Compton & Hildreth on Tamayo

Stunning poetic moment of the evening (among, admittedly, several): Jennifer Tamayo, whose debut book is soon forthcoming from Switchback Books.

--Shanna Compton at AWP DC!

Jennifer Tamayo rocked the Madam's Organ stage at the Switchback / Coconut / horse less reading, bringing everyone to laughter and tears, and Liz Hildreth does an amazing job of explaining why [Red Missed Aches] -- available in a few weeks! -- is so fantastic, over at her The Effect of Small Animals blog:

Reading this manuscript really is so similar to watching and listening to someone learn a language. It’s fascinating and thrilling and unnerving and extremely irritating. You really want to get in there and fix things, correct it, help it. You want to figure out: What EXACTLY does this poetry mouth know? What exactly does it know it knows? But it doesn’t want your help. Does it even know the word “help” or “fix” yet? It has to, right? It just used the word "clitoris" and drew a picture of it.