VRZHU bullets of pure love: Tuesday Wrap

I missed the Split This Rock Poetry Festival these past four days due to international intrigue. Or something.

But STR got a lot of well-deserved coverage in lots of places. You can get the skinny here if you also missed it. Word had been spreading for quite a while.

I'll be checking out the Split This Rock blog, which has some videos of readings and stuff up, and promises to put up more as they get them, which means I won't feel entirely left out, at least after the fact.

Vrzhu publisher Dan Vera showed up here in poetry and elsewhere in person. I'm hoping he'll report here on the festival as an observer, attendee, and participant.

Karren Alenier, aka The Dresser, has some reporting out on her blog here and here and here and here.

Having missed it I can still enjoy the Split This Rock issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly -- including this brilliant poem by Naomi Ayala, one my big poetry crushes -- and this issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal.

I look forward to hearing about Vrzhu author Kim Roberts' Harlem Renaissance in DC tour.

From the blog posts about the event -- of which I expect to see more and more of as folks report back on the festival -- it was by all accounts an exhilarating success.

I remain in awe of festival organizers and masterminds Melissa Tuckey and the inimitable Sarah Browning as well as the rest of the Split This Rock posse.

UPDATE (Dan here): I was able to get some nice video of Mark Doty and Galway Kinnell's reading. I've posted it on YouTube and below.

The festival was a great success and the hope is to hold these every two years.

I got some video of Mark Doty's gorgeous reading on Saturday night. Doty read a number of poems including Walt Whitman's "Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic A Voice." But I was really stunned by his reading of an earlier poem of his titled "Charlie Howard's Descent" written after the killing of a gay boy in Maine. The video is below. Below are links from other videos I posted to Youtube.