Jeannine Hall Gailey reads at Open Books!

Jeannine reading from her new book!

I had the pleasure of hearing Jeannine Hall Gailey read at Open Books yesterday and it was one of her best readings ever!  Truly perfection!

I had her book She Returns from the Floating World in my hands and followed along in the book while she read with many of the poems.  This is one of the treats about poetry readings--you can hear how the poet interprets the poem by their voice and read it in on the page to see the actual form of the poem.  It's almost as if you're given another key to a poem when one does this.

I won't do it for every poem otherwise it feels as if I missed out on the reading, plus Jeannine will do a fun gesture every so often when she reads so I like witness those.  She was funny and charming and said something like, "I don't do the filthy talk" then proceeded to read a poem with a short rated R moment, which she swears is advice she learned from Redbook magazine (if you want to see the poem I'm referring to-- go here "Advice Given to Me Before my Wedding" - stanza 5 is the so-called "Redbook advice").

Yes, Jeannine was fabulous.  If you ever get a chance to attend one of her readings, do attend.  You won't leave disappointed, she reads in a way that is interesting for the audience and we all left with paper cranes with poems on them.  Love!

Tomorrow is confession Tuesday and one of my confessions has to do with my travel to Jeannine's reading--many of you know while I spend quite a bit of time in the city, I don't live in the city but in a less-than-3000 person rural community (no, I'm not in a cult, just a small town).  But to get anywhere, I need to take a ferry, which brings me to my preview of tomorrow's confession--getting on the ferry I made 2 women shake and had a ferry worker tell me and my friend (co-editor, Annette), "You gals sound as if you're lots of fun...."   Stay tuned.  When poets travel, hilarity ensues...