The Wurster Interviews, Part 8: The Less Early But Still Early Years of PPE

Read previous installments:     Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5      Part 6      Part 7

The International Poetry Forum

It's important to mention the International Poetry Forum. That was directed by Samuel Hazo. He started it in the '60s, before PPE. But what he did was brought nationally and internationally known poets to Pittsburgh to give readings — poets like:

• Robert Lowell
• Octavio Paz
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Czeslaw Milosz

When we started PPE, one of our goals was to give local poets a format to read their poems to the public. So because of the International Poetry Forum, the public in Pittsburgh was already used to the idea that it was okay to go to a poetry reading without feeling weird.

Now, the forum was important personally to me — to my biography. Remember that in the '60s, I was in the encyclopedia business and we worked in the evenings and on Saturdays, because our customers were families and we needed both husband and wife present for "the pitch."

At the time, I regretted being unable to attend these readings because they were usually on Wednesday nights. Finally, Sam brought Lawrence Durrell to read. Durrell was a literary hero of mine. I had read his poetry and his great work of prose fiction, The Alexandria Quartet. So I took the night off and went to that reading. And it was terrific. That was one of the things that influenced me to get out of sales and take up a line of work with more regular hours.

So Pittsburgh poetry owes a great debt to Sam Hazo, and eventually he opened up to the local poets and sponsored several reading series for community poets: one at Trinity Cathedral downtown and one at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch in Oakland. I eventually became a member of the Forum's board of advisors, and was pleased to be able to support those programs.

Next in issue 12: The Famous Rider