Main Street, Wyoming; 517; Wyoming Poet Laureate

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities and ridging lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history values and ideas Wyoming's poet laureate is Charles Levin. Many of you may know him as the opinion editor of the Casper Star-Tribune but trials work and life as a poet have added depth and vitality to Wyoming's arts community for over two decades. Join us on Main Street Wyoming as we visit with Charles live and ask about his poetry and the role of the arts in Wyoming and the nation. Wyoming has been blessed with two extraordinarily talented and insightful poet laureates

Peggy Simpson Carrie was the state's first one and has been our second child. You're known for so many different things and the many awards you've won for being a spokesman for the first amendment. Your job as opinion editor for the Casper Star-Tribune. But today I just want to talk to you as as a poet and as Wyoming's poet laureate. First I suppose I'd better ask you exactly what is a poet a laureate. Well each state gets to define their own poet laureate. And so I'd like to say first that it's a pleasure just people or it to Wyoming defines Polo as an honorary position. And you're sort of unofficial spokesman for the Arts and the literary arts especially but for the arts in general. It can be a bully pulpit if you make it that. I have the opportunity of course to make it that because I also work for the newspaper and so I can speak about protecting the arts and doing away with censorship

or to be wary of any kind of censorship because of how it crashes in on the arts. There's no pay involved. It's honorary is sometimes invited to official governor's functions to either just observe or sometimes to read a poem or two. I like the way it is in the state because nobody is leaning on you to write an official poem. And that Peggy Curry sort of made it made it clear that the poet laureate was going to be independent and sometimes would write poetry that would make people uncomfortable and maybe even blush. But that's what the West is about and that's what the poet laureate does. All right well we want to look at something that Robert Tory a professor of English down at the University of Wyoming had to say about Wyoming having a poet laureate. Let's watch that. All right. I highly approve of it I think that all institutions states

all organizations ought to have some poet laureate I think that is that the role of the poet has become sort of to a large degree obscure in modern society. It may seem almost archaic institution but I think that we have to we have to celebrate poetry and our institutions are to take it into into account. And to a large extent what survives of our institutions survives in various means and poetry is one of those. And I think that that what poetry allows to survive is probably more subtle more complex and in many ways more interesting than what literal histories or other sorts of accounts allow to to pass on to future generations. Now what did you get from that in terms of what you see in terms of your role as poet laureate. I guess I differ a little bit from my story about this. My feeling about

poetry is that it's why it continues to have power down through the ages is that it's really the best vehicle for one heart to speak to another. It's an emotional language and it's does its best of what it's talking about the you know emotional states of the speaker or someone else that the speaker pretends to be the poet pretends to be or empathizes with and speaks for. Yeah it is a documentation of the you know the life of the human being. And so when when historians might come to the latter part of the 20th century in the state of Wyoming they can read about what our institutions are. But when they read trials Lemon dos these poems there fear a different picture. Yes. Yeah. I don't think of poetry as intellectual. I think of it as more emotional. One of the reasons that

I after being a poet in residence for the state of Wyoming for 10 years I was when I took the job at the newspaper it skewed me. I was excited by the intellectual exchange at the newspaper. Getting into the fray of issues and intellectual things. Something I had missed all those years that I had been poet in residence where I spoke only about poetry and poetry to me is not an intellectual exercise. It's a body mind soul emotional thing. I don't know what a poem is going to say until it begins to come through me in the actual process of writing. That is it's physical as well as metal. And it's very much to do with with my inner emotional state. And so I don't think of it as an intellectual exercise at all.

