As the weather cools down, readings heat up
By Swati Avasthi, Blog Editor
When Peter Johnson introduced his work at a reading he and Nin Andrews gave earlier this week at the University of Minnesota, he told his audience that he hoped we would leave and either stare longingly at each other over our cups of coffee at Starbucks or make good use of our beds. (One of which I did and I won’t tell you which one.) Moving from his poem “Almost Happy� to “Happy� Peter Johnson is a master of using the little moments and little pieces of life to describe one of the hardest things to write about: happiness. The humor he employs in his poems lead us to both laugh and ruminate on the metaphors. Nin Andrews addressed happiness in a way we all can relate to: the power of the orgasms. After reading from her orgasm poems, she told us she would get “less nervy.� But she didn’t. She kept us on the edge by using unconventional, interesting and effective strategies in her poetry that draws the reader so close into the world of the poem that we don’t want to leave.
I have come to believe that the language of happiness is disappearing from our literature and from our speech. I find myself fighting against its gradual and subtle decline in my conversations when I’m trying to describe the simple pleasure of a day gone by when I’ve finished all my work, gotten my kids fed, and am ready to read in bed or in my own writing.
But I was treated to a listening to two distinguished writers challenge my assumption that happiness is disappearing from our language. Look to their work for a simple metaphor, a repeating structure, or the celebration of an orgasm. Read how they guide us to a path that is as rife with conflict as with pleasure. I know that I will be reading and re-reading, studying their prose poems to know more about how to seize and represent moments of pleasure on the page. And I hope you will look for them in our upcoming issue of Dislocate or, of course, between the covers of their books.