All links below are to .MP3 recordings of Camille Norton’s reading at SPC on Sept. 25. 2006
Camille Norton graced the interior space of the Sacramento Poetry Center and filled it with some interior spaces of her own. The poems she read were all from her book Corruption which ranged from meditations on her time spent in Florence to more personal pieces about her relationship with her father.
She started out reading from Corruption. She read the first two sections of this poem “The Medicis” and “The Monsters.”
Then she read three sections from “Index of Prohibited Images” I. John in the Wild IV, Caravaggio, 1604 II. Judith and Holofernes,Caravaggio 1599 and III. Medusa, Caravaggio, 1597.
The next piece was a sprawling history of Dante’s many burials entitledNapoleon’s Boots and Dante’s Body.
She read “Incomprehensible Triangles” with its epigraph from the great Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector:
Will I stay lost among the silence of the signals?
I will for I know what I’m like: I never learned to look
without needing more than just to see.
Then she read Aperture, a wonderful piece about passing through the spirit gates to have a gruff encounter with her father the day that he died.
Norton read “In The Bardo,” mentioning that it was written for a friend who had had some difficult encounters in her life.
“Monday Music” was next, and Norton told how the voice in the piece was derived from some nervous energy she had during her visit to the MacDowell Colony for the Arts.
She read “Eight Pieces for Gertrude Stein,” all of them haikus.
Finally, she ended the evening on a light note with Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox, Babe from the series “Wild Animals I have Known”
For a complete audio log of the entire evening, please e-mail me at tnklbnny@mongryl.com
