There are cheaper ways to celebrate National Poetry Month, but the best way is to pay a group of talented artists and celebrities to read to you.
Joan Baez adds "poet" to her storied resume.
On April 1, my friends and I headed to Lincoln Center with $25 tickets to hear a menagerie of notable poets, musicians and actresses read famous works. The Academy of American Poets hosts the Poetry & The Creative Mind event each year to raise money and kick off National Poetry Month.
In a large auditorium constructed for elaborate plays and concerts, 10 performers sat in a row of folding chairs with white printer paper in hand and half-empty water bottles at their feet. At first the simplicity seemed awkward. But soon we settled in for a form of entertainment that required no HDTV or digital sound system.
It’s easy to forget, as an adult, how nice it is to be read to. Books like The Secret Garden and A Wrinkle in Time came alive when my mom read them to me as a kid. And even in high school, we’d lay our heads on desktops while listening to Ms. Peplinski read the Great Gatsby. I still remember the way she cried about Daisy’s silk scarves.
Each celebrity reader selected a few of their favorite poems, which is why Chip Kidd cracked the house up by reading Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran The Zoo. Kidd, an imaginative art director at Knopf, says he sent the book to President Obama as an inauguration gift.
Musician Joan Baez introduced herself as a novice poet and read her own work, including an amusing poem about low-low impact yoga for senior citizens with an instructor who had a “head full of rustling leaves.” She then whipped out a guitar and improvised a song with jazz trumpet player Wynton Marsalis.
The Dark Knight actress Maggie Gyllenhaal took a more serious approach, reading a haunting poem by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Anna found success in the early 1900s even though her father warned her not to become a “decadent poetess.” (Love that.) Gyllenhaal got a B.A. in English from Columbia University, and her mom is an award-winning scriptwriter, so perhaps she has a feel for captivating language. Her selection stayed with me for days:
- Maggie Gyllenhaal has handsome brother, digs Russian poetry.
I Wrung My Hands
by Anna Akhmatova
I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
“Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?”
– Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.
I’ll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate. . .
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.
And shouted, choking: “I meant it all
in fun. Don’t leave me, or I’ll die of pain.”
He smiled at me — oh so calmly, terribly –
and said: “Why don’t you get out of the rain?”
Leave it to Chip Kidd to make poetry accessable.
If you’re in the NYC area, look for this event in 2010. It’s worth the price of admission, with new readers every year.
