Last night I went to a poetry reading at Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street. It wasn’t planned — I’d passed the store three times a week for the past month and a half, yet never ventured in. It just so happened I chose the right night to check it out, as the U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine was doing a free reading along with other young, talented poets.

There is something special about the atmosphere at a poetry reading — every word is carefully selected and counted for something, sentences are well-crafted and emotions waft through a crowded room. It was invigorating to hear artists recite each verse from their soul.

Portrait of Philip Levine by Geoffrey Berliner

One of favorite lines of the night from Levine:


“I’m not really known as a love poet because I don’t write love poems; but I’m going to read a poem called ‘Of Love & Other Disasters.'”

 Hopefully I will have more of these unexpectedly wonderful encounters —

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