The First Reading! (February 25th, 6 p.m., Katezenberg Center)

The first reading will take place on Monday, February 25th at 6 p.m. at the Katzenberg Center on the 3rd Floor of 871 Commonwealth Avenue, featuring Catherine Barnett and Steven Cramer. Barnett will be reading from her recently published book of poems entitled Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012). Barnett has received the 2012 James Luaghlin Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart. Steven Cramer will also be reading from his recently published book of poems entitled Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012). Cramer is the author of five poetry collections, and directs the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge.

Below are two of my favorite poems from Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett:

Chorus

Every night cars drive by with windows,
buses filled with windows fly right by,
windows filled with windows head home and away from home,
windows opening,
windows closing,
windows in suits and ties
wearing the eyes of strangers or stars.

This poem really reminded me of biking or walking home from campus after class, and the feeling I get seeing the T and buses go by. 

xix.

Finally there's someone I might
and have and could one day
want again, or tarry--

I could tarry a man like him,
warily--
at the supermarket, at the corner store,

where the perishables, waiting to be touched
and taken home, keep
trembling.

I really love the word tarry. It seems to embody the sense you get when someone likes you, they want to tarry, and you can tell they are lingering around. If the person doesn't tarry, it could mean disinterest and dislike. The line "I could tarry a man like him," not quite marry but something close, perhaps tarry the idea of getting married? I also think the speaker identifies with the perishable items in the supermarket. If she, like the items, isn't touched and connected with, she will expire. She is trembling with anxiety that her lover/friend will not tarry away with her, and she will go home alone into a dark void.

Below is the first poem from Clangings by Steven Cramer:

I hear the dinner plates gossip
Mom collected to a hundred.
My friends say get on board,
but I'm not bored. Dad's a nap

lying by the fire. That's why
when radios broadcast news,
news broadcast from radios
gives air to my kinship, Dickey,

who says he'd go dead if ever
I discovered him to them.
I took care, then, the last time
bedrooms banged, to tape over

the outlets, swipe the prints
off DVDs, weep up the tea
stains where once was coffee.
Not one seep from him since.