Great poem. Also:
1) I live in Croton. I hope 55 years ago someone helped her out here!
2) She recited her poetry to my high school some 20 years ago. A couple jerks started fake coughing, then a lot more. She cut her reading short, saying “I feel as though I’ve been in a ward.”
1) I live in Croton. I hope 55 years ago someone helped her out here!
2) She recited her poetry to my high school some 20 years ago. A couple jerks started fake coughing, then a lot more. She cut her reading short, saying “I feel as though I’ve been in a ward.”
https://twitter.com/theatlantic/status/1320340977618460672
The awful fake cough epidemic began because she was reading so softly into the mic no one could hear her in the auditorium, which had invited otherwise engaged high schoolers to express their dissatisfaction in a most insolent way.
And she was so soft spoken that even her somewhat louder final words to us, just barely cutting through the fake coughing fits, sounded to all of us like “I feel as though I’ve won an award.” Which, of course, made no sense.
All’s to say: I was not one of the coughers, but I was one of the students who wanted to hear her and was upset both by how softly she was reading and by my schoolmates’ disrespect, and I am very glad to learn Gluck did win an award—THE NOBEL!—this year.
Ugh also the poem was published 53 years ago not 55 years ago but I’ll just pretend the blown tire she wrote about happened in 1965 so I don’t have to delete thread and start over
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
