Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Iowa Writer’s Workshop Grads Return with Quirks and Religion

On April 14th, Arda Collins and Jonathan Thirkield, both graduates from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, returned to Prairie Lights to read for the ongoing series, Live From Prairie Lights.

They read to a packed house, though the crowd seemed swollen with students required to attend for a class project. The crowd thinned about halfway through the reading, many students leaving after they had made their compulsory appearance. I sat next to two students who made their dashing exit halfway through the show.

Though the ranks dissipated for the reading, I though both poets read remarkably well, though there was a definite contrast in poetic style and their chosen styles of reading as well.

Arda Collins read first, mostly choosing poems from It Is Daylight, which, as her introduction noted, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets contest in 2008. From the beginning, she seemed nervous reading her poetry, which was only more emphasized by the neurotic quality of her poetry, which frequently placed the speaker of her poems in psychologically restricted dilemmas. At one point, she read a poem in which the speaker thought she was “so ugly I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to drive.” The audience timidly laughed at this self-deprecation, which was very prevalent throughout her reading. Most of her poems seemed to be in free verse form, though her voice fell at the end of each line. This falling voice lent some affection the poems, which gave the reading a sense of intimacy that I do not think would be apparent in simply reading the poems, which are often wrought with savage images and observations of the psychological limitations of basic action in the modern world. The voices of her poems often seemed lonely, though not bitterly lonely. She also seemed perplexed by religion in her poems, saying in one of them “I don’t know how to pray but I would try,” showing that the desire for some sort of spirituality exists though confusion and indecision, like in many other aspects of her poetry, reign supreme. Throughout her reading, Collins’ voice remained in sync with much of her content, and her quirky wit seemed at home in a world where “adorable adults always seem like untrustworthy alcoholics.”

Jonathan Thirkield took the podium after Collins and immediately began to read with very little introduction. His voice and poetry contrasted with that of Collins in a number of ways. His poems had a musical quality that was only emphasized by the various musical references that he made. The lines seemed to bob up and down in their unusually varied iambic forms. His voice had a soft and soothing tone with a modicum of fragility, which commanded a reverent silence from the audience. This only accentuated the ephemeral quality of his disparate images, which came and went just as quickly as his voice did. The most notable poem of his was one done in twelve series based on the mystery plays for York. The mystery plays for York, as Thirkield informed the audience, was a display put on by various guilds in 15th century York of the twelve stations of the cross. Thirkield does twelve sections on the mindset and images surrounding each guild’s representation of the scene. They were all done in present tense, which seemed to beg the audience to contrast the display of religion in these 15th century guildsmen with the portrayal and representation of religion in modern society.

Written by Sean Ehni who loves Mario Kart

Monday, April 27, 2009

American Hybrid of Images and Emotions

As soon as I finished climbing the stairs to the second floor of Prairie Lights Monday night of April 27th, I knew that it would be a challenge to find a place to sit. People were trailing back behind the seats, standing in single file lines. I worked my way up front slowly but surely, and I created a seat on the floor in front of the seats. The room was not loud, but there was an excited murmur emitting from the crowd. I saw a small woman dressed all in black embrace a smartly dressed man, and from their body language I could tell they were writers. They shared a glance between them that was knowing; as if because they both had to communicate with words to everyone else, they found ways to go beneath the words with each other. Shortly after this exchange, the woman approached the podium.

The woman, Cole Swensen, was the co-editor of the book American Hybrid which was the subject of the reading. She read a short opening paragraph, which she revealed was something she wished she had put in the book but had thought of it too late, about the experimental nature of poetry. She also introduced the two other speakers for the event; James Galvin and Mark Levine. She said that the unifying theme of the evening was to be the work of writers who were somehow connected with the University of Iowa or Iowa City; either because they taught there, went to school there, had held readings there, or were going to teach there.

James Galvin was next up to the podium. He was a soft-spoken man, and tended to let his statements and jokes sort of trail off for the audience to take or leave. He began his portion of the reading with an explanation of how the rivers in his native state of Wyoming sometimes run underground, then flow back out again. He then led into his first poem by joking, “This doesn’t have anything to do with that; I just wanted you to know.” His poem was indeed about the river, and his low gravelly voice seemed the perfect match for the vivid scenery described in the poem. Galvin then read a piece titled “Nature Averts Her Eyes,” which described an earthquake and several small incidents occurring during the earthquake. One recurring incident was of a woman peeling an orange, which had strong resonance throughout the piece. The speaker described the woman’s fingers as kinds of beauty, and talked about the glowing of the fingertips that touched the orange. Galvin also read pieces from the book by other poets, one of which, Robert Hass, had a poem which stood out. The poem by Hass had the audible effect of a cell phone with poor reception when read aloud, and the repetition of the lines punctuated the effect.

