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

Is This Thing On?: Another Seth Abramson Review

Wednesday night (March 11), the Mill was packed with a reasonable amount of people—enough to feel a good vibe without the chaos of overcrowding. Talk Art Cabaret promised readings from the Writer's Workshop, and the air of the night felt similar to that of a performance of a promising experimental art rock band just beginning to catch their stride. As such, those attending leaned towards the creatively inclined instead of the older folk one might see at other poetry readings.

Three writers performed last night, but this critic only stayed for two as I had a Midterm to attend to the next morning. However, I truly wished I could have had time for the last reading after thoroughly enjoying the first two. This piece will focus on the poetry of Seth Abramson, but I must mention the work of the previous writer Teal Minton as the two artists' performances blended together like your favorite mixtape. Minton's sci-fi flirting story whose title I can't quite remember (Elvis Presley...) focused on the point of view of a character named Bob and his interactions with his friend Manny over the course of several non-linear encounters in a dystopic Maine where the main characters deal with the complications of their life-threatening cancer. Minton read the story in a cynical weary voice which amplified the resonance of the piece. Appropriately, the audience responded with gracious applause. Clearly most people in attendance had come to enjoy new, brave voices unafraid to experiment in form.

Minton and Abramson seemed to know each other somewhat well, as Abramson mentioned upon taking the stage that Minton requested him to perform some comedic freestyling before his poems, but he resisted. Abramson read a dozen enthralling poems continuing Minton's more cynical tone with vivid examinations on life with the eye of a scientist. I can't claim any real authority on poetry, as it takes me multiple readings and considerable assistance to put a poem in its deserved perspective. However, the fulfilling experience of Abramson's poems on a mind completely out of touch with the field of poetry speaks to how successful Abramson's work was. Abramson's words, read in a similar world-weary voice to Minton, kept an enticing beat pulling the listener along to his fantastic visions whether it be a nineteen armed creature (19 arms), or a drugged out hallucination in my personal favorite, "A Man and Two Boys, or a Horseman." Wary of my small, small short term memory, I resisted taking down his words on my notebook because from the first poem I realized I wanted to allow myself to enjoy this on the same level as a favorite band.

"Three Cuts" seemed to be the crowd favorite of the night, detailing a scene of three virgin attorneys in a barbershop. Abramson prefaced the poem by explaining it did not contain autobiographical information, as it may be mistaken because of Abramson's own profession in law.

One other notable poem he read was titled "Boxer Flyweight In Drag." Poets seem to get a little crazy discussing professions like boxing which involve a degree of self-mutilation, and yet Abramson made the topic his own by, what I may or may not have perceived correctly, to be a seemingly mundane experience of a boxer mulling over his thoughts while walking through an alley.

The night's readings could have offered a more ideal experience without the spontaneous bursts of what seemed to be the scores of "Raider's of the Lost Arks" and/or "Star Wars." However, they did add somewhat of a flair to the readings as the MC noted.

Today I did a bit of internet sleuthing and discovered Abramson to be, by at least my accounts, an established poet, having his work published in a score of important sounding literary journals. He hosts a blog which immediately won brownie points from me for giving me a rush of nostalgia by discussing the narrative merits of a certain classic Playstation game in the context of his large mult-part examination of "2666", a book he's currently reading. He also has a collection of poems coming out this Spring from Ghost Road Press titled Suburban Ecstasies. If the book contains a few of the poems he read last night then I'm sure it will be a worthy purchase. Finally, I highly recommend any readers of this post to catch a Seth Abramson reading if you spot one nearby, regardless of your poetic affiliations.

-Abhijit Pradhan

The Mill and Seth Abramson

On this cold night of March 11th 2009 I ventured to Iowa City’s The Mill for my first night of “Talk Art” which consists of works by the members of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. I was lucky I chose to go on this night because I had the pleasure of listening to a few short poems by Seth Abramson. In general, Seth’s poems were fast paced which caused me to pay close attention during his readings. I’d like to say the majority of the poems he read tonight were in free verse but due to his rapid speed-reading I was not able to focus too closely on any specific forms he may have been writing in. What I did notice however was his subtle use of rhymes in the first few poems he read.

One thing I really liked about Seth’s poetry was his use of more informal language. He does not fill his writing with flowery words, which I feel can sometimes take away from the poem itself. All of Seth’s poems got down to the point and I felt that made them more relatable and also more enjoyable for me to listen to. One line that I felt said a lot in a few words came from the poem “Three Cuts”. Seth wrote, “It’s not easy spending a life time spending a lifetime”. It was brief lines like this that made Seth’s poems so powerful.

Another thing that is to be noted about Seth’s poetry is his ability to focus on the characters in his poems and develop them in only a few stanzas. During his reading Seth told us in the audience that the poem “Three Cuts” was not about him, he said that since the poem is about a lawyer that most people assume he wrote it about himself. It was made clear soon after he started reading the poem why he did not want people to think it was referring to him, the poem was about a virgin lawyer and all the barbers in the shop knew he was a virgin too.

One poem that really stood out to me in terms of its character development was the last poem Seth read, and possibly his best poem of the night, “Final Boy." The poem is about a letter a man wrote to his wife and son about why he is leaving them. But “Final Boy” then dove into deeper issues like the choices in life that a man sometimes has to face in regards to women and children. All in all I honestly enjoyed listening to Seth’s Work, and he made my first experience at a poetry reading a positive one.

By: Audrey Thar