Well let's talk a little bit about your history because you came to Wyoming in what in the early 1970s 1972 so had you been you've been writing poetry back and why you hadn't you in your art. That's how I got the job. I don't have a degree in English but I taught English in NYU based on the fact that my first book was published by Western University Press perimeters was the title. And what brought you to Wyoming. I had left NYU. I had resigned my job to finish a book aspects of the vertical. They weren't going to hire me on a tenure track unless I got a Ph.D. and I told the Dean that my books were my Ph.D. if that wasn't good enough. That was fine with me. So young and arrogant I resigned from the job that paid me well enough that I could live a year without being paid and finished a book and timing happened. I got invited here to be a poet. Residents also got invited to Georgia a week

later to be their poet in residence. But I had accepted Wyoming already. That's interesting isn't it when you think about because what two different cultures that you know are Georgia and Wyoming. So glad that I made the choice for Wyoming. I've never regretted even though Georgia offered me more money and I had I was familiar with Georgia because I'd worked in Georgia before. Why tell me about that what was it about Wyoming that you had found appealing openness openness and directness of people people here like to look you in the eye and tell you what they are thinking and they don't have much respect for people turn away or lie about it or who hold it in they really want to know. And even if it's uncomfortable they want to know. And I like that a lot and I like the landscape. I like the the winter last there last year that ness of the landscape. I love the subtle colors in the spring and the fall. It was the right place it was like the land called my name I guess

a way to put it. And I know you didn't make this decision to come to Wyoming all by yourself you you had you were you married when you came to children. I can still remember the driving. We had a Pontiac ad we just bought in New York is the first car we own as a family because in New York you don't need a car it's a handicap to have a car in New York City. And we bought this new car and I can remember coming over the hill looking into Casper thinking this is our new home and the whole family adopted the same attitude. They loved it here. My daughters when they were little real little said they wanted to marry a rancher. I know I used to enjoy hearing your stories about your daughters in the paper reading about I feel like I've watched them grow up in some respects when you'd write about them. That was always very moving to me when I understand how you're in Wyoming. But how did you become a poet What elements do you think there are in you that make you a poet.

I think one of the things I have to go back to is being a loner. My father was military and we travel a lot I was at 13 different schools before I graduated from high school and I was a kid who sat in the back of the room and didn't talk to people and sort of looked out the window all the time and and I began when I got really lonely in the seventh grade I changed schools three times. And I remember that thinking to myself what's the use of making friends I'll just lose them. And. I started writing in the in the backs of my school notebooks and writing down really what would be cries of pain from my loneliness and putting it in that form that sort of capsule lated and Mabel me had to deal with it because after all it's written on a page two or three pages long that's not so big. That's not so much. That's not a big burden. You can somehow deal with it by getting it out. That's not poetry but it's the

beginning of poetry. It's the overflow of emotion one has when you're describing poetry as being an emotion one heart speaking to another then it is poetry it is that. It's I mean it's a love poem but every love letter wants to be a poem you know and everybody has experienced some and some part of their lives a hope of wanting to write a love letter. And portrays a natural So I think that's where I began and I when I was in college I didn't know very much about poetry I got my worst grades when I studied portrait English classes in high school and college and why. Why do you think you got your worst grades in that I don't understand how to scan a poem. I never understood how to get the interpretation the instructor had always taught in the pat answer as to how this poem should be read I never understood that I still don't. You know I don't believe you don't you don't believe it that's what I've been I've been reading read a DAV is the national poet laureate and she said everywhere she goes people say to her

Oh you're a poet. I never understood poetry. And so she she asked them Well what do you mean you don't understand poetry well. And it's as as you just said I don't see it the same way my teacher saw it therefore when I saw it has no value. Yeah. Do you encounter that also in terms of people's understanding of what they think poetry is supposed to be as. Yeah I did in fact when I go into schools and I'll talk to kids and I'll say you know when I was your age it seemed to be that the belief was the only good part was a dead one because that's all we ever studied. I mean I never knew there was any live American poets and here I was in school the time when Robert Frost was writing with Carl Sandburg was writing. I didn't know their name so I didn't know their poetry. So I had. Well when you talk about your poetry and you as a poet you have a full time job. How do you manage to still write poetry for you.

