Poetry Unites Kansas

april is national poetry month and kinect entire and today on k pr for sense we celebrate poetry with their outgoing kansas poet laureate eric mchenry eric it's always good to see you portray can do many things they can inspire a can put thoughts and feelings into words in a way that prose sometimes can matt and poetry can unite us in fact poetry unites kansas is a contest going on right now you don't even need to be a poet to weigh in and tell me about poetry like cancer or you're absolutely right that you don't need to be a poet you just need to be a person who loves poetry or who was a particular poem and you submit an essay about a six hundred word describing how the specific home has impacted your life and what it means to you and if your essay is selected as the winner by a panel of judges then there'll be a short film made about you and about the palm and about its place in your life the project

began it was launched by a resident scholar who was of polish born writer and filmmaker and she actually launched poetry nights in on countries in eastern europe you'd made films about eastern europeans who whose lives have been profoundly influenced one way or another by by palms and you can actually see those films on the website poetry unites dot com amin and it was a major success or was it inspired originally by the favorite poem project that was launched by a former us poet laureate robert pinsky who also called for submissions of our favorite poems by people who have been influenced by them and they collected those and made our short films and are anthologies accompanying madden and things of that nature and so i it first in eastern europe and then it became the united states brought it to new york state are in

line in partnership with marie howe the poet who is poet laureate of new york state at the time and some others they found new yorkers who favor poems that wanted to tell the world about and they made some more perfect the literal so doable on the web site there so now kansas is the second of the us states that the project is going i'm curious new york can't that's how to become a kansas i think that so it it's under the auspices and kansas are being serb supported an organized by huling it llc which is a really interesting high tech publishing company based in kansas city and mark eulogies its founder and ceo is a former correspondent for the new york times and it was in fact i think chief of the mexico city bureau of the new york times for a while while working at the times he became friends with evan who was also a journalist were for the times and so i think that their friendship became a partnership that sort of what the campaigns are promising next place because

each state that you go to their house to be sir somebody on the ground there that can help you get the project launched and so you were girl see is is that in kansas so to be clear it doesn't need to be a poem written by a kansas poet they use at night no it doesn't it can be any palm written by anyone including opponents not in english but that you know in translation aw i suspect that to be selected biden others for services by could be selected for poetry nights kansas it needs to be there needs to be an english version of the poem in order for it to be inaccessible to the broadest american audience but under the judges and enter the judges as well that's right i mean i'm really not qualified burger later to the value of a poem that's been written a french but i am among the submissions there's already one thats thats a haiku by and by showed them in an english translation and so it can be any any palm of any length and style and any

error and any origin language as long as it sounds but there's an english version available that some of the towns they even submitted for poetry nights kansas i've only seen a small sampling of the submissions on among the panel of judges but i've only seen a few of the submissions so far but the diversity is really impressive i've seen emily dickinson salt palm i'm nobody who are you which was submitted by someone who hadn't read it well a candidate forum governor atta girl state in minnesota in nineteen fifty as a way of distinguishing herself from the other candidates and nobody who are you who are you nobody too you know a temporary to be somebody how public like a fraud to spell your name to live long june to an admiring blog sort of uniting herself with other lung delegates i guess a girl state by saying aye aye to feel self conscious and anonymous and not especially

distinguished and and in that we are we are alike or if you feel that way then you have some some company in the world and me i am someone was profoundly influenced by the pond where ago the boats by robert louis stevenson he tells a story in his essay of being in a full body cast or maybe it's up to his navel anyway but it's that he's completely mobilized by this huge huge uncomfortable cast at the end of summer just as the new school year is starting and he's aware of his friends that are ten miles down the road in the little rural school that they go to and he's feeling lonely and isolated and then his class all comes and visits him on and they bring gifts including his copy of a child's garden of verses in that poem by robert louis stevenson provided that incapacitated the summer and fall with the kind of a mental escape from that this world that he was in and it ended up surviving

choices that he made later in his life review he found himself launching an average of boats out into the world in different ways that carry messages to the people who needed to receive them through an artfully done locally it's terrific you know this is where go the boats by robert louis stevenson dark brown is the river golden is the sand it flows along for ever with trees on either hammer green leaves a floating castles of the foam boats of mine a boating where will all come home on goes the river and out past the mill the way down the valley away downhill away down the river a hundred miles or more other little children shall bring my boat's ashore in his essay on end and i have no idea

