April 30, 2009

Sweet, still night, so perfect in temperature that the body feels no difference between itself and the atmosphere.

Went to Jubilee for the opening event of the 2009 WordFest. Laura has worked very hard and looked very beautiful. She has a new boyfriend, a bigger, handsomer, not insane version of DD. It was an evening of fulsome introductions and too many announcements. There are three or four poets in the area who should NEVER be asked to “say a few words,” and they are inevitably introducers for events like this. Performance poetry is emphasized here. It used to be that “performance poetry” was code for “bad poetry,” but that is emphatically not the case any more. The attention given to delivery does make mediocre poetry sound good, but it also makes good poetry a golden hammer, a hurled javelin, a white bird singing. Patrick Rosal was the standout of the evening. I would have thought his poetry powerful had he read it with academic restraint; but in fact he read it with the street poet’s ardor, and it damn near made me rise from my seat and hover midair. My students were all around me. I was proud and happy. I read tomorrow, and practically for the first time in my life I think I must do some work to rise to the level of the event.