lager with a ciabatta sandwich.
The past couple weeks have seen some intriguing Multifarious readings, word on the street goes (even including some comedians). This is no poetry-goes-solo event. In fact, Lasky says that she wants “to mix poetry with related performance work by incorporating actors, comedians, and dancers as much as possible.” She takes it a mark further and explains that she’s generally trying “to continue the amazing momentum Sommer maintained with the series and [hopes] to bring to Pete’s the very best contemporary poets, arranged in exciting combinations.”
This past Friday’s series was madly enunciated by three regionally-renowned wordsmiths, listed in order of appearance below:
Marisa Crawford (The Haunted House)
Steven Karl (State(s) of Flux)
Buck Downs (Marijuana Soft Drink)
– Ken L. Walker
