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Open Books: Event Archive
March 20, 2007 07:30 PM
KATE GREENSTREET & JANET HOLMES
Kate Greenstreet, an Ahsahta Press author, and Janet Holmes, the
director of Ahsahta Press, join us to read from their recently published
collections. Ms. Greenstreet's case sensitive ($16) is a dreamlike and
fragmented narrative, laced with voices and ideas. Her sources are varied
(Lorine Niedecker, John le Carré, Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History,
for example); her images striking -- "It's the size / of a pea, that moment.
// If we could / go there now -- / reconstruct the room with our hands.."
Ranging in style from spare to lyrical to prosy, her work is grounded yet
mysterious -- "Things go together because they are together. / It's a
challenge to the spirit that cleans the spirit."
The title of Janet Holmes's new collection is f2f, ($20 University
of Notre Dame), cyberspace shorthand for "face to face" and a tantalizing
hint of the writing within. Sight, relationships, the body and its isolation
are among the volume's realms, examined with verve, precision, and breadth.
Our ultra-contemporary world of instant messaging is vividly presented, but
here, too, are 19th century Emily Dickinson and the ancient mythological
characters Echo and Narcissus, Orpheus and Eurydice. The connection and
separation between writer and reader is invoked as well. In the poem "Gist"
she writes, "they have no bodies to each other / they have words // each has
the words of the other's body // the dark between them the same dark / as
between stars // & almost as much of it."
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