Kevin Goodan Reading, St. Johnsbury, VT, May 4

I'm baking the usual batch of brownies in support of Friday's reading, and it's good to have something concrete to focus on -- because I'm so darned eager to meet and hear poet Kevin Goodan. His first collection, IN THE GHOST-HOUSE ACQUAINTED, won the PEN prize in poetry for 2005, and he's been touring in New York City and other urban environments; it's great that he's willing and able to come to this rural corner of Vermont. The reading is free and open to the public, in the Grace Stuart Orcutt Library of St. Johhnsbury Academy, on Friday May 4 at 3:30 p.m. You can find a review of the collection in the blog archives (type Kevin's name into the Search box at top left); and here's a quick taste of one of his poems, as printed on Poetry Daily in March:

Untitled

white days, a passion for the winter-birds
cached in every elm, each goat
with its bell in the pasture
as the wind tolls diurnal through the scape,
a far gray band of willows,
the snow cross-harrowed, a barn
where every breath has faltered
where beasts lie down in stalls
quiver and are still, are hauled
to the fire, roil, and enter the earth
as wind skurls bright smoke
against the purple that is darkness blooming

Count on conversation around growing up on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, as well as perhaps Goodan's time in Northern Ireland, his farm in western Massachusetts, and his uneasy stance caught between ethnic backgrounds and passions.