“Welcome to the first annual Alfred Corn poetry reading in Vero Beach,” joked Indian River County Poet Laureate Sean Sexton, only half kidding as he welcomed invited guests to a reception for renowned poet Alfred Corn hosted by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation.
The erudite group gathered Saturday evening at the picturesque Riomar home of Marie Stiefel for cocktails and an open-air poetry reading by Corn, who has been recognized, among other honors, with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and awards from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Thanking Stiefel for again graciously providing such a delightful venue, Sexton said, “We have this wonderful person who opens her home and opens her heart to all of us.”
Corn was in town to visit with his relatively newfound cousin Martha Lemasters. The two are fostering a relationship that began just 18 months ago when they discovered through Ancestry.com that they were related. When she knew he was headed down for a visit, Lemasters contacted Nancy and Harry Offutt to arrange the get-together.
“I was researching my dad’s family and come to find out we have the same grandmother; she raised my dad,” said Lemasters. A writer herself, Lemasters’ memoir, “The Step: One Woman’s Journey to Finding her own Happiness and Success during the Apollo Space Program,” chronicles her experiences as a single mother of three working in a man’s world at Cape Kennedy.
“I set this up through Nancy Offutt because I wanted him to meet some like-minded people in Vero Beach; Vero’s poetry society. When my book was coming out last year, I had a question on how to end it and he helped me. We came from such different backgrounds; I was science and he was academic.”
A prolific and accomplished writer, Corn has published 10 books of poems; a novel entitled “Part of His Story”; two essay collections and “The Poem’s Heartbeat,” a study of prosody, poetry’s rhythms and patterns.
Before each reading, Corn shared the story and thought process behind his wonderful poetry, beginning, with a nod to his shared ancestry with Lemasters, with a poem relating to John Peter Corn, an ancestor from Virginia who served during the Revolutionary War under Washington at Valley Forge.
At times touching, at times humorous, Corn took listeners on a poetic journey of his personal experiences and world travels, closing with a Q&A with his enthralled audience.
“It’s a pleasure playing with words and moving sentences around; it’s like putting together a crossword. We all have insights into what the world is, and it’s that struggle to find a verbal equivalent,” said Corn when asked what drew him to poetry. And, offering encouragement to aspiring poets and poetry devotees everywhere, he noted, “Sometimes you hear the day of great poets is over. I don’t think so.”
