I go to very few poetry readings anymore (well, I mean a few months ago obviously). I'm sure I could have gone more often when living in Chicago or New York, but the high water mark for my involvement in poetry was while at university in Ann Arbor in the very early 90s. (Looking at the list of poets who came through in Donald Hall's memoirs, the scene was really something in the 1960s and 70s, with all the major poets coming through on reading tours, but it had really slowed down when I was in university.)
The most significant poet coming through, that I can recall, was Adrienne Rich in my junior year. I actually had her sign The Fact of a Doorframe, which was then stolen from my rental apartment, and shortly after her death I picked up a different signed volume off of Bookfinder.com. Allen Ginsberg was supposed to make it out but I think he had a health scare of some sort, so that was disappointing. Jim Carroll who was the "opener" read for the whole time, and it was fine, but it wasn't Ginsberg. Actually, now that I think back, I believe Derek Walcott came through, right around the time Omeros came out, and I almost certainly went to that, even though there were some fairly nasty pre-"Me Too" rumours circulating about him (and about most male poets, to be honest). I'm slowly going through old journals from my undergraduate years, and I expect I should be able to confirm this at some point.
In term of other poets, I've seen Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, though in both cases, reading from their novels, not poetry.* I did see Amiri Baraka reading once, and Charles Simic twice. I certainly don't recall Philip Levine coming in from Detroit for a reading, though I may have just missed it. Later, I believe Robert Kroetsch had been scheduled to fly to Toronto for a literary festival, and I might have made that reading, but then he died in a car crash. I've certainly seen a few good "regional poets" but I think that is the list of all the really prominent poets I've seen. Given the general state of poetry, there won't be too many more up and coming poets that become household names.
The summer between my sophomore and junior years, I was part of something called the New England Literature Program where 30 or so UM students went off to a camp in New Hampshire and communed with nature and read writers with strong links to New England (even reaching as far as Boston...): Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Robert Frost, etc. There were some contemporary writers as well, like David Budbill, Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. I suspect that the program originally came about because Hall and Kenyon had strong ties to Ann Arbor (Hall was an English professor at UM for many years and Kenyon was a native of Ann Arbor). I believe that most years, there was actually a gathering or a party at the Hall-Kenyon residence, but Jane Kenyon had been ill for some time and we didn't go that summer, unfortunately; she died of cancer only a few years later. So that was an unfortunate missed connection. I found this video of Hall reading his poem "Kicking the Leaves," which is set in Ann Arbor but looks ahead to the next stage of his life after Ann Arbor.
While I was at UM, I took several poetry writing courses with Ken Mikolowski, who was not only a writing instructor but the editor of The Alternative Press with his wife Ann Mikolowski. I might have, but I don't remember meeting Ann. The Alternative Press was quite something. Each issue came in a manila envelope and was stuffed with postcards and bumper stickers and so on, all with poems printed on them. There were also usually one or two one-of-a-kind postcards where the poets would do a little doodle or drawing and personalize each one. More on the Alternative Press can be found here. I managed to subscribe for two years (4 issues) but then between my perpetual moving from state to state and the poor state of the internet at that time, my subscription lapsed. Maybe in a future post, I'll reveal some of the hidden gems from those issues.
At any rate, Ken did seem to have connections to most of the active major poets in the US. He brought Jim Gustafson and John Sinclair in for readings, and I believe he was somehow involved in the Allen Ginsberg/Jim Carroll reading. I believe that every couple of years Faye Kicknosway came in for a reading, but it was just not to be. I never saw her read. The last I heard she had moved to Hawaii and largely given up writing (or at least publishing new pieces**), so the odds of ever seeing her read live are quite remote at this point. In some ways, she is probably the most interesting poet that I would only have found out about through taking Ken's class. I would eventually have encountered Jim Carroll and Ted Berrigan (another somewhat obscure poet that Ken championed) on my own but probably not Fay Kicknosway. As I was prepping to write this post, I decided that I probably ought to pick up more of her chapbooks, as she did most of the illustrations. I already owned A Man is a Hook. Trouble, Nothing Wakes Her and The Cat Approaches, along with her selected poems Mixed Plate.
I had had an earlier selected volume (All These Voices), and recently I realized there are several poems in All These Voices that are not in Mixed Plate, but I had given All These Voices away to a friend. Now it's possible that with the individual chapbooks, I am not really missing any poems, but I decided I would go ahead and re-order All These Voices, along with She Wears Him Fancy in Her Night Braid, The Violence of Potatoes and Asparagus, Asparagus, Ah Sweet Asparagus. In a couple of cases, these were actually signed editions, so I'll have a very good Kicknosway collection when this is all said and done, even though I never did have the chance to go to a reading and have her sign my book personally.
* And Grace Paley reading a short story or two, though she is not really known for her poetry these days, despite being a fine poet.
** And then I ran across these poems, so I guess she is still in the game after all.
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