Joseph Harrington, KU professor, led off a trio of poets at the Spencer Museum of art at KU Feb. 15. He read "Parrots of Kansas"; a poem composed of one-syllable lines; "Flag" (2 prose-poem sections plus a verse section); and an image & text presentation of his ongoing project about his mother's life and how memory re-presents the past. "Parrots" was not completely ironic, but it did focus on the inverse of colorful plumage in birds like starlings, grackles, sparrows, and mourning doves--so it developed a nice tension. The text-image piece "It Goes On" worked with images of letters his mother received from Al Gore, Sr., postcards, photos, text-maps: each image was unexpected and singular, yet all worked toward an accretion of meaning and created an emotional sign-bundle.
