butcher's tree book launch

Tonight was one of those slip-out-of-the-house nights--Maya at home, pink-cheeked with fever and gum-swollen with incoming molars, my closest poetry friends busying themselves elsewhere, but I hadn't seen Sarah or Mary read yet, and they both have good news in the book-world, so I was glad to quietly celebrate with them.

Above:  MC Hyland, a guru over at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, hosted the event in the gallery of MCBA and set up a press for a special take-away for the audience.

Sarah is defending in the same year as me, but belongs to a cohort the year behind mine.  She came into the program with a first book (Because Why) already out in the world by Coffee House Press, and is leaving with a second one due out.  She's also a doula, and was incredibly kind in covering my class while I was away on maternity leave.

There were two other readers, but the head-lining event was Mary (Feng Sun Chen), as it was the release party for her book Butcher's Tree, which was accepted in her first year of the program.  She's also had three chapbooks published and has work appearing all over the web.  She is fantastically prolific, making me feel as if I hibernated my way through the program.  (Which, last spring, I kind of did.  And it was fantastic.)  Mary had a friend read bits from the last section of her book, which invoked Grendel and birdwomen, apparently.

And anyone who wanted could pull a print of an excerpt from Butcher's Tree, which I thought was fantastic and can now add this to my list of goals:  to have a book reading where the audience can interact at the end by pulling sections of the book from a press.  (I got my copy signed.)