FollowAt Bloomsbury Books On March 31, a crowd of about 50 poetry fans were treated to a reading by Vince and Patty Wixon. The couple read from their two recently published books—Vince’s Blue Moon: Poems from Chinese Lines (WordCraft of Oregon, 2010) and Patty’s Airing the Sheets(Finishing Line Press, 2011). With characteristic Midwestern modesty, they interspersed their poetry with readings from Lawson Inada, William Stafford, and others who have influenced them.
Vince’s Blue Moon poems use lines from classical Chinese poetry of the Tang and Sung dynasties as points of departure for his own reflections. Vince explained (jokingly) that he uses prompts “because he had a happy childhood and has a happy marriage.” The title poem, whose prompt is I’d send a letter in a fish if I could depicts the Blue Moon Ballroom of southwest Minnestoa, where Depression-era parents went to swing to Lawrence Welk.
Patty’s work is about the wisdom of small things passed along or lost forever, from handkerchiefs embroidered with strawberries to an aging parent’s puzzlement at the mahjong tile in her hand.
And each ended their part of the reading with a love poem. Vince’s poem celebrated the end of endless home maintenance. And Patty’s was a meditation on bedsheets. They were made for each other.