Mark Levine, the third reader, announced to the audience upon arriving at the podium that he would begin with one of his poems, read some work by others, and then end with his poem in order to create his own hybrid; the crowd chuckled appreciatively. He started with his piece “Chimney Song,” which had a lot of simple rhymes, creating a kind of schoolyard song effect. He read several poems by other authors, but the one that most stood out was “Variations on the Dream of the Rude” by Susan Stuart. This poem had repetition of Christian imagery and themes, such as the tree which becomes the cross which is like a man. One particular line, “from the man, a God took form,” stood out in that it reversed the usual beliefs of religious peoples.

At the end of Mark’s reading, Cole took the podium once more, reading the last selected pieces and thanking the owners of Prairie Lights. It seemed that only about ten minutes had gone by since she was last standing there, yet an hour had somehow slipped away. The poetry had a trancelike effect that was only broken when the audience’s applause concluded the event. As I descended the stairs of Prairie Lights and walked out into the night, I felt somewhat bewildered about the state of mind I was left with. It wasn’t so much of an intense intellectual experience, as an enchanting emotional and imaginative experience.

Laura Jackson

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Moving into the Beyond

This past Wednesday, April 8th, Jane Gregory, a graduate student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, read from her work as part of the ongoing Talk Art readings at the Mill in downtown Iowa City. Her work was introduced as being “challenging, literally challenging, meditative” and the small room with about thirty attendees was warned: “Try to keep up with Jane’s work; that is the point.” In comparison to other Talk Art performances, Gregory’s poetry seemed more academic and her performance more professional, a reading that required an attentive audience (given fair warning) to key into the small nuances of her poetry.

Commanding the stage with an overall seriousness for her work, Gregory expected her listeners to do the same, beginning her reading by commenting, “My poems are not so funny, but I will work on that for next time.” The Mill, a restaurant and bar with a hometown quaintness that usually attracts blue grass and banjo playing bands, and likewise audiences seeking such entertainment, was a peculiar venue for Gregory’s poetry in that its academic quality was probably more suited to a Prairie Lights crowd of listeners. She read in a straight forward and fluid manner that sounded much like reading academic prose, leaving no room in her performance –or any indication by voice, of line break or poetic syntax. Despite the juxtaposition of poet and venue, Gregory’s work impressed the gathering and even brought the listeners to applause at the conclusion of a poem dedicated to another member in the Workshop.

Most poem titles involved going “beyond” such as “Faith in the Never Beyond,” “If the Hunt is also called Beyond,” and “How we Came Beyond Faith.” The theme of “beyond” brings with it ideas of religion, identity, and questions of the cosmos. Typically such topics have a tendency to lean toward cliché, but Gregory writes deceptively simple statements in her poetry that yearn to be re-examined: “If God gave up on night,” “You mistook my explanation for God,” and “What if God were moved to speak?” While it was never made clear as to what Gregory was exactly going “beyond,” her poetry included a sense of arrival after a long personal journey and a beckoning for others to join her, apparent in lines such as, “Here I am, pure noise” and “Beyond where the moon shone, oh how I want you to have a voice!”

Picking up on Gregory’s use of sound and language was more difficult because of the nature of her reading style. However, a close listener could not have missed the internal rhymes, puns, and Gregory’s overall interest in word formation. The use of internal rhyme may be what saved her from sounding purely prose. While the rhyme was not the strongest or most original, “this alien light in which the night bored us in,” it did offer a nice break from the fluidity of Gregory’s reading. Most interesting about her writing, though, is the way it asks to be thought of on a word by word basis. For example, Gregory writes, “In many languages this rhymes with misfit,” which both asks a listener to compare this and misfit in English in the different uses of the words, but also in accordance with other languages and how a connection between the two might be created. Finally, Gregory states, “Who gave us the word really to tell us degrees of reality?” This last line embodies the nuances in her poetry and the interworking of the poems on a word by word basis. Gregory not only asks about the origin of the words and how they came into being, but uses the words as objects put into conversation with one another rather than as only words in a stream of consciousness.

