You might
think that the Poetry at Noon (PAN) reading series that ran for nearly 18 years
at the Library of Congress came about as a way to accomplish the following
goals, in effect, to:
Bring
nationally known poets to read in Washington at noon.
Introduce
not as widely known poets to the public, including those from other parts of the
nation and abroad.
Provide a daytime
event for those who could not come downtown in for evening readings at the
Library.
Allow excellent poets
who hadn’t had the luck or opportunity to publish a book, to have a chance to
read at the Library of Congress.
Provide access
to poetry for daytime workers in metro DC.
Entice
people who wouldn’t ordinarily go to a poetry reading to attend PAN because its
theme intrigued them.
Offer a brief
lunchtime respite from fast-breaking events in Washington, D.C.
Allow the Library
setting to provide a serene place in which art and scholarship could combine to
enhance human understanding.
Contribute to literary art
and creativity in the nation’s capital.
Give tourists and
visitors a preview of what the Poetry and Literature Center has to offer the nation.
Give poetry a presence
in the midst of daily politics.
Well, not exactly. All
that would come later. Here is what
actually happened.
Also, at
about that time to meet other poets, I was taking a free Jenny McKean Moore Community
Workshop at night. The workshop, taught by
visiting writer Linda McCarriston, was at George Washington University. Nineteen ninety-three was coming to an end very
soon, and Valentine’s Day 1994 might offer a perfect time to have a reading of
love poems. Who wouldn’t want to hear
some love poems, and who had better love poems to read than Linda McCarriston
and a few other poets I knew or had heard of.
I checked this
pie-in-the-sky idea with the Poetry Office and the head of Scholarly Programs
under whose aegis the Poetry Office resided. So, before you could say Thomas
Sterns Eliot, I was distributing flyers for a noontime reading featuring
McCarriston, Nan Fry and Martin Galvin. The turnout was astonishing because the
audience was virtually ready made and included: the Jenny Moore workshoppers,
Nan Fry’s fellow poets, colleagues and students from the Corcoran, and Martin
Galvin’s broad coterie of people who knew and loved him from his English
classes at Walt Whitman High School and his published poetry. An additional few people who had seen the
flyer or read about the event in the newspaper and were curious and were
present. Good. The reading was a success. Now I could move
on to other things—except that people kept asking when the next reading would
be. The last thing I wanted to do was
add a reading series to all the other things I had to do, but the questions
kept coming and I decided, oh, what the heck, another reading or two before summer might be
fun. How about one for the Vernal
Equinox?
Judith
McCombs, Miles Moore and James Hopkins agreed to read poems about “Renewal” on
March 21, 1994 in celebration of the equinox and the coming of spring.
The next idea
for a reading came from curator David Kresh in the Main Reading Room,
because people often asked him how to find things they could
read at weddings. In the poetry world,
that type of poem is called an epithalamium.
However, for general clarity, “Readings for Weddings” became the theme
of the next noontime event. Guest poets Geraldine
Connolly and Sydney March read their selections on June 1, 1994.
(One of the
guidelines for PAN from the very beginning was that guest poets should read not
just their own poems, but also poems by others, living or dead, classic to
contemporary, on the specified theme.)
After these
first three readings, I gave in to the idea of a series and so found myself designing
it along the lines of the ideas listed at the beginning of this article. Soon, I issued guidelines and a call for
manuscripts to find poets who wished to read on the specified and varied themes
for the coming year, i.e., fall and spring of different years.
In 1994-95,
the first PAN reading of the fall occurred in September and had a back-to-work
theme, or to broaden it, a “Work” theme.
Chris Llewellyn, Davi Walders and Celia Brown were the guest poets. Continuing with the idea of seasonal themes,
the next reading, “Halloween,” was presented by Barbara Lefcowitz, Stacy Tuthill
and Sunil Freeman. December featured a
“Family Gatherings” theme for the holidays. Grace Cavalieri, Sarah Cotterill and Tod Ibrahim brought that first
calendar year of PAN to a resounding and cheerful close with the family get-together
theme.
