On Oct. 17, Macalester faculty member Wang Ping and guest Andrei Codrescu read their poetry in the Weyerhauser Chapel. In this response, Sarah Brumble reflects on each poet and his/her work.
 

Wang Ping

Opening with her poem “The Magic Whip” from her newest book of the same title, I was struck by the poise and dignity with which Wang Ping carries herself. Her speaking voice is as unobtrusive and metered as her poetry, smoothly enveloping the listeners in her potent images. The functioning image in “The Magic Whip” is a young girl’s waist-length braid juxtaposed with its Chinese and American interpretations. The image of the braid draws its power from men in both countries, who tell the narrator not to cut her hair because it serves as a temptation in its beauty. The narrator, on the other hand, views the braid as a source of pride and self-empowerment.

For Ping, this cultural duality is a major theme throughout The Magic Whip, manifesting itself in forms such as hairstyles, traditional foot binding, language barriers and the role of the mother and child in both Chinese and American society. It is only natural that such a combination would prevail in her work; Ping was born in Shanghai, moved to the United States in 1985 and finally settled in St. Paul in 1998 to teach at Macalester.

In her poem “Ways of Ai,” Ping investigates the implications of the word love (ai) in Chinese and American societies, and how the word itself has brought about revelations in her own development as a member of both worlds. Through deconstruction of the Chinese character ai, she conveys to the audience a sense of isolation and spiritual destitution as part of a package deal for lovers. Ping highlights this emotional estrangement when she writes, “When pressed by my Chinese boyfriend, I’d say it in English or French only.”

Leaving the reading, the technically sound aspects of her poetry—including a penchant for patient cadences and lengthy stanzas reminiscent of prose—were not the resounding aspects of the reading. Instead, I walked away with beautiful, sometimes haunting, images of a body left to the dogs of society, intermingled with hope that the pain of these experiences will rectify itself through time.
 

Andrei Codrescu

Before coming to the reading, anticipated a curmudgeonly Eastern-European-accented Andrei Codrescu to comment on the world around him in a similar fashion to the way he does on NPR’s All Things Considered. I got what I expected and laughed all the way through.

His opening remark, while searching for the page he wanted to read from, was, “I’m pissed off…” From that point forward, he continued on a five-minute rant about how Coffee House Press should be one of the biggest publishing companies in the country because they’re so good. However, precisely for this reason, and the “provincial” people in America, they will never be as influential as they deserve to be. He was careful to clarify that when he said he is pissed off at “provincialism” in America, he is not pissed off with people who live in provinces, but instead with the public who want only comfortable, pre-packaged ideas in exchange for the unease that frequently accompanies all things extraordinary.

Andrei Codrescu’s writing is extraordinary. This became evident to me a few years ago when reading The Dog With the Chip in His Neck. I thoroughly enjoyed his wry, witty exploration of the American experience.

The poetry from his new book, It Was Today, is no less spectacular than the essays contained in that book. As with all good poets, Codrescu is able to accomplish a fully filled-out crazy, absurd, powerful or poignant scene in only two sentences.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the punch lines that came at the end of most of the poems he read, as his voice rose from what felt like a pitiful complaint to the level of a full-blown growl. All too often, in my opinion, I see contemporary poets aiming for the profound, mystifying experiences of life as fodder for their work. Codrescu, like Billy Collins (former Poet Laureate of the United States), doesn’t fall into the clichéd trap of being overly profound; instead he allows the poem’s weight to be carried by his entertainingly jaded voice dripping from every carefully selected word.

The poem that I got the biggest kick out of was one in which the narrator finds himself at a party in the Chelsea Hotel in the ’70s, bathing himself in the beauty of the surrounding women. Closing his eyes in ecstasy, he reopens them a few seconds later to find himself abandoned, first assuming that barbarians had made off with the girls, only to discover that they had rushed downstairs because Bob Dylan was paying Leonard Cohen a visit in the hotel. From this, Codrescu draws the hysterical conclusion that “the barbarians/were our heroes.”

Embodying Codrescu’s preoccupation with time and aging throughout his new collection of poetry, it was today, is “to a young poet.” Before reading this, Codrescu begrudgingly acknowledged the urge of all writers to address their followers. This acknowledgement included a nod to Rilke that was both tongue-in-cheek and sincere; Codrescu said he realizes that as trite as Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet has become, a kernel of truth lies in all clichés and therein lies their power and omnipresence.

With this knowledge, he snarled into the microphone what turned out to be less advice for the young poet himself and more an endearingly stodgy ode to the old poets who are obliged to read the young hot-shot’s work. In geezer-in-training syle, Codrescu said that, “nobody cares/if we live or we die” and grumbled the closing lines, “books are dead don’t/you know it”. If that’s not a jaded, aging poet speaking, I don’t know what is. Good thing I like testy old people.