Photographs That Haven't Happened

Let me tell you two things that'll get people out on a Tuesday evening: poetry and piano.

I know this because when I got to the Library of Virginia for tonight's installment of Poetic Principles, the room was buzzing with people there for the reading and it's not even poetry month.

Interestingly enough, one of the three readers, Paula Champa, was a fiction writer who shared two sections of her new novel, "The Afterlife of Emerson Tang," the story of four strangers trying to reunite a car's body and engine.

She was humorous, noting that generally writers are not advised to kill off main characters but doing it anyway.

"Our stories collided so forcefully they could not be separated," she read referring to the narrator and Emerson and using the kind of language that had many of the writers in the room nodding in approval of her phrasing.

Emilia Phillips read next and immediately apologized for reading off her laptop, explaining that she had a lot of new work but is in the process of moving back to Richmond, so the easiest way to access the work was digitally.

I have to admit, it doesn't have the same charm as reading from a dog-eared copy of a book or rifling through sheaves of paper, but the important thing was that we got to hear new stuff from her upcoming book, "Ground Speed," comprised, she said of essays and poems or some hybrid of both.

Promising that we might recognize some Richmond landmarks in the numbered essay,"No Man's Land," it was only moments before the intersection of North Lombardy and Brook Road was mentioned.

That's a particularly recognizable landmark for me because it's the Budget Inn there that is the turnaround point for one of my regular walks, although she referenced "bodies wheeled out of the Budget Inn" and I can't say I've ever seen that.

"A quarter plinks into the jukebox of my heart." she read in one especially well-turned phrase.

She told of being a child of four and a Baptist minister asking if she were to die today, would she go to heaven or hell. "My Mom doesn't let me go places like that by myself," she read.

Favorite line: "We're always leaving language, our most transient dwelling."

I've heard Emilia read before and I'll undoubtedly hear her again because of her pithy observations about the world and her place in it.

Our final reader was Joshua Poteat and right off the bat, he admitted he was not good at preparing, so he liked to bring a lot of poetry and a stopwatch and "hope I stop at the right moment."

But you can't sop till you start and he began with "Nostalgia of the Finite," a poem he'd written in graduate school back in the dark ages of the '90s. Wasn't that right after Guttenberg invented the printing press?

He read from an eBay copy of one of his books which he'd bought used from the Daniel Boone Library and entreated us not to support the Daniel Boone Library.

Admitting that he'd intended to read some happy poems until he realized he really didn't have any, instead he read "Death of the Death of Youth," with the beautiful line, "The noise of time is not sad."

For a long time, he said he'd avoided telling the truth in his poetry but now that it felt to him that his neighborhood of Church Hill was losing its authentic feeling - "Instead of hearing gunshots, you see chicken wings from the Roosevelt," he lamented- he was more inclined to be brutally honest.

That had led to "Department of Aerial Photography," also known as "Death Map," an interactive project that showed a map of the area where he grew up and when you clicked on a location, his words came up.

"Every photograph is a disaster that's already happened," he read. So true.

"Letter to Gabriel Written in the Margins of Murder Ballads" was a very long piece that paid tribute to Gabriel Prosser, the woman in his neighborhood who lived in her Oldsmobile on Leigh Street and Woo Woo, the neighborhood prostitute, in a a winding, storytelling manner.

Best line: "When the highways came, the houses didn't know enough to be afraid."

His stopwatch must have told him it was the right moment because all at once, he announced, "That's all!" and the reading ended. How beautifully poetic is that?

Next up was the sundown concert series so I made my way to a favorite pocket park for music in the grass. The series began last year and I'd enjoyed many summer evenings listening to music while the sun set.

See, that's key. The shows always begin 15 minutes before sundown, meaning a different start time every week and way different in May than September.

With a few scattered raindrops falling, I arrived to find the poet lounging with some friends, so after giving her a proper hard time for not attending the reading I'd just come from, we moved over to the enclosed grassy park.

I found a bench with a good vantage point and she joined some friends on a blanket. That was the preferred mode of concert watching tonight - stretched out on colorful blankets around the park- and I saw lots of familiar faces playing park blanket bingo with pizza, wine and other delectables.

At the front of the park sat the unlikeliest of sights, an upright piano under a tree. Before long, I noticed organizer Patrick lighting a candle to put on top of the piano.

Now the mood was set.

Chrijs Dowjhan, tonight's pianist, is a multi-talented man. He's a baker and cook, a teacher and hiker, fluent in Italian and seasoned with summers working at Italian vineyards. Plus he's an all around nice guy.