You either do it or you don't. You know I learned that a long time ago nobody really cares whether I write poetry or not. I mean that sounds harsh to say that but nobody really cares they would rather have my time you know my kids when they were growing up there rather. I would not in my study I would be playing with them and I did play with them but I made time to write. And the truth is if the job used up all my time they'd be happy. You somewhere along the line decide that if you're going to be an artist you're going to put that time aside because nobody cares whether you do or not you're the only one who cares. And so you got to do it. So no excuses make that time. Make a time for yourself. Is there anything else that you need that you feel is really critical to you in creating your poetry. Yeah privacy sayas kind of envelope of silence around you you can achieve it in many ways sometimes I go the mountain outside of Caspar Sometimes I just like when I was writing The New York book I just walk the streets with a notebook in my

pocket and you can do it I can do it in my study with the radio playing music or playing classical music which sort of. Capsule lets me in a novel hope of privacy and I'm able to let the thoughts come through which are not simply at the top of my head that's the problem. They're inside the play and you've got to make room for and the kind of silence allows them to come through and then you have to have the kind of attention that when they're coming through you listen to what is going on. I mean it's I read a wonderful description of a naturalist E.O. Wilson a Harvard naturalist who is so famous now in his book bio filia has a description of himself as a naturalist in a rain forest in South America and he talks about the attention

span of looking at one tree and sitting there and watching it till you begin to see the different little creatures the little insects and the different one species of them that there are there. And you have to open up. And I thought when I was reading that that's precisely what a poet does. You don't know what's going on. You're going to see it. And you have to pay attention. Well you know if you're describing this I'm thinking that's what I want there's so much business in my life. So if even if I can't write poetry I'd like the life of a poet to take that time but it rings me to the other part of your job as part laureate and that is to not just be a poet but to deal with the public's perception of poetry and the arts. I asked I also asked Bob Tory about the role that poetry plays in society and all of our lives let's let's watch what he had to say.

In poetry we are allowed to experience as in few other activities in modern life. Perhaps no other activities in modern life the full range and resonance and power of language. The way in which to a large extent it always exceeds what it seems to mean or to imply or to signify on our first encounter with poetry allows us to sense. Other meanings other implications further subtleties in everyday life when someone says Pass the salt or we read the headlines in the in the paper or were in a simple conversation with other persons we normally look for the simple meaning we normally ask ourselves. Well what is the implication here. We look for facts. We look for for simple messages. But poetry allows us to experience

language as it conveys more than the simple as it conveys the complexities that normally we don't attend to and so it becomes a kind of play. There is no immediately practical purpose to this enjoyment of language. But I think it allows us to understand in a sort of joyful way because it is playful. The immensity and the power of the linguistic world in which we are thoroughly impacted do you know in just listening to that I'm going I don't want to talk about poetry anymore I want to hear poet here. Can you share some of your poetry reaches our hearts it has to do with a lot of times that goes beyond words. So I'd love to hear some of your poetry. Glad to hear it. When I read a poem from Hans. Talking about emotions and you know that I wrote a

lot of columns to my daughters and about my daughters growing up and it was very difficult for me to face them leaving and going off to college and starting their own lives because I had been a big part of their lives. And so I have written goodbye poems over and over again to my daughters. And this is one of my favorite it's called snowshoeing in the mountains. With my daughter a show this is for her and I happen to be in Jackson at the same time she was performing and a dance concert and I was there to teach and we had an afternoon together and I taught her how to snowshoe. And this is that poem snowshoeing in the mountains. Snob groans as it packs Penny thought along lattice tracks. The only sound we make our passage and the wind through pines question us. We leave our to a brief history

behind us silent testimony to those who follow. A father and his daughter pass this way. I taught you to lace the bindings how to rock up slopes by digging in your toes. Now you will break your own trails where the air is thin and shadows Chris. We squint against the bright light walk together a little way longer. Our passage hushes us the sky a stream burbling below the snow. We stop for a moment and look back on our tracks sinking silently into blue shadows. Our passage pushes us. The sun crosses the sky too swiftly we feel the chill passage washes us. I think that makes it pretty clear how I felt and I think I said this is I had no idea what you're going to be

