Introduction: Jason Myers

In Rothko’s Seagram series, I could hear her, the whale swum up the Thames. But I cannot keep orchids and I want to give away the wind. Jason Myers has made America a mix-tape dubbed from a book she had made him out of poems he wrote to find her. A crane made of clay album, a rock shrimp with tarragon album. A thumbnail sketch, a jeweler’s stone—how a farmer stumbles on the terra cotta soldiers of an underworld, but already my heart was stray from yours. “Halloo halloo,” sings Grant Green, “golden rod and grass,” sings Richard Serra. The cider is about to turn and you must recognize, once more, that which surpasses all recognition. What Shakespeare might make of Hussein and the Bushes. How god pauses and passes on. A mix tape for the long drive out of the deep south, for being spun with joy and cold, for a city of ghosts & O the taste of all of her, America. America, like many affairs ours began in the backseat & I try to remember the meals we shared. Olive oil gelato with a pinch of salt? It is so hard to be true. Astonishment, reverence dubbed to a cassette for you to keep in your glove compartment, like Jonah in the belly of the whale up the Thames, gasping, waiting. Yes. Something tells me the eagle is a museum of wind. Yes. Halloo, halloo. Jason Myers.

Nick Laird, Jason Myers, and Austin LaGrone

Thursday, February 26 @ 7:00pm

Chin Music Featured Poets

Born in Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975, Nick Laird has received many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Award and the Betty Trask Prize. His most recent collection, ON PURPOSE, published by W.W. Norton in 2008, received a Somerset Maugham award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His new novel, GLOVER’S MISTAKE, will be published by Viking Penguin in August.

Jason Myers was born in a small town. He has nothing against a big town. He went to Bennington College in Vermont where he was named Catherine Osgood Foster Scholar by poet Mary Oliver. This fall he will become a Master of Divinity student at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. His writing has appeared in Agni, Euphony, The Paris Review, Poet Lore, Tin House, and West Branch. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Born and raised in Louisiana, Austin LaGrone put himself through school bolting four hundred and fifty transmissions a day to Chevy S-10 engine blocks. He hiked the Annapurna Circuit in flip-flops before earning his master's degree in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in Annapolis. His poems have recently appeared in Brilliant Corners. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at New York University.