CoPo

I had the distinct pleasure of attending Fred Chappell’s poetry reading on November 15, 2007.  A distinguished “renaissance man” of the literary realm, Chappell is an acclaimed poet, novelist, essayist, and professor.  He has held and received a number of esteemed titles and positions from various parts of the world including recognition from the Academie Française.  Though his poetry covers a wide range of subjects, Chappell seems to mostly cling to romantic depictions of life through nature.

            Fully adorned in argyle sweater and casual smile, Chappell approached his audience with calm charisma.  The reading began with a piece entitled, “The Garden”, in which, Chappell compares the relationship a gardener has with his garden to books, claiming that each is about the other.  He continued with an assortment of other works, but his true mastery was illuminated when he began to read his sets of enclosed poems.  Each incorporated either a separate poem of his own writing, or that of another poet, into the main poem at work.  To show this, he invited his wife to the podium and allowed her to read the inner poems, while he read the outer.  The innovation used to construct these pieces was both refreshing and original, in a way unlike anything I had ever come in contact with before. 

I was amazed by Fred Chappell’s effectiveness in original use of language.  In a particularly striking re-telling of the story of Narcissus and Echo, he took two individual poems and fused them together to create one.  Using the repetition of words, phrases, or even the half sounds of the ends of Narcissus’s lines, Chappell created Echo’s poem.  This not only allows for an interesting spin and study of the work, but also embodies Echo’s essence - her repetition, her echo.  The meticulous thought used in creating such a piece was impressive and quite frankly, flooring.

Another poem in which Chappell employs this weave of poetry is, “The Passage”.  I could not help but think how proud Annie Dillard would have been at his keen observance of muskrat behavior in the moonlight.  Chappell describes both the muskrat and the moonlight on the water separately, but links them together.  Combining the separate poems in this instance suggests an idea that nature is in harmony, that though the celestial moon and earthly muskrat are individual entities, all the universe is and can be one.

Fred Chappell’s reading was both enjoyable and enlightening.  The diversity of work read as well as the comfortable conversational tone he took with the audience, gave wing to a beautiful introduction of his poetry into my literary appreciation.  Covering a wide range of encompassing and yet seemingly personal subjects, Chappell places a certain quality upon his work.  In the final poem of the reading, he begs the question, “What if poetry could change the world?”  I would like to maintain that if we all wrote like him, maybe it would.

Original post by chelseanewnam

I had the opportunity to attend Julianna Baggott’s poetry reading on October 30, 2007.  From being moderately familiar with her work, I knew that wit and charm leapt from the pages of her poetry, but I did not know to expect the same from her lips.  She writes as she speaks, in metaphor and eloquence.  Poetry seems to exude from her very being in a way that had me hanging on her every word.

            As many of her poems are influenced by inquiries from others about her work, Baggott allowed for many questions during the reading.  When asked how subjects came to her, she simply stated, “It’s the jazz musician that holds up the instruments, and this is just playing me”, maintaining that the poetry chooses her, she does not choose the poetry.  In the same way, when asked where the diligence to write comes from, she begs beginning writers to look at writing as a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend, something that one enjoys spending time with as opposed to a grueling task.  She says of it, “I love the process”; she does and it shows.

Not only does Baggott become inspired by her audience, she is also keenly interested in celebrities and their lives.  When asked why she enjoys writing about popular icons, she explains that she takes pleasure in undermining people’s expectations as to what it is like to be a celebrity.  One of the first poems she read was about Monica Lewinsky, a seemingly unlikely candidate for a sympathetic and non-jocular poem.  This, however, was one of my favorites because it plays to Monica’s emotion and presents her as a real person as opposed to objectifying her the way media tends to.  This and other like poems show the humanity of the famed and are a refreshing take upon their lives.

             I thoroughly enjoy Julianna Baggott’s poetry and was in no way disappointed with her presentation of it.  She expands upon familiar topics in diverse ways, and allows her audience to interact with the material.  In the inscription she wrote while signing my collection of her work, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, it read, “
Chelsea: Hope these inspire!”  To which I am proud to respond, yes Mrs. Baggott, they most certainly do.

Original post by chelseanewnam

     I read two pieces in the last Thursday Poems series for my English 302 class, Introduction to Creative Writing.  While listening, it occured to me how beautiful it is that people approach poetry from all different angles.  No two people approach the world with exactly the same outlook, so it makes perfect sense that poets would also not come to it identically.  During the reading, I was confronted with poems about life, death, love, loss, rage, sarcasm, food, tables, deer, and even grocery stores and superheroes.  The wonderful thing about poetry is that there will never be an end to it.  Humanity will never use up all of its resources of language or all of the possibilities maintained wihin poetics.  I am irked when people claim to “hate” poetry.  I don’t think it is possible, because if you hated poetry you would also have to hate life.  Poetry is life…and not in an emo, beatnik, teeny-bopper sort of way.  It is life because every time a person feels, they are experiencing poetry.  Every time a person looks at the world and takes time to absorb it, they are experiencing poetry.  Poetry is everywhere and can be found in all things.

I know I am probably rambling and more than likely making no sense.  Please excuse that. 

Original post by chelseanewnam

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Brian Eno. He was a pioneer, especially of ambient music, for decades. He recently released a computer program that overlaps different pictures and sounds and it randomly overlaps them. The possibility is there for 77 Million different images. I wonder what something like this would be like if it used words in poetic form? If anyone wants the program, I have it. Eno encourages free distribution. Let me know!

