Ruth Ellen Kocher, assistant professor at the University of St. Louis, Missouri, read some of her diversified and powerful poetry to a large audience in the reader’s room at the Illini Union Bookstore Wednesday afternoon.

Kocher, known for her published works, including, “One Girl Babylon,” “When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering,” and “Desdemonda’s Fire,” used her soothing oratory to conjure up images of her ties to her mother, personal mythology and metaphorical tangents that rewarded the engaged listener.

In an event put together by Tyehimba Jess, whose first book of poetry, “Leadbelly” (winner: 2004 National Poetry Series), in conjunction with the Illini Union Bookstore, Kocher calmly put her audience into her own world, life and experimentation.

Jess, presenting Kocher, gave an introduction, which Kocher commented that it was one of the most powerful introductions she’s ever received.

“(She is) daring and experimental at the same time knows to the bone the discipline and merit (of poetry),” Jess said.

In a setting befitting the moment, Kocher began her poetry readings with a multi-paneled window in the background, showing off the street signs of Wright and Daniel, and students moving around campus.

Kocher began with “Poem to a Jazz Man,” and followed with “My Mother as Daedelus.” In mythology, Daedalus, considered the inventor of carpentry, constructed the Labyrinth for Minos, the King of Crete. Minos had Daedalus and his son, Icarus, imprisoned, but they made their infamous escape by making wings secured by wax. As mythology goes, Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings melted, and Icarus plunged to the sea. Kocher idealized if Daedalus and Icarus were actually mother and daughter, and that if the daughter ‘Icarus’ fell into the sea, the mother would’ve dived into the waters after her daughter and drowned with her.

Kocher also explained a poetry style of complication named “Guigan,” after the Godzilla series where the giant lizard fights another monster made of different parts of ‘recycled creatures.’ Kocher explained that she started to shy away from longer organic forms – referred to as myth and/or literary allusions.

“No more! Now it’s a little bit more villanel (a style of poetry), a little bit sonnet … it’s (now) neo-pastoral, dealing with sex, death, longing and fruit,” she said.

When fielding questions, an audience member asked, “What poetry do you love the most?”

“I have stacks of upon stacks of different books,” she said. “I’ll grab a stack and loan them out to students, and take their names, of course. I have with me Gerald Stern’s ‘American Sonnets’ … (and) Jack Gilbert’s “Refusing Heaven.”

The audience had positive comments afterwards.

“I personally enjoyed anatomical reference, cells, biology; the fastening, (and) bringing of things together,” said Peter Plescia.

“Our eyes are always going back to what we’ve done … it brings us back to the mythology of our own lives,” said Jordan Dunn, junior in LAS. “She did a very good job with the reading.”

Kocher has just accepted the position of associate professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder.