January 02, 2007
Rockin' Robins
Here I am with my regular first-week-of-the-month poetry PSA to announce that this Thursday, for the next installment of the Observable Poetry Series, there will be Robins traveling in from all corners of the country and converging on Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest, in Maplewood). This month's reading is titled, appropriately, "Rockin' Robins," with some warm-up tunes provided by Farm Team (who you may've caught at the Art Market in December).
As usual, I defer to Mr. Aaron Belz, who always writes thorough, descriptive poet bios:
"Robin Behn's Horizon Note won the Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2001. She has authored two other books of poetry: Paper Bird (Texas Tech, 1988) and The Red Hour (HarperCollins, 1993). She directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama.
Robyn Schiff's first collection of poems, Worth, was published in 2002 and appeared on Fence magazine's list of Most Notable Books for that year. Originally from New Jersey, Schiff now lives in Chicago, where she is a
visiting professor in the English department at Northwestern University.
Robin Beth Schaer works at the Academy of American Poets and has taught writing at Columbia University and Cooper Union. Her poems have been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Rattapallax, Small Spiral Notebook, Denver Quarterly, and are forthcoming in Spinning Jenny."
And now for my not-so-schooled, subjective take. I saw Robin Schiff read in the '04 series, with her partner, Nick Twemlow , and St. Louis' own Julie Dill (yes, I am a fan!) I bought Schiff's book (Worth), and was downright charmed by it. She writes about Finches and dresses, specifically old fashion houses. At the time, I was working for SKIF, and so I had a double appreciation for poems about fashion houses (and somehow, birds). Her poems are very vivid and clever. I don't know the other two Robins, but I know Rattapallax -- they put out a great issue that was dedicated purely to Brazilian poetry, which came with a CD of the poets reading their work. I don't know a lick of Spanish, but it was to the editors' credit that the poetry was very listenable anyway; that old idea of poetry being made up of pleasing sounds as well as sense. I gleaned no sense from it, but the music rang out bright & clear. So anyone who's published there, I am pretty sure I'll like her poetry. And Farm Team rocks. The other piece of info you need: the show starts at 8 p.m., and Schlafly's new No. 15 is a peculiar, spicy beer which will be an exceptionally great pairing with the poetry.