Writer's Alliance of Gainesville Hosts Lola Haskins

Well!

I went to my first poetry reading when I was a teenager, a long time ago.

I went to my second on Sunday. (What was my hurry?)

The first one was a reading in Hudson, NY, given by Dorothy Stickney, who, as I recall, was a close friend of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She read from Millay's works, and the poem that has stuck in my mind since that night lent its name to the evening's performance, "A Lovely Light."

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

Sometimes I feel as though I've adopted that philosophy in my own life. So surely I wasn't scarred by my first poetry reading.

It amazed me on Sunday to realize that my life has flown by without further exposure to performed poetry. Lola Haskins was wonderful, both in her recitation of works and in her remarks about the "cross fertilization" of the arts. Of particular interest to me was her story of teaching a course to medical students. As I understand it, her goal was to get them to think in new ways, to open up their creative receptors. She said she had them dance and paint and sing and they worked very hard at it. She had to stop them and say, "You aren't going to get an 'A' for studying hard in this course. You won't get an 'A' until you jump off the cliff." What a concept! What a creative woman, who regularly works with artists in many disciplines. I'm disappointed that I didn't stick around to pick up her book on writing, but expect to do that soon. Check out "Not Feathers Yet" if this intrigues you as much as it does me.

Meantime, I'll be thinking about jumping off some "cliffs." And maybe I won't wait another fifty years to attend another poetry reading.