Origins of Brevitas
Brevitas first took shape (in 2004) as DaVinci-like doodles on soup-stained napkins in a noisy Grand Central bar. It was there that we, Steve Zeitlin and Jim Pignetti, met to imagine an online forum for poets to manifest and share short work. The outline scrawled at that meeting was an attempt to configure how poems might circulate online. Hubs and spokes were scribbled on the napkins, with arrows pointing in every direction. The notes were cryptic and lost to landfill. But soon the tangible shimmer of a vibrant Brevitas was established as an invited, intimate community of poets, ablaze with metaphor and meaning.
Brevitas poets post one or two short pieces to the group – 14 lines max – twice a month, on the 1st and the 15th. Every poet is then free (optionally) to respond directly and privately to posted poems, with praise, criticism, suggestions, howls, or silence.
~ Jim Pignetti and Steve Zeitlin
Brevitas Festivals & Anthologies
Brevitas is a bi-monthly online poetry-exchange. While every year we host a live (+/or Zoom) Brevitas Annual Festival of the Short Poem to offer a zesty chance to meet in-person, and celebrate publication of our annual Brevitas Anthology of the Short Poem, featuring each poet's top picks of their compositions that were shared online during the year.
What Brevitas means to me…
Because of Brevitas, poetry waits for me.
Around the first and fifteenth of each month, my fellow Brevitas poets fill my email inbox with whimsy, heartbreak, and delight, all acutely observed in fourteen lines or less. Because the price for receiving these nuggets is to contribute my own, I troll for poetry as I wander through my days and nights. What is occurring around me and can I distill it into a brief verbal photograph? Can I translate a vivid, complex emotion into a few lines?
Once a year, the Brevitas poets meet face-to-face, and we hear our works in our own voices. Because I have a bad memory for faces, I am never sure if the New Yorkers I encounter during the rest of the year aren’t some of my fellow brevitas poets -- or members of some other poetry collective -- or private poets. That girl could be texting or she could be writing a poem before inspiration leaves. Is the college kid jotting on a scrap of paper working out a haiku? The preoccupied woman waiting to cross the street may be crafting a description of the odd-shaped stain she’s staring at. The man watching his toddler kick a juice box down the sidewalk might be going home to write about his feelings at this moment.
Because of Brevitas, everything is a potential poem and everyone a potential poet. Because of brevitas, poetry waits for me.... on the next block, around the corner, in every stranger’s face.
~ Richard Storm, 2010
Brevitas Annual Poetry Anthology Covers Gallery
2005- Jim Pignetti
2006- Jim Pignetti
2007- Vincent Benedetto
2008- Vincent Benedetto
2009-Flash Rosenberg
2010-Zev Shanken
2012- Claudia Carlson
2013- Flash Rosenberg
2014- Bob Heman
2015- Bob Heman
2016
2018- Jeff Wright
2019- Flash Rosenberg
2020- Chime Lama and Flash Rosenberg
2021- Jan Emerson
BREVITAS poets, 2019