La fete de amoureux

OK, so we finally got the day correct to show up at Poetry Flash's reading at Cody's books. It was a rather quiet crowd for the pre-Valentine's reading. I'm hoping it's because poets are out there making more poetry.

Glad to see Catherine Daly read. Working in the computer field I particularly enjoyed her flarf from her latest book at Ahadada Books, "Secret Kitty" with her use of alternative search engines like AltaVista and doing machine translations of her poetry to Japanese and back. Maybe not for poets but certainly for techies there is a bit of politics in terms of which search engines you use on a regular basis. She also read from the super-shiny, "Locket" which does sell quite a bit because it's so shiny.

It would make it appropriate for Eileen to then read from "Post Bling-Bling" after the shiny Locket whose cover reflected a light glow to Catherine's face. And indeed Eileen read from her earliest pieces from "After the Egyptians Determined The Shape of the World is a Circle" (1996). Poem #17 on the spreadsheet. It's always hard to go back to read a work. The week prior Geraldine Kim mentioned while reading from her book, "Povel" how if she could edit half the book out. It was interesting to hear that work contrasted with the "brick", a change of cadence, of word choice.

Afterwards we headed to Raleigh's down the street, a typical college tavern with the loud rock n' roll playing. Kind of figured not too many people ask for wine there since their menu gave no winery names just a list of wine varietals. Fortunately we ordered nachos to wash it down. I'm sure their ales and soju were better.

We managed to pick up a couple of poetry fans. A man at another table noticed the shiny blinginess of Catherine's stack of Locket and asked to take a look. He ended up buying a copy to give to a friend. Later, his friend came over and said how much he was enjoying the poetry.

We finished off the bottle and the nachos and then got Eileen's car out of the locked up parking lot. Every other day of the week that parking lot is open until 1am/2am, except on Sundays apparently. Let me tell you, we weren't the only ones with their cars stuck in there for the night. There must have been at least a dozen other cars there. I'm surprised there isn't a taxi hanging out near the parking structure just waiting to give people rides home.

Anyway, hope you have a Happy Valentine's Day and that it's a poetic one.