Review: Robert Morgan visits the EMU campus

Earlier this week, EMU was lucky enough to have the accomplished author and poet Robert Morgan on campus to share his work for a second time.

At 7:30 p.m. on Monday in Lehman Auditorium, a collection of roughly seventy-five EMU students and faculty gathered as Morgan read a few pieces of his poetry and prose. Morgan, perhaps best known for his New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club novel Gap Creek, opened his reading with the poem "Honey," which he wittingly introduced as his most financially rewarding poem he has written. The poet said that the money aspect generally is of interest to students since students enjoy finding out that poetry can be beneficial monetarily.

It was obvious that Morgan is no stranger to reading his work in front of others; this was evidenced by his calm and controlled demeanor. He began every new reading with some sort of introductory story or comment on the following piece which allowed the poems to have more meaning once read. One specific poem concerning his father, titled "When He Spoke out of the Dark," was particularly powerful due to the lengthy introduction that Morgan gave prior to his reading of the poem. Morgan described how his father was a man who loved a full day of hard, outdoor labor, even if doing so did not involve making any kind of profit. He shared how that inspired him to write many poems on his father, including the poem mentioned above. Morgan's next work, a biography of Daniel Boone, will be a tribute to Morgan's father, who once told Morgan that he was mystified that his son would write poems instead of biographies.

Morgan said that much of his poetry has been influenced by his childhood spent on a farm and in the mountains. This background has shaped Morgan into a poet who often uses nature as his muse. Morgan said that he uses "nature as a language," and described how using it in his writing often involves vividly describing seemingly simple aspects of nature that often go unnoticed, a writing specialty of his.

The hour-long reading finished with a question and answer period. Morgan handled questions from the audience with comfortable ease. A special thank-you goes to the English Department at EMU for attaining the honorable presence of Morgan on our campus for a second time. As Andrew Harvey, Professor of English here at EMU, pointed out, our campus was indeed lucky to have a writer of Morgan's quality read to our students and faculty.