During this time, PAN had fully
established itself, and when fall came, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Henry
Taylor read with Dan Johnson for the “Seasonal Change” September 1995 event. Upon opening the “Discovery and Imagination”
reading that fall, I chose a quotation from Mary Oliver: “The world offers itself to your imagination, calls
to you like the wild geese--harsh and exciting....” and introduced guest
readers Rod Jellema, Tina Daub, and Joe Davis.
Of Davis I remember saying, “…a graduate of Harvard with a Ph.D. in
English from the University of Michigan, he has been a journalist for 20
years--8 years with the Congressional Quarterly--now with the Environmental
Health Center--where he is a senior writer.
Although his articles have been published in 110 newspapers, his poems
have not been published.”
I felt at the time and still feel that there
are poets out there busy with keeping a roof over their head and doing
worthwhile remunerative work but who inevitably haven’t enough time to market
their poetry, though they produce excellent poems. To give the public a chance to meet and hear
those poets was one of the reasons that PAN existed. As Halloween approached, Maya Peretz, James
Griffin and Claudia Annis read poems about “Spirits Beyond This Realm.”
In
1996-97, PAN returned in February with “Love Poems” read by Gregory Orr and
John Lee, followed by “Humor” with Reuben Jackson and Laurie Stroblas, then “Blossoms
and Sensory Delights” with Laura Fargas, Martha Sanchez-Lowery, and Natasha
Saje. Also, in the spring, Poet
Laureate Robert Hass held the Watershed: Writers, Nature and Community
conference, April 15-20, and I was able to snag Pattiann Rogers and other poets
for PAN readings that week. In the fall, 1996, Robert Lauder, Tom Layesman
and Michelle Arku read poems about “School Days and Childhood,” Myra Sklarew,
Maxine Combs and Terry Winch courageously took on “Fear” for a near-Halloween
reading on October 29, and Hilary Tham, Elisavietta Ritchie and Richard Peabody
brought “Reconciliations” home for the holidays in their performance.
As
1997 began the fin de siècle was upon us. Though not
especially decadent, “Love Poems” fit the bill.
Lori Sang, Kenneth Carroll and Gretchen Colligan read a sexy and
rewarding Valentine’s group of poems.
Later that spring, Hiram Larew, Elisabeth Murawski and Sharon Negri brought
“Poetry of Place” alive, and the whole idea of “Flight” lifted off with poems and selections about that subject from
pilot and poet, Ann Darr, plus Mary Ann Daly, and, also Angelin Donohue (whose
Dad was a pilot).
In September, the “Poems for
Children” reading was opened by 12-year-old Elizabeth Logan, followed by
children’s book writer, Mary Quattlebaum, and poet Belle Waring. In October, “Dante and Longfellow” made an
interesting subject for a reading by then-Laureate Robert Pinsky who had
published his translation of The Inferno. As Thanksgiving approached, “Giving” was the
theme of the reading by Donald Everett Axinn of New York and Michael Brosnan.
“Love Poems”presented by Myra
Shapiro, Matthew Lippman and Diana Timblin launched 1998 PAN. “Frost and Fire” on March 4, featured Shirley
Cochrane, Joanna C. Scott, and Lisa Russ Spaar in a passionate reading. That spring “Gardens and Gardening” thrived presented
by Jacklyn Potter, Heddy Reid and Elizabeth Stevens.
James S. Taylor read from and talked
about his book Poetic Knowledge on May 26, a different but important
departure from the usual all-poetry format.
Taylor’s premise is that when poetry was taught as a regular part of the
curriculum by colleges and universities years ago, it bred a particularly rich
and desirable kind of knowledge that could bear fruit throughout one’s life,
and that universities are much the poorer for its absence.
In June 1998 just two years before
the turn of the century, the idea of “Voyaging” was was needed. Michael Collier, Judith Dollenmayer and R.T.