what lessons will be selected to make the films and you know and i should i should add that but i was moved in his essay by the fact that he's almost apologetic about the fact that this is a children's palm that has spoken him so well for so long and some people he says might not consider poetry i am and i just want to reach out a hand and touch a shoulder reassure all know that poetry absolutely and it speaks to you and not just because of that you're remembered affection for it when you were a child book because it's like all great children's poetry contains lessons that endure that don't shed their value throughout one's entire life the idea that we launch these little vessels are our lives and we have no idea where they're going the broader sure eventually or by whom we have no idea who's whose lives a largely touch on is that there's a lot in that thats thats more than just dumb twinkle

twinkle little sore thumb up the really the value of really good children's literature is that it doesn't just you don't just treated as a campaign that at some level it stays with you either with eds with the words or with the last ten or the picture that it's painting that stays with you in a way that when you read that poem forty years later as an adult it still makes a connection that's right yeah it's a little music box and you open it up and it still gets playing the same tune you out you might hear it in a different way my hear different notes receiving the apostles you know but the but it saw its enduring and valuable and it's in another i'm talking about making connections across ages you know when you return to children's poetry that was valuable to you when you're young you're now as an adult revisiting your relationship with that poet who never knew and maybe with the characters and that palm and you're also may be

revisiting your relationship with a parent a regular palm island and thinking about the lesson that though that parent or whoever was presented a palm tree was kind of quietly instilling a new album but by sharing if you're just joining us i'm visiting with eric mchenry the outgoing poet laureate of kansas we're talking about poetry unites kansas a poetry contest where you'd don't even need to be a poet to enter you can find out more about poetry unites kansas at their website poetry unites dot com eric any us another example of a poem and essays submitted for the contest you mentioned mad japanese poem a poem by washoe the high crew that was so moved you see if i can remember it now that the english translation is so soon to die and no sign of it is showing locust cry and the the person submitting as paul mrs

favre goes on to talk about how he encountered it as a young man whose life was full of emotional turbulence and early love and heartbreak and all the sorts of things that you associate with the late adolescence in the teenage years and a lot of that sort of drama and it spoke to him so profoundly this solemn tight compressed little lyric that offers them a glimpse of a life that so on the one hand lengthy but you know seventeen years and for certain types of locus or cicadas living underground waiting to escape the earth and then your emerge and then you have your day or two in the song and your death is imminent the entire time that europe quote unquote alive but the whole time you're just singing you know for all that your words with the top of your lungs on and he ties it to his life in interesting ways it's really lovely and i had never thought about this before but unlike i just

admitting a poem that you like this very personalized the city in a way that this is what i got out of the poem and this is how it spoke to you in a really personal way that i'm the princess comes alive absolutely and it's a wonderful i mean think about the distance that the poem had to travel to reach this man living in rural kansas you know it had to cross centuries it had across a language barrier and yet it reached out to him and said i too was here i see you i hear you i experience precisely what you've experienced and i see that embodied in what this insect is experiencing its most improbable miracle that that conversation has taken place well poetry is made it possible which is that you could say that that's really the whole purpose of not just poetry but literature in general is that it reaches across time and space and speaks to us and connects us absolutely that abolishes

time it really got it universe lies in so many different ways that it can access to people that we otherwise have no opportunity to know and that shows how the experiences we have that feel so personal and so particular gosar experiences that we share with the human race everyone has experienced those that regardless of what time they were like that it's a lie that experienced loss and heartbreak and elation and i and that kind of communion across the ages and across cultures is the more important if i would enter the poetry nights kansas contest this is the poem that i have in mind it's by piggy schumacher who was the poet laureate of alaska and i had played honor and privilege of interviewing her several years ago plan former kansas poet laureate carried miriam goldberg had aired ads gathering of poets laureate from across the country and here in kansas

and when and this is upon that she recited for me it's called beyond words this language the morning i was born you held my hand the morning you died i held your hand what's left to forgive she recited that here in the case yesterday as a couple years after my father had passed away and i thought in that short sparse poems seas so eloquently this universe all emotion of connection between a parent and a child and that sense of loss and the beauty of that relationship and how at the end of the day what's left to forgive you were here for me and i was here for you and regardless of wyatt rocky terrain that really

