ARIANA REINES

— I was in love with Lili Taylor in high school. Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas in I shot Andy Warhol. Her voice kept me awake at night. She was the sexiest woman the world had ever known. Before I ever heard her voice, maybe I’d read a little Rimbaud. Something was beginning. Thickening. Something was happening to me. Preparing me for her. The first thing I ever did on the internet was search for the S.C.U.M MANIFESTO. My best friend and I printed it out from her mom’s computer. Lili T’s voice. Her blunt, uncondescending face. Her tough little ears, her hard little wrists. Her voice.

In 2010, at a studio in Bushwick, Lili Taylor recorded a little poem of mine called SAVE THE WORLD. The poem is kind of about one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s also about tired twentieth century ideas about women and men and the end of the world. But because it’s a poem it’s also just about nothing.

Ariana Reines is a poet, playwright, and translator. She was born in 1982, in Salem, Massachusetts, she lives and works in New York. Her books of poetry include THE COW (2006), which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; COEUR DE LION (2007); and MERCURY (2011). Her poems have been anthologized in AGAINST EXPRESSION (2011) and GURLESQUE (2010). Her first play, TELEPHONE (2009), received two Obie Awards, and the Guggenheim’s Works+Process series in 2009 featured a re-imagining of its second act.