Greetings, Friends of Open Books,
We are just back from the Bulk Mail Center in way-south Seattle, where we
take the hardcopy version of this missive for sending. After handing over
our little bins to Dora, the clerk we’ve known for years, we stopped by the
Georgetown Liquor Company (a charming vegetarian dive) for supper. In the
midst of our food and beverage, a group of men, dressed all in white with
red suspenders, asked permission of the waitress to move several tables,
received it and did so, and then, to everyone’s surprise, began Morris
dancing, exuberantly waving their white handkerchiefs, accompanied by
guitar, squeezebox, and the bells attached to their legs. A second dance,
this one involving the striking of sticks, and then they were gone. We’re
still rather giddy from it all. Their intricate, centuries’-old dancing in
this dark bar lined with video games — such a wonderfully strange,
delightful, and human endeavor — seems a fitting start to a newsletter
about poetry. And so…
Below you will find links to the recently updated listings for this spring’s
last readings at the store. We’ll be taking our usual summer event hiatus,
beginning again in September. We will be sending out an all-books newsletter
in June — much to read and write about! In the meantime, here are write-ups
of the new books of the next four readers at our podium:
On Tuesday, May 25th at 7:30 PM, Allen Braden will read from “A Wreath of
Down and Drops of Blood,” and Oliver de la Paz will share his latest,
“Requiem for the Orchard.”
http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/calendar/archives/000397.html
On Tuesday, June 1st, at 7:30 PM, Patricia Fargnoli arrives from New
Hampshire to read from “Then, Something.”
http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/calendar/archives/000399.html
And on Friday, June 18th, at 7:30 PM we’ll host Jennifer Boyden, reading
from her recently released collection, “The Mouths of Grazing Things.”
http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/calendar/archives/000403.html
That’s it for now. Read well until next we meet.