Angela Williams, Mary Ann Samyn, Joy Gaines-Friedler, David James, Dennis Hinrichsen, Patricia Clark, Linda Nemec Foster, Keith Taylor, Anne-Marie Oomen
Alison Swan, D. R. James, Teresa Scollon, Bill Olsen.
“I
recall the lifeboat, wooden on a wooden rack, paint peeling/there, for so many
years behind the foredunes,/miles from any road....”
-
Alison Swan, “Lifeboat”
“I’m
on a writing retreat, see—complete with/balmy breezes and solitude, convinced
the word/connotes respite, relaxation, and introspection—“
-
D.
R. James, “On the Eve of My 35th Year of Teaching”
“Here
in our town on July Fourth, it was good/ for us to see you. It was good for you
to hear us/calling to you.”
-
Teresa
Scollon, July Fourth
“They
don’t know the summers are getting longer./They have no idea. They can’t even
imagine us.”
-
William Olsen, “Leafdom”
“How
many moonfish would the river hold/if you squeezed the banks together for an
instant?”
-
Angela Knauer Williams, “Almost Savages”
“Once
I was a little girl who tried to write it./Now I do twenty years’ worth of
looking every afternoon.”
-
Mary
Ann Samyn, “My Life in Heaven”
“What
have the suburbs to offer me now?/
The city feels comfortable in my hand./
Like a
found rock.”
-
Joy
Gaines-Friedler, “Detroit”
“The
man waits for spring when he hopes to reassemble for another year, to piece
himself together with what’s left from the bitter winter months.”
-
David
L. James, “His 53rd Autumn in Michign”
“Fraudulent
river, how can/
I believe anything you/
say?”
-
Dennis
Hinrichsen, “Drown”
“How
can I go down to the river,/
nudge the car into my usual spot/
and walk?”
-
Patricia
Clark, “Missing”
“Look
at this landscape, the place/
that takes nothing for granted./
The sun rises like
a sleepy, swollen eye....”
-
Linda
Nemec Foster, “Copper Harbor: Early October”
“You’ll
hear a hermit thrush/
calling, hidden in the pines/or in a cedar swamp....”
-
Keith
Taylor, “Directions to North Fishtail Bay”
“She
dreads the starved waifs in the milking barn,/cold mewing on her back
step,/snarling dead run for house scraps/when all their mouse hunting is
done....”
-
Anne-Marie
Oomen, “Good”
These are the thirteen poets who were with us in the bookstore on Friday evening, June 13, reading their poems from the beautiful book, Poetry in Michigan, Michigan in Poetry. Each poet also read another piece from the book by a poet unable to be with us. What you have here, from me, are the merest tastes, a few words to stimulate you to want more of the excellent writing offered in this book. And there is visual art, also -- paintings and photographs and lithographs by Michigan artists in full-color, full-page reproductions.
I should probably apologize to the poets for my amateur, candid shots, taken from a back corner of the room with a zoom lens while they were reading, but it's important for me to show readers far from Northport that we did have live poets on site, thirteen of them in one room, reading to a packed, SRO house.
What struck me as each poet read the work of an absent colleague was that he or she read the other's work as carefully and beautiful as his or her own poem.
The afterglow of the celebratory evening continues for me, and I am still overwhelmed by the generosity of poets.
4 comments:
Wow. Just wow. To have so many right there, together in one room and to hear them read. If a person wasn't into poetry when they walked in, I bet they have a new appreciation after. Wonderful.
There were a lot of shivers and many moments of holding breath. Each so different, all so on-target. For me, I'm sure it will be, as I look back, a once-in-my-lifetime event. 'Wow' pretty well expresses what I feel, Dawn.
I can feel the afterglow in the way you shared about the poets in this post, Pamela. I have only been to one or two poetry readings, but would like to attend more some time.
Going to readings by Diane Seuss and John Woods in Kalamazoo (long ago!) both reinforced my love of poetry and showed me that I needed to promote poets rather than try to be one myself.
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