Having been baptized into Zoom during the COVID spring of 2020, all of my face-to-face, in-the-classroom course moved to the online platform, my connections with friends and family moving there, too, has made me a weary participant in the virtual. Would that I could see the masses raising hands and nodding in solidarity? I feel it.
My aversion, though, over time, has mellowed into acceptance of a new state of things, at least in some realms, one of them being the poetry reading. Properly orchestrated, virtual (using Zoom and other platforms) readings can be quite wonderful, bringing together voices and poetry it would be nearly impossible to bring together any other way.
Such was the Trio House Press 2023 launch reading. David Groff, Lena Khalaf Tuffuha, Sunshine O'Donnell, Jennifer Manthey and I read for about five to eight minutes each from our new books, which was the perfect amount of time. It makes me want to do more of these readings in a similar format with other voices, other poets and writers.
It makes me wish, too, that there were a center to our contemporary literary universe a la Paris for, what, the first third or more of the twentieth century? Maybe a social media site is the best we can hope for. But that is a social media site I would be an expat in.
The reading went so well that I have been wishing we could get in a bus and go on tour across the country, five unique voices making poetry new for our times the best we know how. If ever there were a time in our country when such a tour could work, that time, alas, is not now. So I dream of it.
Here is a link to the reading, which I have likely oversold, like a film or restaurant review that gets you so excited to experience the real thing that the real thing falls inevitably falls short of expectations:
Trio House Press 2023 Book Release Reading
PHOTO: A bike shop in Paris, in Les Halles, from which we could procure transportation for an imagined moveable feast.
My aversion, though, over time, has mellowed into acceptance of a new state of things, at least in some realms, one of them being the poetry reading. Properly orchestrated, virtual (using Zoom and other platforms) readings can be quite wonderful, bringing together voices and poetry it would be nearly impossible to bring together any other way.
Such was the Trio House Press 2023 launch reading. David Groff, Lena Khalaf Tuffuha, Sunshine O'Donnell, Jennifer Manthey and I read for about five to eight minutes each from our new books, which was the perfect amount of time. It makes me want to do more of these readings in a similar format with other voices, other poets and writers.
It makes me wish, too, that there were a center to our contemporary literary universe a la Paris for, what, the first third or more of the twentieth century? Maybe a social media site is the best we can hope for. But that is a social media site I would be an expat in.
The reading went so well that I have been wishing we could get in a bus and go on tour across the country, five unique voices making poetry new for our times the best we know how. If ever there were a time in our country when such a tour could work, that time, alas, is not now. So I dream of it.
Here is a link to the reading, which I have likely oversold, like a film or restaurant review that gets you so excited to experience the real thing that the real thing falls inevitably falls short of expectations:
Trio House Press 2023 Book Release Reading
PHOTO: A bike shop in Paris, in Les Halles, from which we could procure transportation for an imagined moveable feast.