Last night was the last Folger poetry event of the year (though only half way through the season).

The raison d’etre was the upcoming birthday of Emily Dickinson. The reader was the poet Aracelis Girmay, who interspersed readings from her own work with poems and letters by Dickinson. Afterwards, there was a delicious black cake, made according to Dickinson’s own recipe (very rich, with a strong flavor or brandy, and pleasantly and slightly gooey).

Girmay is not a particularly good reader. She rushes too much sometimes, too many ‘ums’ and the like, but her clear enthusiasm, especially her enthusiasm for Emily Dickinson, carried her past those faults. Passion goes a very long way. Plus, she came across as very sincere and generous.

After her reading, there was a conversation moderated by Alice Quinn, the executive director of the Poetry Society of America.

I say ‘moderated,’ but actually, something more than half of the ‘conversation’ was a monologue by Quinn. While I appreciate her passion for Dickinson and her appreciation for what a Ms. Susan Howe has written about Dickinson, I was under the impression that the whole point was hear was Girmay had to say about Dickinson and her own work and also to take audience questions. But, hey, what do I know?

While I believe Quinn’s intentions were genuine and that she just caught up in the opportunity to rave about a much beloved poet who has been of great importance to many women poets, in particular, the effect was of someone who wanted to lecture and show off her own erudition, rather than do anything like moderate a conversation.

I purchased Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia before the reading started from the Folger’s bookshop. I was very impressed by just a casual glance at her work and have been more impressed as I have read more. She isn’t someone I had read before, though her name has come up frequently when following the doings and goings on of poetry.

I was also fortunate enough to be the first in line to get my book signed and so got a bit more time with her than I otherwise might have and she was just as generous and sincere sounding one on one as she was on the stage.

She is definitely a poet I might recommend to a parent who has an adolescent child interested in poetry. Understandable and clear, but not lacking in formal or thematic complexity, I could see it as the kind of thing that might act as a bridge for a sixteen year old, would be poet, connecting him or her to contemporary, ‘grown up’ poetry.