The Distinguished Writers series continued at the Russell House on Wednesday night, with poets Jean Valentine and Rachel Zucker reading evocative selections from their most recent works. The Wesleyan University Press, which has published both authors, was responsible for bringing the poets to campus.
Jean Valentine’s last book, “Door In The Mountain: New and Collected Poems,” won the 2004 National Book Award for poetry. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, NYU and Columbia University. Rachel Zucker had her first two books published by Wesleyan University Press: “Eating in the Underworld” (2003), a series of connected poems that retell the myth of Persephone, and “The Last Clear Narrative” (2004), a book that addresses the issue of motherhood.
Zucker read first and seemed visibly nervous before the small crowd, mostly consisting of staff associated with the Wesleyan University Press. Her poems were filled with strange images and drifted along with eerie repetitions. She openly addressed the issue of whether her work was too experimental to be understood.
“After having children, I just felt so fragmented, I couldn’t even speak in one voice,” Zucker said. “I was just telling the experience to sit down. I think I’m being as clear as I can possibly be when describing a non-linear experience.”
All of Zucker’s poems delved into personal, often painful experience. One described her staring out the window of her Manhattan apartment, after having her first baby. The poem used repetition, such as “clutch clutch” and “pace pace,” in order to covey the monotonous, circular experience of having a child. Another poem openly addressed a rival Zucker made in one of her writer’s groups, someone she described as “a writer for The New Yorker who I think was physically appalled by my presence in the world.”
The climax of Zucker’s reading was a poem that addressed her aunt’s death from pancreatic cancer while Zucker was pregnant
“She kept getting smaller and smaller while I got bigger and bigger,” Zucker said. “It took me a long time before I could write about it.”
The poem was an eerie retelling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, with the wolf representing death and Zucker’s aunt as the ill and dying grandmother.
Valentine read next, with a quiet confidence that comes from experience. Her poems were shorter and more concrete, and utilized more religious imagery than her predecessor. One poem, “Trust Me,” was filled with fish imagery related to Christianity, and ended with the powerful line, “God fills us all like a woman fills a painting.”
“It’s so wonderful to have a book with all your poems in it,” Valentine said later about her relationship with the Wesleyan University Press. “I couldn’t be happier to be at Wesleyan.”
Valentine went on to read one poem, “Snow Landscape in a Glass Globe,” that addressed the death of poet Elizabeth Bishop.
“That was completed soon after her death, in 1979,” Valentine said. “I wrote it out of love and sorrow for her being gone.”
Valentine then read a sequence of poems that addressed the before and after of 9/11, and another sequence titled “Hospital – Far From Home.” She read hypnotically, while at the same time retaining good humor, understanding that such personal poetry can be a difficult listen sometimes.
“I’m just going to read three more,” she said charismatically to a child squirming in the front row, “and I promise, they’re very short.”
After the reading, the two authors took questions from the audience, during which more similarities between them became obvious. Someone asked what themes motivated their poetry, and Zucker replied, “Loneliness, anger, and fear.” After a pause, Valentine chirped, “me too!”
“Both of them write so much from the force of experience, talking about motherhood, wifehood, and the failures and losses within these roles,” said Suzanna Tamminen, director of the Wesleyan University Press. “I couldn’t be more pleased to have them read here.”
Columnist Anna Quindlen will be next in the Distinguished Writers Series, on Apr. 20.
Leave a Reply