AURORA - A nascent gallery played host on a recent rainy night to rooms packed with people well-versed in local ways.

Bruce Bennett, a professor of English at Wells College, stood in a black T-shirt and khakis Sept. 14 before a lectern and nearly 50 students, faculty and visiting writers who laughed and grinned along to selections of poetry he read at Grove. Since June, the Main Street space has showcased fine furniture, paintings and other crafts.

Practically a Wells fixture, Bennett has taught at the college since 1973. He also heads the school's creative writing program and directs its Book Arts Center. Teaching poetry in a four-person English department, though, takes up most of his time. Over his career, he has published 25 books of poetry, seven of them full-length collections. Some of his books are on sale at Grove.

“It's the only poetry reading I've been at where I thought there'd be too many people,” he said, wanting to maintain respect for the fairly small space and the pieces on display there. The owner, Anna Baxter, is a friend.

“He has a great sense of humor and sees things in a very unique way,” Baxter said.

Much of that humor came in limerick form, with Bennett referencing the nearby Fargo Tavern's annual and enthusiastically followed St. Patrick's Day hosting of a limerick contest. The outpouring of entries over the years, he indicated, has contributed to Aurora's reputation (mostly among Aurorans) as “the limerick capital of the world.”

Stanzas rendered slices of area and neighboring life, warts and all, from Aurora personalities to the insects that inhabit people's backyards.

At times, his short sonnets and limericks passed as private jokes depicting experiences in Ithaca and Auburn as well, like this short unpublished piece about Hunter's Dinerant entitled, “Any questions?”:

I have PMS

and a handgun.

Any questions?

reads the T-shirt

on the huge woman

in the Hunter Dinerant.

Actually,

I have plenty.

Just none

that I will ask her.

Even those not yet familiar with the small Dinerant laughed appreciatively. The reading communicated Bennett's own fondness for the area, and let everyone connect around his observations. For this reason, Bennett said he prefers poems that can be read aloud. Those kinds of poems, he said, “can be communal.”

Afterward, Bennett casually remarked attendance topped the draw of his readings on campus. He'd hoped his students would attend, and quite a few did.

Caitlin Rice, a Wells senior, said she enjoyed herself. Rice is in the Creative Writing program and said Bennett has been her mentor. She has taken classes with him in poetry and creative nonfiction, and seems to have found in him a kindred spirit who understands the creative process.

That said, none in the small crowd seemed like strangers to Bennet's work. More like family - familiar and, judging from the warm hugs with which listeners greeted him - all seemed fond of him as well as his art.

Staff writer Olivia Goldberg can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 235 or at olivia.goldberg@lee.net