Eleanor Goodman:
The event began with a very enjoyable reading by Eleanor Goodman from her book Habitation. Her poems offered a very interesting perspective because of her work in poetry, fiction, and translation. In her reading, she took the audience on a journey through her family tree in “Ancestry,” to the base of Santa Maria della Vittoria in “Rome,” and the Limpopo River in between Zimbabwe and South Africa. A really memorable image that stuck with me was her grandfather’s advice to “pick up pennies for good luck” and how, even at age 70, he tolerates knee pain to pick them up on the street. She also recited a poem written by a contemporary Chinese poet to show the musicality and natural euphony of the language, followed by its English translation that revealed the beauty of the words. My favorite part about her poetry is how they aim to portray not the exotic or the fantastic, but the realistic aspects of life. She does not see any of the foreign places she describes with the lens of an outsider. I would say this quality of her work is what allowed me to picture the places she described in my head so vividly, even though I have never been there myself.
C. K. Williams:
Williams begins with an anecdote about how, even while sitting alone at his desk, he never found poetry writing to be a quiet, peaceful, or solitary process. The first poem instantly catches my attention with its onomatopoeic title “Whacked!” In it, he details his struggle with producing a “poor damp little poem.”
“Every morning of my life I sit at my desk getting whacked by some great poet or other…” he starts. It’s not merely the legends – “some Yeats, some Auden, some Herbert or Larkin” – who intimidate him. It’s also the a “whole tribe of others – oi! – younger than me.” Because all of his influences haunt his thoughts, he declares that “one never is, really, a poet. Or I'm not. Not when I'm trying to write…” For a second, he even considers reading “bad poems” to escape this sting, but realizes that the dullness is even worse. He ends up deeming it a “waste of time” if “you're not being whacked.” The rising intensity, the drama has everyone at the edge of their seats for the duration of this poem. If there were still any misconceptions in my head of writing poetry to be a peaceful, idyllic activity, it has been completely whacked out of my brain.
I found that alluding to other poets and authors was very common Williams’s work. At first all the allusions seemed chaotic and I struggled to keep up. There were poets I had read, poets I’ve meant to read, and poets I’ve never even heard of. There were poets whose echoes could once be heard just down the street, like Lowell, Sexton, Plath, and Starbuck. There were poets whose voices carried over from as far as Japan, such as Basho, Issa, Buson. Williams tells the audience what he feels is the most important message he has to give: Reading and writing, in poetry, are not separate things. Every poet is a product of his or her influences and how he or she chooses to interpret and borrow from them. Williams chooses to show his influences plainly and directly because artists, writers, and thinkers have had such a great impact on his life. In his poem “Exhaust,” for example, he cites his “rapture reading Camus,” for example, for showing him that “suicide wasn’t the route” and to focus on “love, family, poetry, art” instead.” The most striking and memorable poem was “A Hundred Bones,” which explores themes of indoctrination, childhood, and enlightenment from the search for knowledge. “A Hundred Bones” is a recollection of Williams’s childhood growing up during the WWII. We first see an innocent image of children playing with toy planes. He soon turns the activity from innocent to disturbing when we hear what the children are talking about: fighter planes, blockbusters – “bombs that smash down your whole block,” “words we don’t know yet – gas chamber, napalm…”
Williams addresses the same question that’s in the listener’s mind: “Do children of all places and times speak so passionately and knowledgeably about torture?”
The question haunts us when we realize what we know that the children did not. That “cities were burning,” that “some Japanese cities aren’t even there,” and atom bombs that caused “shadows to burn into asphalt.” Everyone in the room is now trying to find the same answers. They are trying to figure our what exactly the “flaw” - the “error” of humans is. Williams offers no answers but instead quotes a mysterious haiku from Basho. The audience hangs on to his words and their seats like a frog "invisibly waiting forever to make its leap.”