Baseball-playing men weren’t the only game in town last weekend. Women from the world of arts and letters played to fan bases of their own too.
Yale University professor Elizabeth Alexander, in town to read from her new book of poems, “American Sublime,” was guest of honor at an intimate brunch hosted by Lisa Yun Lee, board chair of the civic discourse organization Public Square.
Later in the evening, Denyce Graves, fresh off her final “Carmen” performance Friday night at the Lyric Opera, regaled an audience of 700 at Northwestern University School of Law with her storied rise from humble beginnings in Washington, D.C., to become an acclaimed international opera star.
The brunch for Alexander, who teaches African-American literature at Yale University, took place before her reading at the new West Englewood Library, the second of this fall’s “Know More: Conversations That Matter” series sponsored by the Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council. “These are flush times” for poetry, Alexander said when asked where contemporary poetry stands in the popular culture. Poetry “does make its way through the culture, not in the way you can measure on the best-seller list.”
Brunch guests filled Lee’s spacious apartment with the sort of animated chatter shared by women who know each other well. Mostly from the world of academe and philanthropy, the heavily female gathering got an unexpected treat when Chicago novelist Rosellen Brown read a delightful poem about, what else, baseball.
“An Evening with Denyce Graves” was another in the ongoing public interviews conducted by Chicago’s The HistoryMakers documenting prominent African-Americans’ life stories. Angela Bassett was the celebrity interviewer for the event, which will air on public TV stations in February, said HistoryMakers executive director Julieanna Richardson.
The Oscar-nominated actress, in a red sleeveless dress that revealed her toned deltoids and biceps, may have stumbled with a few questions, but Graves was composed and eloquent throughout the almost two-hour interview. She offered up story upon story to illustrate how she didn’t discover opera until age 15, yet came to be one of the biggest stars in the field today.
You might say that Graves, whose voice critics call “voluptuous,” scored a few runs with the crowd Saturday night when she told Bassett that what she wants most is to be “the best human being that I can be who also sang.”
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