Wednesday night Talk Art at the Mill gives both the Workshop and the community an opportunity to interact. Jane Gregory’s reading proved to be academic and professional, her work demanding close attention and reading, her poetry asking for more than one examination. Gregory’s work is nicely summarized in a colleague’s words as, “Poetry that you can never touch but can always believe in.”

Kathryn Duffy

Monday, April 13, 2009


Honor Thy Father
-Poet and Writer Honor Moore Explores Her Relationship with her Father in her new Memoir, The Bishop's Daughter

This is the poetry blog. I am not in the wrong place. So why am I sharing my experiences from Thursday night's memoir reading by Honor Moore? Well, first, Moore is a poet and she is well known at The University of Iowa as she taught here in 1996. She currently lives in New York where she self proclaimes to be working on more poetry and another memoir.

This reading was from her newest book, which happens not to be specifically a book of poetry, but a memoire that touches on writing and the process of writing, especially poetry. Poetry plays an important role in the book and clearly, in Honor Moore's life. She read one section of the book in particular that deals with writing very personal family business in the form of poetry as a way of dealing with issues that seem overwhelming in print. Her writing was encouraged by her mother and disapproved of by her father, the well-known Episcopal Bishop of New York, Paul Moore.

This reading was important on so many levels. First, here in Iowa this past week same-sex marriage has been approved by the courts. As Moore's father was bisexual and married to her mother, fathering 9 children as well as maintaining a 30-year relationship with one man; one had to wonder, listening to her read, if these issues would have been relevant if her father had been free to marry a man. I thought about asking this question, hypothetically, to Honor Moore, but decided against it, as it would have been purely speculative in nature.

I enjoyed her reading very much; was interested and inspired by her poetic writing style. The Bishop's Daughter is a personal memoir, but the language, description and view is from the eyes of an established poet, so the material is far from dry or simply factual. There is a rich story woven in this book, a poet's perspective of a sensitive issue, a child's image of her father, a woman's acceptance of her father as a human being rather than an icon. This work is not 'poetry' per se, but it is poetic prose. It is lyrical story-telling at it's very best and the most interesting thing about the reading is that the book is a memoir. There is something in the literal and not fiurative that draws me to this work in particular.

It is also interesting to note that Honor Moore mentioned that most of her poetry touches on the women's movement and her relationship with her father in one way or another, so by reading the memoir, it gives the reader better perspective and understanding of her works of poetry, Red Shoes (2006) and Darling (2001). She has also collaborated on several works, edited a book of poetry from the women's movement and written a biography, White Blackbird about her grandmother, Margarett Sargent.

So, now you know why I'm writing this review in the poetry blog. I hope it inspires you to pick up Honor Moore's newest book, or perhaps touch back on some of her previously published poetry with a new perspective. I know I certainly enjoyed participating in the reading!


-Elizabeth Green


Thursday, April 9, 2009

Emily Wilson: A Poet in Full Bloom

Most residents of Iowa City would remember Wednesday, April 8th as a temperate evening in the beginning of April just before the deciduous trees had come to bud. They might recall that their rusted lawns hadn’t quite begun their ascension from autumnal death to renewed vitality and that the tulips were still unrealized, tucked safely beneath the soil. I’ll remember it as the evening Emily Wilson teased her audience with poems about flourishing gardens and unrestricted life.

At 7 p.m. the man who would deliver her introduction came to stand before the podium. He spoke of Wilson as she would later speak of backyard gardens; she was described as blossoming, brilliant, and “generous in her sparseness." As she approached the microphone and the crowd began its welcoming applause, he finished: “Welcome, Emily Dickinson or…excuse me, Emily Wilson”; most within the crowd laughed. Wilson paused, giggled beneath her breath and then thanked him for the incidental compliment. She then thanked her husband, Mark, the University of Iowa Press, and a number of the individuals who occupied the reserved seats before ultimately beginning her reading.

Wilson read from her collection titled “Micrographia," a homage to Robert Hooke’s 17th Century contribution to microbiology, in a soft deliberate tone that was both eloquent and calming; in fact, throughout the entirety of her half-hour performance Wilson did not stutter or fumble with a single of her words.

