{"id":117,"date":"2016-02-26T11:30:59","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T17:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2016-03-07T18:24:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:24:19","slug":"poetry-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/poetry-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, dark and chilly, I wandered up to Logan Square to attend a poetry reading by Michael Robins (my Advanced Poetry Workshop instructor), Adam Clay, and Joel Craig at Uncharted Books<\/a>. I vaguely remembered the poems from Craig\u2019s collection The White House<\/em> from when I read it for Intermediate Poetry Workshop, so I was looking forward to getting reacquainted with his poems. And that Robins guy? I was definitely interested in hearing what his style was seeing as where he\u2019s coming from as a poet is influencing where I\u2019m going. Adam Clay was an entirely new experience for me. So into the winter night I went with my boyfriend and his white, \u201977 Cadillac.<\/br>
\nAs I walked up to the bookstore where the reading was being held I saw a curious white dog in the window. It was hard not to think of that one song about the \u201cdoggie in the window\u201d as my boyfriend finished puffing on his Lucky Strike. The smell of old books hit me before I even got my whole body in the door, and I felt happy. The creaky floors and books piled and organized on shelves with handwritten labels greeted us. We said hello with our fingertips and stood waiting for the reading to start. It was a bit after 7 o\u2019clock when Robins finally kicked things off with \u201cPoem White Page White Page Poem\u201d by Muriel Rukeyser and an introduction of all the poets, including himself. Adam Clay was to read first.<\/br>
\nClay was a small man; though I suppose all of the poets were slender and stereotypically poet-like in that respect. The things I noticed most from his poems was the sound, the strong images, and his use of wordplay. He didn\u2019t read too fast, but took his time. It was a pleasurable experience listening to his work, and why I later purchased his collection. Clay said before reading a pastoral poem, \u201cif you live in Kentucky you write about horses and bourbon.\u201d Little did I know that this wasn\u2019t the last time horses would come up that night.<\/br>
\nJoel Craig was up next. Tall and spectacled, he stepped up to the podium, or rather loomed over it, with a stack of papers from which to read. And so began the heaviest portion of the reading. His voice fell down on all of us in attendance as he read in a slow monotone. I remember initially thinking it was achingly slow, but came to appreciate how lovingly he treated each word and phrase as it rolled out. As Craig\u2019s reading dragged on I looked about the space; Craig\u2019s twitching leg, the books, the people, my boyfriend slowly inching closer to me as time passed. It was just one long block of sound as the titles of the poems got lost and mixed in with the poems themselves. I was happy when it was over. (My boyfriend later remarked that Craig\u2019s reading was weird and sounded more like \u201cbluh, bluh\u201d noises than actual words.)<\/br>
\nLast to go was Michael Robins; the main reason I came. He began by saying that he was going to read from section three of his book because he asked his daughter to choose a number, and that was her selection. He moved his body into his poems as he read, propelling his soft voice out and around us. Amidst moments of discussing his previous marriage \u2013 \u201cbelief isn\u2019t the golden ring you wear, but the way you wear it\u201d \u2013 there were horses. Then he read \u201cOnly Sunshine,\u201d his poem about the Sandy Hook shooting. The way he slowed that poem down and repeated \u201cone\u201d over and over brought an oppressiveness to the space that really mirrored the subject matter. I felt a heaviness in my chest just below my ribcage as the words hit me. Relief came in the form of a new poem almost entirely driven by sound, rather than the words attached to it.<\/br>
\nOverall, the reading was a good experience. I was introduced to work by a new to me poet, I gained a new insight into a poet I\u2019ve read previously, and I got to hear some of my instructor\u2019s work. I also left with work by Adam Clay and Michael Robins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, dark and chilly, I wandered up to Logan Square to attend a poetry reading by Michael Robins (my Advanced Poetry Workshop instructor), Adam Clay, and Joel Craig at Uncharted Books. I vaguely remembered the poems from Craig\u2019s collection The White House from when I read it for Intermediate Poetry Workshop, so I was looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[84,68,85,87,83,12,86],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-adam-clay","tag-chicago","tag-joel-craig","tag-logan-square","tag-michael-robins","tag-poetry","tag-uncharted-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abigailm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}