Works and Days

Managed to see read in a single week Eric Baus, Graham Foust, Crag Hill, Lauren Levin, Eileen Myles, Douglas Rothschild, and Jared Stanley. Dug and Crag addressed a BBQ from the Cobb/Coleman victory balcony, tossing down late Creeley and Theogony like the revolution’s confetti. Lauren and Jared stunned a happy hour bar crowd into submission using only great shoes and a mike. Graham and Eric brought out the youth like I rarely see them for poetry here, which sparked the distressing reflection that youth is no longer a category of identity for me so much as a remote and exotic presence, like tropical fish passing and re-passing in a tank. Eileen sort of flipped the tank over and got Iceland to sing on top.

Learned too that Crag Hill joined the English faculty this year at WSU in Pullman, WA along with Linda Russo (who was down to see Norma Cole in Portland last week) and Christopher Arigo, a fellow Pavement Saw author. So if you see a spate of young Eigner- and Kyger-hopped poets coming out of Pullman soon, you’ll know why. It happened in Ashland—why not Pullman, too?