UA Writing Professor Robin Behn Discusses Combining Music and Poetry at Honors Forum

The UAH Honors Forum met on Oct. 20 for a poetry reading by Robin Behn. Besides being a published poet, Behn is the director of the University of Alabama’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She also plays the flute, the penny whistle and the sax for Waxwing, a traditional music band. She has published four books of poetry; her fifth, “The Yellow House,” is expected next year.

Behn talked to the students about the elements of poetry, and through her poems illustrated the use of sound and structure in poetry. She wrote her first poem at about the age of 12, and her first book – “Paper Bird” (Texas Tech University Press, 1988) – came out when she was 26.

Her early poems reflected her life, but since then she has written mostly about the music in her life. She majored in music for many years, but it was only on meeting the poet Donald Justice that she was “challenged” to write about music. The result was her poem “The Bassoonist,” which she read as well at the forum.

Her talk led the students from defining poetry – “using words as words . . . more than goal-directed speech” – to understanding the “architecture” of poetry and the “pattern-hungry” nature of the human mind. She suggested going away from a blueprint, while understanding that poetry can be spatial and temporal.

Her forthcoming book, “The Yellow House,” is a novella in verse, and has archetypal characters. She describes “House” as surreal: “a yellow cube floating in space, or a yellow houseboat.” The idea is also using poems as a still life, “a moment frozen in time.”

With the band Waxwing, a popular innovation is the use of poetry within music. The piece is explored by each instrument; Behn then reads a poem, and the music follows at the end. This is helped by keeping in mind the title of the poem. The music allows the audience to ponder over the title, and when the poem is read, listeners form deeper connections with it.

Another way of keeping the title alive is by playing with the words in the title. An illustration is her poem “The Quarry Cross,” in which she looks at all possible meanings of the words “quarry” and “cross”. The poem is written in quatrains, thus adding another dimension to the work.

Questions followed the poetry readings. Students were keen to know if she planned what she wrote. “Mostly I write what comes, but sometimes I give myself limitations,” Behn said.

Art, according to her, is the realm of not knowing what you want to say, and the process of going from there to saying something meaningful.

Responding to a question about publishing poetry, she said that while her books have underlying “themes,” poetry publishing can sometimes just be a collecting together.

A sample of her poetry is available online. “Gray Poem,” published in The Cortland Review, can be read at http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/12/behn12.htm. Behn also performs regularly with Waxwing. More information about the band can be found at www.waxwingband.com.