Poetry in Austin and Love all Over

My friend Dawn just blogged about me over on her new blog: Poetry in Austin. Now, Dawn says really nice things on her blog, but the admiration is mutual -- I love her poetry because she uses these fantastic lyrical phrases and beats, and one time when I told her one of her poems made me visualize a Frida Kahlo painting, she did not freak out and run the other way. Those are the kinds of people I enjoy being around. Also, as you can tell...Dawn is WAY involved in Austin's poetry community. She proves daily that sometimes all you need to do to inspire others and perhaps take a little inspiration back home with you...is to show up. Simple, eh? We hang out at La Tazza Fresca, which is a great little close-to-UT-campus venue that sold me a most excellent coconut latte once. I've played some good venues with bad coffee and some bad venues with good coffee but it's always nice when a place succeeds on both levels. The true draw of the Friday night poetry and music open mic is the glorious array of good stuff. Just GOOD. Dawn reads, Kathleen Romana reads, Thom the World Poet astounds me with his free-flow every time. I say if you take a new word away with you after seeing wordsmiths do their thing -- it doesn't have to be a fancy word, just a new one...you've had a good day. Thanks for the words, Dawn!