•If you missed Think Out Loud yesterday you missed blogger and Portland Mortified reader Sarah Hoopes and Kevin Sampsell, author of the new memoir A Common Pornography, sharing their thoughts on exposure in our modern age. Exposure, that is, of the type of horrifying personal secrets that families used to spend generations covering up and forgetting in books and the internet. Don’t worry, you can listen to it online here.
•I attended the Loggernaut reading series Wednesday night at Urban Grind Coffeehouse. The series has been going on for five years and they’ll be celebrating their anniversary at their next event. Wednesday’s reading was based around the theme “patient.” The guests tackled it as a virtue and a state of being, literally being a patient in two cases.
Dao Strom shared excerpts from her upcoming book which consisted mainly of meditations on Vietnam, her home country. She carefully read poetic, well rendered pieces on the country and the war memorial in DC. Jennifer Richter treated us to poems reflecting on the patience of motherhood and enduring a long term, ambiguous illness. She wasn’t bad but when you have to explain the subject of every poem you share you’re either very nervous or there’s something wrong with the poem. Finally, Keith Scribner shared a chapter of his current project chronicling a perfume artisan losing her sense of smell. He gave a lively reading, and the subject matter was tender and quietly tragic. Wondering how it’s going to fit into a longer piece.