An exellent reading last night at DvA. Good poets and a great time. Even a fairly decent crowd. But god, it reminds me how much I hate Lincoln Park every time I go down there. Two years during grad school was quite enough. While I love the look of the neighborhood, it's oldworld streetscapes and the abundance of trees, the annoying people seem to have gotten younger and even more plastic than seven years ago. Overtanned, over siliconed, underdressed girls with ridiculous little pink purses roaming up and down Lincoln Ave. from one bad music blasting bar to another. I was used to the jogging, latte-drinking, babystrollering, suv crowd back then, but I'm sure alot of them have made hastily for the suburbs these days. Or maybe they just never seemed so young back then. Every once in a while a porch collapses during one of their parties and does a few of them in. I consider this a form a natural selection.
I wound up reading from belladonna in the first 10 minute segment, and then newer stuff and a couple of poems from The Archaeologist's Daughter in the second. Gave away a couple of chapbooks to people who had already bought one of the older ones previously. Didn't sell any, but then I figured I might not. It's strange, but the more poets and people from the local "scene" the less I sell, and the more non-poets and other sorts of writers the more I end up getting rid of. Like the Poetry Center in October of the CPL thing last month. Random audience members who seem to like and buy. Of course, money may have much to do with it--us poet types not being much on the expendable cash. And I've never sold many at readings in general anyway--mostly online and mostly through poems people have seen in online publications. I've been considering cutting another print run of Bloody Mary, of which I'm down to a measly two copies. I'm thinking I have a couple pieces that might fit well that I've yet to stick anywhere else, so perhaps a second, revised printing is in order so I can clean up my shabby lay-out job on the original. And I was never keen on the flimsiness of the cover stock and have my eye on something sturdier. But I think I'll only do 25 or so this time. Between all the dgp chaps and my own, I'm tripping over enough stuff as it is.
