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\centerline{\largest Notes from the Poetry Reading}
\centerline{\largest at the Media Lab}
\centerline{\largest 13 December 1990}
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\centerline{\large Andrew Marc Greene}
\centerline{\large 21.760 Poetry Reading Report 2}
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On 13 December, I attended a poetry reading by Sharona Ben-Tov at the
MIT Media Lab.  Ben-Tov is a lecturer at Stanford University and has
published one book, ``During Ceasefire.''

Ben-Tov began with what she called ``chestnuts.''  One, William
Blake's ``Ah, Sunflower,'' was in anapestic tetrameter and had an
a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d rhyme pattern.  It opened with the phrase ``Weary of
time,'' which conveyed both exhaustion and age.  Ben-Tov then
introduced the concept of an aubade, which became a recurring theme of
the evening's readings.  She read Silvia Plath's ``Poppies in
October,'' which drew the image of a ``woman in an ambulance, her red
heart blooms through her coat.''

Ben-Tov selected a wide assortment of her own poems.  I found about
half to be lackluster and boring, but the others made up for that.
Ben-Tov postulated a distinction between songs and poems, but said she
could not explain the difference between them.  Her first work was
``Early Rising Song,'' another aubade.  This work was characterized by
stanzas of four short lines.  The poem moved from a description of
nature to one of technology in the natural setting.

Her next song, ``High Window,'' used a number of effective sound
devices.  ``The sun //cl//imbing the //cl//ear buildings,'' (emphasis
added) was striking, as was ``caught in the sky of thought,'' whose
recurring drawn-out word ending pictured the act of catching.

A poem about her father's death in an airplane crash was titled
``Mourning Aubade,'' which was, as she pointed out, a pun on the
aubade as a ``morning poem.''  She utilized recurring images of light
in the sky: ``Now Venus in the sky opens her house of light.''  ``The
sky shed chunks of fire,'' depicted the flaming debris and also was an
effective string of sibilants.

She read a section of the poem ``During Ceasefire,'' which depicts
Jerusalem.  In this poem, she uses a metaphor which is rendered even
more effective if one recalls the pottery sold in the markets: ``The
sun has fired the sky to a purple glaze so hard an airplane's noise
would break it rim to rim.''  The slant rhyme of ``glaze'' and
``noise'' is also effective.

The most impressive poem that she read was her ``Nightmare.'' It uses
the refrain, ``Nightshade, henbane, datura.''  This line was
reenforced by the frequent use of the word ``night'' and especially by
the large number of words that rhymed with ``henbane.''  I noticed
``vein,'' ``pane,'' ``flame,'' ``rain,'' ``stain,'' ``contain,'' and
``sustain.''  The third section used repetition of ``exist'' and
``existance'' as a rhythmic device, recalled later by ``the pulsars,
beating their hearts of light like a drum.''  This poem was very
effective in drawing the listener into a compelling narrative.

Ben-Tov concluded the reading with exerpts from a work in progress,
``The Life and Times of Kuja.''  I found this work dull and lacking in
the linguistic excitement of some of her other poems.  The characters
were uninteresting, the plot was mundane, and her word choice failed
to evoke images or emotions.  As this is a work in progress, I hope
that she will be able to improve it; judging from the poems she read
last night, I believe she has the ability to make this an exciting
sequence of poems, but that she is not guaranteed to do so.

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