second literary event

This is my second literary event in three days. I am not sure how much longer I can stand up under this deluge of culture. Seriously, though, this reading was fantastic. It was the undergraduate writing awards ceremony. I would highly recommend it to anyone who might want to attend next year.

The best part of the reading, in my opinion, is that it was everyone's first time. None of the undergraduates had given a reading before (or at least, so I assume) and they were clearly thrilled to be up there, standing in the Terrace Room on the fourth floor of Margaret Jacks (which must be one of the best places for readings in the world), sharing their work to an audience that clearly wanted to listen to them. I have never had an experience like that. I hope to, someday, although I'm not arrogant enough to expect it. I do intend to enter the contest next year, if only to say that I did.

The first reading was very powerful for me. Honestly, it was a better piece of writing than I've encountered at  a few professional readings. It was fluid, powerful, and delicate. The author had an incredible feel for place, scene, object. The sentences sounded right, in the same way that Hemingway's sentences sound right. It's difficult to put it any other way.

Another one of the writers had a great sense of metaphor. I remember relatively little of the plot (I'm sorry, she spoke in the middle, I got mixed up), but I remember the image of a hand pressed into the plaster of a kitchen counter. Very cool. Also a chocolate-milk ice sculpture with a spigot thrust into it. The point of the spigot is that as the chocolate milk starts to melt, you can "harvest" it and drink it. That's awesome. Besides having to endure an acute sense of wanting to freeze one of those sculptures for my very own, I have to say that I haven't encountered such a memorable or original image in any "professional" writing in quite a while.