This afternoon I went to a poetry reading at UCI bookstore. UCI readings are always such abbreviated things. Today's was no different, despite the fact that there were two readers instead of one-- Cp;ette LaBouff Atkinson and Stephanie Brown. These were rather local writers, one of whom works at the U, I think. I think also that both graduated from the MFA program, but I am not sure. But for some reason, there is never occasion to dawdle and discuss, as at many readings I have been to. And the writers seem to read as few pieces as they can. Both writers took up barely an hour together.
They were quite different. One was a prose poet, whose short pieces were sharp and acute. I liked them very much. She had managed to write one short piece about a yoga asana, one I am not familiar with or couldn't recognize by its Sanskrit or English name or from the description.
The other writer was various all in herself. She could be rather off-putting, and feared she was offending the assembled audience. If so, they didn't let on. Some of her things were odd and humorous, formless almost. They seemed neither poetry nor prose. Some were haunting and stuck in my head. I'm glad I went because it left me plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the evening. Though I like going to readings, I also like evenings to feel long enough to get in a bit of reading and relaxation at home before I go to bed at what would seem to most a very early hour.
So when I got home I started reading this month's bookclub novel, The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry. It is an Irish novel, and has that self-consciously poetic feel about it that I associate with Irish literature. So far it is very good, though I wonder whether the 100 year old narrator, a patient in a mental hospital being considered for release, would really speak this way. But the writing has authority. So I read on.
4 comments:
Colette taught at IVC years ago. I am enjoying Barry's novel very much, whether I believe a 100-year-old capable of such memory and complexity or thought.
It is amazing I never knew Colette. I guess it was during that bleak period when I was wandering around jobless, at least without an academic job.
The strange thing about very elderly people and memory is that they often begin to remember early childhood in detail... I have an uncle of 100 who can recall in detail but is somewhat an unreliable narrator because he can be mixed up about persons in the present.
My dad's memory is just a bit off. He does pretty well, but then he is a youngster of 92.
Mom's memory, on the other hand, is totally off. Or it would be more correct to say it's a corrupt file because she gets this world mixed up with the imagined ones she lives in. Last week she said that she and dad were just checking into the motel when I called. They were home in their board and care room, where they have lived for the past two years.
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