Paul, I greatly enjoyed your essay on Kay, who ranks as highly in my esteem as she does in yours or Dana's. What one doesn't get on the page is available only at her readings. She has the most exquisite sense of timing I've ever heard. It's very subtle, but her voice brings out every internal rhyme, every trick in her bag, in a way which makes even her serious poems excrutiatingly funny. I first heard her read at West Chester, then we performed back to back at UC Santa Barbara. It took the students about three poems to figure out what she was upt to, and then they were hooked. Given what we have in common (alcohol, sexual inversion, short lines and hailing from desolate places), I may be less than impartial; but I urge every one to read her books.
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