I celebrated the Fourth of July at Chautauqua, walking the ground, visiting the awesome bookstore (best poetry selection in Western New York), and attending a reading by poet Nicole Cooley and fiction writer Kirk Nesset. I have forgotten how hot Chautauqua gets in the summer — I just love meeting great writers when I am sweaty and tired.
But I digress. Nicole Cooley read from her collection, Breach, a book about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Cooley, who is originally from New Orleans, gave a lot of background information about each poem which really added to the reading — I could tell that a lot of people in the audience were either from New Orleans or visited there often and appreciated her stories and poems. I have a special interest in poetry and catastrophe and have read other books about Hurricane Katrina (See my review of two other “Katrina” books here), and I must say that Breach ranks right up there. I also picked up her book, The Afflicted Girls, a poetry book about the Salem Witchcraft Trials.
Kirk Nesset is a local writer (local by rural Pennsylvania/New York standards). He read two stories from his upcoming manuscript, and I was able to pick up his collection, Mr. Agreeable — I stayed up last night reading his work. So far, my favorite stories are “Snakes Having Babies” and “Scream”. In many ways, he is a minimalist writer — his work reminds me of the book I just read by Rusty Barnes, except Nesset seems to focus more on character than sense of place.
My booklist is still growing. It’s going to be a hot week, so maybe I can find some nice shade and get some more reading and writing done.
The Scrapper Poet 
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