Fogged Clarity brings five sets of music and two poets to The Living Room in NYC.

Michael Tyrell The tuxed-up drunk, trembling the dorm’s lobby window when a bottle tipped him over. His squint not at me but past me to the one hundred keys glittering behind my post, the check-in desk, where all summer, I worked the Saturday insomnia shift. The ruse of looking down at the marble notebook, one-one thousand, then looking up: the drunk gone, like a movie ghost. The prank caller, the phone a bee-sting sound. The paper I...

Michael Tyrell I was born the summer of his disgrace. That’s always been my claim. And it’s a trait I despise in other people: hitching the intensely personal to the historical, making Watergate a lame pun for passage and delivery. But my mother insists on scandal. An unmarried mother, middle-aged— she swears her pregnancy didn’t show, even that morning she locked herself in the toilet and told her own mother to call...

The night of June 20th was a special one for the clarity. 350 people gathered for nearly 4 hours to celebrate beauty and drink good beer. Every performer brought it hard, and the evening became one of emotional intimacy. The small, acoustically capable theater played host to passionate artists who executed their respective talents with a candor that was truly special. We are doing this again: in New York, Chicago, and right back here...

Poet Michael Tyrell talks about his work, New York, and Roman Polanski. His poem Restraining Order is featured in our March 2009 issue.

Michael Tyrell A tuxedo cat’s been haunting my fire escape; it disturbs me to realize his form is all he is, all he will ever be. I swear, I could skin him, protect myself from all decoys, prevent us from meeting, even in dreams, within the same 100 yards, but no worries, I don’t need protection; you follow the law and stay gone, as maybe you feared last year’s blizzards and that’s what kept us inside… all that unrestraint, all...