Night of Poets

You were probably going to let National Poetry Month slip by with nary a recognition. Shame on you. National Poetry Month might not be comparable with Mardi Gras, but man cannot live on pancakes alone. The Loft offers a trio of Graywolf poets whose concoctions nourish the mind if not the belly. Matthea Harvey's most recent collection, Modern Life, crackles with clever observations and stories. In "New Friends," she compares potato roots with brain synapses. Fanny Howe's poems open with inviting lyricism verging on the pastoral. Throughout, however, she maintains a persistent focus on moral and political imperatives in The Lyrics. In "At Baron's Court," she describes the morning snow before commenting, "A Palestinian flag waves/In this small Irish town/The correspondence being/Children throwing stones." In Elegy, the most intensely personal and intimate of the three collections, Mary Jo Bang bares her grief over her son's death in stark images and spare language. In "No Exit," she sums it up, "What cruel nature wires a brain like this?/To give it pleasure/And then let pleasure make itself a pain?/To say you loved a person./To say that person no longer exists./A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on."
Fri., April 18, 7 p.m., 2008