The Norman Train Depot was bright and cheerful Sunday, providing a strange contrast to what went on inside.

You could hear birds chirping and see bicyclists whiz by outside, but when Elizabeth Sargent began reading her poetry, all of these signs of life faded away and made room in the imagination for the images that her poetry called forth.

The Second Sunday Poetry Reading takes place at 2 p.m. every second Sunday of each month at the Norman Train Depot. It’s sponsored by the Performing Arts Studio in Norman, which also organizes events like Summer Breeze.

Sargent teaches composition classes in the English department at OU. She’s a published poet, but also writes fiction, especially short stories.

“Most poems I write are also like short stories, in the way that they tell a story,” she said.

Sargent began the reading with what she called one of her signature poems, “Anonymous.”

Her flat, emotionless reading voice echoed in the depot, and it matched the style of her poetry with its images of loneliness laced with sarcasm. As in the best poetry, it was Sargent’s small details that brought her words alive for the listener.

She also read several selections from “Fragments from a Diary,” which was written during the Gulf War.

One particularly memorable line from part two went, “tranquilizers are better than nihilism.”

Sargent said that she was feeling a little depressed around the time of the war, but poetry helped her express herself. She also said she had help and inspiration from her friend Mary Jane, who was in the audience Sunday.

In fact, it seemed that most of those gathered for the reading knew Sargent in some way. This gave the reading a very intimate feel.

Sargent also shared a poem about the famous photographer Edward Weston, who was said to end every class he ever taught by asking, “Do you have a question?”

These words were supposedly the last that Weston ever said, Sargent said.

The poem “Do You Have a Question?” was very dark in tone, which was a stark contrast with the setting in the depot. The contrast was a welcome one though, because it seemed to emphasize Sargent’s words even more.

Much of the work Sargent presented throughout the Second Sunday Poetry Reading had a strong feminist leaning.

This could be heard in one of her last readings, “Shall We Gather at the River?” She said it is one of her favorite poems she ever wrote.

The beginning ran, “The night cracks open like a bottle/contents spilling/to every corner of the room/Poems slip through my fingers/wet as rain/even they can’t save me.”

The Norman Train Depot, 200 S. Jones, is also home to visual arts. The depot holds open gallery hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.

The next Second Sunday Poetry Reading will be held on July 11.

-Megan Morgan is a professional writing senior