Beyond Baroque Gillian Wegener Analysis

Walking from the lobby to the theatre, I felt like I was entering a completely different world. The white walls and bright lights in the lobby turned into a small room of blacked out walls with a single light shining on a podium. While people found their seats, a man who worked their went to the podium and began to introduce the poets, but beforehand, he spoke about Beyond Baroque and the work that this organization does in order to support art in the area. Founded in1968, Beyond Baroque has been a fixture in the Venice community where they work to support poets and artists while also boasting an impressive resume of working with well renowned writers and celebrities. While the speaker was finishing up his speech, he began to introduce each
Of the four poets that spoke, the one that caught my attention was Gillian Wegener. Wegener’s introduction was interesting as it seemed to only offer little insight into her poetry, but instead alerted the audience of her jobs as a mother, teacher, and poet while living in the city of Modesto. However, once she began to speak, all of this information came into perspective. Wegner’s poems gave insight in to modern day Americana while often placing focus on the underserved groups of people that she would encounter in her day-to-day life as a mother, teacher, and poet. She began with little additional information and only restated what had already been said about her. Beginning with the piece “Chorus,” this piece would establish the general tone of her poems. Wegener spoke of the value of birthplaces and how individuals carry the identity of these places with them as they move onward. This was made evident as all of her poems seemed to be heavily influenced by her life in Modesto, where she would encounter different people that would influence her poetry and life. In “Distractions Furious and Brief,” Wegener wrote about a line of homeless people outside of a soup kitchen. From there she