"I'm not really prepared tonight. I love Patrick," he said of the man who'd asked him to play. "Patrick is reliably unreliable, so when he asked me to play, I said sure, when you get a piano in the park, I'll play. I never really thought he would."

Then Chrijs sat down under the tree, in front of the piano, to play original music and adaptations he'd been working on the past few years.

I'd seen Chrijs play at the Listening Room last March and that had been my first clue what he could do with the ivories.

As he began playing, a gentle breeze picked up and before long, the enormous wind chimes hanging nearby began adding their distinct sound to Chrijs' dynamic one.

As he played, the crowd sat rapt and newcomers continued to arrive and find a place just outside the grassy area or among the other yard sitters. No one was talking, just listening.

"I'm not that prolific," he said after huge applause. "So I only have a few more songs. This next song I love to close my eyes and go some place else."

If the composer can, why not the audience, so I closed my eyes and allowed his playing to take me to another place.

When the audience began clapping enthusiastically, a neighborhood dog joined in, barking along with the applause.

The last piece of the night came with a story about how it came to be. Chrijs was in Italy, waiting for the farmer to come back and killing time with a Russian also staying there.

The Russian began writing poetry, Chrijs the music and while copious amounts of estate wine were consumed every night, they brought forth an exquisite composition we got to hear under a darkening sky tonight.

Interestingly enough, he stopped at one point, unsure of the music, before restarting. "What's up with you guys? You're making me nervous," he said, uncharacteristically flustered.

He had to be over-thinking it. So he let his mind go and his fingers took over the thinking and the piece was finished to hollers and a long round of applause.

He took a bow and Patrick sent us on our way with a mission.

"This isn't about me, it's about you guys, it's about all of us! Tell your friends about this series," Patrick called out. "Be ambassadors for what we're doing here. It's every Tuesday night until it's too cold to be out here anymore."

There's so much summer ahead of us. It's enough to make you want to just close your eyes and listen to the poetry and the music until it's the right moment to stop.

No over-thinking allowed in the meantime.

The Poetry of the Plural Pronoun

I am a sucker for a man who writes poetry.

In a perfect world, he would write poetry to me, about me, inspired by me, but I can't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

So instead, I go off to hear poets read to me.

Tonight Poetic Principles was hosting Pulitzer prize-winning poet Charles Wright (!) along with Ellen Bryant Voigt, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer prize for poetry.

The room was uncharacteristically packed and I saw several poets I knew, although not a one who might be inclined to get poetic about me.

Ah, well.

Everything Voigt read was from her new book, much of which had to do with life in Vermont and contained an element of sly humor.

After reading a poem called "Moles," she cracked, "If you have any good solutions for getting rid of moles, let me know."

From "Bears" came a favorite line: "The plural pronoun is a dangerous proposition."

After her last poem, she said, "It's such a great pleasure to get to read with Charles Wright.

From his front-row seat, Wright piped up, "I've decided not to read." The room cracked up.

It was the ideal introduction for a man who balanced understated poems of yearning and acknowledgement with bursts of humor.

His "Appalachian Farewell" got him reminiscing about back in the '40s and '50s having to leave Tennessee to get beer because he lived in a dry county.

"Bedtime Story" included the evocative line, "The forest begins to gather its silences in."

A poem about a '49 Ford, "Appalachian Dog" referred to the car as "a major ride" in 1952 and referenced "Les Paul and Mary Ford records broken in half."

Not long after, Wright peered up and observed, "I can't remember when I came up here. I may read forever."

I don't think anyone in the room would have minded if he had. Okay, maybe the library security people, but certainly no one in that room.

Next he said he'd read some six-line poems. "I fell into writing six-line poems on my way to writing three-line poems. If you can't write a poem in three lines, just get out."

Intentional pause.

"I can't do it."

What he could do was write six-line poems beautifully and we heard several, one with the memorable line, "Empathy is only a one-way street."

Concluding a poem using the words ultimate and penultimate, he said, "I swore on my ancestors' graves in graduate school that I'd never use that word - penultimate."

Throwing his arms out, he quipped, "So sue me."

In "Road Warrior," he wrote, "Roadside flowers drove us to distraction."

Getting near the end, he said, "I've got just two more. One is 40 pages." The man was hilarious.

He closed with the appropriately-titled "Lullaby," with the lovely line, "I've said what I had to say as melodiously as I could."

A poetry lover couldn't ask for any more.

Well except for a man to be melodious about her, but I'm not dead yet.

Leaving the reading, I stepped into the elevator finding a poet I knew, a poetry lover I knew and the woman who sponsors the poetry series.

