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Arts & Entertainment

Brooklyn Poets Appeal More To Eye Than Ear

Poetry reading at Greenlight Bookstore draws greater enthusiasm for socializing than oration.

Poetry may have its roots in oral tradition, but don’t expect to hear much epic narrative at literary readings these days.

Three poets with Brooklyn connections read from their recent work on Wednesday evening at Greenlight Bookstore, a lovely independent that frequently hosts authors of all kinds, from novelists to music reviewers to the founders of literary journals.

All of Wednesday’s poets were also, unsurprisingly, teachers at Pratt, Columbia or Bard (is there a poet alive who makes a living from scribbling alone?), and the experience of listening to their work conjured the academic lecture hall rather more than the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Priscilla Becker (“Stories That Listen”), Christian Hawkey (“Citizen Of”) and Matvei Yankelevich (“Boris by the Sea”) read unpublished material as well as excerpts from their current collections. Becker’s work was the most visual, with sensual language and wry conceits, making it most conducive to reading aloud.

The rythm of Hawkey’s piece, as he acknowledged, derived from electronic dubstep music and stood out accordingly, but a little too effectively recreated that genre’s monotony. Hawkey spoke most interestingly about his work, though, explaining his poem’s disparate roots in pharmaceutical texts, insect biology and 1950s pulp novels, as well as dubstep.

All of these poets’ work would be better appreciated on the page. Their philosophical, rather than narrative, approach and stylistic experimentation require contemplation at a reader’s own pace. These poems are made for the eye more than the ear, as with these verses from Becker’s poem “Neglect,” from her current collection:

The life that was

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waiting for me is

gone. It was

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there so long I’d

thought it was

part of me.


It used to hover

at the skin of me

or farther off

like a boy

I once kept

not too far,

close


enough to be

a motion I thought

my own.

Plenty of contemporary poetry is enjoyable aloud, like Mary Oliver’s lyrical nature poetry or Billy Collins’ delightfully humorous work. At Greenlight, during the social bustle following the reading, many in the audience turned out to be poetry teachers themselves. These Brooklyn poets  are steeped in academia - as Becker herself admitted, teaching draws from the same part of her brain as poetry - and their work is correspondingly cerebral.

Buy the books for leisurely perusal at home; attend the readings for the mingling. Given the apathetic Q&A session on Wednesday and the cacophony that followed once people were released from their seats, that appeared to be the main reason for the crowded attendance, anyway.

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