{"id":29916,"date":"2024-03-27T21:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T21:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/standard.asl.org\/?p=29916"},"modified":"2024-03-27T21:00:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T21:00:12","slug":"how-bergeron-fellow-caroline-bird-creates-destroys-loneliness-through-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/standard.asl.org\/29916\/features\/how-bergeron-fellow-caroline-bird-creates-destroys-loneliness-through-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"How Bergeron Fellow Caroline Bird creates, destroys loneliness through poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo you hear sex noises through the wall when standing in a field?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The library was silent after award-winning poet and this year\u2019s Bergeron Fellow Caroline Bird concluded her first poem, holding the attention of the audience of students, parents, faculty and alumni who came for the annual Bergeron Lecture Feb. 29.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bird had just finished reading a piece titled <\/span>\u201cPatient Intake Questionnaire,\u201d<\/span><\/a> inspired by her time at a rehabilitation center when she decoded what the employees were really trying to find out about her. The crafted structure of a poem is what Bird calls the \u201cgame\u201d of it, and, for this piece, the game was one question after another, leaving the audience unsure of where the final question mark might land until silence eventually gave way to applause.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe air after a poem is like white space, and you never know how it’s going to be inhabited,\u201d she said. \u201cThe silence is always different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the expanse of a blank page or the held attentiveness of a seated crowd, Bird finds meaning that is invisible to the naked eye. She communicates a raw emotion, pure in its attempt to be authentic to the way we feel without requiring a concrete explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love poetry because it seems to hold all the mystery and not pretend that life can be paraphrased or summed up,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’re under such pressure all the time to justify things, to explain, to clarify\u2026 Poetry breaks all of those rules.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a stretch for her to consider poems as life forms that demand creation, partly because they reciprocate the human tendency to ask questions. Just as poems ask something of readers, the audience must also ask questions in return. So often, Bird said, we are asking the wrong ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPoetry is the one art form that people always try to interrogate and go like, \u2018What does this mean?\u2019 Right, but that’s the wrong question to ask a poem, just as it’s the wrong question to ask, you know, the ocean or a face or a tree,\u201d she said. \u201cIt won’t answer you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
“<\/div>\n

When you’re sitting right in a poem for hours and hours, you kind of do feel like you’re speaking to someone.<\/p>\n

— Caroline Bird<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n