All Signs Point to Poetry

Life seems to be without rhyme or reason lately. It happens. Your formative years have trained you to anticipate something new and exciting to occur at the end of August, but once you're out of school, nothing changes at the end of the eighth month. And yet the feeling persists that something new should happen, and it throws you off. How do you make sense of this internal upset? Maybe you can't — but maybe poetry can at least make peace with it. Poetry is the act of wrestling with those ineffable feelings and attempting to make sense of them. And it's poetry's peculiar grace that you don't have to write it yourself to benefit from it — witnessing other people's words often works just as well. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Focal Point, the St. Louis Poetry Center (2720 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood; 314-973-0616 or www.stlouispoetrycenter.org) sponsors readings by Gaye Gambell-Peterson (pictured), Robert Lowes and Katy Miller. These three very different people and poets will share what they've learned about themselves and their place in the world — and you may be surprised by how similar the view they've seen through certain windows is to your own internal scenery. Admission is free.
Tue., Aug. 25, 2009