Audio of Moe's Reading/Poem for Lynne Knight/The Poetic Character

Second Reading At Moe's Books in Berkeley

I really enjoyed reading (my second here) with Lynne Knight at Moe's in Berkeley March 25th. Check out the following link at which you can listen to us read. Click on "listen to Ed Coletti" and you'll first hear Owen Hill introduce me. Then I'll begin, and, I recommend, in the interest of time that you pull the button about a third of the way through the reading to where I really begin picking up some steam. Here's the link with photos, bios, and audio.

Poem For Lynne Knight

I don't recall whether or not I've previously shared this here.

After a Reading About Her Mother

It’s not that I hear my conscience chiding.
I do.
It’s not about all those times
people didn’t approach me after a reading.
It is.

Not that her time spent with her dying
demented mother wasn’t moving.
Not that the child in me is too shy
or that in her vulnerability
I see my ego wanting more
than she or I or any audience can deliver.

Her poetry has rocked me speechless.
I’m not ashamed that I have no words to give her
except some day this poem.

And if tonight that’s only self-importance
then at my next reading
when no one tells me that I’ve moved them
I’ll remember Lynne Knight and how not speaking to her
freed me from my greediness for praise.

The Poetical Character

"John Keats wrote that the poetical character 'is not itself— it has no self— it is every thing and nothing— It has no character— it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.' And thus 'a Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity— he is continually in {forming} and filling some other Body.' " (Peter Ackroyd in Shakespeare: The Biography)

...A cardinal
Passes like a flying tulip, alights and nails the green day
Down...

(Phillip Schuyler in Hymn to Life)

2008 Marin Poetry Festival - May 14-18 - including May 18th reading by Robert Bly, Eavan Boland, and Jane Hirshfield at Dominican College in San Rafael.

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