I wasn't surprised to see any of them.

The poet cocked his head and asked, "Karen, were you at Frightened Rabbit in Charlottesville last night?"

Color me surprised. I hadn't seen anyone I knew.

"I saw you from across the room and then I lost sight of you, but I thought for sure it was you," he explained.

Once down in the garage, we spent five minutes geeking out about how much we'd enjoyed the show (he'd even seen them last month opening for the National in Asheville).

Leaving poetry behind, I went to the Grace Street theater for some direct cinema, a term with which I was not familiar.

Turns out it's the American equivalent of France's cinema verite.

The VCU Cinematheque series was showing the 1968 Maysles brothers pseudo-documentary, "Salesman."

It was the story of four actual door-to-door bible salesmen from Boston who sold high-end, illustrated bibles to poor Catholic families.

Because it was made in '68, the stereotyping was rampant (the Irish were "mickeys") as was the cigarette smoking.

The film starts in the suburbs of Boston before the four salesmen head to Miami to sell down there.

The Florida landscape manages to be cliched, depressing and vaguely art deco at the same time.

Waitresses wear white uniforms (with giant flowers), women at a sales conference in Chicago all have bouffants and sexism is rampant.

"My wife wants to buy a bigger house and have two more kids, so I gotta earn more money," one says.

The fact that the film is a documentary makes it fascinating for the random moments they capture.

One salesman is completely out of his element in Florida - getting lost in cul de sacs with names like Sesame Street and Ali Baba Avenue, not making sales- and he sings "If I Were a Rich Man" whenever he gets nervous in the car.

At one point, depressed and frustrated at his lack of success, he turns on the car's radio and "This Land is Your Land" is on. A scriptwriter couldn't have dreamed up a better song for the moment.

In another scene, he goes up to a house to knock on the door and there's a baby in a high chair on the front porch. Not another person in sight.

When he knocks, the mother answers the door, says she's not interested and closes the door on him.

Her baby is still on the front porch. WTF?

Again, a writer couldn't have conceived of such an unlikely occurrence and yet there it was.

There was a scene where the salesman is trying to sell a couple a bible and the man jumps up and says he got a new Beatles album, putting it on his giant console stereo.

A lush string arrangement of "Yesterday" blares into the room.

This isn't the actual Beatles, this is some schmaltzy orchestral cover and it continues to play, almost drowning out the salesman's spiel.

During the discussion afterwards, we learned that the Maysles brothers shot 200 hours of film and edited down to 90 minutes, a process which took two years.

We spent a lot of time discussing how all that editing effectively turned a work of non-fiction into a fictional piece with documentary elements.

Likewise, I'm sure there's a whole lot of editing that goes into creating a poem, whether six lines or 40 pages.

Not an issue. Should I ever find a poet, he can take as much time as he needs to say what he has to say about me as melodiously as he can.

I shall gather my silences in and work on not driving him to distraction.

To Live This Life

Almost back in the saddle again, with only an occasional reach back.

Things got rolling at the Library of Virginia for Poetic Principles, a reading by Joshua Poteat and Henry Hart.

Arriving in the Library of Virginia garage, it was just me and one other woman and the parking attendant knew nothing of a poetry reading.

In the elevator going upstairs, we wondered if we'd both gotten the wrong date.

It seemed unlikely.

She introduced herself ("Hi, I'm Carol") as we took the elevator up.

Fortunately, there was a poetry reading when we got there, but we were the only attendees.

I've been an audience of one before, so I have no problem being an audience of two.

Eventually others arrived, meaning Carol and I had not been mistaken.

Best line overheard as I sat waiting for the reading to begin?

"Ever hear of the singer Elliot Smith?" a 20-something guy asks of a girl entranced by her phone. "He sang really sad songs."

Nope, she replied, going back to her phone.

Silly me, I'd have thought Elliot Smith would have been a terrific conversation-starter at a poetry reading.

Eventually Josh Poteat began the reading by thanking us for coming rather than going to the Byrd Theater for author Tom Robbins and a screening of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

I've heard him read before (in fact, I have one of his lines of poetry etched into a piece of collaged wood hanging over a doorway), but he was reading new stuff tonight.

He dedicated "Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature" about the strange names given Puritan children by their crazed parents (favorite line: "Make sweet what's given") to his wife.

From there, he spoke of a project where his inspiration came from the city of Richmond and the 1900 Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Wonderful imagery arose from poems with departmental names.

"Department of Telescopes" provided, "There in the night orchard of the clumsy city."

Oh, but we can be such a clumsy city sometimes.

