Poetry and fiction, the wise, perhaps gray-haired eminences of literature, have saved, and possibly confused, readers for centuries. Only few have mastered the arts, such as Lan Samantha Chang and Nan Cohen, who will read at Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., at 7 p.m. today.
Unfinished City, by Cohen, is a collection of poems strung into the themes, questions, and wonders of the first five books of the Torah, otherwise known as the Hebrew Bible. (Other religions refer to the ancient text as other holy names) The title itself coincides with a story from Genesis, a tower, and the city of Babel. Cohen’s poetry has seized the art of being human, whether the idea is derived from a modern standpoint to an aged one.
“I think much of my poetry, maybe much of poetry in general, is about the fascination with this strange project of being human, of waking up each day to a world that is both familiar and strange, predictable and unpredictable,” said Cohen, the poetry director of the Napa Valley Writers Conference. “I have always been interested in poetry that reimagines myths as part of contemporary experience, and that’s my project in a lot of these poems: to make visible some archetypical patterns of human experience in one individual’s experience.”
She has a passion for writing and understands that reading helps her everyday life. But like all writers, she finds comfort through the scratching of a pen or the soft clicking of keys.
“It’s probably reading that helps my everyday life more, but like most writers, I write about things I don’t understand in order to know them better — things like love, motherhood, friendship, loss,” she said.
The dual reading is no coincidence but stems from a sturdy friendship built as fellows at Stanford University. Chang, the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will read from an unfinished work among the bookshelves and keen at ears at Prairie Lights.
While the secrets of the book have yet to be turned up, she sets the scene in the Midwest, with a bit of a shadow from her own childhood with Chinese-immigrant parents. As a professor of English, Chang recognizes the importance of poetry and how it can lead humans and their trail of problematic events down a clear, smooth path.
“Poetry is a crucial art form for our society,” she said. If something happens, we look for a poet to help us create the event. Poetry has a way of crystalizing moments, speaking to the human experience. For instance, why is there a poet laureate in the Library of Congress but no novelist or ‘fiction laureate’ ”?
From the highest form of governments to broke college students, many hearts are drawn to poetry, and fiction, for knowledge, understanding, and peace.