"Coming Home" Reading at W&B

Both originally from the Rochester area, W&B billed their July 24, 2007 readings as "Coming Home." Randall, who now resides in Colorado Springs, CO, began the evening reading from her 2007 collection A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road Press). The cover of this book is rather Rod Serling--an extreme close-up of the made-up face of a haunting doll. Randall's poems elicited chuckles and smiles from the audience which consisted largely of both poets' friends and families. Most memorable are the titles of her poems, especially the title poem of a small self-published group collection "The Underpants of Gloom" The chapbook includes over-sized sewn paper underpants in an envelope on the inside back cover. Check out http://www.ghostroadpress.com/ for more info on Randall.

Fagan, whose original inspiration in poetry was Edgar Allan Poe, couldn't be more different from Randall. Fagan's work is admittedly dark incorporating violent and graphic imagery. He read from his collection Garage (Salt Publishing, 2007). "Scatology" was inspired by Maxine Kumin's "The Excrement Poem." What begins with a somewhat lighthearted account of the simultaneous profusion of an elephant's liquid and solid waste elimination ends with the image of Christ on the cross. Fagan's juxtaposition of such seemingly unrelated images is the fresh edge of a poet worth reading. To learn more about Fagan, including a video introduction, visit http://www.saltpublishing.com/.