Refrigerator Manuscripts

Jill Bialosky returned to Iowa City for the first time since graduating from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1983 on February 26^th, 2009. I found this ironic as I had never before been to a poetry reading and here I was showing up at my first one with notebook in hand observing a writer making her first appearance to Iowa City since before I was born. I was skeptical at first to post a review of Jill Bialosky given the nature of my first attendance so I attended a few other readings in the past weeks, such as translations read at the Sanctuary and Zach Savich at Prairie Lights to see what was out there, only to discover that Jill Bialosky was my favorite poet out of the poets I saw.

For my first time experiencing Live From Prairie Lights I was taken aback at the size of the audience. I had a friend save me a seat in the front row and I was thankful when I started to notice people standing in the back without seats. The audience descended into a dead silence as Jill was introduced. Not too long after being introduced she began speaking and was interrupted by a cell phone ringing in the first row (not mine thankfully). Jill politely stopped talking and allowed the woman to silence her phone before moving on and describing her process of writing and how it affected her ordinary life as “a mother and an editor being in the world”. Jill provided some more background information of her writing style, such as her use of “She the poet” vs. using “I” in order to reach a different consciousness, before reading from her new book of poetry Intruder.

Jill tells us the intruder is part muse, other, and imagined other challenging the levels of selfhood and reality we inhabit. This detailed introduction leading into her first poem had me leaning forward closer to the poet as she spoke, even though I was already in the front row. The first words from the first poem began with “blank canvas” and I could not imagine a more appropriate attention-getter to suck me in for the rest of the night. Jill then read a few sections of a ten section poem entitled “The Skiers” which she called her own version of Paradise Lost. The first section began with “Snow, lone wilderness…” and ended with “high on the crescent” with the final section she read ending “for one moment the world is calm”, which I found translating into my personal experience that night in attendance.

I was really riveted when Jill began telling us the occasion for the next poem she would be reading came from a library of forgotten Chinese manuscripts. Given my interest in Chinese literature and our class discussions of occasional poetry I knew I was in for a treat as Jill says she wanted to “blend the old and the new” with these erotic Chinese poems. The poem was not the greatest of the night, but I couldn’t stop listening with her direct references to Taoism, as I found myself referencing myself throughout her poems as she was reading.

Jill read a few more poems before reading from her novel The Life Room. She presented the themes of desire and responsibility, authentic and narcissus. My favorite lines were “I write because I can’t” and “Loneliness is inevitable, it’s a force of nature.” Then suddenly, the reading was over.

Although Jill Bialosky came off as very quiet and perhaps nervous and she ended her reading somewhat abruptly, I nonetheless appreciate all the advice she gave to the writers in the audience. She advised us against looking too closely, for one can get lost. She shared with us her enjoyment from moving between two genres. And by sharing with the audience that she kept her manuscripts in the refrigerator, I left Prairie Lights with the sense that Jill Bialosky has found a harmonious balance as “a mother and an editor being in the world”.

--Josh Elwer