Reading with a Student

I read tonight at Cornelia Street Cafe, with my student, Talia Boylan, who was part of the Middle School Poets' Circle I led. Now a high school sophomore, she gave a beautiful and hypnotic reading, her first outside of school. Kat Georges, the host of the evening, pronounced it "professional." Of the eight poems she read, my favorite is the ekphrastic poem "Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly," written after Mary Cassatt's painting. It is a poem that I would have been proud to write myself.

I read two sequences "What We Call Vegetables" and "Seven Studies for a Self Portrait," both inspired by challenges that the Poets' Circle set for itself. It was a delight to see many friends in the audience, Eric, Wendy, Orlando and Ana, his fiance, Naomi, Sunu, Betsy, Sarah, Amy, Angelo and Iris Berman. I sold five books and traded one.

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