It's Like Getting a Brain Massage

Robert Hass wins the Pulitzer for poetry two weeks ago and then magically shows up on our doorsteps for a reading. Coincidence? No, just another example of the excellent taste and foresight of Inprint, Houston's gem of a literary organization.

Go see him read tonight and find out why he won. Poetry is meant to be read aloud; listen and let Hass's well-chosen words push out the crap accumulated from a full day of Monday. His imagery will take your brain somewhere entirely new. Click here for more on Hass and links to his poems, in text and audio files.

It's not like this Pulitzer came from left field. Hass has also won a MacArthur "genius" fellowship, two National Book Critics Circle awards, a National Book Award and was the US Poet Laureate from 1995-1997. That's quite a batting average for five books of poetry.

Writer Stanley Kunitz has this to say about Hass: "Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element."

He's reading tonight on the Neuhaus Stage at the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Avenue, at 7:30PM. Tickets are $5 general admission, free for students and senior citizens 65+.

Go go go! You'll be glad you did.

photo: Barbara Hall