Kingston Reads her Foray Into Poetry

Maxine Hong Kingston, the award-winning author of The Woman Warrior, is best known for her prose writing. But in an appearance yesterday afternoon she ventured into new territory: poetry.

"Getting from prose to poetry is like letting go of the side of the pool," Kingston said.

Kingston's talk in Science Center C, entitled "I Call on the Muses of Poetry, and Here's What I Get," is one of three talks she is giving this week that focus on her foray into poetry.

Kingston read to the audience of about 80 people from a poetry journal she kept this spring for over an hour, often pausing to motion with her arm when she wanted the audience to breathe deeply.

"It felt good because I could see that everyone in the audience seemed to be my readers," she said. "It was a meeting with my readers."

Her journal dealt with everyday life, describing impressions of nature, dinner with friends and bouts of insomnia, among other topics.

The journal selections often incorporated poetic elements into a narrative-like form.

Phillips Professor of Early American History Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who introduced Kingston, praised her writing talent.

"She has a wonderful wit. She's describing what's happening to her but it's playful," Ulrich said.

Ulrich also said Kingston's ability to critically examine her own writing process was valuable.

"If you're really serious about writing as a craft, it's really fun to see someone work through their process," Ulrich said.

Victoria S. Chang '03, a biology concentrator who said she first read one of Kingston's books in one of Ulrich's classes, said the reading could not be neatly categorized.

"She said it was poetry and prose, but she really melded it together," she said.

Kingston's final talk, entitled "Spring Harvest," takes place today at 4 p.m. in Science Center C.

Kingston has had her main successes in prose writing. Her 1976 book, The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction that year. The novel dealt with the challenge of growing up with American and Chinese culture. China Men, published in 1979, received the National Book Award.

The talks are part of the William E. Massey Sr., lecture series sponsored by the Program in the History of American Civilization. They will be collected into a book to be published in the future.

Past lecturers include Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Eudora Welty and Gore Vidal.