One of the benefits of attending UCSD is that the reading series there is not the usual academic menu. I remember in particular readings by Rae Armantrout, Ron Padgett, Dennis Cooper, Edwin Torres, Elizabeth Alexander, Mary Jo Bang, Michael Heller, Kit Robinson, and Barrett Watten. Paul Naylor. I recollect, read a series of poems he had been working on about flowers and gardens, which he had started in the summer of 2001. There were daily entries, and when he got to September 11, the poem was very brief.
“There will never be enough flowers.”
I remember the sense of quiet beneath some ultimate quiet slithering through the room, then twanging like that distant string in one of Chekhov’s plays.
On another occasion, in San Diego, Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout read together, though I remember the reading having Ron as the featured poet and he invited Rae to read a piece they had collaborated on. Joseph Ross gave the introduction, and then sat down in the front row next to the poet Stephen Cope, who would go on to edit a volume of George Oppen’s writings. I’m not sure if Ron’s blog had even started at this point, and Rae was still working as an adjunct professor at UCSD. I would have the good fortune to be her T.A. for one quarter before I graduated in 2004. All three of our lives have changed considerably since the evening of that reading.
I was inspired, in part, to run these photographs in my blog because I noticed recently that Ron and Rae are reading in New York in two months.
https://as.nyu.edu/cwp/reading-series.html
Thursday. October 18 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Rae Armantrout and Ron Silliman
Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 W 10th Street, New York, NY
If you’re in the vicinity, and you’re old enough to realize that many poets younger than you might need a little reminder in the midst of their whirligig lives, then do the right thing, and make certain they don’t neglect this chance to hear two of America’s finest poets.
About Bill Mohr