I found out today I had two new poems accepted by The Battered Suitcase. I’m very excited for those poems to be forthcoming.
I have new poems out. One poem came out in June in the online journal Blood Lotus. Three poems came out in the online journal WTF PWM earlier this month.
As usual, I’ve been teaching dance, and I feel lucky to be working with so many talented dancers this summer, especially in my repertory class.
On July 9th, I was one of the readers in the Arena Wisconsin Poetry Festival. The reading was held in the evening in a gorgeous barn and featured such a wide variety of poets that I think there were surprises for everyone who attended. I'm glad I got to be a part of it.
Edgewood just did an article/profile on me- artsandsciences.edgewood.edu -if you want to check it out. I feel grateful to have studied writing with Matthew Guenette for two semesters before transferring to Edgewood.
In June, I visited my friend Ria Misra in DC. One of the days I was there we went to some of the Smithsonian Museums. At the Hirshhorn, I really enjoyed the Yves Klein exhibition. The space was filled with paintings and sculptures by the artist. Videos of Klein and his “living brushes” performance art events were projected on a blank wall. The videos were almost life size which made me better understand the impact of the work.
What was bizarre to me was not Klein’s work, but the fact that besides Ria and I, there were only two museum goers at the Klein exhibition the whole time we were there. While I’m not sure exactly how long we were there, we certainly savored the exhibition. The other two patrons were there for only a couple of minutes. They were quiet and respectful, but zoomed right through it. With the exception of a couple of security guards, Ria and I had the exhibition all to ourselves for longer than I think anyone would ever have guessed was possible.
In sharp contrast to this, at the National Museum of Natural History’s National Gem and Mineral Collection, crowds of people swarmed around the displays which made the pace to view the minerals and especially the gems uncomfortably slow. I wasn’t sure at first how to feel when a thick crowd was circled around the Hope Diamond. It seemed so anticlimactic to me and yet tourists brought their sweaty faces near the glass case to take picture after picture. While there were some stunning pieces there, I was far more taken with Klein’s work at the Hirshhorn. Of course, if someone were to present me with the Hope Diamond I would accept it. Curse and all.