The first poem, which I was not able to ascertain the title of, addressed the world that lay within eyesight of the backyard she formerly maintained in Oregon. It read nicely. One of the immediate qualities of her writing that struck me, and would later develop into a recurring theme, was Wilson’s ability to meld typically coarse scientific language into gentle poetic patterns. And while her word choices often lacked the inherent musical qualities of more conventional language, her fastidious word selections and arrangements only further exemplified her poetic prowess. Her opening poem, like those that followed, sounded neither forced or rigid.

Wilson continued thereafter to read several poems, often introduced by their location. Most originated in Oregon, or New York—places Wilson formerly resided in—but she also spoke of Montana and California, not necessarily as states but rather as locations with unique and impressive vegetation.

Some of the more memorable poems within Wilson’s performance include “Tableau” and the cleverly titled “Johnny Rotten’s Produce”; the latter, a poem set in New York, treated Dyker Heights and the derelicts of industrial Brooklyn with the same sincerity and imagination that had been given to "Bill's garden", pigeons and flowers in previous poems. For me, “Johnny Rotten’s Produce” demonstrated Wilson’s ability to move beyond the unadulterated spaces of nature to the confides of one of America’s least vegetated cities. What was most impressive and surprising about her treatment of this space was her objectivity. As foolish as it seems now, I had prematurely assumed that Wilson would treat industrial spaces with condemnation and disgust. I had assumed her obvious affection for the natural world would bias her perspective of these spaces but Wilson’s cool contemplation clearly championed over such sentiment, if in fact they had ever existed, the ultimate result being another articulately crafted poem.

Even more impressive was that Wilson‘s poetic performance was almost entirely free from standard adjectival descriptions. While most poets struggle to not muddy their works with an over-insistence on descriptive language, Wilson has the incredible ability to unpack her descriptions into sentences more accurate and meaningful than the words they replace. As her introducer had indicated, Wilson’s collection is deliberately “sparse."

Before beginning her final poem, “Excursion," a poem that moved from the painted coast to the water of the ocean itself, Wilson described her poems, with a gentle laughter, as her own “version of a still-life painting." Such self-assessment was not only founded but the perfect introduction to a poem that would dance over a series of objects, gracefully, careful not to overshadow any one subject with another.

Ultimately, I left Wilson’s reading with a respect for her ability and a yearning for nature’s beauty. Her work is the perfect companion to those Spring and Summer months when the earth’s vitality is renewed, and we are once again able to bask in the beauty of the natural world. “Micrographia," like beds of brilliantly arranged flowers, rubs the hues and shapes of our language against each other, further highlighting the beauty of it’s individual parts. It can be purchased at Prairie Lights or online here.

-Tyler Lang Mauseth

Monday, April 6, 2009

Don't Slam Big Poppa E

Terrified of what a “Slam Poetry” reading could bring, I bribed my urbanite Chicagoan friend with a cup of coffee in to tagging along. Although, it turned out to be less of talking her into it, rather her convincing me that it was going to be really cool and that she loved slam poetry. Who knew?

As we walked up to Old Brick, the air was filled with a sweet aroma of maple syrup and sweet pastries, only to find out that Big Poppa E was not serving pancakes, rather it was a fundraiser and Big Poppa E was not at Old Brick, rather the daunting lecture hall of MacBride Auditorium, so our adventure continued. Walking into MacBride brought back memories of freshman year science class as well as a complete shock. Expecting the auditorium to be packed with poetry gurus, I found a few college students sitting, a few running around frantically untangling cords and dragging massive speakers, and then a number of students sitting at tables with numerous signs and brochures. Then I saw Big Poppa E himself, recognizing his distinct style from his website and his unique voice uncovering the details of the student tables.

After watching Big Poppa E, rather than listening to him, for 20 minutes as he conversed with students and pounded a Rockstar energy drink, he finally got up on stage. He let us know that he too was a little bummed out with the turnout, but he was determined to have enough of us to do the wave. Although, I thought this might be fun, it was small enough that it almost seemed conversational. I had expected a packed house and after running across campus expecting a packed house it was nice to sit and observe, rather than be jammed in a corner of a packed lecture hall. He started to point out people in the audience giving them names, while the microphones were being adjusted. Naming kids, Red for her hair, Green for his shirt, Bandaid for his ridiculously cut arms, and finally Phish for his hair, he finally was given a mic. Big Poppa E introduced J[amnesty], and then informed the audience that he had to pee, but first would pick us out a crucial playlist for the two minutes he would be gone. At this point, my friend had become extremely irritated and hollered out asking exactly how long was the restroom break going to take him. Big Poppa E found this his first opportunity to start his “Slam” poetry. He named my friend “Angry girl” and then went in to how she was going to be referred to as his ex-girlfriend for the rest of the show. After he went off on his tangent, he finally picked his playlist and then was off to the bathroom, only then to inform us that he did not know where the bathroom was, and was a bit terrified to ask for directions, for fear that “Angry girl” might come after him. Once Big Poppa E took care of business and returned to the stage, he was overwhelmingly entertaining. This poetry reading was definitely worth the wait.

