His yellow Mini Cooper pulled up to the circle outside the Musical Arts Center five minutes before his scheduled reading Sunday afternoon, and poet J.D. McClatchy emerged from the passenger seat. \nMcClatchy and his companions left the car on the curb for his entire 45-minute lecture.\nMcClatchy, an English professor at Yale University, was in Bloomington for ArtsWeek and to celebrate Friday's world premiere of "Our Town," the opera for which he wrote the libretto. McClatchy said he is a poet and an opera writer but he likes writing poetry more.\n"That's what I set out to do; it's what I do best," he said. "It's what I want to be remembered by. Opera is finally the composer's creation. I prefer to write where my name comes first."\nAt the reading, he also said opera writing is about simplifying material, while poetry is about complicating simple ideas.\nOne poem he read, made up of three sonnets, was called "Cancer." \n"Let's all buckle our seat belts," he said before reading.\nThe first of the sonnets was about the progressive cell damage of cancer and the second talked about the plague in ancient Athens as a metaphor for cancer. The final sonnet told of McClatchy's grandmother's final birthday before she died of bone cancer.\nMcClatchy explained all of his metaphors before reading the poems to help the small audience understand his intentions. While reading his work, he put on a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses; during explanations, he took them off and made eye contact with the crowd.\nThe date for the reading was printed incorrectly in the ArtsWeek brochure, which might explain why so few people showed up.\nMcClatchy played to the intimacy, commenting that the raised podium he spoke from made him feel "like a pope."\nThe second poem he read, "Mammogram," examined a male perspective on the typically female experience. McClatchy said when he got a mammogram, it was an experience he knew he had to write about.\n"It was one of those experiences that come with a little label at the bottom that says, 'write me up,'" he said.\nAfter the reading, McClatchy answered a few questions from his listeners. One man asked what his writing process is.\n"I'm not a dedicated writer," he said. "I don't have discipline. There are times you just feel a rush to write. Maybe it's something biological or chemical in the body," he said, laughing.\n"I can't even remember writing any of these," he added. \nMcClatchy said he works poems out in his head first before committing them to paper.\n"Once you get something on paper, you tend to fall in love with it, and it's harder to get rid of," he said.\nHe also said he keeps poems around for a couple of years before attempting to publish them.\n"No one's banging on your door begging for another poem," he said. "Might as well sit on them for a while."\nFor information on more ArtsWeek events, visit www.artsweek.indiana.edu.
Author offers insight on poetry, cancer
Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe