Dear Alan,

This is a very kind and thoughtful goodbye post--and in those ways seems characteristic of all of your posts here at Harriet, which I have enjoyed reading immensely. I very much enjoy this blog, not only for the great posts and discussions and the things it gets me thinking about vis a vis writing, but also because it introduces me, via the rotating sequence of bloggers, to writers whose work I wasn't always very familiar with. If those writers' posts are smart and funny and patient and generous and compelling (phew!) I usually end up seeking out their work. I did so with you, and am really glad I did. I think I googled your name with the word "poem" and the link (http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_archive.html) (one must scroll down) I ended up clicking on contained your really smart and complex answers to some difficult (at least difficult to inhabit) questions like: "Does having strong political values and strong aesthetic values cause conflicts in your poetry?" and "You are a poet and a critic. How closely are poetry and criticism related for you and your writing in both genres?"

Plus, you also said: "I imagine that it sucks to be “a big plastic bucket full of frogs at the market” " which would have won me over if I hadn't been already. I'm really looking forward to reading your book Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight.

Re: your surprise that no one replied to those posts you had prepared that you thought would be the most generative--your "My Favorite Poetry Readings" posts--it *is* kind of surprising. I follow many of the comments threads here and it does often seem like people are most compelled to write in when they want to argue, not when they want to express agreement or enthusiasm. (I was once or twice guilty of this myself--and then I was really embarrassed and like, "why am I being such a bitch about this blogger's take on the lyric I? I certainly wouldn't argue this way in person!" (Then I sincerely apologized to Ange :-) , and stopped posting under a pseudonym (which doesn't (and who cares) make my identity any more discernible or important but somehow makes me feel more accountable for/ aware of what I say. Minding my manners as mama would say.)

For the record, my favorite poetry readings--if I think about that, I tend for some reason to think in terms of poetry readings that were the least disappointing. So many times I feel like I have attended readings by poets whose work I just adore, and then the poet's voice or the way they read ruins the poems--sometimes the way a poet reads just does their poems a complete disservice, and though I still love the poems I feel really disappointed. So that is why in order to answer your question I am in part thinking in terms of least disappointing... But actually I can think of two readings that I saw in the last couple years that I really loved and that were really important to me. The first one would be a reading by Jim Galvin, from his book X--I was already a J.G. fan but had not yet read that book, and from the moment he finished reading the first poem in the book, "Little Dantesque," my head was a hive. Here is a little more than the first stanza:

It turns out
The dogs were in control all along.

Hard by the hinges of Hell--
A faculty party.

Everyone drifts
in their disastrous bodies.

Sudden furniture,
A hint of eucalyptus.

Someone plugs in the flowers.

1.

I've been a has-been.
Now I'm a was. I was
Promoted.

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I guess I partly love that reading best because it introduced me to this book, X, which I still can't get over, which lives in that stack of books on the desk that goes with me anywhere I'm going longer than a month. The books you really live with. I think it's the best book of poetry I've read for years and years.

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I really loved a reading I saw that was part of a DVD series I can't recall the name of, in which Kevin Davies participated, and I remember thinking his reading--and his way of talking about writing, too--was every bit as funny, smart, searing, and beautiful as his book Comp., which also lives in that little stack of books I just mentioned. Another book I never got over.

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I'd really love to attend a reading by Anne Carson.

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Thanks for all the time, thought, and energy you put in here at Harriet. Bon courage!

Anne Carson will be reading in Chicago for the Poetry Foundation on November 1st; details here!

Thanks, Ashley. Discovering new poets and poetries has been the most rewarding aspect of Harriet for me as well. I appreciate the time you spent reading my posts.

I am still kicking myself for losing the name of young man I saw read in town...

Open mics - are like car grills on which are smashed the regular bugs and sometimes, an exotic one, but it's dead..lost to the wind.