We're Hitting the Muggy East and Midwest

Coming next weekend: a poetry reading in Columbus Ohio (invitation only; contact me if interested) and a poetry reading in Pittsburgh PA (free and all invited; 1:15 Tues. 7/20, at Hemingways back room). Thanks to everyone who's come to my readings and shared their adoption stories and poetry--this is a rich, fascinating set of connections for me and my family, and for adoption poetry!

My poetry loves the company. Jan

Sky = Empty: My New Favorite Book

Poor Judy: she flies from Tokyo, meets her boyfriend Chris, drives to Portland, swaps poetry books with me ("Geneva font!" glasses clink), and after she leaves I stay up all night reading her new book Sky = Empty, which won the New Press Poetry award from Western Michigan Michigan Press. Judge Marvin Bell and I both love this book a lot.

Well, it was a long trip to take to make a good friend rant about a poetry book. (Seeing Chris and her family, and getting a new job, not our toast, was the goal of the trip).

Down the Mountain

Take Me as nothing left
lift me twisted through granit and moss
water lung, milk waist, sage
I pass through these pages like a ghost

erase my shape in the sun on the porch
brown my skin into the riverbed
push my words into a lullaby
paper lung
milk waist and sage
whatever I came with exhausted
I pass through these pages like a ghost
whatever I came with I spent

The poems range from quirky and lyrical family stories ("Mom Says Stalin was a Bad Communist") to pieces full of strange, isolated-figure juxtapositions as she writes about illness and the skinless way we feel when we fear we're sick and can't recover, to these striking two-language poems that reflect her life in Japan and her bi-lingual interest in how words make people imagine their lives in different languages. So, as the end of "Woman Under Trees" shows us:

ama
ocean woman:
a woman diving for shells

kan
three women:
wickedness and mischief

ameonna
rain woman:
a woman who brings rain

It doesn't make as much sense without the beginning, but I'll let Judy's poem close this entry; the poems finishes with:

these words flood into the river
they are trees that rise uprooted
they are butterflies in the trees

Poetry and the Lively Audience

Last night I read poetry at Mississippi Pizza--and came home and had frozen pizza (I ate more at home than there). (The pizza is a LOT better there!)  

Here are some pictures of this poetry + music event (next shows: Fri. January 22 11:30 am at Chemeketa CC, Building 2, Salem, and then Tuesday, January 26, 7:30 at The Press Club on SE Clinton St in Portland).

Pictures: the writer, reading seriously with pianist (Lorin!) in the back. Then, in the other picture, note the real show. Poetry works better with dancing kids. (Asa, our friend's 1 1/2 year old in the audience, kept saying, "Jan. Jan. Stage." And, Zoe too!).

Thanks to musical genius Lorin, the book table guy and the film guy (Jeremy and Justus), and especially to all who attended--and to the amazing sound engineer Lauren ("When the kids start dancing, turn up the mic's," I instructed her) and the kids who danced spontaneously on stage, demonstrating their ability to jump over dragon beams. To avoid being dragon bait.

Unscripted moments included the melt down before the show (Zoe's, not mine!), Tim shouting support for some parenting joke from the audience ("I have been backed up by a MINISTER," I said), Zoe trying to put a sticker on my chest during a poem, and the kids forming a chain and trying to hide under my--thankfully full skirted--dress.

Just your basic poetry reading, with backup Eddie Vedder on the mandolin.