…Which Is Why I Hate Giving Readings

Turtle-neck aficionado Brigit Pegeen Kelly (center) poses for a picture
with Lucie Brock-Broido (left) and Tree Swenson (right).

She started with a joke or what I took to be a joke, thereby laying out her theme for the entire evening: “I’m from a very sad place,” Brigit Pegeen Kelly started, pausing for effect. “Central Illinois.”

I reached down for my knapsack, grabbing for my notebook. I had a sense that that was only the first of many gems that she’d deliver that night. I was right. To say she delivered jokes is a tad misleading; it was more natural and less self-conscious than that. It would be more accurate to say that she said things people laughed at.

This past Thursday, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, former Yale Series of Younger Poets winner and “one of the very best poets now writing in the United States” (at least according to Stephen Dobyns) gave a reading at the Helen C. White Hall at UW-Madison. Despite the dimmed lights, wooden podium, and desk lamp, it was clear that we were gathered in a large conference room made more depressing by the dampness that hung in the air. (Many of us had trekked through three straight days of nearly constant rain to get here). The ceiling was bubble-tiled and spotted with halogen lights, and the place was packed—I had to squeeze between two young men (undergrads?), both looking like they wanted out.

Pegeen Kelly kept with the theme she laid out in her opening “joke,” that of place, more specifically, that of her life living on a farm in rural Illinois. (She teaches at the University of Chicago, Urbana-Champaign). Before jumping into her first poem she explained more about Central Illinois. She set the scene: “There’s no place to dump things, no trees, no hills,” she explained. “I like the landfills… they give you something to look at.”

Pegeen Kelly’s outlook is a bit different than most. Over the course of the evening, she called a harsh windstorm that caused quite a bit of damage “kind of magnificent” and said this about a flood that covered the Central Illinois countryside two years ago: “It was so, so beautiful. It was like living in a land of lakes.”

She continued: “It was like the scene from Spirited Away—have any of you seen that?—the part where the train glides over the water…”

Here is the scene she to which she was referring:



For someone with such a strange outlook on things, the reading started traditionally enough. In a quiet, yet commanding voice she read an Emily Dickinson poem, which I now don’t recall, and followed that up with the poem “Killing Rabbits” by a writer who’s last name sounded like “Miroslaw.” Any ideas?

She moved into some of her work, reading “The Orchard” (“And I saw / That the horse was a dog. But the apples / Were still apples”)—she followed the poem with the clarification that “there aren’t any orchards in Central Illinois.” She moved on to “Rome.” (Find it here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20907).

One year, there was an ice storm, she told us. There’s always ice storms on rural roads, but due to the budget crunch, the city manager had decided not to buy salt for the roads, she said. There were 49 accidents. She said it without accusation, without irony. Just stating a fact. “The police office issued this statement,” she said. “Do not call the police unless you are mortally injured. There are no police to come get you.”

She read a poem about a wolf wandering through a village called “Fable,” which I really wish I could find. I did get down the last few lines. It went something like this:

He walked wide-eyed all morning
until he was beaten to death.

I went into the reading on a hot tip from a poet-friend—“I hear she’s amazing”—and because of that was expecting something akin to Ilya Kaminsky, a reading that is less a reading and more an experience. Sure, many people read better than Kaminsky, but when you go see him read, you understand the power of performance. Pegeen Kelly was not powerful. She wasn’t “an experience.” However, she was simply amazing.

Her reading might have possibly been the most enjoyable reading I’ve ever attended. I’m sure I’m not the only one who often finds it difficult to focus on the poems yet who always feels awkward when the poet goes “off the cuff” to tell us some back story or to set up the poem or to banter. Pegeen Kelly, instead, made her reading into a performance without performing but tying her poems and the poems of other authors together with the theme of place. All her setup stories had the effect of communicating a sense of what it means to live it Central Illinois. Listening to her was like reading a good non-fiction narrative, except this narrative lacked any naval-gazing, self-indulgence. It could be that she’s a natural story-teller, though none of her anecdotes were really stories or perhaps she spends as much time planning what she will say as she does writing the poems she’ll read.

She ended the performance by describing the stunted Central Illinois trees as broccoli (“Someone should get them on film”) and reading a poem written by her son when he was a young child. The poem started thus (or something close):

We should not use words.
Words can make anything…

“That is why I don’t like to give readings,” she said. Everyone applauded.