Garren Small, Fires Dare to Ignite

One poem that Garren read that really stuck out to me was about a father and daughter- I don't remember the name of the poem. It reminded me of a certain freudian primal desire for love that starts with the parents- for your parent to recognize you, see you as special, and have a devout love for you. These are the lines that, to me, had this theme:

"Working man vein hands

  Daddy, look at me.

  Ain't no telling where those fingers been."

There was also a theme of old vs young desire- how the father has the desire for a more individual, independent life as he had spent years putting selfless energy into his daughter, and the daughter does not have that sense of self and desire for independence yet, so she is especially tied to whatever the father is doing. 

I'd say my favorite poem of the night was "along the row." I think this poem, as Aven said, asked the question: "are we lonelier when we are with someone than when we are actually alone?" The following lines spoke to this:

"everybody dies of loneliness

 says the prophet on his bus tour

 your best friend

 will betray you

 between envy and desire"

"He wants to explode it to her.

 He wants to whisper it to her."

These lines speak to sexual desire and also romantic desire- the desire to be both a sexual being and also a romantic, loving being and for the two to coexist. To explode with a whisper, in a sense, seems hard to do, as the actions oppose one another, but the experience of love is often like this- two different people trying to align, trying to manage the sexual with the romantic.