Maurice Manning will be coming to Glasgow to the Mary Wood Weldon Library on Thurs May 14 @ 7:00pm to share his work, and if you have never attended a Poetry Reading this will be your last opportunity to do so in our present location at 107 W College Street. 

He is the author of LAWRENCE BOOTH’S BOOK OF VISIONS, which was published in Spring 2001 by Yale University Press and was the recipient of the 2000 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.  This collection includes 58 poems featuring Lawrence Booth, a fictional character described by Publishers Weekly as “equal parts carnivorous nightmare, Freudian pastoral, and deep-fired family romance,” Manning uses both allegorical and symbolic characters.  His book, A COMPANION FOR OWLS is a collection of narrative poems written in the voice of frontiersman Daniel Boone.  Maurice Manning’s third book, Bucolics, has recently been published by Harcourt.  His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Washington Square, Green Mountains Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Wind, Hunger Mountains, Black Warrior Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Poets or writers are special in that they can take the ordinary and condense it into something funny, profound or just from a perspective that someone who does not have a passion and gift for writing cannot.  The mundane does not seem so when viewed from their pen.  Manning spends his summers in Kentucky, and the following is a quote. “A few days ago, I happened into the Dollar Store in Springfield, Kentucky, where I try to reside as much as possible. Little towns in the middle of nowhere are sadly fading away but there’s always something interesting and strange afoot—and besides, it’s home. At the Dollar Store, I was seeking some Christmas stocking stuffers for my niece and nephew. In walks a woman named Dora, who says, “Whar’s my boyfriend at?! Me and him’s a-runnin’ off to Jellico and git murried.” “Oh Lordy,” the cashier said feigning weariness and raising up a hand, “I ain’t stole yore boyfriend! I wisht you’d quit a-comin’ in here an’ harrassin’ me!” “Honey!” Dora said, “You ain’t seen nothin’, chet.”

Manning continues with, “I pay attention to exchanges like this, for I find the use of language electric and hilarious and moving, though it’s floating through the air and not written down.”

“As writers, we weigh, plot lines of thought, and calculate all the time. We develop theories on the origins and nature of things and pursue them. We have devices which get us into the deep unseen world. What does a simile do in a poem except allow something that wasn’t previously visible in the poem suddenly to appear?…”

Poet Maurice Manning is a native Kentuckian who teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Maurice Manning is a poet and writer of note so that missing his program would be a lost opportunity; please join us on Thurs May 14 @ 7:00pm.