Ashley Baldinelli

Saturday, April 4, 2009

GZA attacks Iowa City


GZA performing his classic album "Liquid Swords" at the Englert on April 1? Surely this is an elaborate April Fool's joke, right? Made nasty by gathering concert-starved Midwestern rap fans and telling them at reveal of no performer, how absurd it was to think they could expect someone from the Wu-Tang Clan to grace Iowa City with a visit. Well, apparently not. GZA truly opened the Mission Creek festivities this Wednesday to a sold out crowd of rabid Iowans.


Before I went to this concert, I kept in mind my mission to evaluate this concert from a poetry-minded perspective. I expected difficulty to form such a review for some reason, but actually the whole night played out as a devoted cel

ebration of the lyrics GZA wrote over ten years ago when he released the album in 1994.


I should probably include a little back story for the uninitiated. GZA hails from Brooklyn, New York where he developed his skills as a rapper with his cousins in the exploding hip-hop scene. He and his cousins eventually united to form the all-star team of the infamous Wu-Tang Clan. Wu completely changed the game of hardcore rap once they released the album Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers), which married themes of martial arts with their memories of violent street life, and demonstrated the RZA's unique production style which would go on to influence an entire decade of hip-hop. Members of the Wu-Tang Clan went on to make their own groundbreaking solo efforts including Raekown's Only Built for Cuban Linx..., Ghostface Killah's Fishscale (A personal favorite), and of course GZA's Liquid Swords.

Anyways, I expected a crowd consisted of an interesting mix of locals and both undergrad and grad students. Instead, a diverse mix of people filled the theater with a large proportion of the local residents. The show sold out and the bulk of crowd showed up before the openers started, showing just how psyched up this crowd had been. After the opening act ended the restless crowd threw up folded pairs of hands in the shape of a “W” famously symbolic of the Wu-Tang Clan. The crowd erupted when GZA took the stage, backed by a single DJ. GZA broke out into the first song, laying down a specific tone for the rest of the night. From that first song the crowds repeated the lyrics in step with GZA, like a minister in a rousing sermon. Throughout the songs GZA and the DJ would suddenly stop for an instant so the audience could fill in the end of a verse. It took me completely by surprise to see such a huge amount of people in Iowa so familiar with such a strange album. The material covered GZA’s hood experience told through a Shaolin warrior’s lens, as he extolled his toughness by demonstrating his mastery of the street experience, like Ramses II engraving his name over the buildings of conquered civilizations. I wondered how this crowd could possibly relate to these lyrics. But maybe instead of directly relating to the GZA’s lyrics, Iowa fans loved the album in more of an escapist sense, transporting them into dramatic scenes of hood life.


As the night progressed GZA’s performance increased in intensity. At one point he took the hand of a boy and let him on the stage. As GZA continued the song the boy danced and mouthed the words along until GZA hugged him and let him back off stage. At another point he let a girl up on stage to dance too. Between songs GZA overflowed with appreciation as he admitted he doesn’t get the chance to pass through here often.


However, the show was not without its snags. After the first song, GZA requested the “sound man” to turn his mic up. The sound guy didn’t quite respond as GZA asked and so GZA spent some minutes nearly demanding for his mic’s volume to be turned up. From the perspective of the audience, it seemed the sound guy denied the GZA because they feared it might get out of hand. However, GZA clearly wanted to give the audience the best experience possible, regardless of any other consequences. The sound problem never came to an ideal solution; I stood maybe a quarter of the auditorium’s length to the stage and even then I couldn’t hear the lyrics particularly clearly.


