A packed crowd filled the New World Center Friday, April 29 for it’s first poetry event as the month-long O, Miami poetry festival wound down.  The crowd for Poetry and Persona was there for the headliner, the peripatetic movie star/ poet James Franco, but just as rock trumps scissors, President Obama’s drop-in to Miami trumped James Franco’s visit by bumping him out of Miami’s air space to Orlando.

Despite festival organizer Scott Cunningham and Pete Borrebach’s heroic efforts to Skype with Franco, the actor/poet circled Orlando as the Miami crowd waited. But the show went on, and the crowd spent a mesmerizing 90 minutes listening first to former Miamian Dave Landesberg riff on the bullet fragments next to Lil Wayne’s heart and how they impact his flow.

Next, Franco’s poetry professor Tony Hoagland captivated the crowd by reading about race and love but not sex… Miami’s poet laureate and favorite son, Campbell McGrath then came on and gave a reading from his latest book, Shannon, about a member of the Louis and Clark expedition who became separated from the expedition and on day 13 became delirious from starvation dreaming about buffalo, buffalo, buffalo…Which I couldn’t get out of my head as I dozed off Friday night.

When O, Miami founder Scott Cunningham came out and finally gave it up that Franco was to be a no show, he still got a rousing round of applause. It hardly mattered at all as the crowd was dazzled and sated by the three wonderful performances.  But  , james franco turned out to be a stand up guy… he arrived at the venue at around 10:30 pm and signed books for each and every person who waited..   Miami’s cultural quotient continues to rise off of nights like this.