Book Markers 06.21.12

Poetry Pops Up

    Poets, prick up your ears: A new venue to air your verse has made itself available, open mike and all. On Tuesday starting at 5:30 p.m., Phao restaurant on Main Street in Sag Harbor will inaugurate Poets’ Prix Fixe with a couple of journal-published East End writers, Lucas Hunt and Michelle Whittaker, both of them associated with the M.F.A. program in Southampton. The organizer is Teri Kennedy, known for putting together shows of performance art and readings at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.

    Mr. Hunt, Corn Belt-bred, came out last year with his second volume of poems, “Light on the Concrete,” from the North Sea Press. Ms. Whittaker has won a Pushcart Prize honorable mention. The artist Michelle Murphy, for one, has signed on to read, and for those who might feel microphone jitters, a free beer or glass of wine awaits as enticement.

    Also in Sag Harbor, farther up and across Main Street, Mr. Hunt has rounded up other poets for a gathering at BookHampton on Sunday: Rosalind Brenner, whose new book is called “All That’s Left: Poems and Paintings,” Kathryn Levy, the founder of the Poetry Exchange and the New York City Ballet Poetry Project, and Matt Frazier, whose first collection is to be published by the Spring Press. The readings start at 4 p.m.

“Vanished in the Dunes”

    In the mood for a thriller set in familiar environs, rendering them strange and new? “Vanished in the Dunes: A Hamptons Mystery” might fit the bill. It’s the debut novel by Allan Retzky of Amagansett, and he’ll read from it on Saturday at 5 p.m. at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor. Take a businessman recently scapegoated and canned from his international trading firm and a beautiful resident in psychiatry at a Manhattan hospital, toss them together in a Hampton Jitney, and stir.

    Oceanview Publishing will officially release the book around the Fourth of July.