Before an overcrowded audience in the Knight Library Browsing Room on Thursday night, local poet Maxine Scates read poems from her new manuscript. Author of award-winning books “Black Loam” and “Toluca Street,” Scates said she’s been writing since she was a student at California State University, Northridge when a teacher told her she could write.
“Nobody had ever said I could do anything particularly well, so I thought, ‘Oh, that’s great; I’ll be a poet,’” said Scates, laughing. “Then (the teacher) said, ‘that’s not that easy.’”
Scates read a collection of poems from her new, unpublished manuscript entitled “Before.” After a brief synopsis of why each piece she’d chosen was important to her, Scates began to read.
Her poem “The Giants” examines how children look at their parents and the rather large picture children paint of them.
“I think all of our families assume mythic proportion in our life. And I’ve written a lot about my family over time,” said Scates, introducing the piece. “This is a poem where I felt like, okay, they’re giants. That’s what they are, they’re giants. And I really liked finally recognizing that they were truly giants.”
Professor of Creative Writing Dorianne Laux, who specializes in poetry, helped decide to bring Scates to campus for the reading. She has been reading Scates’ poetry in class with her students.
“I think the last poem she read, ‘Giants,’ is very typical of the way Maxine as poet works, which is she can talk about something that’s ordinary in a very extraordinary way.”
“It takes an artist to say, ‘Oh, that could be a poem. And I’m going to call it Giants,” Laux said.
Laux said she chose Scates because she’s lived in Eugene for 34 years and much of her poetry shows knowledge of the area. Laux said that it can be fun to recognize landmarks in a poet’s writing. But there were other, more specific reasons Scates was asked to read.
“Maxine has a new book coming out, or going around. So it’s also nice to bring writers who are in the process of writing, in the midst of their art, so that our students can see how a piece of art can be put together from the early stages,” said Laux. “Some of the poems that she read tonight have been published in magazines, but some are unpublished. So when they finally do get published, students might look at them and say ‘Oh, look how she’s revised it since then.’ It’s a learning experience.”
The readings the Creative Writing Program organizes are open to everybody.
“It really brings people in to the college. And that’s very important,” said Laux.
Scates said it’s equally important for her to be around that new fresh energy.
“It’s really important for me to read to people who are just starting to write themselves. I really feel excited to be in the presence of people who are just beginning to write. I remember myself in the same place,” she said, chuckling.
“It was great to see people from the community and from campus, as well,” Scates said. “It was a nice turnout. I was really pleased.”
“She had a great reading voice,” said University junior Lindsey Stevenson, who is in one of Laux’s poetry classes. “I think she had a really good grasp of how to draw the reader or listener through time easily.”
Laux also spoke to the strength of Scates’ reading voice, but Scates said that when she was in school, she was the kind of a student who would drop a class if the final was an oral presentation.
“I don’t think of myself as a public speaker. I love to read my poems, and I feel really alive and inside my body when I can read my poems. But if you asked me to stand up there and deliver a lecture, no way. But when I’m reading my poems, I just feel like I’m some place else,” said Scates.
She said it wasn’t as painful tonight because she was surrounded by familiar faces.
“Sometime it’s easier to read in a place where you’re anonymous and people don’t know you. So I was a little nervous,” Scates said. “But when I looked out and saw a lot of people I knew, it felt really good. And I was really happy that so many students (studying creative writing) were here.”
Stevenson said she was particularly impressed with the length of Scates’ poems.
“I can never write poems that long,” she said. “I think she has a good eye or ear about when to use an image and when to give us more specific information.”
Stevenson, who has read “Black Loam” cover to cover, said she hoped to hear Scates read a little from that book, but she was pleasantly surprised with her newest material.
“I didn’t think she would read any of her new work,” she said, “so that was cool.”
“I’m glad that the department is doing these,” Stevenson said. “I want to come to more.”