Modern Mann

On Thursday I went to another Visiting Writer presentation. I wrote a review of it for a grade and also submitted it to the University Press but I called too late for them to make room. There's always next week. So, seeing as it couldn't be published in the press. I figured that I'd throw it up for you, my loyal audience. Here it is as it was presented to the press.

Enjoy.

Thursday evening the University Visiting Writer Series welcomed Jeff Mann to the Alumni Lounge inside the Memorial Student Center. Mann writes of the beauty within nature that touches our lives in ways that many over look. It seemed, as he read from his works, that the bulk of his work is self-reflecting. As self reflecting as it is, it is also a mirror held in front of the world forcing it to recognize who and what it really is.
As I sit here and write this review, I struggle with how to word it. How do I write about issues that are foreign to me? Do I handle the review with kid gloves and dance around wording, or do I put it out there as it was presented? I struggle with the words because Jeff Mann is a gay man who writes exceptional poetry and prose.
He finds beauty, as most poets do, in the minutiae of life. However, his work is also about growing up gay in rural West Virginia and having to struggle with that. It doesn’t matter how much I sympathize or try to understand, I cannot get my head around that, because it is something that I have never had to deal with. I have had and hopefully still have several gay friends whom I have hung out with, but at the end of the day I cannot fathom with the complexities of who they are.
Jeff is an accomplished author and educator whose work is as varied and wide-reaching as the publications he is featured in. The great thing about his work is that none of it is self-pitying. He is who he is and you either accept that or you move on. His work stands on its own merits and is a testament to honesty and non-conventionalism. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading and brought from it a sense that my struggles with writing, more often than not, pale in comparison to others.
Jeff Mann is the author of four books. His newest book of poetry and memoir is Loving Mountains, Loving Men, published by Ohio University Press in 2005. I suggest picking up any of his work. It may aid you in your struggles or it may disgust you, but in the end you felt something, and that is all that art is anyway.