Another star
Is Christie Williams the Bill Graham of local poetry?
Think about it: as Graham stuffed his music venues — Fillmores East and West and the Winterland Ballroom — with established or soon-to-be-established acts, often on distinct and creative programs, so worketh Williams with his Arts Café Mystic series.
On Friday, for example, Williams has secured yet another Pulitzer Prize winner. Poet Philip Schultze, who indeed won the PP for his collection “Failure,” will headline. His latest book is “Luxury,” which includes an amazing array of heartfelt, intuitive and flowing observations. Consider this brief, poignant excerpt from “The Woman's March”:
“So many mothers are here, daughters and granddaughters/Mine's been dead for nineteen years but somehow/ managed to come. I'm seeing her everywhere” Or this, from “Greed”: “Happiness, I used to think/was a necessary illusion/Now I think its just/ precious moments of relief.”
It's never fair to try to capture an artist in two brief samples, but Schultz's poems are fireworks of humanity.
But Williams doesn't stop there. For the evening's musical component, Nora Fox & Friends, veterans of Broadway and world tours, will perform charming interpretations of standards, rock, and opera.
Opening the program is the fine Connecticut/Arizona-based poet Eleanor Kedney, reading from her debut book, “The Offering.”