92nd Street Y

Today’s guest post on poetry readings at 92nd Street Y is by poet Erica Wright, author of Instructions for Killing the Jackal, poetry editor at Guernica Magazine and writing instructor at 92YTribeca. Wright visited the Unterberg Poetry Center on Monday, October 31, for Four Irish Poets, an evening of readings by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Leontia Flynn, Caitriona O’Reilly and Rita Ann Higgins. Today’s featured recording is of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. You can download the MP3 here.

Below are Wright’s thoughts on the program.

Sometimes I kill time on public transportation by making lists; I see how many diseases, Olympic sports, or bands beginning with “The” that I can name (silently) by the time I arrive at my destination. On my way to 92Y on October 31st, I tried Irish Poets in honor of the event I was going to see. The game didn’t last very long, especially if I eliminated the dead ones. Partly, this increased my anticipation. By night’s end, I would be familiar with the work of at least four more. On the other hand, what if I ran into one of them in the ladies’ room, and she wanted to know my views on writers who, say, use Gaelic vocabulary words like pog and slainte? Okay, so this scenario didn’t seem likely, but city-dwellers have a knack for dread.

It was fast apparent that a confrontation with one of the evening’s stars wouldn’t happen. The Weill Art Gallery was packed, and all but the last row of seats were occupied. I sat down behind my least favorite type of reading attendees—the P. D. A. couple—and reprimanded myself for lollygagging on my walk to the venue. Fortunately, Nick Laird’s thoughtful introduction soon distracted me.

Laird (make that five new Irish poets to add to the list) provided detailed praise for each poet. Leontia Flynn was heralded for her “poetic shards,” Rita Ann Higgins for her “depth charge,” while Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was credited with “rebuilding language” and Caitriona O’Reilly as being “detached but seek[ing] attachment.” Despite Laird throwing me off the scent by highlighting what makes each unique, the poets did have something in common besides their nationality. Their work was imbued with gravitas.

There seems to be a growing appreciation of frivolity in contemporary poetry, not wit or humor—for which there will always be a place—but art for art’s sake with its roots in that towering Irish figure of Oscar Wilde. Even with his green carnations and memorable one-liners, Wilde was still the same man who wrote, “Some kill their love when they are young, […] The kindest use a knife, because / The dead so soon grow cold.” Which is to say, his position as an icon of poetic joie de vivre (craic, perhaps more appropriately) seems a bit easy.

It was refreshing to hear poems that tackled the big subjects of family, love, and death in sincere (but never sentimental) terms. Early on in the evening, Flynn read a poem about airplanes in honor of the book tour. (New York City was the women’s fourth stop in promotion of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry: 1967-2000.) It ended with the line “We rock, dry-eyed, and we are not at home.” In a way, the four-member covey of Flynn, Higgins, Chuilleanáin, and O’Reilly presented a stand-in for the poetic community, its writers and readers who suffer a little less because they suffer together. Often the actual poems read were about isolation—O’Reilly’s evocation of a mermaid, Chuilleanáin’s of a witch—but the banter between the four demonstrated intimacy.

The event was co-sponsored by Imagine Ireland, and the intent was, I assume, to increase awareness of the Irish arts. And yet despite the lilting accents and occasional glimpses of unfamiliar terrain in the lines, the poetry was more universal than not. And perhaps that’s what I mean by gravitas. The subject matter need not be about prisons; Flynn’s vegetables do just fine. But something must be risked, for example, a trying to get at what it feels like to be human. The couple in front of me agreed, I think. They cuddled in a way that cried out for shared experience.

Next up at 92Y Poetry: Words & Music: The Cornet Rilke with Wolfgang Holzmair, baritone / speaker and Shai Wosner, piano, on January 23. That’s followed by Péter Nádas on January 26.

In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Unterberg Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.

Upon the publication, in 2009, of the first volume of the Letters of Samuel Beckett, editors Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck visited 92Y to speak about the influence of music on his art. In anticipation of the editors’ return visit on December 18 (the second volume is just published), here is an audio recording of their earlier presentation.

Volume II covers the years 1941-1956, and in a preview of their upcoming talk, Fehsenfeld and Overbeck write: “After World War II, Beckett is a changed man: his work shifts from the parameters of self to the wider boundaries of all humanity. Watt is written in the early forties out of the absurd and often impossible situations imposed by the war. Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable are forged from isolation and loss. Waiting for Godot offers a stark reminder of the responsibility of survival—’was I sleeping when the others suffered?’

“From 1946, Beckett begins to write in French. He writes plays and becomes involved in their production. In letters to friends, publishers, actors, translators, interpreters and critics, we witness Beckett honing his aesthetic—particularly through the incomparably intense series of letters to George Duthuit. From 1941 to 1956, Beckett’s work emerges from virtual obscurity to achieve international recognition and Beckett must learn to protect his work and writing life from the encroachments of literary renown.”

To purchase tickets to the event, which takes place as part of the Unterberg Poetry Center’s Books and Bagels series, please click here.

In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.

Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.