Bumbershoot, “A Word Bath”
MONDAY Poetry panel with Adeena Karasick, Clayton Eshleman, Joe Safdie, and Janine Pommy Vega -- an amazing way to start your day. These folks are so smart. Where is poetry going in the next 100 years? Social, they said. Poetry can change the world.
Novelists Amy Schutzer, David Matlin, Robert Cabot. Local poets Craig Van Riper, Bob Lyons, Molly Tennenbaum (first poet on the new poetry press Van West). More novelists, including the local (and locally reviled) Mark Lindquist, who wrote an airport pulp novel about grunge; and the local (and locally admired) David Shields who wrote Black Planet about race and NBA basketball.
The graceful Duncan MacNaughton, from San Francisco. Duncan told me that punk is nothing new, and the old communities are scattered and dead. I didn't get to ask him “what then?”
Clayton Eshleman, who read for a million years poems that are probably much better on the page. Congrats to 20 years of Sulfur, lit mag now retired.
And Paul Nelson and Stephanie Skura again, with a Michael McClure poem put to dance and recitation. Finally, the crowd got it up one more time for Sarah Jones, who had read earlier in the day from her off-broadway show Surface Transit. Sarah knocked them dead again with non-character pieces, and personal stories she said the audience deserved to hear. Lots of love in the place. It will keep us moving all year or at least until Bookfest next month.
Last day. You think it's going to go on forever, you hope it does, and your ears hurt, too.
Poetry can change the world
to ask him “what then?”
