SNAPSHOT: At the Irene McKinney Group Reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: Scuse’ me, while I barge into this blog with a photo and few notes from an event Vic has been promoting in MountainWord | thegazz.com ed
Jayne Anne Phillips reads a poem as part of Monday’s tribute event to West Virginia Poet Laureate Irene McKinney. Chip Ellis, Gazette photo.
Last night’s homage to the powerful, vivid poetry of W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney drew a crowd of more than 100 people to the cool confines of the Scottish Rite Temple auditorium in downtown Charleston, W.Va. McKinney, set to read herself, was, alas, absent at the gazz/FestivALL Charleston 2008 event, from the trials of coping with cancer treatment. Yet as one reader noted, she was certainly there. How could she not be when her luminous poems were there, her life’s DNA encoded into words, certainly as rich, imagistic and evocative as any poetry ever to come out of the hills of West Virginia.
Maggie Anderson, one of the readers and a poet with family roots in the state, offered up a memorable and apt connection. McKinney stands less in the line of American poets and more in the tradition of British and Celtic poets, Anderson noted, like Yorkshire-born Stevie Smith and Ireland’s Seamus Heaney. Denise Levertov, an American transplant but Essex-born, is one of McKinney’s favorite poets, she added.
Photo at right (click to enlarge): poet Devon McNamara begins the readings. Chip Ellis, Gazette photo
For those who’ve never taken a long drink of McKinney’s poetry or who look askance at poetry readings from Bad Poetry Moments in Public Past (let your healing begin), they missed one of the year’s most powerful performances in West Virginia’s capital city. It’s hard to capture in words why this is so when you looked at the unadorned stage, the simple set-up of a microphone and a row of readers in beige metal chairs. There was perhaps an equal amount of laugh-out-loud humor (McKinney has a droll, sly wit and is often ribald) and heart-clutching lines that make your eyes go wet. Five minutes later, the cycle repeats itself in another poem. McKinney’s seemingly straight-forward, conversational language conceals endless depths. Her work fully embodies Ezra Pound’s phrase: “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost degree.”
Photo by Douglas Imbrogno
Maggie Anderson (above) reads and talks about Irene McKinney, among the readers who included long-time friends, past students and admirers one and all. Shown (from the right): Jayne Anne Phillips, Kate Long, Doug Van Gundy, and Diane Gilliam. Not seen: Devon McNamara, Jeanne Bryner, R J Gibson.
– By Douglas Imbrogno
June 24th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Thank you, Doug, for a great job of giving those of us who could not but wanted to attend a sense of what is was like to be there.
Vic Burkhammer
July 1st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
It really was one of the most extraordinary nights in recent memory. The room was quiet, the reading voices soft, but the air was full of resonating power. I wished the moment could go on forever and that more of the people I love had been there.