In honor of our visiting friends, Mika and PR, and their recent nuptuals, we decided to title our most recent summer event "Honeymoon in Detroit." I met the happy couple when we were in the MFA program at the University of Arizona together. These last few years they have been refining their skills at being crazy-good at home renovation, and were more than happy to share their gifts with the house.
I wasn't even sure if I had the energy to plan another event, but as I watched my friends sweat, and as we started to have so much fun exploring the city and as the living room and a stairway got coats of some tastefully chosen colors, I got to thinking... what's one last push of creative energy? All it really takes to throw a successful event are talented people and a trip to Trader Joes. What with my photojournalist/blogging dad around, we figured that even if it was just us at the reading, there'd be enough for an entertaining evening.
Before I'd left Tucson, a fellow of the literary foundation Cave Canem gave me the contact info of a bunch of Detroit poets. Because Detroit is such a magical place, and I really mean this, I'd actually met a few of them already out in the small world. By accident. When I shot out emails, everyone, whether we'd bumped into one another or not, was enthusiastic about attending. Some told a friend or two to come, so we had a healthy crowd. Add to that my sister, my journalism majoring neice, my neighbor Rosie, this awesome photographer Stephen, and an MFA friend who just moved to Ann Arbor for law school, and you've got yourself an event.
There is always a moment before one of these shindigs, usually when I'm on my way to buy wine and cheese, when I think "OK hold it together Aisha. You can do a little chit chat for a couple of hours. Just get yourself a cup of wine and you'll survive." But as soon as these friend-strangers started showing up, I got that happy feeling in my stomach. Before I knew it the evening was in competition with some of the best I've had. Nandi was on the couch telling me about a Connecticut artist's residency to model ours after... Blair had these awesome blue shoes... don't get me started on Darryl's pants. I wanted to marry them all.
Then we started reading. The SHEER QUALITY of the work was... sheer. Oh goodness. Cave Canem doesn't let in anything that looks like average, I'll tell you that. And my old grad school friends blew me away anew. It's always refreshing to hear fresh material from people you thought you had pegged-- even if you'd pegged them as brilliant. This may sound like a love fest, but the reading was called Honeymoon, and I am not exaggerating at all. Not this time.
Blair, a fellow with the African diaspora-themed journal Callaloo (which had the Cave Canem folks jealous if you want to know what prestige looks like) read--nay, shouted!-- from his book of poems on Michael Jackson, Moonwalking. He has a slam history, so the room came alive with that satisfying je ne sais quoi that happens when a slammy delivery meets an academic aesthetic. (If you don't know what I mean don't assume I'm casting aspersions at either genre, really... there's just this beautiful balance...) Nandi read a poem about a woman who died in a Detroit fire that had the whole room going "Unh." Josh read what I must ineptly describe as an ode to his mother's immigration from Peru, that practically got a standing ovation. By the time Erika's car got stolen outside (I wish I were joking), we were all old friends.
When it comes to readings, I've become a real fan of strictly enforced time limits, and my sister Lisa decided to take this task on with gusto. For a lot of long, juicy reasons, I haven't spent a lot of time with my sister until the last few years, and it turns out she is... hilarious doesn't do her justice. Sharp doesn't either. She's like Detroit... you have to see for yourself to understand. Her gentle reminders, impromptu Q and A's, and unsolicited but entirely necessary ending remarks yanked our little gathering into order and laughter and style.
The whole car incident left us all feeling a bit smacked around by the rougher edges of a city we love to romanticize. It forced us to reconsider and perhaps take more deeply to heart some of the more hopeful lines read during the course of the evening about the state of affairs in this city, which teaches residents -- new, old and returning-- every day a new lesson about beauty and strength and loss and community. And humor. Oh! And love. Uh oh... cue the photograph of the young black boy wading through the water off Belle Isle in the shadow of a cityscape...
No comments:
Post a Comment