“And language? Rhythms/of echo and interruption?/that’s/a way of breathing.” wrote Denise Levertov, who lived the last part of her life at the south end of Lake Washington, with a view of and poems about Mt. Rainier. Her poem title, “Looking, Walking, Being” pretty much sums it up for me – alive on the move.
And language. And Kaveh Akbar last night, first SAL Poet of the season read at Hugo House. We watched remotely, still feeling unsafe in crowds. He celebrated the Bushwick Book Club composer/violist/singer Alex Guy and past Youth Poet Laureate and author of “Motherland” Bitaniya Giday, as his first on-stage act, so that I liked him from the get-go. He read from “Pilgrim Bell”, his second book, stretching a leg back, lifting up on his toes so that he loomed high above the mic, twirling his amazement of thick dark hair. He conjured, sang, lamented, pled, questioned, in English and the Farsi he said he does not speak, magical and affecting. Not affected. I will never think of the punctuation mark the period at the end of a sentence in the same way. Did I mean to declare? Demand through imperative?