January 09, 2006
Thiefth
I rarely get excited about academic literary readings, because usually -- unless it's someone like William Volman or Wislawa Szymborska -- it's just an insufferable snooze. I was required for a class to go see Susan Howe read, and was not really pepped up over it, but was happily shocked when the reading was over; she looked like a conservative New England mom, but she read like David Byrne. She whispered, she yelled, she gestured. It was refreshing, especially because you didn't expect that out of this tiny, conservative-looking person.
On January 24th, she's going to be at SLU with musician David Grubbs to present "Theifth," a reading of two poems accompanied by Grubbs on computer and piano; one is on the marginalia in Melville's notebooks, and another is a sketch Thoreau, appropriately titled "Thorow." (Though she's no Burberry mom, as you can seee she is thorow-ly a New Englander). They have a CD out, which was named as one of Artforum's "Best of 2005," which you can pick up at Blue Chopsticks, a fun little stop-off even if you hate poetry but like academic music. It's at 6pm, at the University Theater at Xavier Hall. If an ice cream truck pulls up outside the doors to distribute popsicles and bombpops before the show, it will be an absolutely perfect night.