Kate Gale Leaves Gnawed Bones for Peggy Shumaker

Last Thursday we walked over to the Arts Building at UAA to hear poetry.  Kate Gale, who created and runs, as I understood it, Red Hen Press, read red hot poetry.  Her poems are in your face and challenge the listener on themes not usually rendered so directly in poetry or elsewhere.   (I found the Red Hen website to be visually interesting - the icon of the hen is white, though the words are red - and incredibly slow to open.)

She read in one about luring someone out of the prison of his high rise office, to fly out the window to freedom.  It was a powerful poem.  She did preface it by explaining that she wrote it when she was trying to convince her husband to leave his secure job with a good salary.  Just leave it and join her in pursuing poetry and making the Red Hen Press work.  In a poetry reading you can get such context from the poet that you normally wouldn't get in a book of poetry.  But without the preface, a reader has more freedom to interpret the poem more personally.

It wasn't like one imagines a poetry reading.  Rather it felt as though she was exposing her heart with just the thinnest veil of words between herself and the audience.

Then Peggy Shumaker came to the podium.  We'd all been given copies of her book Gnawed Bones at the beginning of the reading and she told us now, that they were only on loan so we could read along.  She asked audience members to pick a poem for her to read.  Someone would call out a title, then she'd ask what page, and read.  By the third of fourth poem people were calling out page numbers, which is a lot less poetic, but it moved things along faster.  I liked the idea of this - involving the audience more - but somehow it was less intimate. It was like the audience members were fetching a ball and then dropping it at her feet waiting to be petted.

And each time, Peggy would go to the page, see the poem, and smile as she recognized it.  Then she read it.

I'd read one of the poems in the book before things started.  It was about visiting a sick relative in the hospital.  Since a good friend is sick in the hospital, it particularly hit home.  But I didn't ask her to read it.

Shumaker's reading was much more like I used to imagine poetry readings.  I don't have her poems in front of me so it's hard to say exactly what it was about them, but the poems and the delivery sounded very much like 'poetry' in the sense of something distinct from real life.  She read everything in a voice and rhythm that one associates with teachers reading poetry.   

It was unfortunate that Shumaker didn't proceed Gale.  I think that would have worked much better.  As it was, it really felt that after Gale, all that was left for Shumaker, was gnawed bones.

But don't take my word for it.  You can listen to podcasts of Thursday evening and many of the other presentations this week. Note:  the link goes directly to the podcast for Gale and Shumaker.  For the others look for July 2010 podcasts.   There is one more reading Tuesday night July 20, 2010.