Roofwalkers played music and everyone tried their best to stay in their seats as opposed to dancing like maniacs. Suzanne Frischkorn, whose recap is below, read poetry from Lit Windowpane.

Chad Clark invented this brilliant idea. As Suzanne says in her blog post, poetry seriously needs someone and something in order to increase audience. Charlie Jensen, Chad Clark and Matt Byar are actually doing something about it.
Afterwards several people who purchased Lit Windowpane mentioned that they had never attended a poetry reading before and how much they enjoyed themselves. That’s when it struck me that Story/Stereo and its innovative concept to feature literature and music is exactly what poetry needs. Now more than ever we need to bring people to poetry who have never been to poetry before, people who have never even considered poetry before. Kudos to the consummate host, Charles Jensen! Kudos to Matt Byars and Chad Clark who helped curate the musical component! Kudos to the Writers’ Center! I hope Charles’ vision is imitated far and wide.

We let ourselves into the house. The little one was creeped out being in the house without grandparents. She kept saying she was scared. I showed her a high school photo of grandmom, and the little one looked at me with a serious expression and said, “we should put that photo back on the shelf.” Her eyes were wider than normal.

The little one found a toy, played with it, and put it away. We dawdled. No one showed up. We could not call them because they had forgotten to take their cell phones.

Finally, my cell phone rang. They were calling from the grocery store near our house. They could have sworn they were supposed to come to our house and so on…

We had a good southern lunch. No poetry reading though. I’ll try again next weekend.

On Saturday night, our sitter completely forgot she was supposed to come over. I called and asked her if she was still coming. She dropped what she was doing and ran over.

Tonight, I emailed my friend to remind her I’m picking her up to go have a drink. I’m not taking any chances.

Sunil Freeman, assistant director of the center, said, “When I heard Charlie was going to take the job, I sent a one-word email that said, ‘Hallelujah.’”

So, I’d say people are pretty excited to have him here. Darn, I’m excited to have him here and running the center.

The reception itself was a good time, and I chatted with Dan Vera and Michael Gushue (way too briefly), Sandra Beasely, Reb Livingston, Kim Roberts (too briefly!), Charlie Jensen (of course), and Greg McBride.

Afterwards, DH and I went to Austin Grill. We were in Bethesda and had to take advantage of the good restaurants. With all the good restaurants, how did I end up with such a disappointing meal? The “Migas Plate” with eggs, veggies and refried beans left me feeling a bit sick all day.

We sat outside, though, and got to people watch. Many women who passed by wore a lot of shiny things.

The Bethesda Barnes and Noble has a great literary magazine selection, so I got to read poetry in some of the magazines I don’t already get. I was especially taken with an Oliver de la Paz poem. Wow. I have to buy his book now.