Whenever I go to lots of events, I fall in love all over again with New York. Most of these events would not occur outside of New York and a couple of other places, the way that people from Detroit grew up hearing a lot more Motown, non-hits, than the rest of us. I'm grateful to be in a nexus.
In the last week or so, I went to these literary events:
* A Prose Pros celebration of excerpts from Martha King's memoir about being at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, published in A Public Space, a terrific & thoughtful magazine full of "works that don't stack on obvious shelves." Vincent Katz, Mitch Highfill, Kim Lyons & Burt Kimmelman each read an excerpt of Martha's piece along with brief memoirs of their own. I admire people who can remember anything.
* Karen Weiser & Maureen Owen at the Poetry Project. Karen was a revelation, reading a fadeaway collaboration with Melville.
* The launch of Jackson MacLow's complete light poems, also at the Poetry Project, where I found out about his infatuation for an old pal. Poetry: gossip of the highest order!