In the Public Eye

Today, 2pm, I am part of an event at the Seattle Central Public Library. Ten writers representing the ten years of the Jack Straw Writers Program will be reading for five minutes each. Each of us represents the writers from each of the years of the program. I am Miss 2002. I was a Jack Straw Writer in 1999 too, but am not wearing the sash for that year. Since I have as a project the memorization of my poems (if I don't love them, who will?), I will be saying my poems rather than reading them. I have made a little commemorative book, cleverly titled "4 Poems in 5 Minutes", which I will be handing out to whoever wants one. Yesterday, I brilliantly affixed stickers advertising my book, nothing to hold onto, so that people might go to Finishing Line Press's website or to amazon.com and buy my book. A couple of days ago, folding little books for this reading, a small overweight angel in mismatched socks whispered that I am doing the best work I can do the best way I know how so I may as well put it out there. I'm not suddenly going to awake to take my waking as Roethke or Shelley (him or her) or anybody else but me. I don't sound like the greats, but then none of them sounded like any other of them, not to mention that in this postmodern, postindustrial, postmenopausal world, there are a fracking lot of us out here throwing words around like we really mean it and who the bleep can decide which of us is going to last or even surface. Perhaps that was a question. To make any kind of art is about making it. To be a deep sea diver, go diving, if you know what I mean. What will I wear to the reading? Nothing too obviously psychedelic yellow green so I don't blend with the escalator and confuse patrons. I used to try to dress like a poet, but never have been able to decide what that means. One middle school student for whom I have built a small but colorful shrine in my back bedroom told me she knew I was the visiting poet because I looked exactly like one.

Some possible rules for pre-reading jitters:
1. know thy poems but print them up in 14 point type in the event your mind flees the premises
2. warm up voice and body.
3. no milk - blechy throat will blur words. no vodka.
4. dress for the event. no tiaras unless event calls for same.
5. bring party favors
6. no stiletto heels unless you can stand in them without falling on your face

And yet, I have come to cringe over the flip, snide and tongue-in-cheek. I take as my text David Sedaris's supposed text of the graduation speech he delivered at Princeton, reprinted or printed for the first time, in the New Yorker. How many pages? I was bored after the first half page. When satire goes wrong.

And now to launder me and iron my linen skirt and spiff up for Rem Koolhaus and the Jack Straw Foundation gang.