Dear friends, readers and writers,
Please come out for our first planned reading under new curatorship at Riverby Books. Mary Ann Larkin, one of DC’s best poets will be reading her poetry and poems by poets who have influenced her. We promise you a delightful evening of words.
That’s:
Tuesday, Oct. 19th 2010 @ 7PM
Mary Ann Larkin
READING FROM HER
NEW BOOK OF POEMS
Riverby Books
October 19, 2010
at 7:00 PM
Featuring Mary Ann Larkin
(202) 526-1632
or
Riverby Books (202) 543-4342
The flyer for this reading, and directions to the bookstore can be found at http://capitolhill.poetrymutual.org
As you know, we’ve taken over hosting A Space Inside, the regular monthly reading series founded by Monica Jacobe. Monica, although now teaching at Princeton University, serves in the capacity of Host Emerita.
Because the title of the series, A Space Inside, is Monica’s, we’ve decided to re-brand the series as the Capitol Hill Reading Series. With this new name we hope to retain the warm and intimate atmosphere that Monica has created, and also show that we are part of Capitol Hill, part of the community, that our interests radiate out from Capitol Hill to DC and environs, and that showcasing our rich and diverse literary world is our goal.
So, I hope to see you at Riverby this coming Tuesday, wine, refreshments and noshes will be in attendance.
Michael Gushue & Dan Vera
Co-curators of the Capitol Hill Reading Series
A SAMPLING OF LARKIN’S WORK:
BODIES
All my members felt His in full felicity.
I wholly melted away in Him.
Hadewijch of Brabant
Even the solitary mystics—
it was their bodies God came to.
Love knows no abstractions.
It licks and sucks,
wounds and devours.
Even the infant stiff with desire,
tensing and mewling, roots
in tumescent flesh, hungry
as the mystics
for bliss,
that pure white milk.
CAR RADIO
After we crossed the Tappan Zee
the New York stations came in clear,
jazz and blues and far-out
and the oldies,
the Cleveland songs that taught me lust,
the folk songs that lured you from the suburbs,
and we got that feeling
people get, driving all night
with only the headlights and the stars,
that we were young again and crazy,
and we started singing,
me, belting them out,
knowing only the words,
you, your timing and nuance and sound so fine,
so heartbreakingly fine,
singing Woody Guthrie’s old song
“This Land Is Your Land”–
that that’s when it happened.
I saw you. I saw you deep,
not the tired guy coming home from the factory,
not your neurons and muscles
but the place the song came from.
I saw where you make your song.
Poems by Mary Ann Larkin, from gods & flesh, Plan B Press