Fifteen minutes with Donald Sidney-Fryer

It's always a pleasure when Donald Sidney-Fryer comes to town. Alas, tonight's reading at the South Natomas Libarary (as part of the Urban Voices reading series) didn't go as planned. Suffering from Laryngitis, the Plan B was to play a cd recording of Donald's reading of the epic poem The Hashish Eater by Clark Ashton Smith. But event organizer's couldn't find the cd. The poem, Donald told me, is quite a vocal exercise to be done properly. But faced with the gloomy option of cancelling the event outright, Donald decided to read (briefly) anyway, breathing in the poem from a thick scroll that slowly unfolded over the edge of the podium like a parchment flag, and exhaling the lines with passion and force. It was hard to detect the Laryngitis as he pushed on, through the opening section, into the second and third, finally stopping with the fourth. A rather intense and provocative fifteen minutes. Enough to whet the appetite for a complete reading of the poem on a return visit by Donald to Sacramento.