First Thomas Sayers Ellis read "Ways to Be Black in a Poem" "Or," and a section from a 35 page poem on Michael Jackson. Now to see if I can read the poems in my head the way he read them, or rather performed them, on stage.
Next Stephen Elliott read from his memoir, The Adderall Diaries. He had many great lines, and I recall 3:
Dominant women never really look dominant.
I wish every action were recorded and we had a little google bar to search out what we did yesterday.
My father is pure Chicago, and I'm New Age San Francisco. If Chicago attacked San Francisco, it would be like the Nazis invading Belgium.
Then Jessica Francis Kane read from The Report, a book of historical fiction about a catastrophe that happened for no apparent reason in 1943 in London. The section she read was more humorous than I imagine the book to be.
Lines that I remember approximately:
The Bibles sold out --evidence either that people were looking for help or that faith could overcome the market.
A church without Bibles is like a dearth of hairpins.
Then Nick Flynn read "Haiku Failed," "Air," and "Forgetting Something."
(Nick Flynn, I love your hair! I am going to write an ode to Nick Flynn's hair!)
The last lines he read: First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines.
Elizabeth Alexander was the last reader. She read poems about everything from women's prisons to historical figures to a dream book to a poem about her mother's cooking in which she wondered what her African American mom did with all that grease she saved and kept by the stove. I've been wondering that same thing about my white mother, now that I think about it. Back in those days, grease was considered a good thing. Sigh. Alexander said she follows the advice of Yusef Komunyakaa: Don't write what you know. Write what you are willing to discover.
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