A RIVER & SOUND REVIEW

"We want you guys to celebrate with us...Make some noise!"
—RSR board member Michael Schmeltzer

The evening of Sunday 09 August 2009 was the latest live show from A River & Sound Review. This particular show was held at Northern Pacific Coffee Company in Parkland, next to the campus of Pacific Lutheran University.

This show was what it never was in Puyallup, and perhaps what it could never be there. The space consisted of two rooms of people, each with about forty audience members. Many people were eating food and most everyone was enjoying various drinks—beers of various styles, light and dark; coffee; hot tea; iced tea; fruit juices, water, and the occasional Italian soda. Members of the crowd were engaged in lively conversation with one another, waiting for the show to start, because, as all good literary events, this one was not going to start on time.

The evening began with the 4-minute poetry project, wherein audience members had four minutes to write a poem using each of the following words: maul, citrus, dilettante, undulate, and one other that I now fail to recall. This was followed by RSR founder and emcee Jay Bates delivering a hilarious monologue on a recent trip to Las Vegas and the "characters" he met there. Next up was singer-songwriter Jerin Falkner singing an anti-love song.

The night was co-hosted by RainierWorkshop Writing, which meant that the readers for the evening were alumni of the program or current students (as were many of the audience members). Jennifer Culkin (RWW class of 2007) read an essay about helicopter crashes and the fragility of life. Andrea, an RWW thesis student, read a poem that bounced about and lovingly played with languages. David Huddle (poet and prose writer, as well as teacher at RWW), the keynote reader for the evening, read two "naughty" pieces—a short story about warfare and violence and freedom, and a poem about "Two Joke Man."

Rounding out the night were additional songs from Jerin Falkner, the literary game of Name that Book, and the "crowning" of the new 4-Minute Poetry Project champion.

It was a night to celebrate literature in all of its various forms—poetry, music, fiction prose, non-fiction prose, humor—with like-minded lovers of the word, spoken and written. At times, the crowd even bordered on raucous. Some of that may have been the beer and the informal atmosphere, but I also believe it was simple celebration and joy to be out on a summer night, listening to good words, and being comforted by them.