since it may have had over the years between it doesn't really matter feels like a novel in its six little lines added remind you one of those competitions where to you know can you write a complete short story in six words you know or some of that is a little bit longer than that but it's as you say they're the inversion of the parent child relationship where the child becomes the parent at the end of life is present it it's got both ends of life and so it's friends a lifespan there and then the introduction of forgiveness but also that presenting it as a question draws all of the drama of a human life and complex intimate relationship in the palm but also releases in at the end to resolve that somehow because it's fresh phrases a question what's left is that what's left to forgive and you know yeah that's that's bottomless bomb struck and it was so lovely it stuck with me

through the years and when i heard about poetry nights kansas contest i immediately thought of the poem if we have listeners who would like to enter they poetry nights kansas what kind of tips or suggestions would you give them in terms of perhaps poetry selection and how they describe how the palm affected them well i think that your experience is really i think that if listeners out there have had an experience like the one that came back and are just described which is cheering about the contest and immediately knowing which poem you would submit then you may be a good candidate for submitting to the contest because that suggests not only do you have a relationship with poetry but they do have a relationship with a particular poem that you really are probably have something to say about and then when you visit the website of poetry nights dot com you'll find instructions for submitting to the congress that actually gives some pretty decent i was reading about a factory is only on nsa with a maximum word count of six

hundred then you know there's only so much that you can do in that space and they lay out pretty clearly what questions they want you to consider when writing it and one of course is just what is your palm and was it by and not separate center on but then they also want to know how does palm relate your life how that impacted her life and then i wanna know more about what your life is like at what what you've done or what are you planning to do or what do you do in your life and what are your dreams and aspirations and things like that so they did some big releases very autobiographical essay that they're hoping to receive it's not an academic essay it's not you know a scholarly a valuation of this palm you know with footnotes and things like that it's really they want to hear about your experience in the full body cast and how does palm came to you and give you an imaginative liberation from that at a time when he really needed or if you watch the films they are knockouts the films of art and made in both in the

east european countries and in new york are fantastic and we will give you a sense of what a first rate job the filmmakers do in taking that special relationship you have with his palm and bring it to visual life if you're on the fence about whether to submit or not go to poetry nights not come and watch those films and you'll be inspired wonderful eric your tenure as kansas poet laureate is drawing to a close it's hard to believe it's been two years already what your favorite memories from your time as poet laureate all of them so it's really been fun never i'm gonna know the state i never would've gotten of the state which is my own state my family's been here since the mid nineteenth century and i think of myself as knowing kansas absolutely backwards and forwards but i didn't really know i knew laurence and topeka and i

knew the parts of russell kansas that could be seen from the interstate seventy five mph but being poet laureate really got me on the back roads in the little highways and out in the little communities that i would never have passed or otherwise and i got her conversations with so many people who for whom poetry is an important thing here has a poo it's or people were curious about the portrait might have a larger place in their in their lives on i wrote about this for the humanities council newsletter but i remember particularly my trip to glasgow all time but to my trip to glasgow gao's ceo which is named after the city and scotland but was spelled that way instead because the postmaster misspelled it and i drove into town and it was it was almost post apocalyptic it was the middle of the day and there was no one there is a completely empty main street that i found my way to and i and i pulled into a parking space and i wondered if everyone had left and they just forgot to turn out the sun you know in the

end and they're you know and i walked around downtown for about five minutes or so and then a car showed up in another in another gravelly the whole main street filled up with people would come out to hear of the poet laureate or find out what the poet laureate is on and i did a reading him a little pocket park between a couple of buildings on the main street there and got some musicians came with the dove fiddle and banjo and guitar and eight and played some music there's just this little sort of gathering that had been organized but that felt kind of formal spontaneous because it seemed happened so suddenly organically in this little town of this little celebration of the arts in this just tell me my mistake for being completely deserted if you were just passing through and similarly you know i went to colby kansas well in northwestern kansas and because i'm not the most i'm typically organized person in the world i rely heavily on the internet to tell me where i'm supposed to be and well and things like that and so i knew i was on my counter that i had an appearance in

