Last night’s reading for the What’s New in Poetry Series–with Dorine Preston and Terita Heath-Wlaz–was great fun. Let’s be honest: this is not always the case. Sometimes there’s feedback on the mic, or a dead crowd, or a snobbish headliner. When there are three poets, each position has its own perils. The first reader has to break the ice. The second reader feels pressured to keep it short. The final reader has to ignore yawns and quiet exits.

But last night, everything went…exactly as it should, really. Bruce Covey was a gracious and welcoming host, Dorine’s humor and energy lent momentum to everything that followed, and Terita’s work–which is just getting reintroduced to the world, after eight years of radio silence–impressed me with its determined, resonant strangeness. I liked the layout of the room: a hodgepodge of upholstered seats in concentric arcs, that provided an engaging visual field from the podium. Even the empty chairs had personality. And Sean, the guy who worked the counter at Method tea house, made it out.

After the reading we headed down to a local pizza joint for a round of beers (I had a house specialty, the ”Dirty Turtle”–Guinness layered over Terrapin Pale Ale) and some random conversation. Among the topics: NPR, half-faked knowledge at cocktail parties, California culture, how to tell if your Mac is REALLY broken, and book contests. I cannot emphasize how important these later-night conversations are to a poet on the road. I’ve done readings where commuter logsitics dictated that within ten minutes of the event ending, I was standing alone in a dark parking lot. That’s just not how it should be. Hanging out with other poets and hearing about their geographies, their struggles, their tech expertise (or lack thereof), their particular way of making a living, always broadens my sense of what my options are. It’s worth more than any honorarium.

Now I am back in Washington, with the aforementioned deadlines still looming. But at least I made a little headway on a sestina while in Atlanta. Also read Mark Strand’s essays on Edward Hopper’s paintings (illuminating, in all senses of the word), Cecily Parks’ fantastic first book (Field, Folly, Snow, part of the VQR series) and the last issue of Black Warrior Review. To write, first we must read.

On the post title: Whenever I travel on planes, I always later find crumbs in my bra. Sometimes I haven’t even had a meal that would logically *generate* crumbs. I blame the airline industry.