Teacher vs Student

On April 4^th, I went to a reading at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House. There were two poets who read, and it had been emphasized from the beginning that one of the poets, Alex Dimitrov, had been the student of the other poet, Marie Howe. That fact held my attention throughout the reading. I was determined to see how the work of a poetry professor and that of one of her students differed. It was incredible to me that they had once had a relatively generic relationship (teacher and student) but then progressed to be presenting and praising each others work, as well as their own, together in front of a crowd of people waiting eagerly to hear their poems.

It was the first poetry reading that I had ever been too and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I had never read much poetry other than Shell Silverstein and Shakespeare’s work and the generic poems I was forced to read in high school, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Alex Dimitrov went first and his poems were surprisingly sexual. Each piece he read had a kind of sexual undertone, or blatantly discussed sex, and, embarrassing as it is to say, before that reading I had no idea how incredibly relatable, funny, beautiful, and real modern poetry is. The only poetry I had really been exposed to was that of writers who had been dead for a very long time, and I’d never had much of a reason to seek out new poetry. Listening to Alex Dimitrov read his poetry was inspiring and gave me the incentive to go out and read more poetry. I probably would have bought his book if I’d had any money.

In contrast, Marie Howe’s work was relatively boring. I’d been excited to see what her work would be like after enjoying the work of her student so much, but I was disappointed in what I heard from her. Her work didn’t have that same relatable, real feeling to it that Alex Dimitrov’s did. It could be because of how much of a role religion played in her work, which tends to be a turn off for me, but I didn’t enjoy her poetry. In spite of that, I enjoyed my first poetry reading a lot more than I expected to.