Reading Last Thursday, Saturday Adventures
Much poetry (OK, 5) read, went to Doors Open Minneapolis.
Thursday I was on the roster at a student reading put on by The Loft, one of ten. Readers, that is, not readings. We went in alphabetical order, which was mildly surprising to me; not the ordering, but where I fell in it. Having changed my name fairly recently. I also felt out of place because the first two had first names and last names that started with the same letters: Ailene Ashikana, Betty Benson. I felt awkward for breaking the pattern.
Anyway, I was third in the lineup. Most of us read poetry (one essayist, one digital artist). I read five poems (so, so hard to choose):
Living Next to the Klan
Gravity Makes the Heart Grow Heavy (one of my series of same-named sonnets, à la Terrance Hayes, whose brilliant book American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin is one of my favorites)
The Library Where We Keep Our Hearts
Pattern Recognition
So Many Questions
They were well received. We had two reading sessions, and a 10-minute intermission, and some snacks. (Crackers, cheese, some kind of fabulous carbonated fruit tea from Trader Joe’s I’ve never had before, and a thickly frosted cake…not comparable to the cakes I’ve been baking lately, but frosting covers a multitude of sins.)
At the microphone, Ailene Ashikana; left foreground, Becca Lewis, who read a moving and funny essay; far end, Mary Kelly, who was fairly awesome—we talked a bit during intermission—and strongly encouraged me to work on getting my poems out in the world.
Yesterday, I went traipsing around Minneapolis with a friend, checking out how the other half lives. (Interesting, that…it used to be half, now it’s one percent? Or ten percent? I mean, it was probably never half to begin with, but….)
I’m not going to annotate a whole play-by-play; instead, here’s a small photo collage (top left, clockwise: the amazing studio of George Roberts; Purcell-Cutts House; penthouse suite of the Hotel Ivy (which is apparently $629/night and up, for the “regular” rooms); and a couple shots of The Dayton’s Project. Really love the stylish bathroom!
