(performed by Martha Plimpton and Mark Rudman)
Only the Night Before
Which Tribe Do You Belong To?
 
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Mark Rudman:
One of the most widely published poets of his generation, Mark Rudman
has received awards from the National Book Critics Circle, the Ingram
Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment
for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the CCLM
Editor's Fellowship. His most recent book, Sundays on the Phone
(2005), completed the Rider Quintet and joins other Rudman
titles published by Wesleyan University Press, including The Couple
(2002) Provoked in Venice (1999), Millennium Hotel
(1996), chosen as one of the twenty five best books of the year by
the Village Voice, Realm of Unknowing: Meditations on
Art and Suicide and Other Transformations (1995), noted by Joyce
Carol Oates as one of the best nonfiction works of the 20th century,
and Rider (1994), for which he received the National Book
Critics Circle Award. This series was preceded by By Contraries (National Poetry Foundation) and The Nowhere Steps (Sheep
Meadow Press). A revised version of his book Robert Lowell
will be published in 2007. His poetry has appeared in such major English
language journals, such as The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic
Monthly, Harper's, Grand Street, The London Review, The New Yorker,
The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, TLS
and The Threepenny Review. His work has been translated into
a number of languages, and has been represented in both The Best
American Poetry and The Best American Essays. He has
been the guest editor of several anthologies and special issues, such
as Tri-Quarterly 106 and the poetry side of The Most
Memorable Books , ed. Michael Dorris and Emilie Buchwald (Milkweed).
His translations include Euripides' Daughters of Troy (Penn
Series), Memories of Love: Selected Poems of Bohdan Boychuck ,
and he contributed many translations to Ivan Drach's Orchard Lamps,
edited by Stanley Kunitz. His translations appear in numerous anthologies
including Twentieth Century French Poetry, Twentieth Century
Russian Poetry, ed. by Yevgeney Yevtushenko and Daniel Weissbort,
and Norton World Poetry, and he has been honored with the Columbia
Translation Center's Max Hayward Award (1983) for his translation
of Boris Pasternak's My Sister-Life and a PEN/Columbia Translation
Fellowship (1976). He has also written introductions to the Penguin
Classics reissue of Malcolm Lowry's Ultramarine and the New
York Review of Books publication of R.W. Flint's translation of
Cesare Pavese's The Moon and the Bonfire. Works in progress
include Identification of a Woman and On the Firing Line
(both poetry) and, both prose, Out of the Loop: Selected Essays and Plain Loco. He has been poetry essayist for The
American Poetry Review, The Nation, Amazon.com, and currently
the London Review of Books. He is editor-in-chief of the international
literary journal, Pequod. Mark Rudman lives in New York City
with his wife and son and teaches poetry in the Creative Writing Department
at New York University. Martha Plimpton was born November 16, 1970, in New York City to two actors: Keith Carradine and Shelley Plimpton. Martha began her career at age 8, when her mom had a friend of hers, composer Elizabeth Swados, enroll her in an actors' workshop. At age 10, she got a small part in Rollover (1981), and also made a series of Calvin Klein commercials. Her first substantial film role was as a tomboy in The River Rat (1984); the following year, Steven Spielberg cast her in The Goonies (1985). Martha met River Phoenix while they were both filming The Mosquito Coast (1986), but since she was only 15 at the time, she did not go out with him. Even though she had a small part in the movie, it established her as a serious actress. Martha appeared in movies such as the screwball comedy Stars and Bars (1988); and that same year she was paired again with Phoenix in Running on Empty (1988). They dated for a while and then broke up. For a while she was engaged to actor Jon Patrick Walker. As if making movies didn't keep her busy enough, Martha frequently worked at theaters and made her Chicago debut with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company Ensemble in "The Libertine" in 1996. As a member of that ensemble, she received a National Medal of Arts award in the autumn of 1998. As for movies, Colin Fitz (1997) and Eye of God (1997) in which she plays the starring role, have been run at the Sundance Film Festival. Although some recent movies have had low box office, (Pecker (1998) $2.1 million, and 200 Cigarettes (1999) $6.8 million) Martha's performances shine and she often rises above her material. Perhaps recalling how important acting lessons were to her as a child, she donates her time and efforts to the "52nd Street Project" which is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to matching the inner-city children with professional theater artists to create original theater, by writing, directing and performing their own plays. Reed Rosenberg , Production/Sound Engineer Sunday's on the Phone (Wesleyan University Press) |