Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

SITE OF THE DAY Mus incli by U KELLY McPHERSON Features Bte McKissick Museum's monthly Muses Night Out poetry reading will take place tonight from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and will feature guest poets Amittai Aviram and Melissa Niemi. This popular program showcases some of the Columbia area's finest poets and introduces new local poets to the public. Coffee and dessert are provided free of charge. The Gamecock caught up with Aviram, a 1984 graduate of Yale University and associate professor in English, for an interview and preview of tonight's reading. How long have you been a poet? How does it work / fit in with your role as a professor here at USC? "I've been a poet?sort of?since I was 14. Fm 39 now, so that makes 25 years, I guess. Poetry is considered a creative activity equivalent to scholarship, which is expected of me?if it gets published. I think giving poetry readings "counts" as something like erivincr a public lecture. My other scholarship area is theorizing about poetry (and also interpretations of poems), so the two areas of my work, the poetry and the prose, work together for me. This semesterr-for example, I'm teaching a graduate seminar in Poetics, which draws from my knowledge of theories of poetry, my ability to read and understand poetry (and explain how I do that), and my experience as a poet." How would you describe your poetry? Always a hard question. My poetry is almost always in meter, so that you can (or should be able to) hear a regular rhythmic beat in it, like a song. I have sometimes set dance A 1" ETC. ON es N jdes SC p movement to that same beat, while i reciting the poem or having it played 1 on a tape or with some other 5 arrangement. My poetry is also very rich in i allusion to other poems of the past, i I always hope that my poetry will 1 s* . 1* 1 1 maKe some sense on nrst reading, and for people who don't get the allusions, but it rewards rereading and also knowledge of other poetry, so it works on many levels. Rereading is important. I try to design my poetry with tricks and turns of wit that are likely to come across only after a few re-readings. What are some of your major influences? Who are your favorite poets? My all-time favorite poet is the Roman poet Horace, in Latin. Otherwise, influences and rolemodels are wide-ranging, including, Come look into this window And see me spread before This small earth all perfection Of royal blue tail and crest Of crimson -- seldom flying. But preening with golden beak Each feather's hair - my splen Sapphire - in verdure set. , i WEDNESDAY Interview wit El ight rea irofe n English, Andrew Marvell, John ?eats, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Classical (Baroque) music and jazz ire also influences that have shaped ny mental habits. T 11 .1 . !1. . il low wouia you aescriDe me ittitude toward poetry today? At JSC? The widespread assumption is that x>etiy is a personal self-expression in ree verse (that might as well be prose). As a result, very many people write poetry," but almost none of them read my poetry at all. This is partly because it takes some raining to read and enjoy poetry, and Deople are not trained for it nowadays. The same is true at USC. But I also think that USC students ire very interested in poetry and eager jo learn how to make sense out of real Doetry and enjoy it. dor Amittai Aviram USC Profesor FEBRl j Tickets < use Student . h Columbia band The Verna ( rc; Out ding ssor Graduate students and professors at USC take poetry quite seriously and, when students learn how to reac poetry, they take pleasure in it. What are the advantages to a liv< poetry reading? Are there enougt l ii_ i. n 1 M I sucn readings nere in ^otumDia Is there anything pertaining t< readings, in particular th< McKissick series, you would lik< to see added? How many reading! do you do in say, a semester? Live poetry readings, for me, are grea because they give the audience a chana to hear the music of poetry an( recognize poetry as a performing ar as well as one to be studied privately Since rhythm and sound ar< important in my poetry, it lends itsel to public readings. I think a possible drawback of pubh readings is that people can fall int< the mistake of thinking that the poe is always literally the "I" in the poem But I can upset that stereotype b] reading poems where the speaker is obviously not me; ifs a bird or an ocean or something else. There are a fair number of readings here in Columbia, and this is a gooc think; it shows the vitality of the arts here. I give around two public readings a semester. I'd be happy to give mors if people invite me. Some of my readings have beer public benefits ? such as one for th< Nickelodeon last semester. I think it's great that McKissicl Museum is holing this reading series Poetry should be fun and interesting 1.1 ill _ J i il. ana snouia Dnng a community togetner and that's what this series makes possible. Where have you most recently been published? I know you've published a book. Was it i compilation or was it written wit! a specific theme in mind? Three poems of mine appear in ar anthology, Gents, Bad Boys, anc Barbarians [ed. Ruby Kikel (Boston IARY 2, l l available al ts - $8 (advance Foi ' A . Gannon I m i m > m % m m m t H * f Internationally acclaimed marimba perform and give a clinic for the rehearsal roan of the Roger Center ^ with developing techniques that h; phone-like marimba into an instrur will perform at 7:30 p.m. At 8:30 V marimba techniques, including ' 3 approach and one-handed rolls. Be > information call the U9C School of 3 I Alyson Press, 1995)]. 3 By the way, my USC English ; department colleague Ed Madden also has several poems in that book. The , book is a selection of gay male poets a in the US. I also have a chapbook?that's a c small book, like a pamphlet?published by a small publisher in Charlotte, called y Tender Phrases, Brassy Moans. There may be some copies left at 5 Volume I in Five Points, and there is a copy in the Cooper Library. I am working on a full book 7 collection to be published separately , (I hope!). i If there is a unifying theme in my t poems, it's pretty abstract. It has to do with stepping outside of oneself. j I think you "find yourself by getting j outside of yourself rather than by obsessing with what or who you are. 1997 i : all Capitol' \ 61 A I A* if a( aliAti I y*w \uay vi siiui r more information, co ? For me, even when poetry is serious and sad, it is also a game; a game with words and ideas and images Aroittai Aviraro use associate pcxessor at BgLm I Igpg jB Hfc SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK artist Leigh Hcward Stevens will ' public Thursday Jan. 23, in the for the Arts. Stevens, credited ave transformed the large, xylonent worth/ of solo performance, p.m., he will danonstrate various his revolutionary four-mallet >th sessions are free. For more Music at 777-4280. i And I think poetry itself can help you do that. For me, even when poetry is serious and sad, it is also a game; a game with words and ideas and images, and often played with those other poets of the past, like a tennis?right back atcha, Wallace Stevens?and the game is played to a musical beat. I want poetry to delight and w dazzle, to be so rich in sensations that you have to reread it, because it always has more to offer than you can even contain in your mind at one time. That's my goal, but that doesn't mean I get there. 3:00 PM Ticket Outle v) Non USC Stuc ntact Carolina Produc v T '