Award honors professor,
collection of prose
poems
By Stephanie Young
Staff
Writer
With a quote from Chico Marx — "Who are
you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" — poet Joel Brouwer
explores the world of illusion in his first collection of poems, "Exactly
What Happened."
The collection of prose poems published by Purdue
University Press in 1999 recently earned him the 2001 Whiting Writing
Award, and had also won the Levis Reading Prize and the Emery Poetry
Prize.
Each year the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation recognizes
10 up-and-coming writers, awarding each $35,000.
"These writers are remarkably distinctive
in sensibility and subject matter. We hope this award will help to bring
them the recognition they deserve," said Barbara Bristol, director
of the Writer’s Program.
Brouwer, a professor at Southern Illinois University,
explains that when he wrote "Exactly What Happened," he was
trying to think about problems of illusion.
"We're always looking for the truth," he said.
"The truth about ourselves, about the world, about each other. But illusions
get in the way."
His poems include stories about illusionists such
as a photojournalist who manipulates images to create a greater impact,
artists who bend life to get at its truths and magicians who he said
make things look like illusions and illusions look like the truth.
Brouwer uses humor and familiarity with history
and culture in his collection. Poems range from the witty "Universal
Studios Backlot," in which a poet riding a golf cart is mistaken for
a film star, to the thought-provoking "Astronomers Detect Water
in Distant Galaxy, Suggest Life May Be Present Throughout Universe."
Brouwer, however, has not always been the writer
he is today. He admits to writing terrible poems in his Michigan high
school and at Sarah Lawrence College and Syracuse University until he
found teachers who encouraged him to take his poetry seriously.
Brouwer has had many of his poems as well as his
literary criticism featured in such magazines as the Paris Review, Ploughshares
and The Harvard Review. His next project, "Centuries," due
out in 2003, includes poems that are each exactly 100 words and deal
with historical questions.
Brouwer influences include a range of poets —
W.H. Auden, W.B. Yeats Rainer Maria Rilke. He said reading poetry he
admires is his key to improving his poetry and recommends it to aspiring
poets.
"As my teacher Thomas Lux used to say, ‘Read
until your eyes bleed,’" he said.
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