ETSU’s poet-in-residence and English professor Jesse Graves delivered a lecture and poetry reading for the fifth installment of the “Dessert with the Experts” series on Jan. 26.
Graves’ presentation was titled “Rediscovering Poetry in Trying Times,” which centered on the dramatic shift that has taken place in many peoples’ lives since the pandemic and how poetry can be used as a tool to work through hardship and trauma.
“I think this whole past year has been such a strain on people across the country and across the globe,” said Graves. “Hardly anyone alive in the world today has experienced anything quite like the multiple, cascading crises that we’ve been dealing with, the main one being the pandemic.”
“Poetry really seems to be a balm for people, and a comfort, even for people who didn’t have poetry as part of their everyday lives before the pandemic.”
The presentation was delivered remotely using Zoom. Graves started with “poetry’s rare star-turn with this week’s presidential inauguration,” in reference to the well-received poem by Amanda Gorman, and noted the “ancient quality of poetry, and its public base.”
Graves curated four poems for the lecture: “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, “Blessing the Boats” by Lucille Clifton, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski and “Remember” by Joy Harjo.
The poems Graves chose to read had a recurring theme of resilience, perseverance and resolution in the face of adversity. Each poem was delivered with an anecdote about an attached experience or the personal importance of the piece.
“As we have been taken out of our routines and public interactions, poetry might offer us a place to explore, a place to examine and see the world,” said Graves.
Alongside Graves’ academic work, he is an award-winning poet and just released his fourth collection of poems titled “Merciful Days,” which is named after a phrase used frequently by his mother.
“Sometimes it means something positive, and sometimes it’s more negative,” said Graves. “It can almost mean something despairing. It has a lot of variance, depending on the context and tone.”
Graves comes from a rural, working-class background, and discovered poetry through music and lyricism. He became fascinated by the ways that tone affected words and the shapes and textures that could be generated with language.
After the lecture, a Q&A session opened, and the first question was about Graves’ productivity as a poet during the pandemic.
“I have written fewer poems during the pandemic than in my whole life,” said Graves. “I found it harder to access. I don’t know that I have a great explanation for that, but it has certainly affected my process, affected my habits. I’m hoping this is a germination period for poems while working on other writing projects.”
“One of the paradoxes of poetry is that one cannot write a universal poem that will relate to everyone, but something that gets close is writing something very personal,” said Daniel Westover, the department chair of Literature and Language, during the event. “The personal aspects of poems have authenticating details from one’s own experience that give a strong chance of relating to potential audiences.”
Alongside the theme of rediscovery, Graves discussed the accessibility of poetry, which he said might be misconceived as “a lock to which there is no key.”
“In important cultural moments poetry almost always has a voice, and what I hope people take away is that poetry is perfectly appropriate for the grand stage of a presidential inauguration, but it’s also just as relevant to our quietest moments, and our most everyday, prosaic experiences, that have nothing to do with public expression or public presentation, but that are really interior for each of us,” Graves said.
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