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April 13, 2008

Only Kevin Killian could wring so many marvelous tones of pathos and undertow out of an awful disco song title, as he did in an amazing reading last week for belladonna. I don't know what it looks like on the page in his poem, but this is how I heard the refrain:

Is it all
over my face?

you've caught me...

love-
dancing...

Through juxtaposition with Killian's memories of Arthur Russell, the vapid bloodlessness of the original line is somehow re-animated as a confrontationally vulnerable "who, me?" gesture, an overheard Blanche du Bois utterance with existential overtones.

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