Deana and I attended two readings this weekend: in Raleigh, Stammer's Carolina Wren Press showcase at the Percolator Lounge, featuring E. V. Noechel, Andrea Selch, Jaki Shelton Green, and Joseph Donahue, and, in Chapel Hill, the Desert City Poetry Series at Internationalist Books, featuring Chris Vitiello and Cole Swensen, finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in poetry. Children and jobs meant we couldn't go to the after-reading reading by Evie Shockley, but we did meet her and a number of other delightful people at the pre-reading dinner. It's odd and disturbing how little contact there is between the Raleigh and Chapel Hill poetry scenes — Durhamites seem to show up everywhere and invite everyone. But we missed Durham3 because we were in Chapel Hill.
If you know me only from this blog and you know the work of the poets we heard, you'll probably be surprised to read that I enjoyed myself immensely almost all the time. In particular, I was impressed by Cole Swensen's reading of two series of poems, one about hands and one about the baroque gardener André Le Nôtre, by Andrea Selch's euphonics poems, by Chris Vitiello's starting sales pitch, and by Joseph Donahue's "failed haiku." E. V. Noechel's selections were mostly familiar to me and so made less of an impression, but I've always liked the ones I recognized. Auden teaches that none are unjustly remembered.
12:39:09 PM 
|
|