Smith navigated a superb reading. Also
in June, Ruth Boorstin and Philip K. Jason tickled the Library audience with
“Humor,” and that fall, on September 15, Merrill Leffler, Robert Sargent and
Carolyne Wright were featured poets for the “Returning/Coming Back” theme. “Safe Harbors/Dangerous Seas” brought PAN’s
calendar year to a close with poems presented by Anne Caston and Lisa Parker.
In the last year of the 20th
century some fantastic readings took place.
Needless to say, in February 1999, love bloomed again in the reading by Barri
Armitage, Ramola D and Jonathan Vaile. On March 4, Rumi translator Coleman
Barks read with Barbara Hurd, exploring “Longing and the Thirst for Ultimate
Water.” In April “Renewal” was revised as
a theme at the end of the century in the presentation of Stephen Cushman,
Catherine Harnett Shaw and Marcella Wolfe.
On the Bard’s birthday, April 23,
John Bartoli and James Gregorio gave the “Shakespeare’s Birthday” reading, but
in late May, Martin G. Murray and Alice Birney brought scholarly information to
PAN’s “Celebrating Whitman” program, along with librarian David Kresh on May 31,
Walt Whitman’s birthday anniversary. To
celebrate the final Father’s Day of the 20th century, Sid Gold and Lee Briccetti read poems
about “Dads.”
In September, 1999 “Favorite Fall
Poems” were read by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Wendell Hawken, and Craig C. Smith;
“Gratitude” was the near-Thanksgiving theme presented by William F. Claire,
Lane Jennings and Raymond Lovett, and the final PAN reading of the century, “Centuries’
End and Millennium,” and was given by Kim Roberts and Karen Thompson.
____________
As the century ended I was facing a
dilemma as director. During these first years of PAN, in order to provide more
poets with a chance to read I had discouraged poets from applying more than
once, but considering that a poet’s work evolves and changes over time, that
policy seemed too limiting, so I instituted a two-to-three-year interlude
before a reader would be considered again.
As it turned out a few poets read a second or third time if they sent in
excellent poems on the requisite theme. I
also asked some poets and writers and later interns to serve as first readers,
so that my poetic sensibility didn’t override other excellent choices.
____________
Poetry
at Noon in the 21st century began January 28 with two widely known
poets, Marie Howe and Tom Sleigh, followed by the traditional “Love Poems”
reading in February by Mel Belin, Jean Kalmanoff, Mary Ann Larkin and Patric
Pepper. In March, 2000, “Fun Poems for Children” were delivered by Nancy
Allison, Cicely Angleton and Jill Williams.
John Bartoli, who could be mistaken for the Bard if this were the 17th
century, read on April 25 for a post-“Shakespeare’s Birthday”program. The idea of “Growing Older” was tackled successfully
on May 30 by Joseph Awad, Laureen McHenry and Victoria Wyatt.
That
fall, the lens of “Hindsight” offered an interesting filter for selections by
Jill Ann Mortell and Rhonda Williford.
“Obsessions/Addictions” were wrestled with in poems read by John Clarke,
Bernadette Geyer and Kwelismith, and “Transformations” ended PAN’s first year
of the new century performed by Lynda Malavanya, Gareth Philips and Marie
Pavlicek-Wehrli.
For
PAN’s second year of the century, or 2001, “Love Poems” arrived again presented
by Kwame Alexander, Grant La Rouche and
Ann Silsbee. Two thousand and one was an
auspicious year for PAN, for that spring PAN began its 10-year association with
Michael Kahn and The George Washington University Academy of Classical
Acting. The ACA kindly lent its
professional actors to read for our “Shakespeare’s Birthday” program. This first year, actors Steve Martin, Ashley
Strand, Peggy Scott and Susan Wilder gave stunning readings. In particular, I remember Susan Wilder’s
insightful interpretations of dialog from the plays. The May reading in 2001 showcased poems about
“Animals” offered by Andrea Grill, Jean Johnson and Nan Fry.
As
you know, 2001 was to become an annus
horribilis for the country, and reverberations were felt throughout the
Nation’s Capital, but particularly on Capitol Hill. I remember standing on the 5th floor of the Adams
Building and catching sight of a section of the Pentagon in flames. Needless to say, I left as government
buildings were closing and headed out-of-town.
