Prof. and band provide evening of poetry
The Daily Pennsylvanian
September 15, 2000
To many a Penn undergraduate, Herman Beavers is a well-respected academic. Those who attended his poetry reading last night now also know him as an innovative poet.
Last night, before a crowd of about 30 students and area residents at Kelly Writers House, Beavers proved that it is indeed possible to be both a poet and a professor. In the Kelly Writers House kick-off event of the new semester, Beavers read several poems from his work-in-progress, Still Life With Guitar.
His poems ranged in topics from loft parties in the New York neighborhood of Soho to the death of his grandmother, and from jazz legend Lester Young to life in his hometown of Cleveland.
A band featuring Penn Music Professor Guthrie Ramsey on piano, a Penn sophomore on an electric guitar and a Philadelphia musician on the drums, accompanied Beavers' verse. The music began with the start of each of Beavers' poems and mirrored in tone the content of his verse.
By and large, the audience members believed that the music enhanced the effect of the reading.
"This night could have been 1,000 different nights because the music changed the feeling of the poems," said English doctoral student Peter Menacker, one of Beavers' advisees.
"Poetry is more than ideas; it is about sound," said local resident Ted Gladue, who praised Beavers' ability to "jump back and forth from abstraction to reality."
Best known at Penn as an English professor and the chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, Beavers said, "Trying to be an academic and trying to be a creative person isn't always easy."
As both a professor and a poet, Beavers often weaves literary aspects into his poetry. He studies Afro-American Literature with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
In several of his poems, Beavers adopted the voice of fictional characters. In particular, Beavers has written a series of poems chronicling the adventures in the life of Vernell Spraggins, an African-American man who lives in Cleveland. One such poem, "A Matter of Life and Debt," discusses Spraggins' struggle to make ends meet.
"I am much more interested in someone else's life," Beavers said.
Beavers, who is married and has a son, did not shy away from the truth in talking about his work.
"I have no idea what it means," Beavers said about his poem "Dream Lubricant," which strung together a series of vivid images that related to the subconscious.
Beavers has already published one book of poetry, A Neighborhood of Feeling. His work has appeared in several publications, including The Black American Literature Forum, The Painted Bride and The Cincinnati Poetry Review.
In addition to his poetry, Beavers is currently finishing another book, Prodigal Allegories: Constructions of 20th Century Black Masculinity in Literature and Culture.