Frederick Turner

Having the opportunity to see Frederick Turner both Thursday night, and Friday in class, was an experience that I am sure touched many of us. After reading some of his works, I was prepared for a so-smart-it's-dull presentation, but instead the vibrant poetry reading and engaging class discussion were understandable, gripping, thought-provoking, and over all, fantastic.

Starting out his presentation by talking about the "travels" we all experience in life, Turner described the ever-changing "now" and the remoteness of previous life that exists after moving experiences. This was the setting for the first work he read to us, a section of The Undiscovered Country. "Space and Time" he reads "clocks don't matter anymore". and, on another corresponding level, "nothing in life was dearer than to leave it". Here he reflects about someone in turn reflection about an encounter with an Italian Woman whom he wonders about in a sort of ghostly magical way. We never, at least in this section of the epic, find out if the narrator is a ghost or spirit, or a crazy man suffering from amnesia, or a being speaking from the afterlife...or all three?? The narrator appears to be somewhat of a Hamletian character, expressing sort of a philosophical musing that is both brilliant and insane.

The second work he read, about the Galapagos islands,was easier to grasp, not quite as entertaining to me, but still beautifully written. The message here was a need to "love the planet through and through before I leave"

Other beautiful and moving Turner presentation quotes/ideas:
         we are "given being by eradication"                 
        "death is but a pruning"
         genius of action, and genius of reaction
         epic - the world is significantly different at the end of the tale

Having Frederick Turner visit our class on the day after his poetry reading was also a great experience that was improved by knowing a little bit about this man from the reading the night before. His graphs about blazing a trail from the known, speak-able past to the "nothing" is the chaotic travel that I believe many if not all people experience to some degree as they grow up. One interesting distinction about "nothing" that I had never before considered is the two basic types - the nothing that rips apart, splits kingdoms, splits crowns, etc. and the profoundly creative nothing, the accepted nothing that makes "something" more fantastic. Although I have already began my project on a different topic, I am going to incorporate the idea of nothing into my piece about Hieros Gamos. Because I am now very much intrigued.

**Interesting note: This girl found a sonnet she actually likes!!! Haha thank you Frederick Turner and The Lady's Impatience for doing your part in curing my hatred of "prison poems". The key: humor :)
       
-AS