Warehouse Reading with Brigitte Byrd and Tony Morris

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DATE : Wed, 8 Feb 2006 15:58:09 -0400
Entered in Database : 2006-02-08 19:58:09
length : 25231058
Link to the Show / Show Notes

To encounter Brigitte Byrd's poems from Fence Above the Sea for the first time, read by the author, is to encounter the experience of reading itself. Because she is beautifully French, and because she reads with a beautifully French accent, I found that at times I misunderstood words; that is, until she read to the end of the line and I realized my mistake. I heard"isolated" when I should be hearing "insulated" as in, "their house is not insulted, it is cold." What happens in these small slips is that I become keenly aware of how these words, and the ghost of a conjured image, change when in contact with other words. The same thing happens when words and phrases in French appear and I must enjoy the sound as opposed to the meaning, which, as Gertrude Stein, another French(ish) woman talked about in "Composition as Explanation," reveals itself as one way to articulate a continuous present. To back me up (or maybe to give credit to the teacher who helped me articulate this idea), I'll quote from Ralph Berry, "I know of few books that undergo their words as utterly. Fence Above the Sea is a primer of presentness, that unimaginable task, this being here now." Tony Morris is an ambassador to (or from?) the natural world. His poems are lush, verdant, out-of-doors and harrowing. Lines that seem simple expressions of Appalachia or Florida or life on the farm, in the woods, in the three-seater outhouse are like gorgeous little wings with dark undersides. Take for instance this line, "dogs that run the woods at night" which in addition to its first meaning: dogs running in the dark, also suggest the hierarchy of a particular patch of forest where dogs run the show. Then there's the list of beautiful field and stream stuff that makes its way into many of his poems: barred owls, bottlebrush grass, copper birds, buzzards, porch lights and wings that shimmer gold. In the poem about the barred owl, Tony Morris describes the activity of this night animal which, if applied to poets, is the greatest description I've come across, "conspicuous behavior for a conspicuously strange breed." It's nice to know that this program has graduated such variously talented writers.

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