“I feel far away, but I’ll try to bring you closer.”
These are some of the first words visiting poet Rob Halpern said Tuesday night in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts Loft. He stood at the front of the room wearing dark jeans and a flannel, clearly ready for a casual night.
Halpern, an associate professor of the creative writing department of English language and literature at Eastern Michigan University, read from his book “Common Place,” which he said took 3.5 years to complete. The project began when he came across an autopsy report on a Yemeni detainee from Guantanamo Bay.
Halpern was a part of the visiting poets series, which is sponsored by a Keenan grant and the Department of English.
Although his book contains many controversial topics, including military, gender and racial violence, Halpern told the audience before the reading that he wanted everyone to put aside that judgment for the moment.
“Common Place” focuses closely on the relationship between Halpern’s body and the autopsy report he studied. If reading and bodily reactions are related as Halpern explains, his reading showed that. Halpern moved his hands as he read, pacing slightly and even taking a few breaks for sips of water.
During one of Halpern’s couple-second breaks, he looked out at the group of students and asked, “How’s everyone doing?”
He added that breaks are good because it gives the audience time to breathe.
The reading had many medical terms scattered throughout. Halpern said he retained some of the original wording from the autopsy report while transcribing it. His hope was to make a sort of bodily connection with the detainee—obviously a difficult task with something as ambiguous and impersonal as an autopsy report.
Towards the end of the reading, Halpern read a section that talked about the dreams he experienced while being involved with the report. It talked about a dream he had in which he showed up to a party wearing shorts and a T-shirt, while everyone else wore suits and ties.
The anxiety he felt in that dream was released through bodily fluids, which he explicitly explains in his book.
Some students attended the event for classes, while others went because of their genuine love for poetry.
“Poetry is a way for people to express themselves, which is always important,” said Mackenzie Watson, a sophomore journalism and mass communication major. “It gives us a better understanding on how each mind is unique when thinking and processing things.”
kolbee14@bonaventure.edu
