The Paris Review

The fall I moved to Washington from Nashville, Tennessee, the poet Jack Gilbert gave a reading at the Library of Congress. During my first days in the city, Gilbert’s Refusing Heaven had become for me something of a vade mecum. On wobbly Metro rides to and from work (my first experience with public transportation), I read and reread the book, drawn to its fierce, lapidary verses as a kind of antidote to homesickness and the political blather emanating from Capitol Hill.

The poems trembled in my hands on the train yet somehow steadied me. Gilbert’s lines might have come from any continent in any century. They wouldn’t have seemed so out of place scrawled on papyrus or etched in stone.

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This Thursday, join us at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House for an evening of new fiction and poetry from The Paris Review, hosted by editor Lorin Stein. The event, part of NYU’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series, will feature readings by recent contributors, including Adam Wilson, author of Flatscreen (and winner of our Terry Southern Prize) and Rowan Ricardo Phillips, author of the poetry collection The Ground.

For details, visit the Reading Series Web site.

“Here’s one for you,” the driver said as soon as the taxi door had closed. “If you’re standing in a house, and every window faces south, what color bear are you looking at?”

I was caught off guard; it seemed to me late in the day for riddling.

I stifled a sigh and marshaled my meager resources.

If you’re standing in a house, and every window faces south, what color bear are you looking at?

I know next to nothing about geography, but it seemed clear that the riddle dealt with a geographically anomalous zone. Probably a pole. Which meant …

“A polar bear?” I suggested.

“What color bear?” he repeated, clearly disappointed.

“Oh. White.” I said. He sighed, deflated.

“Yes.” He said, and we drove in silence for a few minutes.

“What exotic meats have you eaten?” he asked after a while.

“Let’s see,” I said thoughtfully. “Ostrich, alligator, elk, bison ... I guess venison doesn’t count, does it?”

“Oh, it counts all right,” he said with suppressed violence. “I count it. So you’ve never had bear? Moose? Bear?!”

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I am giving my first ever “real” poetry reading in a few weeks. Whenever I go to readings, the writers are charming and chatty and tell stories in between selections of their work. How do you do that? I am not at all confident in my ability to improvise witty remarks in front of an audience. It’s nerve-wracking enough reading the poems! —Tongue-tied

Dear Tongue-tied,

It’s not your job to be ingratiating. Leave that to lounge singers. I find it embarrassing when a poet tries to be liked, or explain what he or she was thinking when she wrote blah-blah-blah. Patter is just a distraction—an apology.

My advice: Memorize the poems you plan to read. Anything spoken by heart commands attention. Bring the poems with you, so you can consult them if need be—but really, the way to win an audience over is to get up there, say your poems in a loud, clear voice, face out. Then say thank-you and get off stage.

You’ll kill. Read More »