colby on this particular day and i think i had on the time but i wanted to confirm all of that so i got on the web and google books and turns i couldn't find really any online presence for this event that all online and so i drove from my hotel down to the public library where emily that was happening and i didn't see any signage up for it or anything like that i was really beginning to worry like am i here on the wrong day you know are a bit i just dreamed that i had an engagement in colby kansas i had really drove a long way to get here and i hope that i am speaking here and eventually found an employee of the library said oh yeah you're the poet r i get to write this way and let me down into this big sur basement auditorium that was full of tables and chairs and big spread of food and things like that and then eventually as the time for the event drew near it began filling up with people young and old and an entire class from the high school came and then it was for fifty people or something like that by the time everybody was was in and it was a reminder to me of how i am not everybody

relies on the web and in small towns where you've got especially got an established literary series of the library just as regular attendees and you're known in on people's physical paper calendars then you don't need to put up fliers and you don't need to put a big you know a web site devoted to the thing online you're going to have your audience they're so cycle because there still are committed to poetry in iran and they may put backsides and the seats pretty impressive way without any of these newfangled tools that the rest of us and to rely on the kansas poet laureate program is it misstated the kansas humanities council and i think it's no secret that this is a time when the humanities are struggling a bit view and the past three kansas poet laureates are kind of taking up the banner of the humanities tell me about those efforts all were major major beneficiaries of public support for the humanities through the canvas humanities council and by extension through the national endowment

for the humanities the poet laureate program exists because of those entities and significantly it's not funded principally by those empties that is we as poets laureate we get small travel stipend that allows us to get to these locations and we don't ask for mr aaron when we make our sponsor appearances which really helps the small town library isn't why not bring the poet laureate i am all of the money for that and travel site when every penny that i received from the kansas humanities council was privately raised on it's just that we rely on the humanities council for the support an administrative help and is overseeing and maintaining the program om and to help us out and myriad ways but it's it's a very for a full public private partnership and its benefits are enormous to the state not just a poet laureate program which i'm i'm not unbiased commentator on the value of the book warrior program for my point of view

it's clearly an inherently mobile but programs that the cans humanities council of ministers reach four hundred thousand kansans a year often in underserved an isolated areas they bring the humanity is the town and they do it at almost no cost to the taxpayer and so i turn and goldberg who was two poets laureate before me so when she saw that once again the national endowment for humanities national him for the arts where they're always the first thing on the chopping block even though they would save no money by cutting them because they receive such a drop in the bucket in terms of money compared to other government expenses on they were coming under fire again and she said maybe because we have this platform having been poets laureate we can speak about the value of the humanities and arline kansans of the value of public support for the humanities tom and how it

affects our lives in ways that they might be thinking about and so on we together drafted a letter and we've been circulating et tu or sort of serve an op ed that we've been circulating the newspapers throughout the state and beyond are men than it may appear here and there as a letter to the editor or as i call them and it ran in them couple in topeka recently as a column of but we would want to go to make our voice known this is that many people don't realize how they jive as humanities council really has made it possible for you to spread poetry out to make those appearances in colby in although in all this town's hugo to throughout not just matthiessen can suspend all over the state and some of those are right ways away they really are ya ya hits we make twelve sponsored visits a year as the program is currently set up on two all they have to do the humanities council has the state divided into six regions and we have all of those regions can you know so every corner of the state we

visit but above and beyond those four sponsored visits we accept invitations to go all over the place and talk to a great schools and high schools and book clubs and things like that and i was telling about and i had made close to fifty appearances in twenty sixteen plus to fifty public appearances and i know from talking to the previous poets laureate that they weren't getting around a similar rape or even greater on and so all of that is you know a service to the citizens of kansas and again is coming at virtually no cost and we're happy to do it in the audiences that we see are diverse there old and young and all income tax brackets in and communities of every size and you know we get to kansas city but we also get out liberal and where i'm going in a couple weeks it's you know it's our pleasure too to do it but we weren't rich so many people that way in and it might be one of those things that

can be properly valued until it's gone and then you regretted substance here what would you miss about being cancers poet laureate all of that i think the hectic ii i really enjoyed the process of interviews in poetry people might be a little bit skeptical about it it feels like your own a little bit of all the world like the one magic trick that i'm capable of doing you know if you do encounter someone who's resistant to poetry who has read palms and hasn't gotten them or haven't gotten to them in its fold a little bit of an inversion of poetry because of that experience and you can say it won't let me say this little poem to your real quick and recite a poem that's beautiful and elegantly turned an accessible we don't have it to have a physical copy of it in front of you to follow it and understand what's going on and yet that's profoundly feel like you could revisit it again and again and hear different palm each time you know that look that comes

