Last Wednesday night, I had the pleasure of seeing Robert Fanning read from his debut, The Seed Thieves, and Carolyn Maun read from her debut, The Sleeping. This was at Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor and was to a decent sized crowd in the range of 40 or so people - not bad for two debut poets on a Wednesday night (it was the night, after all, that the final episode of Lost for nearly 3 months would appear on television).
Caroline read first, noting that she had worked for about five years on the poems in The Sleeping. She read:
- Girl in Before a Mirror - which was inspired by a postcard of the painting by Picasso with the same name
- On the Difficulty of Every Day - which came from her online relationship with her ex-husband, back before he became her ex-husband
- On Line Dating - with the great line, "His approximate grasp of basic writing"
- Travelling as Lightly as Possible - I took no notes during this poem
- The Sleeping - Evolving from her experience as a sixteen year old when she awoke, all alone in her home - that is, recovering from a rape experience. She later found out there were three reactions to danger - fighting, running, or sleeping through it.
- I Was Failing Math and Just Sixteen - a very powerful sestina hybrid with usage of repetition and varying emphasis levels
- Thanatos - a poem about poetry that I am not sure if I've spelled the title of correctly
- Faceless - Caroline taught at a predominantly Black college in Maryland for six years and learned more about race and racial issues in those six than in her previous 30 combined.
These are strong poems about both self and the body, and even if you don't get a chance to catch Caroline reading, make sure to pick a copy of The Sleeping up.
Robert was up next and read a few I had not heard prior to Wednesday, even though it constituted the third or fourth time I've seen him read recently.
- Dying Star - inspired by Robert's reading an article about a theatre actor who had the role of a dead man, whose only scene was near the end of the play, and brief at that
- Failed Existentialist in a Field of Fireflies - Robert's experience after deciding in his 20's there was no God, etc.
- Happiness - Friends had noted to Robert that he had written a string of pretty morose poems, so he wrote Happiness at the top of the page and was determined to write about. Word choice notice - the word SLAB was used by Robert for the second time in three poems
- Pedinkis - Robert's mother's word for penis, as in, okay, wash your pedinkis now. He's hoping to read this aloud often enough to get the word into Webster's
- The Man Who Names Wars - Just like it sounds, and as Robert noted, his war announcing voice is getting better
- 1 1/2 Miles Away From Dying - Robert's imagined happenings in a car with a family of four as they approach what will be the accident that kills them
- The Boy Who Taught Me to Whistle - About Robert's brother, Tom, who as stated, taught him to whistle, and whom also took his own life, sans note, last year. I can't imagine having the courage to write a poem like this, no matter how cathartic, let alone read it to a crowd of friends and strangers.
- Light's Bright Lies - Another one I took no notes during besides the word light. That was handy.
I cannot stress enough that if you live in SE Michigan you need to go out and see Robert Fanning read if you get the chance.
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