Thursday, July 16, 2009

Wednesday Night's Readings - Rogow Gets Racy


Zack Rogow's book, The Number Before Infinity, recounts a love affair, through poetry. Along with the erotic poems to his lover (I used racy in the title because of the alliteration, but erotic seems more apt) the narrator also tells of the impact on his marriage. In the video, Rogow reads one very sexy poem to the lover and one about the daughter's displeasure with the father breaking up the family.

This is not a big book, but one that I think most couples would benefit from reading aloud to each other. It raises issues - passionate love, passionate love of someone outside the marriage, the impacts on the family - that couples shoud talk about, but I suspect don't, until it's too late. And since he's such a good poet, he captures in a few, well chosen words, what academics can't say in long volumes.
[The poems Zack Rogow reads in the video appear in the book The Number Before Infinity,  Copyright © 2008 by Zack Rogow, and may only be used by permission of the author.  Click here for the Scarlet Tanager Books website page for this book. Before Zack, Anne Costen read poems influenced by her nursing career and her religious background. And after Zack, Rich Chiappone, read a wicked short story about ex-hippie parents in Homer (he said when he was in Homer that he said they were from Anchorage) and their son's difficulty telling them that he'd joined the military. There's a hip sister too. It was funny, though I've never met people that fit this aging stereotype so well. Maybe they are all in Homer.


The UAA Readings go on tonight (Thursday) in the UAA Pub. David Grimes is doing a concert. There've been around 60 folks each night. A good chunk are people taking the workshops, but also strays like us. Dark Friday night, then back in Rasmuson Hall 101 at 8pm Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The detailed schedule with bios is here. For all the other posts on the Summer Reading Series.

For an interesting Saturday night double header - go to the UAA Readings at 8pm and then to Out North for the final episode of Midnight Soapscum.

1 comment:

  1. I've ordered Zack's book from Amazon. His recitation left me breathless.

    ReplyDelete

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