The daily poetry readings aren’t over yet. Last night there was a Lannan reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library, with Mark Doty and Galway Kinnell. Even though I saw both poets read over the weekend at Split This Rock, I wanted to hear them again. Besides, feather-brained as I can be, I completely forgot to take the Mark Doty book I have in the US with me on Saturday night, and I did want him to sign it. Unfortunately the book isn’t the most recent, his Fire to Fire: New and Selected (I covet it, but I’m trying to not accumulate too many books) but the 2005 book School of the Arts. He read a new poem—I didn’t write down the title, and so it’s flitted out of my memory, but it was set on Fire Island. It was incredibly moving—one of the few times I have actually been reduced to tears at a poetry reading. (I usually save the tears for my solo reading sessions.) Even though it was such a transfiguring experience for me, there was something that bothered me during the reading—it was so, so close that when a tiny moment crept in that jarred for me, I wanted to iron it out. So what did I do? Well, I’m an upstart (as has already been established) so—I told him.
Okay, I can’t quite believe my own audacity. But at the moment the words popped out of my mouth it wasn’t audacity, but an automatic response. (Perhaps in having had such an immediate emotional response to it, I felt an odd sense of partial-ownership? Does this happen?) It happened so fast, that it’s hard to know exactly what I was thinking—but the result was that Doty was interested to know exactly where it was that I had my jarring moment, and handed me his copy of the poem to read through again, so I could pinpoint it. I did, and I told him—a line that seemed oddly self-conscious in such a poem that really drags you in. For a moment it pulled the reader too far outside the poem. And the rhythm didn’t fit—there were too many beats in the line. For me. My friend Elizabeth was with me, and I pointed it out to her. She seemed to agree with me, but she might have just been taken aback at my having actually uttered the words! So, I told him. He didn’t seem offended. I can only hope that was really the case. Read him. Please.
But I don’t want to neglect Galway Kinnell. Who could neglect him? I was glad I saw him read again, as this reading was a little more varied than the Split This Rock reading, which of course had a distinct theme. What more is there to say?
Elizabeth and I were very lucky at our moment of arrival—there was actually only one ticket left, but they let us both buy tickets, knowing that there was going to be at least one person who didn’t show up. (I believe this is always the case, because all the Lannan fellows—undergraduate students at surrounding universities—get free tickets, and they never all show up.)
And—following one last reading tonight—my near-week of all poetry, all the time, is at an end. Back to the real world of study, writing papers, reading for classes… At least it’s made clear to me that I really should be writing about poetry. That I should follow my passion, even in that odd world that is academia.
Oh, and a small item—I had my first poem accepted for a US journal. SPECS. It’s taken me some time to get myself into gear, submitting work—figuring out where to submit work, etc. I don’t know much about the journal but at least something is happening on the poetry front after not sending out work in so long. And I wrote a little poem on Friday… More to follow? I can only hope.
