Poet reads works at Philomathean event

Despite the lengthy climb to the fourth floor of College Hall, more than 20 people showed up to hear Philip Dacey read a selection of his poems. Dacey read many poems including "Porno Love," "Mystery Baseball," "The Condom Nightmare" and "Coke." "I think the topics were odd but interesting," College freshman Bradley Tusk said. The Philomathean Society co-sponsored yesterday's open event with the Creative Writing Department as a part of its Poetry Fiction Reading Series. At 4 p.m., English Lecturer Gregory Djanikian welcomed Dacey and introduced the poet. Dacey began by speaking about his background and telling some funny anecdotes about his personal life. The Southwest State University teacher also talked about his career as a poet. He told the listeners that he had recently published a book of his works called Night Shift at the Crucifix Factory from which some of his readings were taken. Dacey has also published four other books of poetry and has been published in many magazines on numerous occasions. Dacey started his reading with "Porno Love," a comical narrative about a joke that was played on him while he was teaching at Southwest State University. It involved pornographic pictures and two mythical women. He then continued with poems pertaining to his family, personal life, baseball, condoms, Coca Cola, elephant dung and other topics of interest and humor. "I think that he was a fresh author," Wharton freshman Vivek Tiwary, a new member of the literary society, said. Tiwary went on to say that Dacey's topics were mature and that he dealt with them in a humorous way which young people could understand and even relate to. "I thought the poetry was wonderful. It was both humorous and sensitive," College senior Greg Cohn added. "He was a good reader and it was good to see a lot of body language. I also enjoyed his introduction to his poems." Dacey brought laughter to his listeners with his humor-filled poetry, and the hour-long reading ended with applause from the audience. Philomathean Society's next poetry reading will be by Stephen Dunn on April 8.

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