No public programs would be held for quite some time, and even if they
had, few people would have come.
In
light of all this, a “Harvest” reading was held after the Library reopened, but
not until November 20. Even then, a trio
of in-house poets read to a handful of mostly staff members who were brave
enough to attend. The poets were: John
Clarke, David Kresh, and Patricia Gray.
Poetry
at Noon timidly began again in January 2002 with “Winter’s Tales” and guests
Dan Johnson, Colette Thomas, and Martin Galvin, followed by “Urban Life” at the
end of that month with Tonya Maria
Matthews, Davi Walders, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. We began to feel truly back in the groove
with “Love Poems” landing exactly on Valentine’s Day in 2002. Miles David Moore, Anne Marie Macari and
Benjamin Hicks read. And again, the
soothing repetition of themes continued in April with “Shakespeare’s Birthday” delivered
by the Academy of Classical Acting. A
“Mid-Summer Night’s Dream” ended the spring season on May 4, with Dan Cuddy,
Heddy Reid and Yvette Neisser.
“Poetry
on the Mountaintops” opened the fall season in September featuring Martha
Sanchez-Lowery and Ramola D. “Mystery
and Exoticism” seemed to warm the spirits on October 29 when Padmini Mongia and
David Keibel read. “Home and Hearth”
further warmed us when Miranda Field, George Bilgere, and Geraldine Connolly
read. (Am unsure whether all three poets
read—or perhaps just two—but which two?)
On
February 11, 2003 the sonorous voice of radio and TV personality Robert Aubry
Davis
could be heard in the Pickford Theatre reading
“Love” poems that had been published through the ages. Later that spring poems about “Power and
Peace” and “Healing” could be heard in the Pickford Theater.
In
November 2002, Kate Gale, Debra Nystrom and Dennis Loney rendered “Other Lives:
Persona Poems” to an attentive audience.
And on December 9, PAN broadened the number of poets who could read at
one time to feature a sampling of DC Poets to be followed in future years with
a sampling of poets from other states.
District of Columbia Poets reading were Sarah Browning, Michael Gushue,
Erich Hintz, Carol Jennings, Joy Kraus, Gregory Orfalea and J.D. Smith.
Two-thousand
four was a leap year, and in early February Hiram Larew, Meredith Holmes and Dan Maguire considered its
implications with verse. For Valentine’s
Day, Marilyn Taylor read “Love Poems,” followed on March 4 with an early St.
Patrick’s Day program of poems presented by Robert Aubry Davis. In April ACA actors Robert Leembruggen and
Ian Gould read poems by, and excerpts from, Shakespeare. Earthly Delights crowded our senses with the
offerings of Lucille Lang Day and Nan Fry.
On
September 30, 2004 the formidable subject of “Men and Women” was broached in
poetry performed by Shayla Hawkins, Myong Hee Kim, Ann Silsbee, Ernie Wormwood
and Dwaine Rieves. Late October featured
“Poems for Children” from Sheree Fitch, Laura Krauss Melmed and Mary
Quattlebaum. “Things My Parents Told
Me” were revealed in November by Abby Wilkerson, Christina Wos’ Donnelly and
Judith Harris, and ending the calendar year, “A Sampling of Maryland Poets”
took the stage in December, with the spotlight on John Carter, Charles E.
Wright, Sauci Churchill, Carol Conover, Joanne Rocky Delaplaine, Gary Stein and
Patricia Valdata.
February
1, 2005 signaled Black History Month and Kenneth Carroll brought four young,
gifted poets from the DC Writer’s Corps to read. They were: Anoa Hunter, Adell Coleman, Tina
Pryce and Carenda Tillery. Picking up
the “Love Poems” theme that year were: Karen Benke, Moira Egan and David Dalton,
while Robert Leembruggen returned bringing Teresa Castracane for the
“Shakespeare’s Birthday” presentation. On
May 31, Robert Aubry Davis returned on
the actual month and day of Walt Whitman’s birthday to give the “Leaves of Grass” reading in the 150th
year after its first publication. June
7, looking forward to summer temperatures, George Bilgere and Marilyn Bates
brought a warm feeling to the “Humid Nights” reading.