across people's faces when you share a poem like that with them that i'll be dangling that's apollo bats it's wonderful their mission to poetry a little more of a chance on but so satisfying just being non proselytizing for poetry and says that's my favorite thing to do so that really honored to have a couple years to devote to them when i know you know i've had this conversation before and i think i probably say this day every poet that i have the pleasure of interviewing i myself have oh lot of difficulty reading poetry i have a hard time i hearing the rhythm of the language that i've discovered over the years that i love to hear poetry reciting so i think i may have been one of those people dead in four years would say that the output is not really my thing but through events like ones that you do as the poet laureate hearing poets

recite their poetry or other people's poetry is really an entry into a world that some of us might be a little weary and going well i really mobile lever and i got this from again the poet laureate former us poet laureate robert pinsky who was my teacher a mentor and graduate school i am that the palm on the pages like sheet music that's waiting to be played and not just by the poet who made it necessarily that's something that i would recommend to you and others who might feel a little bit of a failure to make a connection with a poem when they're reading it on the page you don't need to go up a coffee shop or out concert hall and hear the poet read the poem in order to hear it it's meant to be said by you or by anyone who loves the poem on the poem is a fully realize work of art when it's words on the air and that can be you can be the instrument of the medium for that so when you when you see a palm and you're having trouble connecting with him i'd do this all the

time i just been saying it out loud to myself and seeing if i can discover the voice that's their intent and so often i do because it wants to get off the page it wants to be heard a dozen just wannabe writer in the parmesan it's an affair of language but also a musical event but thats i'm a synthesis of meaning in music in language and so it wants to be played a song i'm visiting with eric mchenry he's the outgoing kansas poet laureate eric one of the things we'll do after your tenure as kansas poet laureate is over is an event in topeka honoring gwendolyn brooks tell me about that so when one bridge was born in topeka in nineteen seventeen june seven nineteen seventeen which you don't have to be a mad genius to determine that the center is coming around as your arm and the number two is a magnificent part of first ever in american poet win the pulitzer prize senor really gifted and original you know when

one broke poem anywhere you know instantly that by her if you're familiar with her work i am and tremendously important in terms of her influence on other poets she's associate most closely with the city of chicago because her family moved there and she grew up there very soon after she was born but she was born in topeka and this summer we're going to celebrate that fact and celebrate her life in her poetry with something that we're calling brooks first of gwendolyn brooks centenary celebration for glenn lowenberg centennial celebration and were holding it on saturday june the term for that afternoon at the brown versus the board of education national historic site and one reason we're having it there is that one on bridges mother and this is a little known fact was a teacher at monroe elementary school which is now the brown v board historic site so that may be the most famous segregated public school in the united states had on its faculty the mother of the first african american win the pulitzer prize and that's a fantastic connection and a

great source of local interest and pride and so so we're going to have really anyone who loves a poem by gwendolyn brooks can come and read one will put together a long bill of bridges wins in fact i'd encourage you to come and read and one bridge on a few county maryland good good and our keynote prisoners going to be kevin young to peter bourne or is poet as well who's now the recently named director of the schomburg center for the story of black culture at the new york public library and even more recently named poetry editor of the new yorker magazine one of the most prestigious poetry editing spots in the world so we are full of hometown pride in kevin and his poetry and his nonfiction and his accomplishments and he's somebody who was influenced by gwendolyn brooks so we're bringing him back to talk about her by coincidence those of the foreigners were referred to be guy graduate who is a sometime anchor on the news hour with jim lehrer ran a reporter there

is going to be in town so she's going to come and share a poem by gwendolyn brooks as well and there'll be activities for children and there is going to be a a short a poetry walk along the land and trail that's adjacent to the brown v board site there and we'll have food and ice cream and probably a cake and there'll be student winners of one one berkes the poetry contest from local middle schools and high schools little read their prize winning work and receive their prize is there's going to be a big bucks us which is the name that we've given it and so i mean enjoying playing that i'm looking forward to her husband so a question what is a poetry trail our idea is that a regression our idea is that we'll have like signs are placards that contain a few lines of gwendolyn brooks as pawns and as you walk along insert into burma shave type

