Proust/Levitsky

Many thanks to everyone who attended the reading last week at P.P.O.W. Gallery. For those of you who missed it, here’s some pictorial evidence (care of The Hostess Project). And, below, please find some enlightening answers (to our new and ongoing Proust Questionnaire project) provided by featured reader, and all around wonderful writer, Rachel Levitsky.

An Introduction to Rachel Levitsky

Rachel Levitsky’s fist full length volume, Under the Sun, was published by Futurepoem books in 2003. She is the author of five chapbooks of poetry, Dearly (a+bend, 1999), Dearly 356, Cartographies of Error (Leroy, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (PotesPoets, 1999) and 2(1x1)Portraits (Baksun, 1998). Levitsky also writes poetry plays, three of which (one with Camille Roy) have been performed in New York and San Francisco. Levitsky’s work has been published in magazines such as Sentence, Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, Global City, The Hat, Skanky Possum, Lungfull! and in the anthology, 19 Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology. She founded Belladonna--an event and publication series for avant-garde poetics in August 1999. A past fellow of The McDowell Colony and Lower Manhattan Community Council, she teaches at Pratt Institute and lives steps away from The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Her latest book, Neighbor, was recently released by Ugly Duckling Presse. (Source.)


Rachel Levitsky Answers the Proust Questionnaire

Your favorite virtue.
Sloth

Your favorite qualities in a man.
What is a man?

Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Repeat.

Your chief characteristic.
Disobedience.

What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Brains.

Your main fault.
Sloth.

Your favorite occupation.
Writing.

Your idea of happiness.
Sexual love.

Your idea of misery.
The loss of political discourse.

If not yourself, who would you be?
I can’t recall her name.

Where would you like to live?
In my apartment.

Your favorite prose authors.
Kafka, Renee Gladman, Gail Scott and many others. Proust too, though it seems foolish here. And Musil and Walser and James Baldwin too.

Your favorite poets.
Marcella Durand, Carla Harryman, and Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop. I like Joan Retallack too and Akilah Oliver, and now I am reading David Wollach who is good.

Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Character: Jenny Petherbridge in Nightwood

Your favorite heroines in fiction.
The doctor in Nightwood

Your favorite painters and composers.
Which era. Of a certain one I like Edward Hopper and Maurice Ravel.

Your heroes in “real life.”
Eileen Myles, Nicolas Veroli

What characters in history do you most dislike?
They are all the same character. Dick Cheney could act as a representative.

Your favorite names.
Ruby is the only one I can recall.

What do you hate the most?
Guile.

What military event do you admire the most?
M.A.S.H.

What reform do you admire the most?
I prefer revolution.

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
Voice.

How do you wish to die?
Old.

What is your present state of mind?
Foggy.

For what fault do you have the most toleration?
Sloth.

Your favorite motto.
I am me because my little dog knows me.