29 May 2004. This, I believe, is my first late entry. I'm posting a day late from my brother Sherman's house in Florence, South Carolina, where I'll be till tomorrow morning, when I'll take the the highway again, this time for a ten-hour trip back to Port Charlotte, where I live (and where my cat will have been without company for almost four days, the main reason I'm hurrying home). I spent most of Friday, 28 May, driving from Port Charlotte to Atlanta, where I checked into a very nice hotel called the Highland Inn: a pleasant combination of all the conveniences plus a feel of being rundown: the halls, for instance, were hilly, and pipes were prominent just about everywhere. I spent two nights there.

During the day this is an entry for, I spent most of my time at a place in Atlanta called "eyedrum," part of a refurbished warehouse, I believe, that serves as a gallery and meeting place for illumagists and the Atlanta Poetry Group, or APG. The APG had invited a number of contributors to Bill Lavender's anthology, The Other South, to the get-together of poets that I was at the eyedrum for. Alas, a number of the people originally planning to attend who, for one reason or another, couldn't make it included several I was looking forward to meeting in person for the first time: Andy DiMichele, John Berry (Jake's brother) and Hank Lazar. But Bill Lavender was there. He'd organized two previous similar get-togethers that I'd not been able to get to, so I made sure I got to this one. Mark Prejsnar (who doesn't mind how one pronounces his name but told me his favored pronunciation was "PRAISE nur), John Lowther and Randy Prunty, the ones mainly responsible, I gather, for the gathering, were there, and I got a chance to talk with all three, though mostly with Mark, who drove me over to eyedrum--and is particularly easy to get going on most any topic. Lots of other good people, too. They all made up for the missing ones.

Even had I met and talked with no one, though, I would have considered the trip a big success, for I got to see the UNREADABILITY exhibition. It was near-absolute-proof that visiotextual art is making important headway. I was jolted by the number of first-rate works people I'd never heard of, and by people I didn't associate with visio-textual art, that were in the show. There were some terrific pieces by such old stand-bys as John Byrum, John M. Bennett and Scott Helmes, too.

I hope to say much more about my Atlanta visit and the UNREADABILITY show soon but that's it for this entry. No time to get detailed.