Last night I attended the last of four Red Hen Press readings in New York, and it was outstanding.  (I went to the first reading as well–Friday night at KGB Bar–which was also wonderful.)  Being relatively new in town, I hadn’t yet been to the venue, The Cornelia Street Cafe, but it was charming.  I will definitely be back — they have stuff going on there every night, much of which is poetry-related or jazz, another favorite genre of mine, so it’s well worth the travel time for me.

All of the readers were excellent, but the one who stood out the most was Laure-Anne Boesselaar.  She knocked my socks off with the single, long poem she read, the name of which escapes me, but it was a poem that wove together a train ride to New Jersey from NYC and the speaker’s early childhood in a convent school and how much she longed for her mother.  The poem spoke to me in so many ways.  I believe it’s from her most recent book A New Hunger, which you can bet I’ll be acquiring posthaste.  I have the feeling I’m going to be very touched and inspired by her work.