Student Dustin Wingett reacts to Bhanu Kapil’s recent BathHouse reading:
Before Bhanu Kapil read for us in the Sponberg Theater, she held a quick question and answer session in the Carillon room of the library. What struck me was how open she was in talking about her personal life. One of the first questions was, “how did you become a writer,” which prompted a lengthy response about her childhood and her mother singing to her and encouraging her to sing these poems she was writing when she looked out her window. It was nice to see that she was very warm and welcoming about all the questions. Also, one audience member pointed out that she very eloquent, which I would have to agree with.
When we got to the theater to listen to Bhanu read from Humanimal, that was one of my first impressions. She knew how to speak, and her voice really carried the tone of the book well. It was always constant and never got to excited or animated, even when she neared the end, which is sort of how I read the book. Her voice had a sort of sad or even maybe a bit of a reverent tone towards the two girls. One thing she did do that I didn’t while reading, was that she slowed the pace down quite a bit and integrated long pauses here and there. This really heightened the mood of the reading.
While listening to her speak, I noticed how visually striking the book was, especially when it came to the colors. A lot of the passages she chose to read from had some kind of color mentioned in it, and these colors often where contrasting to the thing they were describing. For example, she describes the jungle as being red, the sky was copper colored. I really enjoyed this and it gave me strong imagery to concentrate on while she read. I was kind of disappointed after she finished, I could have sat there while she read the whole book. Very engaging.