way the palm unfolds before you and so it's an island or reading experience as well as a physical experience and an excuse to keep going because you wanna find out how the pollen and so that's that's the plan anyway we're gonna put some signs that ankara months along the trail and people can can read and reflect on women brooks as they walked through her native town what a cool idea is like a pilgrimage through gwendolyn brooks poem that's right that's exactly right and we're thinking it'll begin that thirty seven going to be which is where leveled brooks park is located and began is not far from an intersection with a trail that leads right back to the brown v board say very cool and for the medical aspects of the festival and j mcintyre you're listening to uk pierre presents on kansas public radio today on tape your present i'm visiting with outgoing poet laureate eric mchenry eric has served as poet laureate since two thousand fifteen we can't as

humanities council is expected to announce the new poet laureate in the next week or so eric i can't let you leave today as we celebrate national poetry month without having you recite a poem or to go well for sure by nearby someone ultimately so all of the sale poem by gwendolyn brooks because we're just talking about her here in this is one that i've enjoyed sharing with audiences because everybody has something that they see in it that's unique and something to say about it again it's a short poem not much happens in it but you feel like you've been interviews to an entire rich full complex human life by the end of it it's called the bean eaters the bean eaters they eat means mostly those old yellow pear dinner is a casual affair plane trip wear on a plane and creaking would

tune flatware two who are mostly good to who have lived there a day but keep on putting on their clothes and putting things away and remember anne remembering with twinkling zone twenty years as they lean over the bins in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and colds and coughs tobacco crumbs pieces and friends tell me about that poem what does that stadium it's amazing to say that home and then ask own an audience what they know about this couple isn't explicitly set in the palm and ask them what they see among other things they always know that the couple is poor and not just because i'm light beams mostly but because they

are together in their dotage eating off of the plane should wear on a plane and creaking would and they live in the their rented backroom not their house not their condo not even their apartment their rented a back room and i think because of that word back at the picture in people's minds is often a kind of a dimly lit one it's dinnertime the windows probably are very large businesses a backroom not a front room alone so there's real storm austerity in the poem a sense of real life that hasn't been a life of material wealth but juxtapose that that is the sense of richness and abundance that sit in the palm and ends with that amazing long catalog of things that they're surrounded by none of which sound expensive but each of which sound like they might have a kind of meaning in the lives of these folks whose lives are destroyed his plane at the beginning plane should wear on a plane and creaking would it's repeated by the end were really about beads and dolls and tobacco

crumbs bases and friend has all of these adornments these things that make a wife special and a small that may be meaningful wei and most significantly they have their memories remembering with twinkling eyes and twenties you sense that all the others exporters still listen as pong there's a lot of internal activity as they reach back and sort of touched on leave that significant and beautiful and devastating events of their rich life together and significantly there together they have each other the soul the yellow pear everything that is true one is true of the other two who are mostly good to have lived their day but keep on pulling on their clothes and putting things away it ends with i'm leaning over the beans and so in the tabloid it's emerging in your mind that i am i see them leaning toward each other because early to have them sit there probably on opposite sides of this little table and in this little dimly lit room surrounded by the staff of their life whether they're leaning toward each other maybe not saying anything because

it's old then said and can all go without saying but but in this and carmen a tremendous animus in and togetherness and perseverance odds that it's an endless pool and two i think and then i learned about it from my audience is every time i talk about it somebody points out something to me that i hadn't noticed that at the forum on the poem for twenty five years and haven't memorized for twenty or so and that system isn't just the presence of the receipts really stuck with me i find receipts the most poignant item in that hole liston there you know when the bridge was writing about african americans in the nineteen fifties and sixties urban african americans not wealthy who had been sort of on the margins of society for their whole life and then you ways the mainstream white culture but also on the margins even of poetry and one really important thing that women brooks was among the artists doing in the middle of the twentieth century was showing these lies in all the richness and foremost that had not been deemed this

appropriate subject matter for poetry and that in the past on and so what do those receipts what are they what are they doing there and there's so many different ways that you can interpret them but i've often thought that this is a bubble that's live their whole lives in renton tiny rooms they've been deprived ownership and rights at every turn four seater proof of ownership right there and his islanders are purchased that you can taken away from me and so i imagine those receipts that are around them or that are you know put away and in a drawer somewhere maybe receipts the things that they don't on her anymore like that they're they're broken and they've thrown them away and then on intention never doing anything with that receive but psychologically it sing vacant to have it that always been mined or british within a one of them that i was at this past year someone said you know our receipts that's the southern word for recipes om and this couple does in every american couple in chicago in the mid twentieth century

