Day primes area poets for reading

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON - The inauguration of President Barack Obama produced varying responses among local poets participating in a reading at the Yellow Sofa Tuesday night.

More than 50 people piled in to the small coffee shop on Main Street to participate in a local version of a nationwide poetry event aimed at putting into words what the inauguration meant to writers.

Leslea Newman, the event's organizer and the poet laureate for Northampton, said the reading was specifically organized to show how area poets reacted to the election of the country's first African-American president.

"There are open inaugural poetry readings happening all over the country tonight," said Newman. "Everyone here has written an original poem for this evenings event in celebration of Barack Obama."

Newman said she watched the inauguration on television, and because of her background in poetry, Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration" was particularly special.

"I thought it was great," Newman said. "It was very accessible to everyone, and I was really inspired by it."

The 30 local poets who read at the event produced a range of responses to the inauguration, featuring poems entitled "In Hebrew Barack means Lightning" and "Obama's World."

The first poem read, by Newman, was entitled "Ode to Obama," and conveyed a point made regularly throughout the night - that the residents of this country are ready for a change.

She wrote: "The past eight years are over now at last - the changing of the guard ... With one hand raised he takes the vow to heal the Earth so badly scarred."

Another poet, Harry Azmitia Jr., a member of the Florence Poets Society, shared Newman's hopes for the Obama administration, in a poem he called "Obama's Inauguration:"

He wrote in part: "We pray for our success in your privileged position / A leader who is blessed gets results despite opposition."

While many of the poets wrote of hope and high expectations, others chose to write about how the latest election hasn't changed American culture and that many of our country's racial conflicts remain.

One read verse containing the warning: "What has happened before will happen again."

Tom Clark, co-founder of the Florence Poets Society, said it wasn't necessarily how the poets felt about the new president that mattered at the reading. Rather, it was illustrating that every one of them had their own response to the inauguration.

"This was a very special occasion in American history," said Clark. "We are participating in this event as part of celebrating the local poetry scene while being part of something much bigger."

Anyone interested in reading their poetry can to attend an open poetry slam hosted by the Florence Poets Society this Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in the Florence Community Center.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com