Even though I am merely a poor young professional (heh), I have found that the greatest aspect of Piccolo has nothing to do with the various things one can do for free (although, yes an added plus). The greatest aspect is that Piccolo uses local venues for programs, in this case, City Gallery at Waterfront Park hosting the Sundown Poetry Series. Not only was I given an entrancing hour of “spoken word” poetry last night, but I was allowed to wander around afterwards and enjoy the present show in the gallery titled Vanishing Landscapes. How fantastic is it that the Arts always seems to flow into one another?

The poet last night was Barbara G.S. Hagerty. I would describe her work as being quite varied, covering a large spectrum of concepts and forms of poetry. Understanding this about herself, she gave the audience samples from each area of interest. Several of her works were based on Charleston, some so specific as being named after the streets themselves. We were also given poems based on word play (these were used as self explorations by Hagerty, such as the repetition of her initials forming words she associated with). She used her interest in the haiku to put together an entire stream of small poems describing her recent trip to Asia (appropriate…and also my favorite). What I most enjoyed about Hagerty was her use of the pause. Each word had its own meaning, like individuals holding hands to make up a circle, or as if after every word there had been placed a period.

Vanishing Landscapes had some very fine pieces in it. It was a juried art exhibition, so it was curious to see which pieces has been given ribbons and which ones had not…and whether or not I personally agreed. I recommend going to the gallery, and if you can manage to kill two birds with one stone, listen to some poetry as well. The next one is tonight, with Paul Allen at 6:30 pm.

Yes, it is all the world to me

Thar dear old city by the sea!

There I was born, there i would die–

My dust with kindred dust must lie ,

In the dear old city by the sea.

–from Charleston by William Gilmore Simms

Yesterday morning, I went on the Charleston Poetry Walk given by The Poetry Society of South Carolina.

The walk started at Washington Square, were we learned about the life and works of Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne. From there, we walked to 10 more locations from Waterfront Park to Tommy Condon’s to listen to Poetry Society members discuss poets with South Carolina connections from Josephine Pickney to Edgar Allen Poe (who was stationed at Ft. Moultrie, and may have gotten some of his inspiration for Annabel Lee from his time here.)

The poems of Elizabeth Verner Hamilton stood out to me the most. I need to read more of her works.

I even got into the act when I was asked to read a Gullah work by Dubose Heyward and managed not to embarrass myself.

It was a wonderful (if somewhat hot) day for exercise and education.

Ida Becker, the blogosphere’s grande dame of Spoleto social coverage, started running haiku poetry on festival subjects last month. It reminded me of the late 1990s when I ran the city desk for The P&C.

One of my stress-relief tactics was to give reporters little creative challenges, more or less for the hell of it, and one spring we came up with the idea that it would be fun to write haiku about Spoleto. We called them “Spo-ku,” at the time, but eventually the hyphen disappeared and the word picked up an “s” in the plural. Unfortunately, the records of that group exercise were lost in the conversion to a new content management system.

For my money, the best Spoku of all time was written by reporter/editor/architecture critic Robert Behre, who despite his many notable accomplishments is best known to his friends as a master of light verse. This one, written in our first year of holding this prize-less contest of wit, captures so much of the Spoleto experience:

Gin Vermouth Olives
Pate on tasty toast points
Have you seen Nigel?

But we weren’t finished there…

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