Actually, with C.K. Williams, I was a great fan of his work UNTIL I heard
him read it in person. I stopped reading his poetry and haven't done
so to this day. He read in a kind of self-pitying whine, which went
through me like nails on a blackboard.
Howard Nemerov was a great reader. I caught him at Bread Loaf the summer
I was there. His voice was trembling from whatever it was that was
killing him, but he gave a great performance. His teen-aged son gave
him a fair evaluation after he was through: "No standing O's today,
Pop." And he was right, not many people there were congratulatory and
I still wonder why.
I remember catching John Ashbery at a Baltimore Catholic woman's
college--St. Mary's (?)--and enjoying the poem he read to the nuns and
their young charges in which Popeye soundly fucks Olive Oil. The nuns
demurely applauded. Later I presented him with my copy of an anthology
of poetry with great looming portraits of the poets (I remember that the
brooding portrait of the aging Delmore Schwartz was my favorite) and
John Ashbery signed his name diagonally across his face.
Jesse
|