April
23,
2004
Rachel
Kahn '04 Vies for Prestigious Glascock Poetry Prize
 Photo by Todd M. LeMieux
Rachel Kahn '04 |
Rachel
Kahn '04,
this year's Mount Holyoke entrant in the eighty-first
annual Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Competition,
said she has been writing poetry "for as long as I can
remember." In second grade, she announced to her parents
that she "wanted to be a poet," and she has been
working hard at it ever since.
The Glascock competition, first held at the College in 1913, is one of academia's
most prestigious poetry events. Glascock competitors have included Sylvia Plath,
Robert Lowell, James Merrill, William Kunstler, Katha Pollit, and many others
who have gone on to prominence in the world of letters. Kahn recalls learning
about the competition in high school when she read Plath's The
Bell Jar,and since coming to Mount Holyoke, she always aspired to be part of it. "Coming
into MHC as a firstie and knowing that I wanted to write poetry, I'd always
hoped to leave having competed in the Glascock and written a thesis in poetry," Kahn
said. "And now that I'm a senior with a chance to do both of those
things, it's a little surreal."
For Kahn, the art of writing poetry has involved considerable unlearning and
relearning. The summer before coming to Mount Holyoke, she attended a program
in creative writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, where she
said she "pretty much unlearned everything I had been taught about writing
poetry in high school." Last summer, she had an internship with the Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she helped set up poetry
readings, took classes with poets Catherine Bowman and Major Jackson, and spent
time with poet Stanley Kunitz. "All of these things were incredible experiences
that re-taught me a lot." Her most profound influences have been Tony Hoagland,
John Rybicki, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Nick Flynn, although she adds, "pretty
much whoever I'm reading at any given time impacts what I'm writing
at that time."
Kahn said that she was "drawn to Mount Holyoke on a gut instinct. I knew
I would be happy here, and that Mount Holyoke was the right place for me. I knew
that I would meet amazing people here and have conversations I would never forget
and see beautiful
leaves and be in love with four years of my life." And, she adds, "I
was right."
After graduation, Kahn plans to move to New York City. Eventually she hopes to
get an M.F.A. in poetry and a law degree with a focus on advocacy and to teach
poetry as a therapeutic tool in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and inner-city
schools. "In an ideal world I would love to be a poet by vocation, but
I'll take it in my life any way I can get it."
Glascock Poetry Competition
to Take Place April 23--24
The eighty-first annual Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate
Poetry Competition will be held April 23--24. Undergraduate
poets from City College of
New York, Columbia University, University of Massachusetts, and
Spelman, Amherst, Williams, and Mount Holyoke colleges will read
their work Friday, April 23, at 8 pm in Gamble Auditorium.
A "Life and Letters" conversation will be led by this year's
poet-judges, John Hollander, Marilyn Nelson, and Carl Phillips, Friday, April
28, at 3 pm in the library's Stimson room. The judges will read from
their own work and announce prizes Saturday, April 24, at 10:30 am in the Stimson
Room.
All events are free and open to the public.
Excerpts from the poem "Deconstruction:
Parts I-XIV," by Rachel Kahn '04
I: In praise of the scars she left
Sometimes you just need to bleed.
Your body has closed itself, vaulted,
against the hurricane bruising of
days, words, hands never extended.
There is mild salvation in the
tearing open.
Ripping with knives, tongues, prayers--
Give me something
to remember me by and
tonight I own my
skin.
II: Bright White
All perimeters lace and fissures.
You learn to take.
Remove subject from verb,
petal from petal, skin from tendon,
you are left with only letters.
You choose your wishes well.
No less smooth above the drowning.
Events from cause,
like b-l-a-m-e-l-e-s-s
like m-o-t-h-e-r-o-f-p-e-a-r-l,
remove every
in the middle of a circle--
fenced in behind flower chains,
bone chips and wedding cake.
III: Butane, baby
My body only wants to be a flame,
map carbon and vapor across the surface
of what you say--
you, all paint and bark and eyelashes.
Surreal never so real without adding
more texture,
texture, texts, context
to conversations I only
anticipated in golds and browns
and your bones are not charred.
Teacups and ashcakes and
don't kill the lights.
We are sifting, sifting--
traces of original ember
burn from the grey behind
closed eyes.
he unhe
counter is
3,633
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