Chris George, Poetry Reading at Clayton Fine Books, Baltimore, May 18, 2008
Reading went very well. Photographs below... but first a relevant poem!
My Book Is Eaten by Termites
They’ve devoured the words
I sweated over; whoops, there goes
another metaphor
to the little white buggers in our storage,
teeming in an old cardboard box of my books:
a book Picassoed by termites, the title
and cover illustration, Blake’s "Ancient of Days," gone
like vacancies in speech,
my authorship zapped into the ether,
as if my words and name never existed.
They’ve even chomped the spaces
between the words--stolen my very breath;
a red roach big as my thumb scuttles by;
I quit the heaving hive,
email property management,
plan a counteroffensive.
Christopher T. George
Thanks to Mike North for taking a photograph of the framed copy of the termite-eaten book and the other photos. Below is how it should look, and then there's one of the surviving poet!
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"I survived the termite onslaught!" Chris with poet Rosemary Klein at Clayton Fine Books, Baltimore.
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Outside of Clayton Fine Books, Charles Street, Baltimore: the scene of Chris's reading on Sunday, May 18, 2008.
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Ground floor of the bookstore from the upstairs Poets Landing where the reading took place.
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My wife Donna talking to organiser Reginald Harris.
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A copy of Chris's musical "Jack" at the reading.
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Copies of Loch Raven Review that Chris edits along with Jim Doss -- also a glimpse of Chris's War of 1812 book at top.