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A rushed first entry for a rushed first couple of readings on the tour…
On Friday, the 3rd, read at NYU on behalf of the new anthology Efforts and Affections: Women Poets on Mentorship. This was a lovely event – even lovelier than I would have expected. Pretty much every single woman poet reading (Rebecca Wolff, Molly Peacock, Susan Wheeler, Joy Katz, Kristin Prevallet, among many wonderful others) went on far past the allotted five minutes, but all were so charismatic and engaging and (usually) hilarious, it didn’t matter and the time just flew.
The next morning, flew down to Austin – early, a little hung-over (there was some woman poet revelry the night before)… Arrived at Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith’s lovely little house at the end of a cul-de-sac on Higgins after being lost – driving back and forth and back and forth on the highway (I don’t even know which, but it was an ugly highway) in my pimped out rental PT Cruiser – for about an hour. I was wearing jeans, knee-length suede boots, sweating through my wool sweater. Hoa and I sat out on her porch, drinking homemade nettle tea, catching up on the last twelve years or so (we met when we were just “poet babies” back in the Bay Area in – oh 1995 or ’96. I had had them down to Vegas when I was running a reading series there… they were always beautiful – a beautiful couple… and now they have two beautiful boys). Here are some pictures. I wish I could get as excited about Halloween (very important note: “the muscles in the suit aren’t REAL muscles, they are PART OF THE SUIT!!!”):
I was tired, but the reading that night, which I shared with Philip Nikolayev, was fun – a mellow affair. Maybe twenty people from the Austin community showed up. I spent the majority of the evening after the reading stuffing corn chips into my mouth, and laughing a lot. It was wonderful. I wish I had pictures (of the crazy winding light they had around the podium, the boys as the “opening act” doing crazy dances with their arms flailing wildly as they screamed and exclaimed), but my iPhone doesn’t have a flash, and I’ve been too rushed with preparing for the book tour (sending boxes to and fro, making various rental and hotel arrangements) to buy a real camera…
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