from
The
Hastings Room:
The Battle of Hastings in 1066 was to
bring about a dramatic transformation to the English Language. At
The Hastings Room Reading Series we do what we can by hosting a quarterly
poetry reading at First Church Congregationalist, 11 Garden Street (across from
the Sheraton Commander) off of Harvard Square…
This coming Wednesday, February 4th,
at 7:00 pm, we will be featuring Gloria Mindock,
the
winner of the 2014 Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award. (See flyer for this event at the end of this
announcement.)
Irene Koronas,
poet, painter and multi-media artist, was a reader at our debut reading in May
of
2014. She is a member of our planning committee, and has been a devoted attendee
at the readings. Irene has written a very thoughtful memoir of Franz Wright’s
evening with us on Wednesday the 19th of November 2014, which we are grateful
to share here:
F r a n z W r i g h t
by Irene Koronas
“The sun shining no warmer than the moon.” Michael Steffen, hosts, Hastings Room Poetry
Reading, Cambridge, Ma., he reads Galway Kinnell's poem, 'For Robert
Frost," before he introduces the poet Franz Wright who asks Mike for the
date the poem was written. The audience remains quiet when Mike asks if anyone
knows. I don't know. I've never read Kinnell's poetry. Sometimes I feel like a
an alien, a foreigner
at a poetry reading, not knowing certain
references written or spoken of in poems. Franz is at home, poetry is his home.
He is comfortable enough to ask. He seems grateful to be approached by
admirers. He's different. Changed. Illness transforms people, for better or
not.
For many years I've attended poetry readings. Franz continues to draw me
to his readings. I listen with a keen sense to how his poetry takes life,
squeezes what lives, drains out experiences, how he can not live any other way.
He is (for me) a poetic super star. He lends to his own legend, what we might
consider, creative anger, loss, abstract thoughts peppered with loneliness. He
often uses accusation to reference contemporary life. Whatever he writes, Franz
Wright comes across. He spits three times like a Greek priest during baptisms,
wards off evil. I always appreciated the Greek in him. Profound, feisty, unlike people who please, he meets his own
weaknesses. He stares down other people's weaknesses. His poetry is his way of
life. This is evident in all his writing. We encounter the way he has lived and
how he has lived. His poems slip off pages and remains in our blood. More human
than evidenced in some poetry, he is in those phrases which allow us to enter
and to be there.
My age teaches me there's not enough time to day dream any more. With my
hearing loss,
I keep trying to pay close attention, knowing I might not be privy to his
voice again. His voice has softened, it is difficult for me to hear. I watch
his breath, the roll of sound, like low tide. Words lap the sand. Foam traces
recede. Another wave. This time wet words soak my mind, I listen anyway.
He asks, if there are any poems we would like him to read. I'm immersed
in his presence and I fumble through my bag for his F book. “Elderly Couple”
written at Mt Feake Cemetery 1990. This is the second poem in his book. It
brings me to my knees. My first thought on reading the poem was, if only I
could write like him. By the time I fish his book out of my bag, Franz is on
his way back to his wife on the red Victorian couch. She moves aside his black
cane. My head leans on his movements, still musing on his poem. How all or most
of my American family from the 1930's are buried at Mt Feake. My mother being
the most recent. She died this summer and I still cry at my loss. “rapidly
graying, dissolving into one substance with the dusk, they are so still they
tremble.” His poem, Elderly Couple, leads me into the rest of F book. Too late to ask him to read the poem.
I tremble at my own weakness.
People ask him to sign his books. I watch his long gentle fingers write
my name. His hand writing reminds me of the quick notes mother used to leave
me. Her notes shake my grief. I stash them in my bureau draw. Wright's book is
back in my cloth bag. Still I can't leave.
Paper cups strewn under seats. I'm reminded, service helps relieve
sorrow. I pick up the cups, stack them in an empty plastic cookie container. I
repeat this task until I find the courage to leave the room, walk to the subway
train and return home wanting more poetry from Franz Wright. “this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of
his making...” Kinnell
Poetry Reading to Celebrate
Gloria Mindock
2014 Ibbetson Street Lifetime Achievement
Award
HASTINGS ROOM at FIRST CHURCH
CONGREGATIONALIST
11 Garden Street, off of Harvard
Square
Wednesday February the 4th at 7:00 pm
Gloria Mindock is the founding editor of Cervena Barva Press, and one of the USA
editors for Levure Litteraire (France).
She is the author of La Porรพile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, 2010, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia
Cosma, Nothing Divine Here (U Soku Stampa, 2010, Montenegro), and Blood
Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson, 2007).
Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated
and published into Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Estonian, and French. Her fourth
chapbook, “Pleasure Trout” was published by Muddy River Books in 2013. This
past December 2014, Gloria was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime
Achievement Award.
Gloria will be joined by co-readers—
Jaime Bonney received a Master's of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 2012,
concentrating her work in languages and in a pastoral theology of the arts,
especially investigating the consolations of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers
Karamazov. She is a member of the Bethany House of Prayer poetry group in
Arlington, MA, led by poet Kimberly Green. In addition to writing poetry, Jaime
is a singer and painter. She lives in Jamaica Plain.
---Michale Todd Steffen ( Co-Director and Founder of Hastings Room)
