Periodic Table, where a table periodically opens

rience for them by crafting a cocktail, mocktail, or meal that they will enjoy and remember.”

The history of the bar and hotel is also unique, as it used to be the location of a high school. “The ballroom of the hotel was where the gym was and the bar was where the locker rooms were,” Nickle said. After renovating the space into its current form, the bar also got its name.

“We did a play on words with the Periodic Table as in the periodic table of elements but also that, periodically, there’s a table open,” said Nickle. Another thing that makes the bar unique is that there is only one neon sign in the whole building, according to Nickle.

Being a bartender also comes with a fair amount of interesting and fun stories. Some of the most interesting people Nickle has met are parents of students at the College. Nickle said that the bar tries to cater to college families and has a diverse menu because of that demographic.

Complete with a checkerboard floor and signs labeled with chemical elements on the wall, the Periodic Table bar and lounge at Hotel Grinnell will not be forgotten. Located only 10 minutes away from the Grinnell College campus, this bar offers drinks and an ambiance that is hard to find elsewhere.

The Periodic Table is a unique bar because every employee of Hotel Grinnell does almost everything, said Amelia Nickle, director of operations and sales at Hotel Grinnell. Nickle is originally from Colorado, and she moved to Grinnell around 10 years ago. She said that she has been working in the service industry for most of her life. Along with her role of director, Nickel also bartends at the Periodic Table.

“A typical day for somebody who’s bartending at the Periodic Table, they could also be cooking, or running the front desk as well as bartending,” Nickle said. This unique system does not change the quality of the bar or the selections available.

“We have a selection of cocktails, mocktails and cans and bottles of craft beer,” Nickle said. All of these drinks can be enjoyed either inside the bar or soon outside on the patio as the weath- er warms up. Nickle said that when the summer comes the bar will hopefully include live music on Fridays and Saturdays, and maybe Thursdays. Nickle said she thinks this music will only add to the ambiance of the bar.

Nickle also explained how being a good bartender includes making the bar feel welcoming to customers.

“Bartending is an art form rather than a job. Your job is not to get people drunk, your job is to create an expe-

“We do a lot of world-inspired dishes and drinks. So because they [college parents] are from all over the world they seem to appreciate it better,” Nickle said. She also said, “I really like when they come in and I can serve them and get to know them throughout the years.”

The Periodic Table is certainly a unique bar that everyone can enjoy. With a wide range of drinks and food, the bar also has “the best patio in Grinnell,” according to Nickle.

Arts

By George Kosinski kosinski@grinnell.edu

talk about — I had a notebook, [I] had an imaginative life,” Clavocoressi said.

“Poetry, before I even thought of it as poetry, was a space where I could talk about things that I didn’t know how to talk about, or how to work with silence and make it generative as someone who lived in a different vessel than I imagined for myself at the time, who didn’t know how to talk about being non-binary, transgender or sexuality in general.”

TAKEN BY LEVI STRAND, CONTRIBUTED BY GRINNELL COLLEGE Gabrielle Calvocoressi.

The following evening, the joy donned a more subtle garb as listeners left heartfelt thanks to Calvocoressi and Sandra Lim in the comments of a Zoom call following the poets’ joint reading. All this was part of a miniresidency at Grinnell College during which Calvocoressi and Lim did more on campus than the usual Writers@ Grinnell roundtable discussion and reading, also leading a workshop entitled Mary Oliver & Elizabeth Bishop: Our Queer and Knowing Pals (If We’re Here To Greet Them) and engaging with students and classes over the course of several days.

Calvocoressi and Lim have each resided at the forefront of the American poetry landscape for several years. Calvocoressi is the awardwinning author of three collections

— “The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart,” “Apocalyptic Swing,” which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and “Rocket Fantastic,” winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. They are currently the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the HarvardRadcliffe Institute for 2022-2023.

Calvocoressi said in an interview that they began writing poetry at a young age to explore difficult topics they encountered. “In a household and a world filled with secrets and shame — things people didn’t know how to

Citing their influences as Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Dody, Marie Howe, Nikky Finney, Lucille Clifton and Marlanda Dekine, Calvocoressi described their journey as one of finding an authentic voice.

“The way in which my poetry, or I myself, have ripened, matured or come more fully into myself reflects an ability to talk in a way that feels authentic about the world and myself — in a way where I retain privacy yet also relate to the world, and people can see something about themselves without me telling them about themselves,” Calvocoressi said.

Many of Calvocoressi’s poems take the form of a story, which through the lens of subjective experience, create vivid images and sensations.

“Story is really important to me,” Calvocoressi said. “I try to tell stories in my poems without using a traditional narrative form — a lot of narrated poetry feels narrated by an authority which talks at the reader, creating a level of distance. Storytelling feels more human, more idiosyncratic.”

In Calvocoressi’s poetry, this often leads to hyper-subjective portrayals of experience which at times feel contradictory, which they say is exactly the point. “My poems are what it means to be in the world and be conscious,” they said. “Poetry isn’t located in being right but in being willing to look at the world and question one’s view.”

Calvocoressi said that ultimately, they hope their poems are an invitation for readers to open themselves up to feelings which can be difficult to express.

“I would love poems to be vessels that people can drop into and put on,” they said. “Literature lets us think about the specific ways you’re going to make decisions about how you breathe while reading poems, what images your eye falls in, where you enter a work, whether you share it on social media or keep it under your pillow. In that way, it becomes a testing ground and an opportunity to explore citizenship, and everyone is welcome in my poems. If people feel uncomfortable, I’m willing to have a conversation — I won’t change myself, but I’m willing to speak to anyone.” At the event on Tuesday, Calvocoressi read several emotionally stirring poems which grappled with themes of love, death and the inevitability of loss, before Lim took center stage and read several of her own.

Lim is the author of three poetry collections — “The Curious Thing,” “The Wilderness,” winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize selected by Louise Glück, and “The Loveliest Grotesque.” An associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell also serves on the poetry faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

Like Calvocoressi, Lim wrote in an email to the S&B that she also gravitated to poetry at a young age, albeit for different reasons.

>> Continued on thesandb.com