Tonight, after visiting the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the Walker Art Museum, I floated over to Magers & Quinn for the Lee Thomas and Chris Stark reading.
Lee read first, from his book Honey in the Dark and I enjoyed his verse immensely. One of the first poems he read was set in a Conference Hotel Restaurant (and that might have been the name of the piece too?) & had a line that I loved about a "murderous smear of jam on a serrated blade." He also read a piece entitled "Likelihoods, Sequels and Spin-offs" which was a meditation on other lives that might have been--if a small choice had been changed, or if things had been slightly different. "Closer to the Mountain" was a piece written before COVID about touch--and what was appropriate or what verged on becoming too significant. As a queer man--the way I think about touch is very different than others, so this piece really resonated with me.
Chris Stark read from her book Carnival Lights, which was historical fiction and moved backwards & forwards in time with the main characters being two Ojibwe girls. When reading from the prologue, the narrator mentioned a Nazi rocket that was on display at the Minnesota State Fair in the 50s--an image that really stuck with me.
The Q&A was enlightening, of course I had to pipe up and ask Chris if the Nazi rocket was historically accurate--and it was! Over her 20 years of writing the book, she naturally accumulated a lot of knowledge, especially about the Minnesota State Fair, and there was a real, honest-to-goodness Nazi V2 rocket displayed, which Chris found out about because she saw a picture of it at one of the "History of the State Fair" kiosks. Fun fact--there's a more established "History of the Minnesota State Fair" site & that picture is nowhere on display. Chris was wry when she told us about that.
Lee was asked how long he had been writing poetry and told a story about how in grade school he used to pass notes with a classmate--in the form of poems. So for him (like me!) poetry goes waaayyyy back. My grade school poetry writing was as a way to woo girls (yes, dear non-existent reader, girls) so I enjoyed his anecdote.
Since the audience was small, or more likely because I can't help myself, I also asked Lee a question--which poets inspired him or his work--to which he gave a list that included Jack Gilbert, Ada Limรณn, Ellen Bass, Victoria Chang and I believe Catherine Barnett (but possibly Catherine Garnett?) Many of which I haven't read before--so I'll have to explore some of their work. I love finding new poets!
The host, whose name was possibly Matthew (a lovely gentleman with this flowy blue shirt and great taste in necklaces) flipped the same question to Chris, who mentioned The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as the authors Louise Erdrich, and Susan Power. Again--I haven't read any of these authors, so I will have to check out their work.
Overall, both authors were extremely gracious and the readings they chose were in parts eye opening, powerful and pleasing to the ear. I'm glad I went!
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