Upcoming Reading: Eloise Klein Healy on Wednesday February 16

Eloise Klein Healy is coming to town. She will be reading at The Ugly Mug on Wednesday February 16. The Ugly Mug is located at 261 North Glassell Ave in Orange. $3.00.

I first heard of Eloise Klein Healy when I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s. She was a poet in LA, active around town in a variety of causes, artistic and political. I heard her read once -at the Women's Building I think - or it might have been Sisterhood Bookstore in Westwood. She read from her collection, Artemis in Echo Park.

Here's her poem about the wind that blows on the island of Lesbos. Mytilene is the capital city of the island of Lesbos. I had the good fortune to spend the summer of 1982 there, in the nearby town of Molyvos. I was studying abroad in a women's studies program through San Jose State.

Wind In Mytilene
by Eloise Klein Healy

and on the waves in turmoil
in the harbor
gulls floated
like pieces of paper
set adrift, little
boat-like birds
twirling
in the wind-tossed waves
that drove into
the strong arms of the seawall
at the apex of the bay
where a statue of Sappho stands,
young woman
with a lyre—not
looking out to sea
but glancing at the curve
of the seawall
and the birds,
those lost notes
before rain

*