Seattle and Portland: Poetry Wonderlands

Getting ready to make the 12+ hour drive home to Northern California, I’m lugging way more books. There are new chapbooks by Dorianne Laux, “Dark Charms,” and Joe Millar, “Bestiary,” from the Pacific University MFA reunion last night, where I got to see Kwame Dawes, Jack Driscoll, and Pam Houston read. Yes, Kwame Dawes is as good a reader as you might think. It was wonderful to see all my former advisors – the whole faculty there are still as warm and sweet as ever – and the shiny faces of all the new students. It’s been a few years now since I graduated, so there weren’t any of my old classmates there, but I still feel a sense of pride and happiness whenever I visit. I got to hang out with my sci-fi-writing friend Felicity for a few hours beforehand too, which gave us a chance to discuss genre and the blurring of lines between literary and “other,” Michael Chabon, Margaret Atwood, Junot Diaz, etc.
Of course, due to a visit in Seattle at Open Books, I ended up with way more books than I even have time to read – the Gurlesque anthology, Canadian poet Susan Holbrook’s “Joy is So Exhausting,” an anthology of interviews called “Poetry in Person,” Allen Braden’s first book from U of Georgia Press, “A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood” – which was even better since I ran into Allen at the bookstore and had him sign it – poetry books by Stephen Burt the critic and Lisa Russ Spahr, and, my friend K. Lorraine Graham would be proud, a book of experimental feminist poetics called “Feminaissance” that has a pretty rockin’ cover as well. So I’ll have to write my next two reviews and get to reading this summer!
It was chilly and rainy almost the whole week I was visiting the Northwest, even a little chilly and rainy for Northwesterners, which is saying something. It reminded me why I owned so many sweaters and wore so few sandals when I lived up here. The other thing I was reminded of is why a community of writers counts for so much in a person’s life. I felt renewed and energized to go back home and pay attention to my writing, to revision and submitting and all the things that can sometimes feel like chores.