Gregory Pardlo
Image courtesy of the Poetry Foundation
By OSCAR BURNES ‘21
On Wednesday, November 6th, Gregory Pardlo visited Milton, sharing with us some of his masterful work that has made him such a distinguished writer. Pardlo filled King Theater with some untested poems, producing laughter and delight. Few speakers are able to garner widespread interest, yet Pardlo did so with an easy, relaxed smile on his face.
Pardlo came to Milton as part of the Bingham family’s visiting writer series. Founded in 1987, The Visiting Writers Series was established by the Bingham family in an attempt to bring distinguished writers of all kinds to Milton. While here, the writers speak to and work with the students for a few days, and many English classes subvert the normal curriculum and take time to study the esteemed writers.
For the past 17 years, Lisa Baker of the English department has been running the Bingham series. According to Ms. Baker, the goal of the series is to “connect students with professional writers,” offering students inspiration from writers at the top of their game. Gregory Pardlo is only one of many well established writers to grace Milton’s student body leading to a wide variety of styles and perspectives for students to learn from.
Gregory Pardlo has an impressive list of achievements in his writing repertoire. His first collection Totem won the APR/Honickman award in 2007, and, more recently, Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Additionally, Pardlo earned fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Finally, his most recent book, Air Traffic, was published in April of last year. After Pardlo’s talk, Students were able to purchase a copy of his works with the chance of Pardlo signing them himself.
No matter what the audience knew about Mr. Pardlo, when he spoke his first words to King’s audience, within a matter of seconds, his mastery of the English language became apparent. Giving light introductions that made the crowd roar, Mr. Pardlo continued on to read four unreleased poems, giving short interludes to add context when necessary. Emphasizing the infancy of the poems, Pardlo seemed interested in how we responded to each piece as though we were giving him useful critiques. As these poems were still being workshopped, they did not have titles; however, each one was still incredibly unique, giving us a window into Pardlo’s own life.
Pardlo’s first poem opened with an image of Owen Hart, a wrestler who died tragically, falling from a suspended platform that was lowering him into the ring. Next, Pardlo transitioned into his second poem, starting with a brazen intro: “LARP sex sounds spectacular, but have you heard of sex between avatars?” This line got the crowd laughing allowing for the rest of his poem to flow easily to us. In the third poem, Pardlo introduced his relationship with his dad. Starting with their drives in the car together, Pardlo walked us through this special relationship from start to finish. Finally, to start his last poem, Pardlo opened with another crowd pleaser: “At 13, I asked my father for a tattoo, I might as well have asked for a Bat Mitzvah.” This hilarious line lead smoothly into the central themes of his own fatherhood around which his final poem was centered.
Despite being on the receiving end of one of the most respected prizes in the world and being an outstanding writer, Pardlo wanted to see how we reacted and what we thought of them. As he says, “Everyone gets something different from a poem, so I just have fun with it and let the world take it from there.”