Cornelius Eady @ Cave Canem

I cried a little during Eady's set... during this line: "For those of you that would rather stay inside your clubhouse, and keep me out of it: I am a brick in the house that is being built around your house." The crowd was under City of Asylum's "Alphabet City" tent, which was getting pounded with rain and threatening to blow over, climatically enough, during Eady's blues song, which I think may have been about Emmett Till, although somehow, it was in a positive light: during the song, Eady would coquettishely glance upwards, at the huge destructive rain, in a kind of battle/dance with the rain, as if he had some sort of past history with it, knowing, as none of the audience did, that the last line of his song was: "if you can stand the soaking!" He said this and then the crowd, half-crazed the way crowds get around giant amounts of weather, burst into laughter and applause.

Before the rain, it was hot. We were packed like sardines, about 2ft. sq space per person, and everyone was waving themselves with the programs... This was during Amber Flora Thomas's set (I arrived too late to see Willie Perdomo perform )-: ). Amber read with less affect, with a more subtle personality than Eady, or even Toi Derricote, who was only present in the form of a video and her son and grandson, who read poems for her. These by-proxy poems were often about the readers; see: "A Note on My Son's Face", which was read by the subject of the poem, the grandson. The evening revolved around the absent Toi, who had taken sick or something; Toi is a co-founder of Cave Canem (as the website quotes from Nikky Finney: "...the major watering hole and air pocket for black poetry") and both Amber and Eady talked about her importance to the group. Eady made it a point to discuss how Toi was a revolutionary, although people didn't often know it, because she was so loving and calm: a revolutionary on the basis of her saying "no"... Eady also discussed, briefly, the Charleston shooting. This was certainly something on the minds of everyone... A security guard outside the event, he and I exchanged a look, sort of in my mind confirming the fact, yes, it was obvious to both of us, that in my torn jeans and flip flops, no, I wasn't going to be shooting anyone, but also: yes, he was there to check, because of what had happened, although it was unlikely. Racial tensions are a thing in Pittsburgh, even the location of City of Asylum as a kind of bridge between the Mexican War streets upper-class communities and the rest of the North Side, a largely black population, has the stink of possible (or definite) gentrification... All of this in the air, inside the tent... But we were equally under the buckets of rain that started during Eady's set, and moreover, his words... Eady said, when talking about the Charleston shooting, that "the only thing we can do is resist. And the only thing we have are words." I think the black community on the whole is more willing to provide verbal accolades/assent/"hmm" noises during the work of poets. But under the tent, during the "brick in the house" moment, we all shouted, and it was loud... louder than the rain. --poetryburgh@gmail.com