The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

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Dark, funny poetry wows Bucks students

It’s Friday night and outside the
library auditorium a modest crowd
has started to gather, all moving
inside to take their seats before the
show begins.
Bucks hosted a night of poetry, a
program presented by the Bucks
Cultural Programming Committee.
This event kicked-off Black History
Month on campus with readings by
famous poets Gerald Stern and Ross
Gay.
The lights dimmed and the crowd
hushed as they entered the crisp, hallowed
halls of the auditorium.
“This feels like a homecoming to
me,” remarked Gay. “I used to skateboard
here and get chased by what
we liked to call the rent-a-cops.”
The audience erupted in laughter as
the atmosphere instantly becomes
light-even the most serious face
cracks a smile.
Gay is a graduate of Neshaminy
High School and author of “Against
Which,” a book of dark-humored and
morbid poetry. For a happy young
man with a bright green shirt and a
big smile, his poems are gritty and
dark.
“Taught you cursing.need to murder.
hands strong for strangling or
praying,” are piquant lines from
Gay’s poetry.
Dark and highly original words, but
as a skilled speaker Gay knows when
to pause and when to yell; he can
keep an entire audience mesmerized
with the level of description he uses.
In the third row one patron could
only remark ‘whoa’ before breaking
out in applause.
“His is a poetry that slams the attention
of the reader with considerable
force wrought with linguistic eloquence,”
according to a book review
from the Midwest Review.
The audience chatted ideally among
themselves as they wait for the next
reader to come up on stage, discussing
the daily hub-bub around
campus, laughing at inside jokes and
wondering how the next writer will
live up to Gay.
One lady giggled, as she talked with
her friends. “Thank you for bringing
me!” she whispered to her three girlfriends
beside her. All of them go
silent as the next man assumes the
podium.
Stern, on the other hand, is an older
gentleman wearing a golfer’s cap and
a professors jacket that every teacher
on this campus over 50 seems to love
to sport. He does not disappoint with
his reading; Stern kept the high that
Gay began.
“My wife is in the audience so I’ll
try to keep it cleaner,” Stern said to
heartfelt chuckles from the audience.
Stern, who has written 14 books, has
been on many campuses as a professor,
not a poet.
From the University of Pittsburgh to
Columbia, the 83-year-old native of
Pittsburgh has led an amazing life,
winning awards for his books, such as
“Everything Is Burning,”
“American Sonnets,” “Last
Blue: Poems,” “This Time
New and Selected Poems,”
which won the National
Book Award, “Odd Mercy”
and “Bread Without Sugar,”
winner of the Paterson
Poetry Prize.
Recently, in 2006, Stern
was named Chancellor of
the Academy of American
Poets.
Gay, a native of
Langhorne, has poems that
have appeared in
“American Poetry Review,”
“Atlanta Review,”
“Harvard Review,” and
“Columbia: A Journal of
Poetry and Art.”
“Quit a resume,”
remarked Professor Jim
Freeman as he introduced
the two men. “I’ve been trying
to crack that one for 15
years.”
The program, put together
by Freeman and Ross Mann,
is just another way Bucks is
supporting cultural heritage
on campus.
The next event, for
Women’s History Month, is
Friday, March 7 in the
Orangery with a reading by
Maria Mozeti and Lindsay
Haywood. Visit
www.bucks.edu for more
information.