In "Department of Taxidermy" came, "When there is another darkness, I'll admit it."

Between poems, it occurred to him that this was not a feel-good kind of reading.

"These are kind of bummer poems," he confessed. "Richmond isn't as bad as these poems make it sound."

Actually, Richmond is pretty cool if you ask me. Not perfect, but better all the time.

He introduced "Department of Masonry" by saying, "This poem begins with death metal bands and ends with me pouting in the backyard."

If that isn't the defining range of a whole generation of men, I don't know what is.

Best line: "It isn't enough, but I'll take what I can get."

About an unfinished poem concerning his obsession, the slave Gabriel Prosser, Poteat admitted, "This poem could be 120 pages long and that's a bad sign."

What was good were lines like, "The houses didn't know enough to be afraid" and "Help me, moonlight."

In "Department of Hymnals," we heard, "The night has used itself up" and "There's nothing I won't do to live this life."

I am particularly taken with the passion of the latter line.

Just before starting "Lighting Department," he said, "Thanks for coming and I hope I will see all of you again someday."

My guess would be at the next poetry reading.

Next up was Henry Hart who referred to Carol, the woman I had met in the garage, as "the guardian angel of poets."

Turns out Carol was Carol Weinstein, she who funds the series Poetic Principles and supports residencies for poets to work.

You know, that Carol.

Hart began with what he called an old poem, "A Gift of Warblers" about the art project he'd made for his grandfather who was always supportive of his poetic leanings.

"Janet Morgan and the Moon Shot" was about the moon landing in 1969 and had the line, "Discovering grace still depended on shifting weight."

"Mystery Play: November 22, 1963" was about his performance anxiety at being in the school musical when he couldn't sing.

"You know how some teachers like to torture students?" he said as if it were fact.

I didn't but he's a teacher, so I took his word for it.

Best line: "His face had hardened to a ridgeless nickle."

I've seen the ridgeless nickel look and it's not one I want directed my way.

A poem about his mother's occasional need to escape her three sons was called "Independence Day" with the line, "All summer she dreamed of storms."

"I doubted everything but luck" came from "Crossing the Gobi Desert Summer 1900," a poem about days lost crossing the desert.

When he finished reading, he offered to take questions, but none were forthcoming, so we scattered like crows.

I decided to go east to the Roosevelt for dinner, arriving to find I was one of scads of people who had made the same decision.

Every table was full, every bar stool was taken and there was a six-top ahead of me waiting for a table.

Even so, Sam Cook's "Chain Gang" was rising above the level of the chattering masses, so I wasn't going anywhere.

Since I had just come from hearing lines like, "Wind droned like bees," I took the drone of chatter for something more appealing and sat down on the waiting bench.

I was perfectly content crowd watching when a server offered to bring me a libation, swearing he had nothing else to do at the moment.

Not long after, a girl at the bar spotted me and reminded me she'd waited on me at Bistro Bobette.

She especially remembered a man I'd come in with, according to her, someone with a very dry British sense of humor, and I had no idea who she meant.

Still, it's always nice to be remembered.

White Hall Cabernet Franc was delivered and sipped until, as if an alarm went off, suddenly tables and bar stools were emptied.

Starving by then, I looked at the menu for new dishes to try, eventually deciding on rice grits, risotto, ham, crab and purple cape beans.

When I placed my order, bartender T. looked at me like I was crazy.

"Really, Karen? Risotto? Didn't you just get back from Italy?"

As I tried to sputter a justification, he went into full placating mode.

"No, no, that's good. You've got to wean yourself off slowly. You're doing the right thing."

I laughed out loud at that, but didn't have the heart to tell him I'd almost ordered the gnocchi as well.

Just as I was finishing the lovely combination of flavors, Chef Lee came out to chide me.

"You went to Italy for two weeks and you come here and order that shit?" he teased, pointing at my empty risotto bowl. "It's not going to be any good."

Of course, it was very good, but I understood his point.

To make peace in the kitchen, I promptly ordered Lee's chicken skin slider with kimchee mayo and pickles, hoping to use southern to knock Italian out of my head.

Kind of like rebound dating after a bad breakup.

As Neko Case's "Favorite" played, I ate fried chicken skin with my fingers, the better to reprogram my brain and taste buds.

That, my friends, is how I replace the pleasures of Italy with those of Richmond.

Poetically speaking, that's the way to make sweet what's been given to me.

Iron & WIne with Poetry

There are many places in RVA to hear poetry and so many different variations that constitute poetry.

After an absence, the Poetic Principles series, for years at the VMFA, returned tonight but at a more fitting location, the Library of Virginia.

