Friday night, calmly sipping hot chocolate, having sufficiently braved the cold walk I was at Literati for a reading in their poetry series. Both were Michigan poets, and even after struggling through traffic jams due to the snowy weather, they expressed their happiness in being in Ann Arbor. After being introduced by one of Literati’s booksellers, John, Zach Tomaszeski read first.
All Things Dusk is his first book and he read a number of pieces from it Friday evening. I found his poems to be very relatable. He spoke about a variety of topics from farms, siblings, grandparents to the desire to become an astronaut. Apart from never wanting to be an astronaut (the concept of space is kind of terrifying and mind-boggling to me), I could relate to the instances he
captured. They were extremely vivid and clear moments. Even if I didn’t want to be an astronaut, I remember being a kid and feeling like I too could climb, the “ladder of clouds”. One of my favorite lines was in a poem about his brother and ice cream. They were at the dinner table and “two years sat between us”. I think this is a really great line because it almost sounds like a sentence people would use in everyday life. But actually he’s personifying time, it “sat” between them, and this word choice makes the difference in age a physical thing between them.
My favorite poem of the night by Tomaszewski was “The Composer Sheds Her Sheet Music”. Here’s a link to it. Throughout the piece there is nice imagery about birds and music. The ending I thought was particularly good: “the composer holds us- but we are the music- we are leaves and we are let go-”. It brings the audience into the poem which I think works really effectively. He also gave us a little peak into one of the things he’s working on now. Tomaszewski lived in Ireland for a time (which coincidentally is where I will be spending my summer!). He stated that he’s working on a poem describing a man he met there who worked, and still does, on the “haggards”. I can’t wait to see what else Tomaszeski turns out!
The second to read was Dennis Hinrichsen. His poems were very different from Tomaszewski’s, and though I sincerely enjoyed both, I liked the style of Hinrichsen’s a little more. They felt more raw and he really has mastered the art of gut-punching last lines. His daughter and wife seemed to be large inspirations for many of his pieces; so again family was a large part of his work. He also used allusion in his poems often, mentioning everyone from popular movie actress Kathleen Turner to the Minotaur. Adding another interesting element he spoke a lot about music and its relation to poetry for him. In the first piece he read Friday, he said that his four chord was “blue” and that his five chord was the “idea of cut” which he used to shape his construction of the poem’s melody. This poem was also written after he had done some reading on queer theory. He named the poem “Queer Theory” and it was a really beautiful piece about identity and desire. Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out for yourself: Queer Theory
Another of my favorites was Hinrichsen’s “Piece for Prepared Piano with Devil in a Black Dress, or Prostate Cancer Blues”. A few years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and this was one of the pieces he wrote to help relieve his anxiety. He has now been cancer free for a year. This piece once again brings in his interest in music, as can be seen just from the title. One of my favorite moments is the repetition of “the Devil and me go walking”. The Devil is further personified as the Devil also tells him riddles, talks to him and goes walking with him. It’s a really interesting piece and if you follow this link you can even listen to Dennis Hinrichsen read it!
It was a really great night of poetry. Check out Literati’s upcoming guests if you want more events like this!
