The word, from here…

Sometimes a literary reading represents the very best that the art of writing has to offer. Witness: Thursday night’s Get Lit! event at the Lorinda Knight Gallery when Jennifer Davis read from her book of short stories “her kind of want” (the lower case letters are how the title is portrayed on the cover), and when Spokane Public Radio producer Marty Demarest read a piece from Natalie Kusz ’s book of nonfiction pieces “Road Song.”

Here’s what I wrote in my notebook about Davis: “Damn, she’s good. Despite a slight sibilance and a tendency to sing-song, she is a strong reader. The best thing you can say about a writer is that her reading convinced you that you just have to read her on your own. This is the real voice of literature.” I immediately bought her book and reread the piece, “Rewriting Girl: An introduction.”

And Demarest reading Kusz’s story “Scar”: “And again the room fills with magic. This is nonfiction, the story of a woman dealing with her outer scars even as she struggles with the inner scars that slowly envelop her father’s lungs. It helps to have Demarest read, though the words themselves obviously don’t need anything extra. The work is powerful — simple, direct and yet capable of capturing life, and pain, in its essence. And make it art.”

Tonight at Whitworth: U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. The word lives on.