Discrete Series 5/13/05

Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

An auspicious day for poetry, Anselm Hollo and Chicu Reddy read for the I-lost-count-a-long-time-ago-th installment of the Discrete Series. Reddy's work presented with all of the halting and accentual silences that add to the potency of his quietly enveloping lyricism. His poems are moved by a range of interesting sources, the meditative exercise of imagining the final moment of one's life and successive moments following that, as well as Esperanto as utopian idea. This was the first time I had heard Anselm read, and he rendered wonderfully the tone-shifting charisma his poems emanate from the page. I always like it as an audience member (and series curator) when I get to laugh out loud at readings. Seems like a historically elemental response to language and yet it's a. a relative rarity in much of the work I admire and am able to program b. is certainly a challenge to use humor while also mediating social and political gravities, which Anselm does with great mastery.