Dave, Nicole Peyrafitte, and I had a tremendous evening attending the book release for the collection: A Howling in the Wires edited by Sam Jasper and Mark Folse. The collection covers blogs, poems and stories in response to Hurricane Katrina and the failing of the federal levees in New Orleans. Here's a few photo shots of the readers.
Valentine Pierce got the night off to a tremendous start with her poem "Reluctant Migrants," a poem full of hard truths and moments of levity and joy for all things New Orleans.
Editor and Contributor Mark Folse is seen here reading r. moose jackson's poem "o'neil's lament" since Moose is out and about promoting and staging the great play he wrote: Loup Garou. The poem speaks to the ghosts and the lost of this city as well as to those of us still, "upright" but not "alright."
Toward the end of the reading, after some hard tears and many more laughs; Dr. Jerry Ward took the stage to remind us of the importance of making history with our stories. As always, a true spiritual mentor and beacon of wise words, he cautioned us to take care with our words as we are the ones who must manifest this history, not the news media or those who would generalize and stereotype us.
What a beautiful night and what a beautiful archive of those terrifying and life changing moments in our lives.
To learn more about and purchase this collection, visit http://gallatin-and-toulouse-press.com/shop.html
3 comments:
Thank you (and Dave and Nicole) for coming, and for your incredibly kind words. That was a tremendous event you put on tonight at the Goldmine. All of the readers were fantastic but Nicole Peyrafitte's performance in particular was stunning.
great post! love your blog!
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