Bradley University recently hosted a reading by poet Bob
Hicok, celebrating their 30th annual writers series. Hicok, after
being introduced by Bradley professor and Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein,
read a selection of his work, some Hicok was even surprised to find he never
titled. His poems were about a wide range of topics, from the personality of
tattoos, insecurities, family, immigration, and our very own Peoria.
Even though
the poems in Hicok’s poetry books are just text, when giving a reading, poetry
turns into a performance, which can add or subtract from the audience’s
interpretations. Hicok showed this by adding commentary in between poems, like
describing the poem or situation and cracking some jokes. Hicok also performed
in the way he read his poems, his volume raising and lowering based off what he
was reading. This can either help the audience understand the words with
emphasis in his poems, or it can distract audiences from other important parts
and they can misunderstand the meaning of the piece.
This
phenomenon is similar to when writers write plays that are only meant to be
read. If someone directed their work, the director or actors could perform it
in a way unintended and add some of their own interpretations. The text is
pure, but other people’s interpretations, like the way actors say certain lines
and present their characters, can fool people from the meaning of the original
text, just like the performer’s volume in a poetry reading, even if the one
reading is the poet himself.
Another
phenomenon Hicok might have used was drawing your work from other works, and
being inspired by those before him. One of Hicok’s poems, “Peoria,” was a lot
like Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” since they both had a physical storm and an
emotional storm. Hicok’s “Peoria” is about the narrator at an airport where he
meets a girl named Caroline. Caroline was worried about her mother and anxious
to get to her, and her emotional storm was seen in the way Caroline’s eyes
butterflied across the room and the narrator even said he saw the storm in her
face. The physical storm was hurricane Katrina, which was going on at that very
time.
This is
similar to “The Storm” because the mother and wife of the story, Calixta, had
an affair, which definitely “stormed” away from what was acceptable in the
nineteenth century, which this story takes place in. The physical storm, the
thunder and rain, was why her husband and child were still out of the house.
These two stories are similar enough that Hicok may have been inspired by
Chopin.
Bob Hicok
closed his reading with a poem about Michigan, and how their February is 13
months long, with a sky gray and angry. After his reading he signed books and
talked with some of the audience members, and after the Wyckoff room was empty
again, Bradley’s 30th annual writers series was over, with any un-purification
of text and inspired writing leaving with it.