To mark the occasion, food and Virginia wine (Chateau Morrisette) were being served.

Although Richmond-born, Kate Daniels, the poet who was reading tonight, acknowledged that she hadn't lived here for thirty years.

She showed her RVA credibility by informing us that her parents had met at a blind date at the Tobacco Parade.

Boy, those were the good old politically incorrect days, huh?

Daniels was an excellent reader and interpreter of her mostly long-form poetry. "Bus Ride" was about Rosa Parks and "A History of Hair" about the Holocaust.

"Genesis 128," about her childhood suspicions of Catholics ("They had a lot of kids so they were having a lot of sex, unlike the Baptists"), contained the line "To anyone walking by, it would have looked like lust."

Speaking of how much she disliked her parents' smoking, she read "Cigarettes and Matches," with the line "I came to fear the little orgy of pleasure that excluded me," referring to her parents' shared vice.

"I am lifted from the stupor of the everyday," came from "Old Pain" about memories of her father smoking and his subsequent illnesses as a result.

"I'm not a very light poet," she told the audience, but followed that with a dash of humor, saying "The dream of every cliche is to make it into a poem" and read "Capitalism" which began with a reference to going to hell in a hand basket.

But as long as there is poetry being written and read, I don't see how that is possible.

Since I had barely over an hour between the reading and the show at the National and they were on adjoining blocks, I wound up eating at Gibson's by default.

Honestly, it was my first meal there pre-concert.

No, really.

The two guys next to me at the bar were also going to the show and were picking halfheartedly at a plate of nachos when I sat down and ordered. They eventually gave up and pushed the half-full plate away.

I wanted to reach over there and help myself; I was amazed that two guys couldn't finish one plate of nachos and said so, but delicately so as not to bruise their male egos.

"We went to Subway before we came here and got nachos," one said sheepishly.

"What? You have to know that guys aren't the smartest people on the planet. Come on, we're guys!"

It wasn't even worth piling on, so I just laughed and changed the topic to music.

Meanwhile, I had the fresh Mozzarella with basil and roasted red peppers and a balsamic reduction and garlic bread, a simple but satisfying supper.

By the time I finished up, it was time to head next door.

I'd heard raves about the Low Anthem from friends and when they came out, a clarinet, an upright bass, keyboard and musical saw, I knew I was in for a treat.

Everyone was a multi-instrumentalist and that's always impressive.

Introducing "Matter of Time" as a love song, they sang "So I feather my nest, See me puffing my chest" in beautiful harmonies with ever-changing instruments.

Unfortunately, the crowd was extremely talkative during their entire set.

"Y'all know Snoop Dog played here last night? How many of you were here? It still smells great backstage!"

My only question would be what does it smell like?

The show was sold out and after Low Anthem's set, that became apparent as bodies closed in around me. I wanted to leave and go get another drink but feared losing my prime space since I had no one but strangers to hold it for me.

Sam Beam came out and said, "It's a treat to be back in Richmond," referring to his years at VCU where he got a degree in painting.

"I've got a lot of in laws here tonight, so everyone act like you like us."

Not sure he had to make that request given the rabid crowd.

Of course, Sam Beam is Iron and Wine, a one-man band. In a teensy-weensy departure from that this evening, he had a ten-piece backing band.

There were backup singers and a horn section and two drummers; it was one-man band madness!

But it made for an incredibly lush sound and some downright beautiful harmonies, so why quibble about the meaning of one?

He wasn't particularly chatty between songs, instead preferring an occasional longer monologue.

He mentioned having walked around Richmond today, barely recognizing the city with all the new development and improvements.

 And naturally he'd gone down to see the river.

At one point he said that his grandfather had worked at a chemical plant in Hopewell.

When the old man learned that Sam and his friends were going swimming down off of Belle Isle, he intoned, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"But I haven't grown any extra appendages," Beam announced with a grin.

Beginning to play again, he amusingly said, "Let's get mellow," as if he'd been anything else.

"For the past few nights, people have been getting jacked up for some mellow, sleepytime music." Clearly he didn't get it, although there was some of that going on tonight.

I find it tough to understand hooting and hollering at Iron and Wine's deeply textured and powerful storytelling.

It's folk, maybe folk rock in places, and the kind of music that washes over you rather than amping you up. It's poetry set to music.

But as I've seen, everyone responds to poetry, whether spoken or sung, in their own way.

 The good news is that as long as poetry is being created, we couldn't possibly be in that collective hand basket to hell.

Not even those among us who aren't the smartest people on the planet.

You know who you are.