Ben Cartwright cooks up some poetry tonight

Like most every other kind of art in the world, poetry is an acquired taste. This may seem obvious, but is it?

Take cooking, for example. In recent years — one could argue since at least 1963 when Julia Child co-authored "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" — food has become the province of chefs who possess a sense not just of taste but for presentation. As such, cooking has earned the description used in the title of Child's book.

Yet no matter who the chef is, or how beautiful the dish, no one is going to prepare something with cilantro that my wife would consider eating. "It tastes like cat urine smells," she says. When it comes to art, personal preferences always have to be considered.

It's the same with other arts. How many of the general public have read, say, Dostoevsky for mere pleasure? Or watched the movies of Ingmar Bergman with the same sense of enthusiasm. Meditated over the paintings of Jackson Pollock? Listened with pleasure to the music of Miles Davis? And so on.

And you can place poetry at or near the top of the list. On the website of Sage Hill Press, publisher Thom Caraway attempts to define what he looks for in a good poem. In his appreciation of poems "that invite me in, give me work to do, reward that work, and toss me around the universe," he adds a list of poets he loves (among them: Richard Hugo and Nance Van Winkle) and those he does not (among them: John Ashbury and Sylvia Plath).

I'm sure Caraway has had more than one dinner-party debate over the inclusion of Plath in that last grouping.

Anyway, all of this is a long-winded way of announcing a poetry reading tonight at Auntie's Bookstore. Spokane poet Ben Cartwright, who teaches at Gonzaga University and whose poems have appeared in a number of publications, will read from his first book "After Our Departure."

For a taste of what Cartwright has to offer, click here.

The reading is set for 7. As is typical, the event is free and open to the public.

And don't worry. As far as I know, cilantro will not be served.