Poet, critic, and memoirist Maureen McLane spoke Thursday, Apr. 3 at the Plutzik Reading Series. Hosted by the University, The Plutzik Reading brings in one prose and poetry writer each semester to read from their work and host a Q&A.
McLane has published eight poetry books, all critically acclaimed. Her newest book, “What You Want”, was featured in the Washington Post’s “Best Poetry Collection of 2023.”
McLane was a National Book Award finalist for her collection “This Blue,” published in 2014. She has been praised for her genre-bending collections, which combines memoir, criticism, and verse. Her work merges past and present, drawing on ancient texts — notably Sappho fragments — a contemplation of how human experiences are mediated by encounters with language and literature.
“What I’m looking for / may not be there. / What you’re looking for / may or may not / be me.” McLane opened the reading with her poem, “What I’m Looking For.”
She then read a group of poems from her newest collection, “What You Want.” She described her inspiration for this collection as the landscape and history of Gloucester, Massachusetts, referencing its lighthouses, Native American history, and colonial architecture.
“Get What You Want” takes after Sappho’s “Fragment 58”, which illustrates the myth of Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, and her mortal lover Tithonus. The fragment explores aging and immortality. McLane’s poem expands on these ideas, framing them in the context of modern collegiate life: “And you forever young / in the strobe of the club / that makes night danceable.”
McLane later transitioned into a recitation of her earlier collections, featured in her Selected Poems, “More Anon”. In these poems, McLane interweaves older poetic forms, such as the ghazal, an Arabic verse, with contemporary poetic techniques and modern technology.
Her poem “Haptographic Interface” explores the rise of AI writing, questioning the quality of AI poetry and the difference between it and human poetry. “Today’s retronym is human writer,” McLane finishes the poem.
Throughout the reading, McLane brought in the work of other poets central to the University. She read “Thursday” by former professor and esteemed poet Jim Longenback and “Divisibility” by Hyam Plutzik, whom the Plutzik Reading Series is named after.
McLane finished the reading with “The Historians”, an unpublished poem, and “Moonrise,” a poem she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic as a take on the Romantic structure of the conversation poem.
The Plutzik Reading Series will return in the Fall of 2025.
