On Wednesday, October 1, Poetry at Bennington hosted acclaimed poets and professors of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College Vievee Francis and Matthew Olzmann for the evening. The event, well-attended by students and faculty, was full of lyrical, thought-provoking, and sometimes comedic poetry.
Matthew Olzmann is the author of the poetry collections Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. His most recent collection, Constellation Route, published in 2022 by Alice James Books, uses what Bennington Literature faculty member Michael Dumanis describes as “the conceit of the letter” to create an “insistence on the importance of connection” as it explores the epistolary (letter) form.
His work looks the reader square in the eye and asks them to confront the modern world through long, lyrical sentences full of shifting imagery, delivered with such urgency that it appears to leave him winded before starting the next sentence. His contemporary references and tongue-in-cheek titles (including “Horse You Rode In On,” “Letter to Bruce Wayne,” and “Letter Written While Waiting in Line at Comic Con”) drew laughs from the crowd; they served as a frank exploration of the utter absurdity of the real world. At one point, Olzmann apologized for the amount of profanity in his poetry, warning the audience that more was on its way.
He concluded his reading with a series of “commencement speeches” delivered to institutes of elevator inspectors and a herd of walrus calves. “The point is courage,” he says to the calves as he warns them of the dangers of polar bears and comments on their unsettling mustaches despite them still being the age of toddlers. “The point is bravery.”
Vievee Francis is the author of Blue-Tail Fly (2006), Horse in the Dark (2012), Forest Primeval (2016), and most recently The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023). “She is a poet who believes language can still change the world,” Dumanis said as he introduced her. Indeed, her poems are musical and lyrical as they deal with the frank realities of life: love, violence, fear, and beauty.
“We are a-wounding of red-plumed birds,” she reads from “Break Me and I’ll Sing,” mixing the tender with the terrible in her rhythmic cadence. Love and forgiveness exist together, finding intimacy in a soft-spoken cadence that fills Tishman Lecture Hall. “I wander out into the winter,” Francis reads from “I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again.” “I know who I am.”
The night’s readers are married to each other, contributing to their healthy banter as they took their turns at the podium. Olzmann noted that Francis wanted him to read a specific poem, and that he always does what she tells him to. In turn, while introducing her poem “Vermont, Lost In,” Francis quipped that the man who read before her is her husband, eliciting some “awws” from the audience.
Francis concluded the reading by thanking the Bennington community for them, emphasizing her love for the college and the beauty of Vermont, where she and Olzmann both live.
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