Furthering the Whitman anniversary
theme in September, Kwame Alexander, Patricia Clark and Kim Roberts read both
their own and Whitman’s poems in “Singing the Body Electric.” October brought “Saints and Sinners” to the
fore, featuring Kathi Wolfe and Michael Mack, and in December a “Sampling of
Virginia Poets” starred Karen Kevorkian, Katherine E. Young, Sandra Beasley,
Lin Lifshin, Cliff Bernier and Mary-Sherman Willis.
Love in 2006 landed on Valentine’s
Day with appearances by Marjory Wentworth, Rosemary Winslow, Marcella Wolfe-Gervais
and Dominic W. Holt. In March, “Trust/Mistrust” was explored by Grace
Cavalieri, Kathleen O’Toole and Susan Thomas.
The “Shakespeare’s Birthday” reading tradition was upheld by actors Anna
Kepe and Tjana Valentiner. Then “Imaginary
Places” took shape on May 23 with Richard Hedderman, Elaine Terranova and Terri
Witek reading. That October 10, “Ancient
History” was the theme of a reading by Larry Johnson, John O’Dell, Kay Lindsay
and Michael Davis. Finally, the mouthwateringly
“Delicious Poems about Food” had to wait until November. That theme was prepared by Bernadette Geyer,
Carly Sachs and Marcela Sulak. In
December “A Sampling of Poets from Florida” were embodied by Kay Day, Roselyn
Y. Cole and Dorothy Fletcher.
“Love Poems” in 2007 was the
province of Greg McBride, Mary Ann Larkin and Patric Pepper, and on March 13,
the rather fraught subject of “Forgiveness” was lovingly presented by Linda
Annas Ferguson and Jeanne Murray Walker. In May that year, “Innocence and Experience”
took center stage in a reading by Joy Gonsalves, Mary Elizabeth Murphy and Jean
Nordhaus. Next, “Shakespeare’s Birthday”
got an extra burst of enthusiasm from the ACA and featured 6 actors: Dan Crane,
Melora Kordos, Stephen Martin, James Ricks, Bob Rogerson and Erin Sloan.
When the leaves fell in 2007, Indian
Summer brought “Magic and Magicians.”
Adele Steiner, Nin Andrews and Willa Schneberg pulled that reading out
of the hat nicely, without having to saw anyone in half. On December 7, “A Sampling of South Carolina
Poets” brought Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth with three more excellent poets
from the state: Kwame Dawes, Carol Ann Davis and Susan Meyers.
“Love Poems” in 2008 gave the stage
to E. Ethelbert Miller (possibly the most popular poet on the subject), Sally
Bliumis-Dunn and Benjamin Morris. In
March, “Fathers and Daughters” captured the imagination of presenters Preston
Pulliam, Jody Bolz and Dan Logan and of the audience. Also that month,
"Family Names and Nicknames" proved amusing and intriguing in
readings by Mary Buchinger, James L. Foy and Sheppard Ranborn. In April we joined the Academy of American
Poets to encourage everyone to carry a “Poem in Your Pocket.” Those who did were given a shot at the PAN
open mic. “Shakespeare’s Birthday” was
held a day before the Bard’s putative birthday and featured again the wonderful
ACA graduate students.
In the fall of 2008, the PAN podium
was given over to a sampling of poets from two states, Kentucky and
Indianna. Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane
Gentry Vance brought three poets from her state who had won the Yale Series of
Younger Poets series (each on a different year, of course). The Commission on the Arts in Kentucky helped
fund the trip and even provided funds for a light lunch after the program! Appearing with Vance were Tony Crunk, Maurice
Manning and Davis McCombs.
