Sallyportal: Madly Blogging Reed

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"Clamor"


Clamoring for Elyse Fenton '03

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It was standing-room only in the psychology auditorium when poet Elyse Fenton '03 read from her award-winning collection, Clamor, on Thursday night. OK, nobody was actually standing: late arrivals sat on the floor or reclined against the wall, situational discomforts that paled in comparison to the striking corporeality of the poems we heard.

Professor Lisa Steinman, Elyse's thesis adviser, praised her aptitude for "making things that are lost or imagined real" in a warm introduction. Steinman noted with pleasure that Elyse's Reed experience is evident in her work as much through references to Orpheus and Dante as through a distinctive "physicality of language" honed by a rugby player...