In the end, the pure energy of the show as created by the sheer exuberance of the audience in their love for the record made for a great experience. I would imagine that it must be every rapper’s dream to make an album so great that you can tour the country of the record to the masses even as you pass your creative prime. The GZA show makes those comments in the nineties of the limited existence of hip-hop look absurd and antiquated. The classic poets never achieved the kind of god like fervor from the masses as rappers. And yet rap doesn’t really derive from those poetic traditions, instead arising naturally from experience like a chemical reaction. It is artists like GZA who can take those natural forms and bend them to their artistic vision.


-Abhijit Pradhan

Friday, April 3, 2009

Lighthearted on April Fool's Day

April Fool’s Day 2009 brought many jokes to the Iowa City area, one event continued in the day’s jovial manner, was the poetry reading of Dobby Gibson at the Prairie Lights Bookstore. Currently residing in Minneapolis Minnesota, Dobby Gibson received his MFA in fiction from the University of Indiana and was reading selections from his second book of collective works entitled Skirmish. I was fifteen minutes early, and one of the first to arrive. By seven ‘o’ clock the room was filled up with professional young adults conversing about their travel plans to Greece, and amount of free-time they had available to read. There were students, such as myself, who were there to get down to business, with their notebooks in hand and minds ready to experience a solid scheduled hour of readings from a published poet.



The lights in the back began to go dim, as a young lady approached the podium in the front of the room and begins to introduce Gibson with a quote from the film Last Days of Disco. The poems of his first book, Polar, she claimed made him a man who could make “rivers vanish into rivers.” He was described as a tall man, who through the advantage of his stature had the ability to juxtapose a sense of alienation with the feeling of brotherhood. And with those words a tall and lanky man approached the spotlight and felt compelled to read a poem from Skirmish; “What it feels like to be this tall?” From the onset of the reading Gibson held a playful banner with the audience. Multiple times he was reminded of the playful nature of the day and one time even adapted a title of one of his poems to incorporate a suggestion from an audience member.


Gibson continued with “Self Storage” which seemed to centralize around the themes of memory and personal connection held in regard to the memories. Gibson said about one third of the poems in Skirmish, were fortune poems written about a Chinese fortune telling game he played well into to the night one evening that inspired him to write the fortune poems. He told five of them throughout the course of the reading. He soon went back to his first book for some selections. One of Gibson’s finer qualities that streamlined from one poem to the next was his use of alliteration. In both his published works he has a unique way of picking out words you couldn’t imagine flow together and make it work.


Gibson worked his way back to Skirmish, and his attempt to branch into prose poetry with two poems; “Civics Lesson,” and “Chin Music” He ventured more into the transcendental with critiques on ceremony, proclaiming gods gutless in “Civic Lesson.” “Chin Music,” told the story of an outrageous umpire married to a composer with writers block. The poet reminded the audience that is National Poetry Month and saved time for a couple questions, but limited the questions. The reading was over by seven twenty-eight.


By: Spencer Poulos

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Dobby Gibson

At Prairie Lights. It is April First. I am waiting to hear Dobby Gibson read.

Originally, I was planning to write my review on Big Poppa E; however, my cousin called this morning and asked if I was aware Dobby Gibson was in town. He’s an acquaintance of hers, she says, from the year she spent in Minneapolis; she says his poetry is “quietly unbelievable.” I promise I’ll go.

At the bookstore, I am inundated with bearded gentlemen and cardiganed women that I know. I smile and whisper “hello.” I note for not the first time the slightly absurd backdrop in front of which poets perform.—we are in the self-help section, abundant with capital letters and alternate question mark/exclamation point sequences: You Mean I’m NOT Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! and Don’t Call ME a DRAMA QUEEN!, etc. A woman takes the microphone. She introduces the poet with a quote from the movie The Last Days of Disco: “Tall people tend to have great personalities…” And indeed, Dobby Gibson is tall—his lankiness is the first thing I notice when he strolls to the podium. I’m not great at estimating heights, but I would guess, if forced, that he is at least 6”3. And I’m not great at guessing ages, but I would guess, if forced, that he’s in his late thirties or early forties. He wears hip-ish square black glasses and a starched white shirt; his manner is scholarly and coolly aloof. He speaks for a few moments about his new book, Skirmish.

