As students waited for a Thursday night poetry reading to begin, they examined the poet who would be commanding their attention for the next hour. He wore all black: black suit, black tie, black-framed glasses; there was even a little black left in his salt-and-pepper hair.
“I’ve been to some pretty depressing poetry readings before. I’m hoping this isn’t one of them,” University sophomore Cody Berger said.
As it turned out, he needn’t have worried.
Thursday night, award-winning poet Joseph Harrison came to the Knight Library to share his work. Harrison kept his audience engrossed throughout the hour that he read – or rather recited, speaking all of his lines from memory – and he critiqued modern progress and society, drawing laughter from the audience more than once.
Harrison seemed to poke fun at the stereotypical gravity of a poetry reading by dressing entirely in black while simultaneously reciting lines with flair and content that betrayed his sense of humor about the matter.
Harrison’s visit came ahead of the release of his upcoming collection of poetry, “Identity Theft,” and on the heels of his acclaimed 2003 release, “Someone Else’s Name” His recitation on Thursday included selections from both. The event was sponsored by several campus departments.
Harrison, a Virginia native, came to the University courtesy of professor Jeffrey Librett, who teaches in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and serves on the advisory board for the Oregon Humanities Center. The two have been friends since they studied together at Yale as undergraduates in the 1970s. Librett invited Harrison to speak for the benefit of his poetry students and of the University community as a whole. He said Harrison is an “exemplary representative of contemporary practices of poetry.”
Harrison’s “Someone Else’s Name” was chosen as one of the top five poetry books of the year for 2004 by the Washington Post. In 2005 he was the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Harrison said he is conscious of his place in today’s world despite his success. He admits that American society is “more familiar with second-rate actors and third-string quarterbacks” than it is with the highest echelon of our country’s poets. But he’s not complaining. He said he knows he lives in a culture that “has always had an ambivalence to the literary arts” and is skeptical of anything without immediate and practical value.
If Harrison’s audience at Thursday’s speech was any indication, he is not alone in his passion for poetry. Most of the several dozen chairs were filled by people whose ages spanned several generations.
Berger was one of the younger attendees. He is enrolled in a poetry class taught by Professor Dorianne Laux. Berger is interested in studying poetry as his concentration, and having read a bit of Harrison’s work previously, he decided to come check it out live.
Maggie Evans, another student in the audience, came with considerably more experience. She has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and is now seeking her Ph.D. in poetry and poetics. She came simply because she likes “to hear what people are writing.”
Harrison said part of the aim of “Someone Else’s Name” was to shed light on “the struggle to make art in isolation,” and as this recitation showed, he can no longer claim such isolation. The challenge then becomes to try to “retain a sense of identity once you become public,” and this is where Harrison is headed with his forthcoming “Identity Theft.”