Baltimore Montage: A Love Story

The reading was a complete success. The room was packed with friends and loved ones (including Catchka, who came in from Boston to surprise me!), and I felt so loved, so empowered to read the poems with my guard completely down--with candor and simplicity. I felt myself being fully in the moment, fully engaged with the audience. I was connected to everyone and that made the event for me.

I had done a couple of runthroughs of my thesis over the last few days, focusing on phrasing and timing of select pieces. Right before Sarah picked me up for the reading, I did a full rehearsal, all alone in my apartment, which put me in a great headspace.

I expected to feel nervous when it was time to start, but as soon as I began to speak I felt safe and very much in my element. It helped, too, that I worked out the transitions between the pieces, being careful to think about which poems would benefit from some introduction or accompanying anecdote and which ones to go into without preamble.

To infuse some freshness into the experience of reading my thesis (plus the two new pieces), I changed the order a bit and arranged them so that there were word associations or thematic resonances between the pieces (the thesis, when submitted to the university, was arranged as a cohesive narrative progression) and it worked.

After the reading portion of the evening concluded, there was tons of effortless mingling. And thanks to the generous contributions of friends, there was plenty of wine and delicious sweets and savories alike of which to partake.

Oh. And my mom survived the reading of the poem with the slightly controversial line.

It was tremendous.