Back in August, eight female poets staged a reading of Gertrude Stein's
History or Messages from History, which I covered for the Poetry Foundation website. They've now posted my dispatch, complete with a splenetic title of their own devising: "Women, Gibberish and Prom Dresses." (As it happens, I'm in favor of all three.) In any case, I began this way:
The basement of Manhattan's Cornelia Street Café is a long, narrow space with colored lights dangling from the low ceiling: you feel as though you're in a root cellar with red banquettes. It certainly made for a cozy setting on August 10, when a cadre of female poets wrapped up the Finally with Women marathon with a reading of Gertrude Stein's History or Messages from History. Given the feminist tilt of the festival--which had celebrated Mina Loy, Audre Lorde, Barbara Guest, and Muriel Rukeyser on previous nights--I wondered whether many guys would be in attendance. There were a few, I'm happy to report, including one compulsive shutterbug who observed most of the proceedings through the viewfinder of his digital camera.
You can read the rest
here.
# posted by James Marcus @ 12:20 PM
