Pushcart Redux

Another “morning after” post, this time to sum up the Pushcart Prize reading at the Baruch Performing Arts Center to celebrate Bill Henderson, founder and publisher of the Pushcart Press, and the new book The Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize.

The line-up, reading in alphabetical order: Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Maxine Kumin, Grace Schulman, Gerry Stern, and C. K. Williams. The event was pretty well attended, though many in the audience were Grace Schulman’s students at Baruch or other poets in the Pushcart anthology. With such an all-star cast of poets I was surprised there weren’t more people there, but there seemed to be a sense that the event wasn’t too well publicized. Perhaps I’m comparing crowds to the packed Kinnell event, or Auden event. Or perhaps it’s just a sad reflection that even after winning awards like the Pulitzer and National Book Award, you can only muster a small recital hall sized room of people interested in hearing your work. And I’m not sure being in New York is a good or bad thing for mustering an audience.

I had never heard Collins, Kumin, or Schulman before, and was blown away by Kumin’s reading. Reminded me of Adrienne Rich, to hear such a sharp, powerful voice trapped in such a seemingly frail, slow body. Her poems for her brother “The Man of Many Ls” and for her horse Jack, were particularly memorable (she even changed the ages of the horses from the printed version of the poem to reflect how old they are today). She had a nice sonnet that began with a line from Mrs. Dalloway, too. Collins was like listening to a series of bad jokes, and the audience seemed to find him funny and eat up the fact he was reading haikus; I’ve never really understood what all the hype was about him, other than he’s that word I hate–“accessible”–and I couldn’t wait for him to sit down. Stern was a riot as usual, though few seemed to get his humor. His interludes between poems are often more interesting and potentially distracting from his actual work, but at least his humor has wit. At one point he even had to say “everything I’m telling you is lies” since the audience just wasn’t getting it.

The worst part of the evening was the emcee, Joan Murray, who edited the Pushcart book. She deemed it necessary to continually remind us that she herself is a poet with each narcissistic, name-dropping story and introduction for the actual poets on stage. I think she managed to insult each of the honored guests at least once while waxing poetic about one of their colleagues on stage.

I must say, having been to three poetry events in the past month, how very different the crowds have been at each.