Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Jimmy and Elvis Presley walked in a little drunk


Weird. Imagine listening to Joshua Marie Wilkinson reading Frank Stanford. Only, not imagining, but actually listening. Weird. Awesome. Weird.

I've been reading Stanford's poem, "The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You," for about three weeks now. But tonight was the first time I got to hear it read, as well as be heard reading it, aloud. It's a really interesting thing reading this poem in a public place. I kept thinking that the casual passers-by must have thought we were as crazy as Sylvester thinks Francis is. Also, the poem is frequently dusted with the n-word, which made you hate that word even more, as the fear of saying it in such an open forum removed you from the reading and made you nothing more than a crazy white man stumbling over naughty words and naughtier ideas.

A few ideas/words that were dropped: Evil Dead (not Evil Dead 2), Really long Tom Waits song from "Rain Dogs," reverie, terrified, terrifying, we're a 150 pages in and the kids still 12!, and finally, I was hoping to skip over the baby killing.

Here's my "big" thought on "Battlefield" tonight: In a time and place when so much was not possible, it makes sense that everything was probable.

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