Amy King - SUNY Adirondack Writers Project, March 6

It seems strange that I have never heard the NYC poet Amy King read, but here she was up in Queensbury, NY at SUNY Adirondack as part of that school’s Writers Project, so I decided to make the trip, perhaps see some North Country friends, & add Amy King’s photos to my collection. The reading was held in the Visual Arts Gallery of Dearlove Hall, where I’ve been for the annual 100 Thousand Poets for Change. She was introduced by sister poet, publisher & professor Nancy White.

Amy began by talking about her current project of a memoir/hybrid form, about her struggles to find a way to do it, an “organizing principle.” She described her fascination with Gertrude Stein’s portraits, her own appropriation of that technique & deciding on an over-riding theme, in a word, “queerness.” As an example she read a draft of a section titled “Context” about her 1st therapist, TV shows, such as The Hulk, The A-Team, Mr. T., as a defense growing up with a mother who was a neurotic hoarder, as well as about her more "normal" grandmother & later becoming gay.

From there she read a mixed-bag of poems, some in manuscript, some from her book The Missing Museum. Her poems were wandering, discursive, often theoretical (or as she described it “theoretically romantic”) as in “The Wind is a Wandering Moon” with its party scene of pick-up lines & dancing, or “Whoever Says the Are Weird are Not Normal” which was a vision of New Jersey, rambling, personal, & just too much thinking. A couple poems involved her dogs, 2 long-haired Chihuahuas. The poem “Understanding the Poem” went on for pages, often clever navel-gazing, which she didn’t seem know how to end.

Her final piece was another draft from the memoir project this section titled “Queer & Present Danger.” Ultimately I didn’t understand her ambivalence & agonizing about the style of her memoir since her poems seemed to be the kind of ruminating about herself & the world around her that she seemed to want to do in her memoir. But then I had to leave before any discussion about this issue, as I was off to meet a friend for coffee & more talk about poetry.

Apparently there are a couple more poets coming in to SUNY Adirondack before the semester ends so if you are in the area perhaps you can check the school's website for the names & dates.