In December 2008, “Indiana’s Air
Poets” arrived. No, they weren’t
flighty. Their poems had been chosen to be incorporated into stained-glass
murals in the new Indianapolis International Airport and they read those poems
for PAN. Former
Indiana Poet Laureate Joyce Brinkman introduced current state Laureate Norbert
Krapf, along with Ruthelen Burns and Joseph Heithaus, all of whom had an
opportunity to read.
Fall 2009
brought a September “Life is Beautiful” theme that was celebrated in the
selections of Sue Ellen Thompson, Barbara Crooker and Joseph Ross, but I’m not
sure the reading scheduled for December 8, 2009—ever came about. It was to be “New to the World”—Poems about Babies. Not sure what happened, but the winter of
2009-10 was a doozy.
The “Love Poems” reading set for Febrary 9, 2010 was
canceled because the Library was closed all week. That was the “Snowmageddon" year in which
snow was piled as high a car roof.
Sadly, we had set up one of the most interesting of all the PAN programs
to be followed by a screening of “Bright Star” the Sony movie about John Keats
and Fanny Brawne. Heddy Reid and
Margaret Mackinnon had agreed to read classic and contemporary love poems and
Kate Harding of Nantucket was to read the short composition that won her a
diamond ring as the grand prize in a national love-letter-writing contest. But you know the bad news. It couldn’t happen; however, Reid and
Mackinnon were rescheduled for a March 12 “It’s Never too Late for Love”
reading, and on March 23, several DC poets whose work appeared in the Full Moon on K Street were introduced by
that anthology’s editor.
Twenty-ten was a splendid year for the “Shakespeare’s
Birthday” event. Gary Logan, director of
the Academy for Classical Acting, had gradually ramped up the actors’
presentations at PAN, and this wasn’t the first year that props for fight
scenes were disallowed by the LOC security, but for several years the actors
had been playing scenes rather than just reading lines. This was a standing-room only presentation in
the Whittall Pavilion and indicated that the “show” would have to be moved to
the larger Coolidge Auditorium in the future.
In October 2010, a “Rhode Island Sampler” of poets was
lead by RI Poet Laureate Lisa Starr, accompanied by Charles “Chachi” Carvalho,
former RI Poet Laureate Tom Chandler and special guest Amber Rose Johnson, the
national champion of the Poetry Out Loud competition for high school students,
sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. “Decade One of the 21st Century”
was celebrated on December 7 by Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, Mary-Sherman
Willis and Lucille Lang Day.
Before the next PAN event I would say a loving goodbye to
the program I had designed and directed and to the Library of Congress itself,
for I left the PLC at the end of October in 2010, but not without setting the
schedule for the 2010-2011 PAN readings.
November 16, 2010 featured David Gewanter, Carol V. Davis and Joseph
Ross in the “Insider/Outsider Experiences”reading.
In 2011, my plan to showcase the state Laureates
continued with Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannan Walker, Michael Salcman and
Michele Wolf. March 15 gave the
spotlight to Janee Baugher, Sarah Crossland and Elisavietta Ritchie, who
addressed “Reversals of Fortune.”
“Shakespeare’s Birthday with ACA’s performance continued to be a huge success,
and May 24, 2011 brought my influence to an end. Jody Bolz, Tom Healy and Anne Harding
Woodworth read on the theme of “Away from Home.”
A number of Poetry at Noon participants are no longer
with us and are truly part of The Splendid Wake. Those I know of are: Hilary Tham, Jacklyn
Potter, Ann Silsbee, Cicely Angelton, Robert Sargent, David Kresh, Donald Everett Axinn, and Edwin
Zimmerman.
Throughout these years, PAN was carried out without a
budget, through the good graces of the Library of Congress. A special thanks goes to the then-head of
Scholarly Programs, Prosser Gifford, who personally bought lunch for the guest
readers, and to all the poets and guests who gave up their lunch hours to
attend!
Please Note: I regret that there were one or two of Poetry at Noon programs for
which I could not locate a file and would appreciate hearing about. If you notice any omissions or errors, please
email Patricia Gray at pythiabeeATyahoo.com. Also, the poetry readings now held
occasionally at mid-day at the Library of Congress are no longer in the PAN
format.
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