Despite Funding Difficulties, Gamut Poets Return to Action

Professors and rhymes might have been absent, but talent certainly abounded on Tuesday as nine student poets, 60-some audience members and generous quantities of wine, cheese and butterfly crackers convened in Adams House Library for a poetry reading.

The nine featured student poets presented a wide range of influences, styles and subjects. By the end of the evening, the audience had heard forms of poetry ranging from dramatic monologue to pantoum, allusions to artistic works as varied as “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” by John Ashbery ’49, and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and poems that dealt with animal testing, parental remarriage and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But it wasn’t just an artistic success—some students also hailed the reading as the sign of a rebound for the Gamut, which co-sponsored the event along with the Advocate. Others said it bore the markings of a new, more cohesive undergraduate poetry community.

For the Advocate, the oldest continuously published student arts publication in America, this was the first event of the semester; for the Gamut, Harvard’s all-poetry literary journal established in 1998, it was the first in a year.

Although the reading included drastically different artistic styles and drastically different artists, selections shared the indelible mark of common experience at Harvard.

Lily L. Brown ’04 read a poem that responded to a reading from a poetry workshop in the English Department. “Rubber Gloves for the Curators,” by Caitlin E. Barrett ’03, was inspired by her job at the Peabody Museum.

In perhaps the most striking illustration of the interaction between Harvard student poets, Anton V. Yakovlev ’03 explained that “The Instigator,” a character from his poem “Cityscape in the Summer,” was fashioned in response to the “The Charlatan,” a character in “The Treehouse Journal,” a poem written and performed by Jennifer L. Nelson ’03.

This dialogue between poems is an indication of community strength, Harvard poets say.

In addition to serving as a forum for poets to display their respect and support for one another’s work, the reading even proved to have inspirational power.

Kevin B. Holden ’05, leaning over the podium as he introduced his reading, admitted that the task of presenting a poem live wasn’t easy.

“I wrote this poem this afternoon,” he said. “I’ve never done a reading before. I was confused as how to choose. I worked at it. I was very upset. So I wrote a poem.”

But the poets also brought with them elements from experiences outside Harvard.

Catherine V. Moore ’05 performed two poems from a larger project that she described as being “about time, music and culture in the Appalachian mountains.”

She apologized for the absence of the musicians—including fiddlers and flat-pickers—with whom she is developing the project.

Much discussion of poetry recently has centered on the poet’s relationship to national politics, especially in the wake of the “Voices of America” controversy, which resulted after a poetry reading at the White House was cancelled when performers revealed plans to use the program as a forum to protest the war in Iraq.

In response, a group of Harvard professors participated in several local anti-war protest readings earlier this month as part of national Poets Against War Day.

But the organizers of Tuesday’s reading were more concerned with the politics between poetry groups at Harvard.

Mirroring the friendly interactions and mutual appreciation displayed between individual poets at the reading, representatives of both the Gamut and the Advocate emphasized fraternity, cooperation and respect between the organizations. And members discounted rumors of rivalry and conflict.

“The Advocate has a reputation for being artsy and pretentious, and we’d like to dispel that reputation by working with another organization,” said Brown, one of the readers and a member of the Advocate.

“There’s a running joke that the Gamut is the enemy,” said Anton V. Yakovlev ’03, a member of both publications. “There’s a mythological competition that’s like legend. But I don’t think that it actually exists.”

Still, members of the Gamut, which publishes only once a year in the spring, say they feel somewhat disadvantaged by their lack of money and the relative youth of their publication.

The Undergraduate Council cut funds this year, but the Gamut says it hopes to hold more events this semester and increase its visibility on campus.

“We’re trying to get more people knowing who we are and what we do,” said Veronica E. Heller ’05. “Everybody knows what the Advocate is, but not everyone knows the Gamut. We sort of disappear in people’s door boxes.”

In spite of their publication’s lower profile, members of the Gamut say they feel at ease in their niche on campus.

“The Advocate and Gamut are different organizations with different interests. The Gamut is pretty new…I think really there’s room enough for both,” said Caitlin E. Barrett ’03.

Tuesday’s reading was evidence of the two organizations’ ability to share a single audience and performance space.

While friends, family and organizers crowded into a barely adequate number of red leather couches and hard wooden chairs, there was no indication of either cramped creativity or divided allegiance.

“In the end,” Brown said, “all you want is to get more student work out in the public.”