Smith shares poetry

Poet Dave Smith spoke to a crowd of over 50 Tulane students, faculty and staff Tuesday night in Cudd Hall. Smith read poetry primarily from “Little Boat, Unsalvaged,” his book to be published in 2005, but also read from some of his earlier works of poetry, including his most recent publication, “The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems 1970-2000.”
Smith prefaced each reading with exposition on the poem?s meaning, sharing everything from humorous personal anecdotes about his seventh-grade girlfriend to memories about his father?s death.
“I liked the back story [Smith] gave before reading his poems,” lecture attendee and Tulane College junior Andrew Shea said. “It gave a framework to the poem and you could get more from the reading. You could tell where the emphasis in the expression of emotion was supposed to be.”
English Professor Peter Cooley, a published poet himself, set up the lecture series in conjunction with his creative writing class. In his introduction of Smith, Cooley said he hoped the lecture series, geared toward inviting male authors to speak, would balance out the women writers that Newcomb College brings to campus.
Smith thanked Cooley during his reading for being one of the first editors to publish his work in the North American Review, and for giving him the idea that “[I] could be a poet.”
“This new book has a lot of exactly what I tell my students not to do: poems about poems and poets. But maybe I?ve gotten to the point where that?s all I know,” Smith said before reading a poem about fellow writer and founder of The Southern Review literary magazine, Robert Penn Warren.
“Dave’s work has a quiet passion that’s amplified when he reads,” Sarah Doerries, assistant director of student and alumni programs at Tulane College, said. “He lets you experience the poems as real events. His readings aren’t just a performance of his work: He spends time talking about the writing process, about the ideas and emotions behind the poetry, to the extent that you almost feel like you’re collaborating on a piece that he’s creating right there, right then.”
Smith is a celebrated writer whose work is included the “Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poets.” He is a past recipient of the Guggeheim Fellowship and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, among other honors. He is the author of 18 books and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry twice. A former co-editor of The Southern Review, Smith was the Boyd Professor of English at LSU for 12 years. He is currently the Elliot Coleman professor of poetry in writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Smith?s reading at Tulane College was part of Cooley?s Duren Lecture Series. The Duren Professorship Program of Tulane College provides four tenured professors in the liberal arts and sciences with funds to arrange for and facilitate meaningful interactions with their students, outside of the typical classroom setting.
The Duren Program is an endowment made by Tulane alumnus Professor William H. Duren, former dean of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia. Professors interested in using the Duren funds must submit a proposal to a committee headed by the dean of Tulane College and comprised of other members of the Tulane College community. Two more Duren Professorship readings are planned for the spring semester.