This past Tuesday, October 20, the English Department’s Professor Will Lane gave a reading of his personal poetry.
The intriguing tone of Will Lane’s voice pierced through the auditorium captivating those around him with his poetry. He read poems from his book Trust Rust which brings up ideas about death, nature, and the connection one could have to a particular place. Overall, Lane wanted to get the message out to celebrate each living moment, which is a key proponent to coming to terms with death. Mostly focusing on these concepts Lane also makes it a point to bring up politics and societal struggles, which are not present in his poetry but he wanted to point out that both are always there.
Through poems such as “Bad Breathing,” “Little River,” and “The Acrobat” lane posed questions to his audience to think about:
Can nature mirror your soul?
What can things truly be?
He uses the bark of a sycamore tree to express deep sorrow and personifies an axe to be the speaker of a poem. This abstract thinking brings together very real moments in life and the beauty of nature that has been around forever and will continue to live on. And even though people come and go, they leave behind their land or a structure built on land for those to come and think about those that have come before us.