reading and you realize I have my oldest son as a senior in high school so this is very moving for me as I listen to this I don't think there's a parent that cannot respond to that from their heart. They're there for a child and that's that's really the gift that poetry can give. And it's speaks for the people who don't have the language to speak it or they or the language seem somehow cumbersome to them when they say it although they say it with the same amount of depth of feeling. It's just that they don't have it practiced the language well. Well what about in in Wyoming we don't talk a lot here as much as they do like saying New York has this been a problem at all for you and or has it changed your writing since you've been here. Oh my. My writing is much more human. I think one of the things that New York

it's a hard place in the city is and people's language is hard in response to the hardness of the concrete city. I mean they're surrounded by concrete it's almost like living in caves and out of granite and the city is built on granite. I think that correspondingly New Yorkers have Shiels and all sorts of defense mechanisms so they seem hard they're not but they seem that way and the language is harsh and it sounds harsh. And it's a question of their survival where our survival is based on you. You can't be too isolated from other people right. We were you know one of the things I noticed right away when I came here in New York in order to have the silence I needed to write to write is I had to shut out the stimulus here. It was the opposite. There wasn't much stimulus except nature.

And so I opened up and it opened up my poetry and I wanted to talk to people because I had plenty of silence whenever I wanted it. I could just go up to the mountain and oh well now I understand you have a new collection of poems that's going to be coming out. One called Circle of Light which will be coming out in the fall and oh. High Plains press is going to do that and I'm very pleased because I think that the high plains press is here in Wyoming and I've always believed in small presses and it's nice to to be able to be published by a statewide press. I'd like to read two poems out of the book. We may not have turned. OK. Let me read the title. All right. Circle of Light in the sun is a circle of light we dare not look at it lest we burn our eyes

in the shadow of a footbridge at the edge of a stream. We stand close. The wind carries the sound of a pine forest. The brook carries a fragrance of mountains as it wriggles by day. I turned to you and take your hands. We are a circle of light. I look into your eyes as the sun a stopped. There is a stream below our feet in the sun above. We are a circle of light. You ask me what are you thinking. Nothing I say. Nothing. Everything we've been to each other is here now. As if this moment were a lens focusing the past toward the future. Everything we have been doing each other is here now saying yes forever. The sun is stopped and the stream and the stream

my eyes burn. Suddenly there are tears. We are a circle of light. You know there you know if I can I have a copy I can buy a book in the fall right and then I can work. This can be my love letter to my husband. That's mind. Now how long did it take you to write that how long did you live with that. Not very long. About three months. Once the the image of the sun as the circle of light once that came to me. That's what my poems wait for they wait for an image or they wait for a metaphor that will hold the whole thing together and make it understandable at one level it's understandable it mediately to everybody at another level. There are many other levels to it of course which I don't even know.

I won't pretend to know but once that happens then the poem begins to generate itself and then somewhere along the line it says to me Sit down do you have another one that is short that you could share. I think so. Yeah the skull string like Jackson Hole in the dim light of evening laps at the shoreline. The lake reflects the deepening autumn sky. We hear a loon we cannot see. Tiny waves against the beach the pines are ears. Darkness slides down the mountainside and across the lake silent avalanche. A blue heron navigates the blooming air we know by the signature of its shape is flight the lap of his wings against the pines. Our hearers are aging flesh blue one in

the fading light. There is beauty we gather to hold us amulets against darker days as promises their light sends tiny ripples that glimmer in our hearts our dreams are deepening love us oh as I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about you member when you talk about the dead poets that I always studied and I think of those field of daffodils. And I go Wyoming has its beauty and it has its poetry share those words thank you thank you. Thanks for all of us for taking the time and finding the silence to enrich our lives with your poetry. Thank you and thank you. Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott

energy proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas.