The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts hosted two events on Thursday. One was a talk from Auburn’s own art history professor Dr. Catherine Floyd on the avant-garde composer, choreographer, writer and visual artist John Cage. He was followed by this month’s Third Thursday event, a showcase of Pittsburgh-born poet James Davis May, hosted by May himself.
Floyd’s talk was the first of the two events, showcasing Cage’s visual work, “Haiku,” a commentary on one of Cage’s favorite themes: the profundity of “silence” or negative space in art.
“[Cage] is interested in taking things that seem, on the one hand, very simple and making them embody something that’s quite complex,” Floyd said. “Even though this is a really small and unassuming work, there’s a lot there, actually.”
May’s reading started with Third Thursday events. There was an open mic segment featuring readings from seven museum visitors.
After the open mic, May read seven of his own poems, five from his book Unquiet Things, as well as two which he debuted for the Third Thursday crowd, titled “Resuscitation” and “Ed Smith.”
May’s poetry puts the mundane under a microscope, often digging the existential wonder or dread from banalities such as an argument between a married couple over which of them accidentally locked the upstairs window (“Nostos”).
“I’m thinking of my friend who died this week,” May said in one of his readings titled, “A Species Stands Beyond.” “Gracious, industrious/If anyone deserved, to live, it was she/And yet, as my wife points out/All in our pantheon of enemies/Our racist neighbor, my wife’s ex-husband, our pig-headed colleague whose only talent is bullying/Still breathe and laugh.”
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