On Thursday, April 12th 2007, Copper Nickel hosted Jake Adam York, a 
professor of English at University of Colorado at Denver, reading poetry at the Dikeou Collection downtown along with two of his former students Mary McHugh and Roxanne Banks. Roxanne Banks is currently an English teacher at Littleton High School in Littleton, CO, a suburb south of Denver, and Mary McHugh is currently a student at University of Colorado at Denver.
Mary McHugh was the first to read, she walked up to the podium timidly after Jake Adam York introduced her. She giggled nervously saying, “Wow, I have a lot to live up to with that introduction. She read several poems including a poem about the poet Andy Goldsworthy, a poem called Octopus; inspired by Marianne Moore, a poem called Pompeii and a poem called Radioactive Water. Jake Adam York compared her poetry to that of Marianne Moore, scientific and logical in manner. She was wearing a black cardigan, knee length skirt and knee high socks with clunky Mary Jane shoes. She seemed a bit nervous; slightly rushed, voice unstable and wavering.
Roxanne Banks on the other hand, a teacher at my high school, was far more eloquent and confident speaking in front of people. She stepped up to the podium and almost immediately cracked a joke. She mentioned an electronic sign outside of a Walgreen’s pharmacy, it read, “Vienna Sausage Armor… $6.75” and talked about how wonderful it would be to have armor made out of Vienna sausage. Her most recent works have been eulogies, mostly to fictional characters. The first poem she read, An Eulogy for a Prairie Dog, she said was a poem she probably should have written about years ago when she first witnessed the events in it. She had very steady rhythm, as well as great structure and imagery. Her second poem, called And Now, was about a beetle, the main character of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Her third, I Tried to Kill Her But… a “fractured fairytale”. Her fourth, Your Educational Rights, about a high school student with an unhealthy obsession with his teacher. And finally a poem about Meursault, the estranged character of Albert Camus’s book, The Stranger (L’Étranger).
professor of English at University of Colorado at Denver, reading poetry at the Dikeou Collection downtown along with two of his former students Mary McHugh and Roxanne Banks. Roxanne Banks is currently an English teacher at Littleton High School in Littleton, CO, a suburb south of Denver, and Mary McHugh is currently a student at University of Colorado at Denver.Mary McHugh was the first to read, she walked up to the podium timidly after Jake Adam York introduced her. She giggled nervously saying, “Wow, I have a lot to live up to with that introduction. She read several poems including a poem about the poet Andy Goldsworthy, a poem called Octopus; inspired by Marianne Moore, a poem called Pompeii and a poem called Radioactive Water. Jake Adam York compared her poetry to that of Marianne Moore, scientific and logical in manner. She was wearing a black cardigan, knee length skirt and knee high socks with clunky Mary Jane shoes. She seemed a bit nervous; slightly rushed, voice unstable and wavering.
Roxanne Banks on the other hand, a teacher at my high school, was far more eloquent and confident speaking in front of people. She stepped up to the podium and almost immediately cracked a joke. She mentioned an electronic sign outside of a Walgreen’s pharmacy, it read, “Vienna Sausage Armor… $6.75” and talked about how wonderful it would be to have armor made out of Vienna sausage. Her most recent works have been eulogies, mostly to fictional characters. The first poem she read, An Eulogy for a Prairie Dog, she said was a poem she probably should have written about years ago when she first witnessed the events in it. She had very steady rhythm, as well as great structure and imagery. Her second poem, called And Now, was about a beetle, the main character of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Her third, I Tried to Kill Her But… a “fractured fairytale”. Her fourth, Your Educational Rights, about a high school student with an unhealthy obsession with his teacher. And finally a poem about Meursault, the estranged character of Albert Camus’s book, The Stranger (L’Étranger).
I was able to stay long enough to hear two of Jake Adam York’s poems, they were both about unfairly solved murders that happens several decades ago. I noticed he had a great stance and confidence. He used his voice very well, he had great projection and made great use of accents in reading his poetry. It was definitely interesting to hear each of the three poets read their own work because it makes a big difference as to the way they read them and the understanding extracted from them. Had I been reading the poetry they wrote it probably would have been very different, having breaks and stops at different points, making a huge difference in the meaning behind the words. 
No comments:
Post a Comment