The Jet Hotel, Sunday night, our first faculty reading for our first annual literary festival. People crowded onto couches, stools, the floor. I noticed everyone trying to massage their jaws after the whole thing was done, many risking injury due to overlaughing. Five reasons: Eric Olson, Chris Ransick, Shari Caudron, William Haywood Henderson, and a dramatic David J. Rothman, who spent the first few minutes of his reading watching us while he drank his martini on the stool, reciting Frost's "Fire and Ice" from memory. Later, he must have felt gratified to watch the martinis shoot out noses as he embarked on a stunning mock epic with a thread of invectives that were breathless in their hilarity. (I'll see if I can get him to e-mail them to be posted, but a lot of the fun was in the delivery.)
Here's what Shari had to say:
"Readings about oyster vulvas, sexual harassment videos, frontier women losing their virginity, and the epic I’m-gonna-kill-you-and-watch-the-bullet-race-through-the-milk-carton-and-around-the-neighborhood poem. Safe to say there was probably something for everyone in that room."
And one only has to add Shari's own tale about stripping in a Jordanian Turkish bath with a stranger to get a full picture of what really went down. So far, so fun. The next one's a participant reading at FR5, then instructors, part II, Sunday at the Jet. See you all at the rest of the lit fest.
--AD
