Author: Chad Wyzynski
To call last Tuesday’s performance of Valerie Savior’s The Contraries simply “a poetry reading” would be to overlook both the uniqueness of her work and the significance of the event. A glance at the gathering in Lower Herrick would have aroused curiosity immediately: four readers sat at the front of an audience that consisted largely of Oxy staff, faculty and a smattering of students. Not the usual reading format, not the usual crowd.
While most of us know Savior as the director of the Career Development Center, others know her as a gifted poet. Savior earned her MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has kept the Oxy Writers’ Workshop (OWW) thriving since its inception four years ago.
Although Savior read briefly last fall, Tuesday was the first time her work, The Contraries, has been in the spotlight at Oxy.
“I wanted to showcase Valerie,” Office of Religious and Student Life (ORSL) Program Coordinator Linda Ravenswood said.
The literary arts week of ORSL’s Creativity and Spirituality month seemed to be the perfect occasion. The large non-student turnout spoke to their support of the artistic endeavors of their colleagues.
The unusual format of the reading reflected The Contraries’s genre- bending nature. Savior describes The Contraries as somewhere between a play and a poem.
“Poets say it’s too dramatic, and actors say it’s too poetic. And that’s perfect,” Savior said before the reading.
The recitation drew on the reading talents of Molly Quinn (junior) and Conor Anderson (sophomore), the co-presidents of OWW, in addition to Savior and Ravenswood. Occasionally, one reader would finish the other reader’s sentence or word. It was rare for one voice to recite the whole poem.
Despite the dramatic tenor of the reading, the readers never relied on gestures or expression; the performance was more akin to voice acting. The rich language created characters and images in the audience’s mind.
The Contraries describes a woman’s meandering journey through a dream-like world. The narrative opens with the woman following a strange man to an even more mysterious pulp warehouse. She finds herself enchanted by the contraries, which are essentially unusable materials found in paper waste. From there, she encounters a variety of bizarre characters, such as a dream farmer and the Page of Rods from Tarot as she tries to break free of form.
Although I am an ECLS major and a strong advocate of reading aloud, I found the story particularly difficult to follow. This may have been because I’m not used to listening to such dense poetry. Savior’s post-reading explanation of the plot hit me like a minor apocalyptic revelation.
However, my inability to follow the plot did not distract from my enjoyment of each poem individually. Spoken language seems an ideal medium in which to journey through dream landscapes. Savior’s words led my mind through surreal environments, and brought me to a mental state similar to lucid dreaming.
“The sky is filled with paper boats,” Quinn exclaimed several times throughout the reading, and, at that moment, thousands of paper boats would swim across the sky of my mind, very much like a dream.
While some may find such readings inaccessible, I found Tuesday’s event to be a worthwhile venture into a somewhat neglected medium. It was exciting to see that talent such as Savior’s is among us at Oxy.
For more information on ORSL’s Creativity and Spirituality events, visit http://departments.oxy.edu/orsl/. If you are interested in Oxy’s Creative Writing Workshop, OWW, contact Molly Quinn at mquinn@oxy.edu.
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