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