On Feb. 17 students at Saint Leo University had the great opportunity to meet poet Patrick Bizzaro. Bizzaro is author of 10 books. Admission was free so all students could enjoy the reading of some of his work. The event took place in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building at 5 p.m.
Bizzaro started with some jokes and immediately got the full attention of his audience and kept their attention, as he made sure to interact with the audience throughout the whole reading. He read from his most recent book. Even though most of his work was rather serious, Bizzaro still managed to stay very funny. Before reading a poem, he would always give an introduction, or a background story to the poem. Most of his poetry is written for his wife, and you can feel the love he has for her through his words.
The poem, “Event Boundaries,” was one of the poems Bizzaro has written for his wife. This poem talks about how people forget what they have learned when they leave the room, something many people can relate to.
Bizzaro also writes about war but stated that he did not want to write historical poems because history is created by people and he is not a historian. He wanted to create a personal tone and does this, he also establishes his belief system through his poetry. His poems are very touching and emotional, especially after hearing his background stories.
“Poetry is a way of making knowledge,” said Bizzaro.
When asked if people had lost interest, the audience asked Bizzaro to read more poems and he did. Time seemed to fly by as words came out of Bizzaro like music.
After being asked if he had always known he wanted to become a writer Bizzaro stated that he had always thought he would become a sports writer, and he did that for a while but when he went to school he gravitated towards literature courses. In college, he went to every reading on Thursday nights and he started working on it a little bit and then decided to follow through with it.
The advice he would give to any English majors or other students interested in becoming a writer is to write a lot, write every day and do a lot of reading. Do not believe in writer’s block and it will not happen to you.
“Writer’s block is what happens when someone is writing and trying to edit at the same time. Those two things work against each other and that is writer’s block so the solution is to not do both at the same time,” said Bizzaro.
According to Bizzaro, a good poem makes connections between things that no one has connected before.
“When correspondences surprise the writer it is probably going to surprise the reader too and when that happens there is always a good poem,” said Bizzaro.
