Last night Larry's kicked off national poetry month with a reading by
Stephen Ellis in which he arrived extremely late with the "poet in ohio"
Brian Richards to an eager crowd of 66 people. We started the open early
even to satiate the droves of folks in from heavy rain slick streets.
After briefly introducing Ellis and reading section 1 of White Gravity
to prime the pumped attention span, he started the first set of 25
minutes reading short older pieces, ones found in To Hand, Embodyment
Air, the bull head Chapbook and various other pampheteering ephemera. It
was odd but noteworthy, to hear him read the shortish. We covered the
table in books, chapbooks, and thinner, many visiting the commerce in
between.
For the second set, Ellis read White Gravity in its entirety, sans
ending pictograph, then cracked into yelled out requests from The Long
and Short of It, including Sky Blue Pink, which had lift, lost the
audience in pilating dependent clause upon dependent clause upon
dependent clause until everyone was way out there, the last three
couplets to reel back in. This is surely a writer who knows a poem needs
only one period, that breath has expired except within a long line
frame. Someone in the back yelled out Broken Donut Mystery Cult, things
got hectic, anticipatory beer drank, Anton busy for night behind the
bar, then full-on quiet, the piece read in its folded out entirety. Much
hooting and hollering at the ending. Out here in Ohio, where we take
Poetry as a statewide sport, second only to Bluejackets hockey, even
Anton, the bartender, loved the reading, staying an extra hour to hear
It all, which says tomes. He's beat up poets for reading crappy poetry.
There was a heated open this fine evening. Highlights-- In the open
before Ellis, Cathy Callahan read a piece about Jesus rightists vs.
Students for free thought viz the modicum of Becketts best humourstance,
leaving us laughing hard and awkward, Frank Richards sluicing us with a
new poem, then post Ellis, Brian Richards dripping the love poem
sequence from the Dorn Worc's Aloud/Allowed, and Ex-NY ABC No Rio diva,
Julie Otten closed hard with her fantastic round bar poem.
Afterwards, a dozen came to my house for the private reading, light
libations and a heavy section of work from Tom Bridwell's newest prose
book, Stevie Mainard's memorable dead baby poem, a few of mine including
Suicide Pact, and a set of 25? pieces from Ellis' March writings which
were well received with Shakespearean comments on blank verse
perversions.
That's my memory of i(I)t, finally, trailing to bed now.
Larry's/ 2040 N. High St/ Columbus OH-- 7pm mondays, open afterward--
Funded by the Ohio Arts Council: a statewide agency which supports the
arts
Be well
David Baratier
next 3 mon readings-- Gina Tabasso, Maj Regain, Tom Beckett
and also a special reading April 13th at Reality Theatre
Dan Raphael-- from Portland OR whose 13th book is out & as Ivan
Arguelles (forgive my unumlat) says "Like the best of his
contemporaries, Jake Berry or Will Alexander, Raphael takes his language
into the swiftly developing chasms of new sci-tech terminology, while
maintaining a balance of humor" reads w/ Julie Otten and John M. Bennett
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