Work of five poets fills night
The Daily Pennsylvanian
September 22, 2000
This was the scene at the Kelly Writers House on Tuesday night: the hum of jazz, the tap of rain and the sounds of poetry.
An intimate yet energetic group crowded the Writers House, audience to a reading from five poets whose work appears in the recently published anthology American Poetry: The Next Generation.
The anthology compiles innovative work by 174 poets, each of whom is 40 or younger.
"[I] just managed to sneak in under the wire," said 40-year-old poet and Penn alumna Carole Bernstein, who hosted the event.
Bernstein commenced the evening with her poem, "The Cup of Coffee," which describes the "grateful, plain, essential bitterness" -- both of a death and of her first sip of coffee.
Notable about her reading, and those of the other featured poets, was the emphasis on honesty and rawness.
Also reading Tuesday night were A.V. Christie, Tom Devaney, Lisa Sewell -- all three of whom currently reside in Philadelphia -- and Douglas Goetsch.
Christie, a recent fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts, alternated between elements of drama and levity in her reading. For instance, "Belongings," a tribute to her deceased brother, was followed by a much lighter new piece about her fat cat.
The combined effect of two disparate sentiments worked well for Christie, who noted that the environment at Writers House is excellent for making her readings especially meaningful.
"It's been a great space," she said, adding that Writers House "put together such a lively array of readings."
Sewell agreed, telling the crowd that the small Locust Walk cottage is "definitely a wonderful institution for the general community as well as the University community."
Sewell read poems including "The Level Eye" and "Winter Poker" from a manuscript in process.
Graduate student Solade Thorpe praised Sewell's work.
"The poems were simple, approached from a fresh angle," he said. "I like the way she moved from the general to the particular, and the fact that [her work] seemed to be personal but not exclusive."
Devaney, who has work forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, shared the title poem of his book, The American Pragmatist Fell in Love.
Goetsch then presented work he found relevant to Penn students. "I've been writing about college a lot lately," Goetsch said, "and I don't know why."
Poems he read at Writers House included "Walking Wounded" and "College," both of which pertain to the mild and -- in retrospect -- funny traumas involved in the life of a teenager.
Those who attended the program gave the readings rave reviews.
"I was impressed by the diversity of the poems," said Galen Longstreth, a student in the Graduate School of Education. "Some were drawn from emotional memories, and others were startlingly funny and some were crass."
Students were also quick to attribute their enjoyment of the poetry to the fact that they experienced it in a reading.
"Poetry is meant to be read aloud," Thorpe said. "There's no real substitute to the spoken word."