Gibson opens with a poem entitled “What It Feels Like To Be This Tall.” The piece establishes him right away as an outsider, not only in the poetry field (the poem contains a snide comment about academia) but in and throughout his own life. I am drawn immediately to his poetic voice—plain, simple, very close to everyday ordinary speech. He seems to have been influenced by Frank O’Hara or perhaps William Carlos Williams (and indeed cites O'Hara as a major influence during the brief question-and-answer session at the end. ) His manner of speech, and his word choice in his poems, is soothing and familiar.

He follows this with a series of poems, each simply entitled “Fortune,” inspired by a severely mistranslated manual. The “Fortunes” are short pieces of deft beauty. I notice that the last line of each is something seemingly ordinary that, by virtue of being the last line, becomes extraordinary: “You will get your wish, but / it will arrive too late.” “You wear expensive shoes, / which you sometimes use to kill spiders.”

In the middle of his between-poems chitchat, a mentally challenged women interrupts his banter. She mumbles something indistinguishable and then says, “April Fools!” Gibson seems first surprised, then flatly unamused; he moves quickly to his next piece. I think about this for a second—in his poetry, Gibson seems somehow cool and open-minded; however, in reality, he was pretty clearly flabbergasted by this slight obstacle. In other words, he reacts radically differently than I would expect him to react if I had never seen him, but only read his poetry. This is an unusual benefit of live poetry readings, I think—you can observe the poet in action, and glean new information from his appearance and his behavior, information that you would never have access to otherwise and which can be enlightening when reading or hearing his poems. By watching Dobby Gibson in action, I feel like I have new insight to his character and thus to his poetic voice—an awkwardness, a certain defensiveness. I may be wrong about these qualities, but I feel as though I know the poet and his poems better, simply by seeing him in real life.

Gibson reads some prose poems, and then one last “Fortune”—a breathtaking piece about the sacredness of everyday life. I think about what my cousin said—Gibson is somewhat “quietly unbelievable.” He’s not an ostentatious poet, he doesn’t seem to be competing for attention; rather, he speaks to his audience of mundane wonders, the true wondrousness that can be found beneath the banality of our lives. I’m glad I went.

Madeleine Wurm

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Meaning and Inspiration

My first poetry reading. I was not sure what to expect as I entered the cozy, crowded corner of the Prairie Lights Bookstore adorned with green chairs, and took a seat amongst the towering shelves of books lining the walls. The mood in the room is mixed. Some, like myself, appear clearly apprehensive, as though they, like myself, have never attended a poetry reading before. They sit in silence, eagerly anticipating the reading. Others--frequenters of such events, I would assume--chat away with one another. Shortly after seven, a woman takes the stage to introduce the reader.

Zach Savich is introduced to the crowd as a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. He is described as having the ability to capture the mergence of romance and reality within his work. These are topics of particular interest to me. As he takes the stage, I am relieved at his noninvasive presence. He appears to be almost as nervous to be speaking as I am to be there. 

He begins by posing the question, "What do people imagine when they're writing poems?" I consider this. Where do people draw their inspiration? And how does that define them as a poet? He answers for himself through out the reading, telling the audience that he draws inspiration from his friends and coworkers, as well as legendary figures such as Don Quixote. Shakespeare, and Charlie Chaplin. Many of his poems are reminiscent of others' thoughts and happenings. I find it reassuring that he, a prize-winning poet, draws inspiration from those he looks up to. I am inspired.

In terms of his work, I found the poems themselves a bit confusing. I could not tell where one poem ended and the next began, or whether they were a series of longer poems. Between what I deem to be poems, he stops and addresses the audience. He speaks to some people specifically, primarily friends and people he has gone out with the night before. He sympathizes with those who feel bored by the long, rambling poems that don't speak to them and promises to read only his most meaningful material and finish at a reasonable time. He finished ten minutes later, presenting the whole reading in just a little over half an hour. 

In the short time that he presented, I listened carefully to his work to try and find that important meaning he had described. The moment when it all makes sense. It was in his poem inspired by Don Quixote that I discovered the line which inspired me the most. Buried within the long, confusing poem was the notion that everything is "out of order, but related." This notion struck a chord with me. This line alone helped me to understand the rest of his poetry--his constant jumping from topic to topic--the disconnect within and between every work. It made me delve deeper into his words and search for my own interpretation of ways in which the random, disordered topics relate and connect to make sense. I believe that I was able to discover the 'meaning' Savich had implied: it is unique to every individual based on their personal inspirations and interpretations. 

-Caitlin Ward