![]() “Carry On Our Wayward Sun” came on the jukebox. But these were first-rate poets, and Phil Hoy, the head of their first-rate publisher Waywiser, had had to arrange the venue from overseas. Downstairs, you saw, in people’s eyes, a gentle acknowledgment of the obvious. People walked carefully back and forth with rounds balanced in front of them and found chairs. Van Halen became REO Speedwagon or Metallica. Someone pointed out David Ferry by the stairs. ![]() ![]() It was not easy to hope that poetry could live there.īut everyone stayed. Seeing the poets, someone official hollered “ down-stairs. Then it was Van Halen, Van Halen everywhere, “Jump.” It was four flatscreen monitors, each with its own sporting event, and a bedlam of voices, men in the middle third of life, already drunk for hours. But as we stepped in the vestibule, something thumped at our assurance. ![]() I ambled along with my wife, Talia, gathering friends along the way, and, assured of hearing good poems by poets unlikely to showboat or hog the mic, we seemed to move through the wind and slush into a collective mood of calm receptivity. It was our last night at a conference everyone seemed to agree was both necessary and farcical. I had come for the others, especially the friends I’d followed from the convention center bar, across Boylan Street. The first time I saw David Ferry was in March 2013, at a bar, in Boston, where he was among the poets slated to read that night. Hearing David Ferry’s Poem “The Proselyte,” Spring 2013, Boston ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |