"Better"

I read twice in one week — unusual for me. The Monday reading was in Village Books, in Pacific Palisades. It meant flying down to LA (Long Beach, actually) and staying with my sister in LA, in mid-city. That was the good part, because she's a real sweetheart and I'm totally comfortable with her. She chauffeured me around, took me and her beautiful daughter, my niece, Veronika, to Huntington Gardens. (We saw a haunting exhibit of the work of John Frame), and came to my reading at "Moonday in the Village." I wish I had something better to say about this reading. Not knowing many in LA, I thought it would be fine to have a co-featured reader (it was; Carol V. Davis is a wonderful poet) and to share the night with an open mike (it wasn't). The open mike was before and after the features; the readers, nearly all apparently regulars who come to hear themselves, are allowed to read two poems each, and, well best not to go on or I'll get in trouble, but there were a lot of poems about springtime … The worst was that no one really connected with my work. I heard someone later mumbling about how I wrote about science. Well, my images are sometimes unusual and complicated, but I don't usually stump the audience.


Thursday, last night, back in the Bay Area, I read at Peg Pursell's Why There Are Words reading in Sausalito. You may know that this series features prose, and I didn't have a lot to chose from, so don't know that I fulfilled my mission of reading about the theme "Better."  I read my "81" piece, in the voice of a Hell's Angels guy I met walking the dog, a piece called "Good Luck Bad Luck Laundry," that went back to stories I'd heard in Camp Mather about 15 years ago, and finally, I read "La Vie (en Rose)," a published prose poem that will be in my next collection. Who knows if they loved me? Who cares? They listened! I felt my energy communicate with them. It was what is supposed to happen. I really enjoyed (and listened to) the other readers too: Seth Fischer, Molly Fisk, Leah Griesmann, David Lukas, and Tracy Seeley, so, it's not all about me. I totally encourage you to check out this reading series that occurs every second Thursday at Studio 33 on Caledonia Street in Sausalito, CA at 7 PM.