It's Poetry Friday

I heard Ted Kooser read for the first time last month. He recently completed his term as U.S. Poet Laureate – succeeded by Kay Ryan.

Kooser calls himself a Great Plains poet. His poems are intimately connected to place. His voice sounds like actor Gary Sinese. One of the most intriguing readings I heard Kooser give at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival was a series of dramatic monologues in verse. The poems were from his 1986 book, “The Blizzard Voices.”

I just completed the rough draft of a novel in verse in multiple voices, so my ears were perked. Kooser had me hooked with lines like this:

We had been playing Fox-and-Geese

in the schoolyard, during

the afternoon recess,

when the blizzard bore down

out of the northwest, roaring

and whistling, loud as a train.

Each poem is titled “A Man’s Voice” or “A Woman’s Voice.” Each describes one person’s experience of the Great Blizzard of 1888. The storm came so suddenly over the Plains States, children were trapped in their schools, men and women got lost walking home from their barns. No one had time to prepare, stock up on food or bring in fuel. The voices are stark and straightforward, but the poems are filled with detail:

On the night

that the big storm struck, we burned

the floorboards from the side-porch

and some of the furniture

because we couldn’t reach the barn

for fuel.

In the book’s introduction, Kooser remembers being a child and listening to family member who lived through the storm. Later, he read “In All its Fury” by W.H. O’Gara and used it as a resource for his poems. There’s no prettying up the effects of this storm. People lose animals, limbs, their lives.

If you’re teaching a Plains book like “Little House on the Prairie” or “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” think about sharing a few of Kooser’s blizzard poems with students. The voices will open a window onto the hardships & community of Plains life. There has been at least one professional performance of “Blizzard Voices” – another great option for your classroom.

I couldn’t find any poems from “The Blizzard Voices” online, but here is a series of reviews: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/kooscrit.htm#blizzard

The small volume takes less than an hour to read. You won’t forget these voices.

The Poetry Friday Round-up is at Picture Book of the Day today. Stop by for more poetry. And remember to visit GottaWriteGirl for an interview about my work as a poet-in-the-schools.

It's Poetry Friday

On with the Poetry Sampler from last week’s Dodge Poetry Festival! Friday afternoon. We are about halfway through a 21 poet, 3 hour sampler. I had to agree with Edward Hirsch, who joked with the audience, “I’m very over stimulated.!” Jane Hirshfield is a longtime Dodge headliner. She has a soothing voice. Her poetry (and manner?) is influenced by her study of Zen. Hirshfield’s calm isn’t lulling – it actually calls you to pay attention to the words. Hirshfield shared a beautiful elegy, “Letter to C,” for poet Czeslaw Milosz’s wife. I was struck by these lines from her poem, “Vilnius,” If you lived higher up on the mountain,

I find myself thinking, what you would see is

more of everything else, but not the mountain. Another Dodge veteran, Sharon Olds, was one of several poets who brought up Pablo Neruda’s “Odes to Simple Things.” She read an ode to toilets. Another: “Ode to a Tampon.” In keeping with the form, she elevated these objects with her choice of language and descriptions. But Olds also had us laughing about our own discomfort with bodily functions.

I begin school poetry residencies talking to children about how all subject matter is fair game in poetry. Olds is a poet who explores the “unmentionable” parts of our existence -- our bodies & how they operate. I’d never heard Ted Kooser read before. He completed his term as U.S. Poet Laureate this summer. People cheered before, during, and after his reading. Kooser read a poem about his mother’s death that made me cry (softie!) In "Pearl," he describes visiting an elderly aunt to deliver the news. In the poem, he knocks on the door and says, “It’s Vera’s boy,” realizing that the death has taken him back to childhood. You can hear Kooser read the poem, “Pearl,” here: http://www.poetrypoetry.com/Features/TedKooser/TedKooser.php Linda Pastan is a fellow Marylander. Her subject matter -- marriage, family, parenting – appeals to me. She read a list poem, “Because.” It describes the reasons why she said “yes” when her husband asked her to marry him. It’s a theme she also explores in “I Married You”: I married you for all the wrong reasons, charmed by your dangerous family history, by the innocent muscles, bulging like hidden weapons under your shirt, by your naive ties, the colors of painted scraps of sunset. Read the rest of Pastan’s poem here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19483 Whew! What a marathon. Poets sometimes say that the Dodge Festival elevates them to rock-star status: the lights, thousands of seats filled with cheering fans. But fame is different for great poets than it is for musicians, actors, athletes. Poets aren’t disposable as they age. If the Dodge crowd is any indication, we want our poets to combine wisdom and a sense of humor about the human experience.

More to come…including What poetry books for kids can you find at the Dodge Poetry Festival’s book tent?

Head over to Two Writing Teachers for more Poetry Friday. They're hosting today: http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/were-hosting-poetry-friday-today/#comment-5238