Inside the prison house of history

Last night I went to see Kate Daniels at the Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series. So many people showed up that we had to trade rooms with a class in session to fit everybody in. I went with my new poetry friend Declan, who runs the monthly critique group I go to at the Nashville Public Library, and who went with me to see Molly Peacock, too. Daniels is a Vandy prof, so the turnout was probably partly because she’s local, but she definitely deserved all accolades regardless – her poetry is smart and funny and thoughtful. One of the poems she read, “Doc,” (from which the title of this post comes) is available online. She said they actually ate Cornish hens (she changed it to steak for narrative purposes) and she thought he was incredibly sophisticated because at that point she’d never had Cornish hens before. I got her new book, A Walk in Victoria’s Secret (which you can get from her publisher or Powell’s, or the Kindle edition on Amazon is only ten bucks), which I spent a little time with when I got home (and which she almost exclusively read from) and it’s quite wonderful, the sort of free verse confessional/narrative-like poetry that I like, where the poet’s not all about themselves but writes autobiographically in service to a larger human story. Plus, she writes about things like breasts without any embarrassment, which is refreshing.

Related Posts