FIRST MEETING OF THE CALTECH POETRY CLUB
at the "Red Door" Friday, Oct 19, 2007
The first meeting of the Caltech Poetry Club was small, but very poetic a and amazing fun. Rick Wilson professor of Mathematics at Caltech, (Kath's husband) joined us for a reading of "A Course in Coimbinatorics" a poem titled after Rick's textbook. Kath wrote (and read it in Japan) at math conference with him. Mary Torregosa, center, a dear friend and local poet joined us, and Noele Norris, on the right, an electrical engineering major, who has always loved poetry was the Caltech student representative.
Noele is a friend from both yoga and glee club. It is wonderful to find we really share this passion for poetry as well.
Noele brought a book of poems by Seanus Heanny that she has been reading, and gave a strong, beautiful reading of one of Heanney's "Clearances"-- poems about his mother, after her death. We had never heard and we all loved it. She explained some of her reactions and pointed out how interesting unusual the use of "fluent" was, in relation to the knives in the poem.
Here you can see the fun we had discussing poetry! Noel is exhuberant and articulate, Mary is a wonderful teacher, poet, reader and and listener. Each of us read either a poem we wrote or one from an anthology that we loved.
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Mary read The poem the poem "Could Have" by Wislawa Szymborska from "Against Forgetting" 20th Century Poetry of Witness, ed Carolyn Forche. The poem was unusual in that every mostly short line ends with a period. It touches on the "could have's of life, especally the almost tragic... and the wonder at the still existence of being.
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On the darkening campus and mysterious shadows, two poet friends delight in knowing one another more and sharing this poetic experience at Caltech.
We plan to meet again next Friday under the flowery hat at the Red Door,
and then plan a meeting in the gem room of the Geology department the following week. We'll send definite notice. Please come and join us!
also see Modern Verse links to another weekly local workshop a block from Caltech