Mandy Kahn Askew feature, April 13, 2019

Mandy Kahn reads in Pasadena with violinist-poet Deldric "Poetic Moor" Bratcher and Charles Harmon.

Mandy Kahn -- author of Glenn Gould’s Chair and Math, Heaven, Time -- has given readings at Cambridge University, London Review Bookshop, and Shoreditch House in England, at Motto in Berlin, Collette in Paris, Printed Matter in New York, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and all around Southern California, including the Craft and Folk Art Museum and the Art Center College of Design.

Her poetry is included in The Best American Poetry 2018 (Scribner/Simon & Schuster) and was featured in Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s column, American Life in Poetry.

Kahn has been interviewed by BBC Radio, Flaunt, and The Los Angeles Review of Books and is the recipient of the 2018 Shakespeare Prize in Poetry.

She frequently collaborates with composers to make new works that combine verse and classical music. She was a librettist for Yuval Sharon’s immersive opera Hopscotch. Her recent commissions include an audience participation poem for the orchestra Wild Up. She was born, raised, and lives in Los Angeles.

THE SERPENT AND THE BIRD

And what’s become of Quetzal,

the round-faced boy who filled

my ribboned backpack

with pornographic notes?

Named for

feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl,

he tucked his downy bird heart

in spiked reptilian skin.

Week after week I saw

his round-faced mother

cross the schoolyard,

headed to face our cool and

lizard-eyed principal.

Once his mother spoke

to me; I marveled at her

charitable face:

what a gentle nest.

She is what I thought of,

finding every note.

I didn’t know to wonder

what their house was like.

I thought of her

too often, with a pure love,

as he thought of me.

• Hosted by Seven Dhar, Slim FitzGerald, Ellie Askew
• Pasadena Highlands, Garden Room (askewlit.com)
• 1575 E. Washington Bl., Pasadena 91104
• FREE, Saturday, April 13th, 7:00-9:00 PM

Deldric "Poetic Moor" Bratcher, a poet, violinist, and producer from Rochester, NY, lives in L.A. and is a graduate of the Los Angeles Film School. Coming from a family with very diverse musical tastes -- the blues, jazz, rock -- gave Deldric a love of art and poetry. He attended military school in South Korea, where he entered a pageant and in the process cemented his love of spoken word poetry, which he performs accompanied by his violin.

Charles Harmon is an auxiliary Coast Guard and pirate poet who would rather choose a poet's life than be at sea. His comedic antics and food fetishes make him a star attraction around Los Angeles. A frequent contributor to Spectrum, he loves to write, loves to live, and loves to cook. But most of all he loves to love...and eat.