I hope that the praise of one of my favorite poets, Sean Thomas Daugherty, will encourage you to attend Maureen Owen’s reading at Beyond Baroque tomorrow, Feb. 24, at 4:00 p.m.: “(Maureen Owen’s) prose poems are like cosmic prisms.” Fearlessly absorbing and enfolding the complex instances of what makes this day different from all others, Owens indeed summons the prisms lurking in muted harmony within the apparently ordinary, and makes them sing. Her gift extends beyond that, though: she makes us want to sing along, and find those harmonies in our own lives, too.
Owen’s reading will culminate a particularly fine set of readings at Beyond Baroque. On Friday, several translators of contemporary Italian poetry celebrated “Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies,” an anthology of poems by such figures as Pasolini, Majorino, Pagliarani, Rosselli, Sanguineti, and Zanzotto. Saturday’s reading included Brenda Hillman, who would certainly get a hearty round of applause from me if it were announced that she has been appointed the next poet laureate of California by Governor Newsom.
Upcoming events at Beyond Baroque include weekends with the following combinations:
MARCH 8 FRIDAY 8:00 PM: POETRY READING HAPTICS, WITH STEPHEN VINCENT AND DOUGLAS MESSERLI
MARCH 10 SUNDAY 1:00 PM: JACK GRAPES & RICHARD JONES
AND AT 5:00 PM: JIM NATAL & DOROTHY BARRESI
MARCH 15 FRIDAY 8:00 PM: JEFF MCMAHON SIX MONOLOGUES
MARCH 16 SATURDAY 4:00 PM: BEYOND SPANISH
Poetry in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Spanish with Josu Baque, Mónica Comas Rodríguez, Jennifer Holmes, Unai Nafarrate, Jurgio Valinhas and Mariano Zaro. Sponsored by the Education Office of the Consulate General of Spain. FREE
MARCH 16 SATURDAY 8:00 PM: OVERPOPULATION & ART
S.A. Griffin’s 65 birthday party will feature a performance of John Cage’s “Overpopulation and Art.”
About Bill Mohr