Catch Robert Wrigley at Auntie’s Friday night

Robert Wrigley is a familiar name to most people who follow contemporary poetry. It's also a familiar name to students who have studied at the University of Idaho. Studied English, that is.

Wrigley, a professor emeritus at the school and a winner of numerous national poetry awards, will read from his most recent collection of poems, "Box," at 6:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie's Bookstore. And the event is bound to be illuminating.

I'd include snippets of some Wrigley poems here as evidence, but his work doesn't seem to condense well. Click here for some examples.

Instead, here are some quotes of Wrigley's taken from an interview that he gave in November 2009. They demonstrate just how seriously he takes his craft:

"If you don't love stories, then what takes the place of that desire?  We live by stories; they are the bedrock of articulate human existence."

"The fact is, everything about existence offers up to us story after story.  Many are incomplete, or false, or unfathomably complex, but that's just part of what it means to be alive."

"There are two reasons, it seems to me, to admire, or even to love, a poem.  There's that pleasure or reward or surprise we take from what it says; and there's that wonderful knocked-out feeling you get at seeing how someone has said what he says."

"I love the music of the lyric and the power of the story, and I try to wield both, in nearly every poem.  You know it when you read it: call it a particular kind of poetic eloquence, when what is said is said in such a way that one understands it simply could not have been said any other way."

And, finally, my favorite: "Syntax is delicious."

Read the whole thing and you'll discover much more. Better yet, read it then show up Friday night at Auntie's.