Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 23, 2001

Volume 29, Number 20

Graduate students give voice
to their poetry in colloquium

Graduate students at Yale spend hour upon hour writing their dissertations in order to earn their Ph.D.'s.

Some of them also take an hour or two here and there to write sonnets.

Isaac Cates is a good example. A published poet with a strong interest in writing and analyzing literature, he began a few years ago to bring together fellow graduate-student poets to share their work at informal readings. These lyrically inclined individuals still meet from time to time to read aloud from their latest poems and listen to an established poet -- defined as someone with a published book of poetry.

This year, the group gained official status (and funding) from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as the Graduate Poets' Colloquium.

"We are organized to give encouragement (and voice) to the creative work that's going on here. The readings are a way for us to show our work to our peers, and a way for us to meet working poets from outside the Yale community," says Cates, whose poetry has appeared in the Southwest Review. He has also participated in the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

"The readings also give us deadlines to keep us writing a few new things every semester, which can be hard with so many other demands on our time," he notes. Cates interrupted his studies two years ago to earn a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Here at Yale, he is doing research in English and American literature and writing a dissertation on nature poetry after Darwin. In addition to his studies, he manages the Yale Younger Poets competition, a project of Yale University Press.

Most of the colloquium members are doctoral students in the Department of English, but some are in the Renaissance Studies or African American Studies Programs, or from other disciplines.

The poems presented by the student poets are as unique as the authors themselves, ranging from playful to soulful in tone and from free verse to highly structured in form. Those who have read their works at the colloquium include Kamran Javadizadeh, Rachel Trousdale, Jonathan Kidd, Nick Salvato, Peter Nohrnberg, Brett Foster, Jesse Zuba and Catherine Rockwood. (See sample poems, below.)

Established poets Mary Jo Salter and Phil Stevens have been guests at previous colloquium events, and the organizers are hoping to bring Greg Williamson, author of "The Silent Partner," and David McCombs, National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist and winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, to read at a future meeting.

This semester, the Graduate Poets' Colloquium also launched a monthly poetry workshop organized by Brett Foster. Before matriculating in the Graduate School two years ago, Foster earned a master's degree from Boston University's poetry program. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford -- one of 10 winners, five working in fiction and five in poetry -- who receive two years of funding to write, participate in workshops and give public readings.

"Obviously, for a writer, any experience like that is an enviable, slightly unreal one," says Foster. "Being given an environment to concentrate exclusively on writing poetry was a real privilege, one I probably took for granted at times."

Foster has published poems in literary journals such as Hudson Review, Partisan Review and Poetry International. He received the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize, and his poetry manuscript has been a finalist for a handful of first-book prizes, including the National Poetry Series.

Despite the rigors of his doctoral work, Foster decided to coordinate the workshop for fellow poets in order to provide a useful outlet for student writers.

"Graduate students naturally don't have a lot of spare time to pursue their writing, so most participants are viewing the workshop as an occasion to help maintain that creative interest," he says. "In this way the workshop functions much like the public readings, but here, we are more concerned about the process, about making good poems better and learning something about the craft as we do so."

-- By Gila Reinstein

From the Projection Booth
(Appeared in Schuykill, Spring 2000)

I'm halfway through a screening of Rear Window
when I see it: Jimmy Stewart is a liar.
He doesn't really love Grace Kelly. Her allure --
incredible allure -- is wasted on him. And I wonder:

what else are they pretending? Shadows on a screen
standing for bodies, lousy orange effect
for blindness in the flash -- all faked, in fact:
his cast from wardrobe, her negligee like spun saccharine,

repartee, continuity, the neighbor's plot. It has to happen,
as I watch the pretty couple watching
the opposite windows together, wishing
their broken inferences were true: finally I'm hoping

the house lights will never rise, no curtain
fall velvet over silver, the hero never move his
wrecked legs to rouse me from the movie-house
blinking at a world bright, dull, and certain.

-- By Isaac Cates

Dead Women's Clothing

Here even the mousetraps
are empty today;
we'll water the soup, none
the less;
fry the beans in homesmelling
hot butter,
make
do.

Today I am wearing
dead women's clothing
passed
over and under and through.

Today I will borrow
their half-cup of sugar.
Tomorrow
the rent will come due.

-- By Rachel Trousdale

Other poetry stories in this issue

Bollingen Prize in Poetry honors 'anguish and humor' of Louise Glück's 'Vita Nova'

Valesio group is 'an ongoing poem'

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

New Berkeley College master named

Bollingen Prize in Poetry honors 'anguish and humor' of Louise Glück's 'Vita Nova'

Yale Glee Club salutes music's power to mold lifelong friendships

Architect Cesar Pelli to design Yale's new engineering building

Comedian Carlin shares tales from his 'very lucky' life

Yale College term bill is set at $34,030

Bentley Layton appointed to Goff chair in religious studies

Race is not a factor in the delivery of mental health services . . .

Graduate students give voice to their poetry in colloquium

Valesio group is 'an ongoing poem'

Candid close-ups are Yale police officer's hobby

Pioneering nurses will be honored at center's annual convocation

Grant to support field research by F&ES students

YUHS names new medical director

Pianist (and trained chemist) makes his faculty debut

Shakespeare-inspired music will be featured in concert by Yale Jazz Ensemble

Campus Notes