Word: poem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Kane, an Eskimo from Anchorage, Ak., read a poem by the noted Native American poet Sherman Alexie, titled "Imagining the Reservation...
...lecture lasted more than two hours, and dragged toward the end when Koch displayed the Wallace Stevens poem "Anecdote of the Jar" on an overhead projector to demonstrate some keys to reading poetry. Alarmingly, he turned Stevens' very sophisticated poem into a cartoon,delighting in the story of "this magic little jarwhich conquers Tennessee," and, while allowingthat more nuanced readings of the poem werepossible, he seemed so strongly by temperament toresist such readings that he effectively arguedagainst them. The key to enjoying this poem, heheld, lay in the music of its sounds and thesilliness of its story, and there...
...performance was exceptional; Koch hasmastered the art of bringing out the subtleties oftone and changes of mood in a poem withoutoverdramatizing it, remaining respectful to thepoem without making it monotonous. Particularlyeffective was the poem "Straits," which was alsothe best poem he read, shifting rapidly betweenscenes of political revolution, literary history,sixteenth-century maritime exploration, musicalperformance, conversation about bankers andphilosophical abstractions about love. Kochcaptured each shift with subtle variations of thepitch and intensity of his voice, and brought theelements together at the conclusion of the poemwith great lyrical skill. His subtle intensitymade the line "Do you remember the idea ofrevolution?" ominous...
...tendency to fall into endless strings ofparallel declarative statements, such as in "OneTrain Can Hide Another," where he cycles throughdozens of variations of the title's formula, "oneX can hide another"; it's easy to see how he canwork so well with children, handing outassignments such as "a poem in which every firstline begins with 'I wish..."--but the readingitself was never disappointing. Koch was charming,and funny; even when his work became homiletic, orsubstituted a joke for real development, he kepthis audience thoughtful, alert and entertained...
...Stars and the Moon tells the wry tale of a material girl who brushes off a series of poor but ardent suitors only to learn that yachts and champagne aren't everything; Ricky Ian Gordon's Dream Variations is a laconic, sweet-and-sour setting of the famous poem by Langston Hughes that ends with "Night coming tenderly/ Black like...