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Open Books: Event Archive
February 13, 2007 07:30 PM
REBECCA LOUDON & RON STARR
We are happy to host two poets with books recently published by
Edmonds-based Ravenna Press. Radish King ($13.95) is Rebecca Loudon's
deliciously dark and darkly hilarious collection. Things domestic go
seriously wrong -- "She's ready to go it alone, more than ready / having
tired of and tidied her family, / having sewed her daughter, her son, into
waterproof coats." The poems are dreamily menacing, permeated with a sort of
courtship of threat and sex. "I want to hurt you in a Rock Hudson Doris Day
kind of way." And where else will you find a poem like "Everyone's Favorite
Holiday Suicide: A Letter in which Violet Bick Addresses George Bailey for
the Last Time," ending (we're sorry to give it away, but we're compelled),
"I hope more than anything you just have the courage to jump." She is also
the author of the fever-dreamish book Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters
Home, mentioned in our December 2006 newsletter.
Ron Starr's inventive book, A Map by a Dim Lamp ($12.95), flows from
the belief held by Oulipo, the French experimental writing group, that form
is freeing, and that new forms must constantly be created. Mr. Starr, in
"Luther's Narrow Road," replaces some of the words in Basho's classic haiku
with those from a Martin Luther essay, resulting in poems such as, "An
offense / has settled on a bare Christ -- / autumn evening." Sharp
intelligence, humor, close attention to the details of rhythm and sense, and
a fascination with religious texts allow his writing to spark on various
levels, including the baroque/modern oddness of its structures. Another
example: one section of his "Creation Myths of the Latter Urbanites" starts,
"In the beginning green grass created happiness and envy. The expressways
were without Fords and Volvos, and dusk was upon the fences of the
domiciles...." This promises to be a quirky and dynamic evening.
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