As community events shift to online platforms, Smith’s Boutelle-Day Poetry Center is finding new and creative ways of gathering virtually to celebrate the joy of writing. On Tuesday Oct. 6, the Poetry Center hosted a book launch via Zoom for the newly published book of poems “The Map of Every Lilac Leaf.” The book was published in conjunction with the Smith College Museum of Art, and all of the poems draw inspiration from pieces in Smith’s art collection.
When asked about how this project came to be, Matt Donovan, the Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center, explained that he immediately fell in love with the campus art museum. During the introduction of the book, he expressed his admiration for the quiet space on campus dedicated to artistic reflection and contemplation. The book quickly sprung from an idea to a way of celebrating the museum’s centennial anniversary. Now, two years later, the book contains 39 ekphrastic poems–poems inspired by art works–and contains work by writers from all over the world.
The evening’s reading featured six Smith alumni reading poems from the publication. Rebecca Foust ’79, Gina Franco ’97, Laurie Guerrero ’08, Jessica Jacobs ’02, Gail Mazur ’59 and Louise Young ’99, shared their words virtually with 350 listeners from across the globe, and their impact was astounding. The book is idiosyncratic in nature and so were their poems, ranging in topics from climate change, civil rights, personal loss, spirituality, the cloudlike shape of flocking birds. The poems contained a vibrancy that was earnest and deeply humbling.
The poets explained that they were given the Smith College Museum of Art catalogue and were tasked to select one piece out of the 27,000 housed at Smith. Many of them expressed how daunting the task was, but how it simultaneously reminded them of their time as a student. There was an air of nostalgia as the process of flipping through the catalogue’s pages transported their memories to times of walking through the art museum in between classes, after lunch, on a morning stroll.
Many Smith students can relate to this experience. Like one of many places on campus, the art museum seems to be a defining place at Smith. Listening to the poems from ”The Map of Every Lilac Leaf,” one realizes that the experience of finding themselves in a painting, a sculpture, a color splotched canvas is not an isolated phenomenon. We find one another in the thinnest of brush strokes, the swaths of red and yellow and gold. We find one another in words, of all languages, from all points in time. Art is what brings us together.
After the poets read their poems, the discussion opened up to Q&A. What unfolded was remarkable. Students of all class years gathered through screens and pondered about what it means to write and be inspired and be an artist in this strange and uncertain time.
The six readers reflected upon their time at Smith from many years ago; they talked about the ways in which being a student here shaped their lives.
One poet remarked that she didn’t even realize she was a writer while she was a student. It wasn’t until 30 years after her graduation that she published her first book. Now, she writes many and frequently.
Another poet, Laurie Guerrero, explained that she had always wanted to be a writer since she was 8 years old, but college seemed like an unattainable dream. She was a 27 year old mother with three kids when she enrolled at Smith as an Ada Comstock student. During her time in school, she took care of her children and wrote two manuscripts which became her first publications.
Hearing these stories exchanged, it is easy to drift outside of time and place and find our way back to Smith, to reminisce on our own experiences in the art museum, of finding our own places on campus that makes us feel whole. In a year brimming with uncertainty, the reassuring words of alums were greatly appreciated, and many participants commented their gratitude.
While it is devastating to not be on campus this semester, Smithies are finding ways of making it through the year with a sense of community and hope, finding one another in pieces of art and poems and moments of humanity. When asked about the transition to the online digital space, Donovan commented on how in the previous months poetry reading, Mark Doty’s dog slyly nibbled on a milk carton in the background of the Zoom call. Donovan explained that while there is much to be lost from not hearing the words in person, there is “something nonetheless intimate about being inside the poet’s home and to see their world.”
The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center has yet to decide if they will continue to offer poetry events virtually even when students return to campus–it is a question many organizations are asking themselves during this time of transition. For now, they are grateful that students and alums gather digitally to celebrate the beauty and joy of human ingenuity.
In the forward of “The Map of Every Lilac Leaf,” Mark Doty asks, “What is there in a work of art?” He answers by writing, “What we put into a work of art.” I am led to believe that what we find in a work of art or a poem is the same thing as what we put there: hope. Listening to these poets, I felt momentarily reassured in the beauty of the world, by the beautiful things that people can create when they choose to be kind. It is a small gift, but one that I, like many of the other listeners that night, am grateful for. If you have the opportunity to join one of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center evening readings, I’d highly recommend it. You will be glad you came to listen!
