another good night

ryan invited me to read some poetry at his album release party.  that would be the second time in the history of time that i have been brave enough to be identified as a poet.

it was a beautiful evening.  the cobalt season bloomed and blessed, and it was great to be there.  and i got to read a couple of my poems too.

today i got this picture from jared taken at the event.  there i am in all my largeness.

there's a funny little piece of theater visible there.  whenever i write the first version of a poem, it goes down on paper in which ever notebook i am carrying around.  but before i am "done", a poem has definitely made it to the computer for all the staring and erasing and revising.  so the best version of all my poems are on a computer.  why am i reading from a note book then?

i decided that real poets don't read from laptops, so i copied the poems i intended to read, by hand, into a notebook so i could look all poetic and stuff while i was reading. for the next time (if there is one) maybe i can convince apple to make a molskine version of the macbook air, then i could be deep and poetic, and also hip and edgy.

what i remember from the evening ...

• ryan's shadow dancing behind him as he sang
• ryan singing into his guitar
• hearing how the poems that i had written and re-written and tied up neatly in a bow, unraveled themselves and became new creations and i spoke them.

Comments

[Mike Stavlund]

I thought that looked like a Moleskine, but it was hard to see it over the web stream.

(I've looked over the shoulders of some of our poet-pals, and they've got their poems printed in small font, then pasted into their Moleskines. So you're apparently not alone in your reverse-Luddite-ism.)

[Heidi Renee]

beautiful unraveling - the written word to the spoken word, wish i could have been there.