Chile

Saturday's poetry event co-sponsored by PEN and the Poetry Society, the oldest poetry organization in America, showcased five poets from four continents reading selections of their poetry to a small crowd in the intimate Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club near Grammercy Park in Manhattan. Of little to note other than the poetry itself, I have included some poems from each author in the order that they presented their works during the course of the night. Have a read and click on their names under the "panelist's bio" section to read more from each of these amazing authors. 

Somewhere I had read (or at least I think I had read) that Neruda preferred that his poetry be read aloud. And why not? Poets throughout time, from Homer to Emerson, wrote poetry to be read to an audience, and for the audience to read out loud in the quiet of their homes or in lonely moments in nature. Previously I have read Neruda’s Selected Poems aloud, as well as collections by Gary Snyder, A.E. Housman, Allen Ginsberg, some ancient Greeks, and the poems occasioned upon in places like The New Yorker, World Literature Today, and other periodicals. There’s just something about forcing the words (and their underlying rhythms) into the vacant air.

A “true masterpiece” said Vanguardia about this novel. It must be the case that Vanguardia doesn’t get out to the bookstores that often, because for me Distant Star is consistently less than stellar. It is not an entire disaster: the story is book-ended by twenty exciting pages on either side. But for the most part, the middle of the book sagged under its own boring weight. Many of the sentences just zipped past my eyes, like cockroaches skittering across dirty floors. I know what I saw, but couldn’t tell you what I read.