After teaching my last class I popped over to the Pink Door to see Sean Hill (www.seanhill.org/) and Liz Bradfield (www.ebradfield.com/index.html) read as part of the Sarabande Reading Series. Convinced Dana, all comfy and warm and home from work, to walk down to meet me, too, with the added enticement of dinner, my treat.

The reading had a fantastic turnout, all braving winter storm warnings and choosing to see art rather than to buy the last quarts of milk before Ragnarok at Kroger. Really, I haven’t seen 50 people come out to see poetry at a restaurant/bar since…ever. Sean and Liz are Stegner fellows down at Stanford and Liz told me she enjoys giving readings with Sean. Sean writes about the Black American experience often, and uses form often and well. He gave me a copy of his “reverse villanelle” out of his manuscript (the first words of the line rhyme). He did this even though I wasn’t buying a book. Here’s the close of “Distance between desires:”

…The moon to the end of this poem
lends soft light. As one desire leaves another
hums. The distance between desire

Sean read in a Barry White bass, but his pace and delivery were, admittedly, dirgelike, and it made it hard to appreciate until I started listening to the words and not the performance.

Liz, a poet, a naturalist, a lesbian, incorporates all three of these aspects of her identity in her works. Her performance was livelier, and poems such as “No more nature” contained much humor.

The audience was not much of a performer. So quiet were they that I went over to Nickole Brown and asked if she had instructed them not to clap. Maybe poetry readings are becoming like classical concerts–you know, no one claps until the end–but it disconcerted me a bit.

It was nice to see you out, Heather Jacobs, writer, sometime Writers Workshop Project participant, freelancer for Sarabande, her husband John, and Ian Girdley, student, poet, who came out to see the reading, as he does to so many (he also runs the Syzygy poets Thursday night readings at Perkfections), and thanks to Sarabande Books for bringing talented readers to Louisville, often for the first time.

Cafe Lou Lou, where I treated Dana, is a work of art itself. Best calzone I’ve had in years!