Original post by willcopps

Before this semester I had not had a lot of experience ith scansion or meter or rhythm in poetry.  I am taking this class alongside Emerson’s seminar Poetics in Practice and in the beginning of the semester both classes were focusing heavily on scansion and meter.  Every class we were practicing scansion and talking about its affect on poetry.  Emerson told us to listen to how people talk, to try to listen to the natural stresses and unstresses that come out of their mouths.  So I tried to do that and that night I had a dream that was scanned.  As everyone in my dream spoke the words would come out of their mouths with stress marks over top of them.  I thought it was funny that I had been so immersed in scansion that I was even scanning my dreams.

Original post by efran5zq

i started this post weeks ago and then didn’t finish it.  well, it’s done now and quite lengthy at that.

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Original post by emcla6ep

I attended the poetry reading of all the creative writing classes last Thursday and I had to post about how impressed I was. I couldn’t believe the amount of well articulated, honest, and emotional variety of poems and student poets. The topics were unique, some were traumatic while others analyzed a simplistic action. I just had to post and commend these beginning poets for their tremendous talent.

Original post by Megan G

After re-reading over Walcott’s poem, “Names,” again it is interesting to point out his isolation of Africans as well as the repeated reference to “nouns.” The very first few lines of the poem state “My race began as the sea began,/ with no nouns, and with no horizon,”. This can relate to the very beginning of men and how language did not play a particularly important role to them. Then in lines 39-40, “except they first presumed/the right of every thing to be a noun.” He again focuses on “nouns” but has changes his views. He believes the change has made them view everything as nouns or the boundaries of labeling and language right then for them. Isolation of Africans begins right away when Walcott separates everyone and particularly states Africans are different then “them.” The line 41-42, “The African acquiesced,/ repeated, and changed them.” demonstrates this. I am unsure if this is Walcott trying to show some contradiction between his title, “Names” and how Africans are singled-out and labeled or if he is saying Africans are different then others therefore they do not have “names” in a sense.

Original post by sfinn2id

Serpas, Martha.

The Dirty Side of the Storm.

Norton. 2006..c..96p.

ISBN 0-393-06266-X

$23.95,poetry.

“The Salvage”

Martha Serpas’ second work, The Dirty Side of the Storm, takes careful pleasure in the teasing out of mysteries and binaries; good and evil, life and death, destruction and construction, give way to the swirling, deeply gray, humane truth. Serpas, a devout Catholic, does not preach, but questions, finding these divisions to be imperceptible, incomprehensible, and untrue to suffering humanity. Her poetics achieve this original and honest grappling in the face of the clear legacies and boxed-up poetic movements to which her poetry may be superficially ascribed. Martha Serpas may be decried as a mystical poet, a nature poet, a Southern poet, a female poet, a religious poet, and (by default) a current events poet. Yet, none of these distinctions take into account the mastery of Serpas’ own desire to reach toward the incomprehensible, the shadowy in-betweens with which she is most intimate. The deeper she reaches into herself, and the topography of her life and location, the more we see into the muddied waters of our own life. What sustains us is also deadly, and the Divine is not a winged rescuer, but a figure as complex and paradoxical as His creation.

As a poet, Serpas stands powerfully upon her own gift of sound-work, pulsing and cyclical use of forms, and the originality and intimacy of her metaphoric landscape. Her base of a Catholic God and the Louisiana Bayou are not limitations on the scope of her work; rather, like any good poet, she uses what is at hand as a concrete base for transcendence. Her poetic landscape is focused by a steady hand, and self-consciously participates in traditional metaphors (chiefly, that of water), and formal traditions: couplets, tercets, quatrains, as well as episodic free-verse. Tracing the arch of the book as a whole, it is clear that the individual lyrics contain piece-meal narrative structure. But they are not so bound and ordered as to be a sequence. Rather, they constitute a shapely volume; many of the poems were published in literary journals individually.
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Original post by Whitney

 Response to Outside Poetry Reading:  Fred Chappell reads his work at Thursday Poems, Nov.15, 2007

The work of Fred Chappell was relatively new to me on hearing him read November fifteenth. However, I was prepared for the breadth and depth of his work-the incredible range of subject matter and form to free-verse, to other genres as well. His reading was unorthodox and incredibly endearing. Rather than hinder, his soft mountain accent lilted his poems, giving them a new cantor, stressing words I hadn’t stressed in my own private readings of them, and shedding new meaning.

He did something else which I cherish in a live poetry reading, he “jabbered” (his own word) between poems, providing insight into their creation. His own career spans so many decades and so many volumes (including a series of four novels, paralleled by four volumes of poetry, belonging to the four elements…an epic, intricate meta-work that intrigues me), that he felt called to delve into the inspiration for his variety of poems. The seemingly simple, and incredibly approachable, man revealed his detailed knowledge of botany, for his “garden poems,” the richness of his own memories, and his ability to translate German and French lyrics for the purposes of his “nesting” poems. Within all of these specific introductions to poems, Chappell began to reveal something beautiful to all present-the methodology of a poet is one of astute attention, intention, meticulousness, and a concern with the intricate, and knowledge of all kinds. I appreciated his philosophy of poetics as much as his poems.
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Original post by Whitney