THE DODGE FESTIVAL – WORLD’S LARGEST
POETRY
EVENT
Just returned from the Dodge Festival (Oct.
23, 24, 25, 26) in Newark and am slowly digging my way back into my life –
incredibly dull after all the excitement of downtown Newark.
You may have seen some videos of the
previous festivals which were widely published
on PBS and Bill Moyers Power of the Word
filmed in Waterloo, NJ, before the festival
moved).
It’s held every two years so you have to get
ready now for the next one because you won’t want to miss it. Every poet you’ve heard of (and many you
haven’t) are there to read from their work
and converse with the audience (which
includes about 5000 high school students from all over the country on
Fridays). It’s great to see high
schoolers with such enthusiasm for poetry lining up to ask questions of poets
like Sharon Olds, Marie Howe, Gary Snyder, Eaven Boland, Brian Turner, Kevin Young.
Wow. There is hope for the world, eh?
You have to have a schedule to plan your day
– panels of poets and a few musicians performed, discussed issues – Making A
Life in Poetry, Ell All the Truth, But Tell It Slat, Poetry and Storytelling, A
Certain Kind of Attention, Going Public with Private Feelings, The Oral
Tradition, Poetry and Song, Saying the Unsayable, Poetics of War, Masks and
masculinity, A Sense of Place, The Emergence of Women’s Voices, Poetry and
Disability, Poetry and Survival, The Inspiration of Influence, and more. Just about covered the full range of poetries
in our time.
There was a performance by the New Jersey
Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Gil Shaham playing Mendelssohn on his
Stradavarius. I’m a fan of Stradavarius
– those seemingly ageless
instruments cradled lovingly in the arms of
violinists.
The highlights for me after Shaham’s
performance was the opportunity to see Gary Snyder, still
actively supporting poetry and the
environment, the poetry samplers which gave you the opportunity to hear a dozen
poets give a quick read, and the Poetics of War panel which featured Kevin
Basl, Chantelle Bateman, Jeremy Stainthorp Berggren, Hugh Martin and Carlos
Sirah.
I guess it reminded me of the war of my
youth – Vietnam.
After
the war I went to Penn State for my MFA and Bruce Weigl and John Balaban were
both on the faculty. Weigl was a
combatant and Balaban was a C.O. who went to Vietnam as a teacher to check out
what was really going on. That influence
still resonates with me.
This group of Warrior Poets hosted a booth
with literature about their on-going workshop during the conference and
welcomed vets. I was glad to meet face
to face with Hugh Martin who I invited to read in Olean on November 11. I had read his volume of poetry from BOA – The
Stick Soldiers – and was impressed. In
the vast number of poetry books coming out these years – this one stood out.
It’s great to know that there are still
people out there in the world who are interested in poetry. Sometimes in my daily life I think I am a
fool for devoting so much of my time to poetry – reading it, writing it,
teaching it, thinking about it. So I was glad to see large audiences
interested and attentive. It was also
great to run into old friends – Jessica deKoninck and Diane Lockward who were
on the volunteer staff and Ryki Zuckerman from Buffalo who came to listen.
Judy Kerman and Leslie Gerber and I went to
the open readings (two, we couldn’t get enough)
and joked about adding to our resume that we
had read at the Dodge Festival.
The two year wait for the next one is way
too long.
