Friday, January 13, 2006

When It Rains it Pours

When is it going to stop?

It's beginning to feel a little Biblical here with all this rain. Very "forty days and forty nights." Very "these are the last days." It really brings out the apocalyptic in me. I drove to Tacoma yesterday for a classroom presentation and an evening reading, and it was a total white-out on the freeway almost the entire way, with all the mist from the semis and the rain and the standing water. My knuckles were actually swollen from how hard I was gripping the steering wheel.

But it was a really fun presentation and reading. Thanks to Allen Braden for inviting me. The Gallery Reading Series takes place in conjuction with art exhibits at the college's art gallery. There was a fascinating exhibit by Frank Lind, a painter, who takes works by old American artists such as Winslow Homer, and adds new characters to them, like a woman mooning us from the rocks over a beach. They were really fun paintings to look at.

I got to read with Sharon Hashimoto, and hear some of her poems from The Crane Wife, which is a wonderful book, some of the poems exploring her family's history of being interned in camps during WWII. It won Story Line Press' Nicholas Roerich book prize recently. I went out for a celebratory drink after with Allen, Sharon, her husband (the poet Michael Spence), and Patrice who works with Allen at TCC. We sat in a semicircle in front of a nice fireplace in the lounge of a Keg near the campus. And it finally stopped raining for a few minutes for part of the drive home.

In other news: four poems accepted for Prairie Schooner. I guess when it rains it pours.

5 comments:

Justin Evans said...

Congratulations, Peter! That is amazing!

By the way, speaking of internment camps of WWII---I am certain you know of Jim Mitsui, but if you don't, he certainly is a wonderful poet to read.

Peter said...

Yes: I remember his stuff from the 70's-80's at UW. Not sure what he is doing now.

Lana Hechtman Ayers said...

Hi Peter,

Sorry I missed your reading. My best friend was reading at Ravenna at the same time as you. But I just talked to another poet friend who was at your reading and he told me you "rocked the house."

Best,
Lana

Steven D. Schroeder said...

Wow, congrats on the four...

Emily Lloyd said...

4 poems at a time! That's wonderful! Congrats.