We knew we had to investigate when we heard about a “live wire” poet named Kary Wayson making the rounds in Seattle. What’s so “live wire” about her, you ask? Well, for starters, she’s won a Pushcart Prize and last year published a full collection of poetry. But that’s sooo last year. This year, her name is generating a whole new buzz. On a Thursday night in January, we put on our Frye boots and headed to Open Books, where Kary was scheduled to read. The tiny bookshop swelled with eager Seattlites. Soon, Olena Kalytiak Davis, another poet of the moment and also slated to read that night, entered the store wearing a pair of room-commanding thigh-high boots. Then Kary, decked out in her own brown-booted poetic swagger, crossed the threshold. The event was a poetic and stylistic burst — a paroxysm by two women who — as Davis put it– “are really, truly trying to make it as writers” and succeeding with an electric, “live wire” panache. – Lori Huskey
