Thursday, October 4, 2007

Michael Dumanis' reading: a postmortem

Thanks to everyone--students and faculty--who came to the reading a couple nights ago by Michael Dumanis. He is a virtuosic writer whose poems bloomed in the hearing of them.

Some memorable moments:

*Michael asked, toward the end, whether people wanted to hear a poem about sex or death. The audience answered, sex. Someone said, "what's the difference?" Then he proceeded to read a poem called "Cancer Is a Disease of Animals..."

*Line that got the biggest laugh:
"I had two options at the movie theater:
1) Footage of people being blown to pieces
2) Footage of people being blown"

*Runner-up:
"She was like a headless Mary,
but with a head."

*Paula McLain wondered whether he was throwing down hendecasyllabics. Dumanis said he thought of them as amphibrachs: as in "u/u", or " I'll love you forever."
One of those lines: "our fibromyalgia our chronic nostalgia"

*A line I find myself repeating: "The heart is a construct I cobble together from outtake to outtake"

*A line I wish I'd written: "My, what incredible gods breathe inside us."

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