An encouraging poetry reading/Books Acquired Recently

This past Friday (4 April 2008) I attended a poetry reading at Northern Illinois University featuring John Bradley, Lucien Stryk, and the current Illinois Poet Laureate, Kevin Stein. The reading was packed, probably close to two hundred people were there, enough that some people had to stand in the back the entire time.

I have heard Bradley read before, and I enjoy listening to him talk about his poems because they often include uncommon-yet-fascinating subject matter, e.g., he has a poem about footnotes.

I have heard a lot about Stryk and about how his poetry is life-changingly influential in many people's lives, but had never read any of his poetry or heard him read before. Sadly, he is old enough now that he could only get his words out at a very slow pace, which hurt the ability of his poems to make much of an impact on the audience if they were not already familiar with his work. I was at a reading three years ago in which W.S. Merwin had the same problem; it just comes with the territory of getting old. But if you are that old and people still want to hear you read your poetry, I guess that is not such a bad way to go.

Quite frankly, I had never heard of Stein before, and I almost laughed when I found out that he is Gwendolyn Brooks' successor. It seems that there would be another poet in Illinois who is more deserving of the honor (Li-Young Lee, anyone?). But once Stein got through his annoyingly self-serving spiel about all he does as poet laureate and began reading his poems, I was rather impressed, enough so that I bought a copy of his latest collection, American Ghost Roses. My favorite Stein poem was "An American Tale of Sex and Death," which includes a description of "Olivia Hussey's / olive chest splashed on screen, each breast maybe / four feet across and deeply cleaved" in Romeo and Juliet. In fifth grade my teacher had us watch Romeo and Juliet because it was the class play for that year (I was Lord Capulet), and I remember when Hussey's breasts flashed on the screen it was breathtaking.

Book Acquired Recently

Kevin Stein, American Ghost Roses.