art they may well i've come north as part of a great migration it's quite possible that quite probable that they came up in the south and dumb and receipts maybe a reference to recipes that i had never heard that before but the recording this prison and several people the room sort of nodded all your receipts may mean recipes there because that's a figure from certain parts of the south when you say a receipt you're talking about a recipe for refugees that's a totally different angle i'm i'm them especially with the starting out you know that they are eating there right thats right singing i hear you're teaching you something else about the boulder because i hadn't thought i thought it's interesting that they're hanging on to recipes you know after some years recipes is it's it's like keep on pulling on their clothes and putting things away recipe is like all make that ad again and the future of living in the future but i had reached back and connected it to the beans you know that that's what they can afford at this point so that got a whole library of recipes there and they're just living on whatever meager savings that they

have they're living on beans but yet there's that hopefulness that forward looking ness of boring to save those receipts your and save those recipes we may need them again someday we're going to use those again someday they may be able to make that yeah that's right when nehemiah fortunes turn a little bit and things come right again that's really terrific thank you again that's an ongoing seminar the border bridge being poetic and those leaders keep learning what a wonderful way to celebrate their centennial of her birth absolutely yeah yeah i mean you know illinois is really going to town with the women brooks this year they're going to literally a hundred of ants in the state of illinois and i heard that hasn't gotten to at least one in topeka i mean c'mon she's only got one birthplace and if ever there were a poet that needs to be celebrated mckamey celebrated another twenty one brooks we're going to do it right away i'd like you to leave us with one of your own pilots perhaps and if you could set it

up for us church or well i've been on what led them on sabbatical the semester jon actually doing some reading them announce also won the life finished kind of recently this isn't a live poetry is pretty autobiographical this one isn't exactly because it's a first person point it's based on a conversation that i had with a friend in seattle we were standing in our front yards talking about houses because in seattle you talk about we will stay a lot ahead just this subject comes up like i like living in new york and on everybody's talking what kind of a deal somebody's on some condo somewhere because it's so much of your money and energy goes into housing or cellphones or china houses senator from your nose area much of a canada cape cod style house unless a room of her house and she said yeah i like it too but you know if you look at it it doesn't have a nose and i thought that's an odd thing to say about a house i mean it's it may be a problem of a person's face eleven lozada but but that they had bought a house meeting and i got to thinking about how i was as do have eyes they're these windows and look out on the world and i've got a

mouth the sonora that takes in and lets out and i somehow says this now houses that they have now you know that are so common in suburbs where the main architectural features the go ride into the houses opens its giant mouth and inhaled you and your car at the end of the day be interrupted by her neighbors as i just got the thing about the ways that architecture certain shapes our lives and our psyches and so i ended up with the slope on what's called no nos we like to stand in our front yard sometimes i'm irritable you regard the house specifically an odd expense of featureless facade were some and we agree should go some jedi porch or portico because the synthesizing i expect that and is bothered by its absence our house has no nose and yet this was the house we

chose why we say the neighborhood the trees are old the schools are good etc and to curb appeal is realty which isn't real but you suspect the metaphor itself is what we've settled for we want a house that doesn't meet the beauty standards of that street a child is going to outgrow her features here and we don't know what aspect she'll soon or whose only that she won't get to choose and when she rubs a little space on the fog a mirror for her face and liens and skeptically and sees familiar asymmetry is you're off plum job my ear and nose she needs to be at home in those that's lovely thank you you know as you're insulting if

i could visualize the house perfectly and us and us sort of a feature less there's the eyes there's the mouth and there's something missing this is music to my ears like you get with a new poll girl wasn't sure if you're a fake accent is letting a house and i could see that just three days and distinctly as i could to the couple in your previous in your previous owner for thinking of a wonderful picture thank you think you are you know when i was writing the poem i didn't know in what direction i was going to go actually like my little complaining reform snout houses was kind of the direction i was having with literature i don't know was it of the house having no nos was significant to me i had to kind of write the poem to find out there and i was kind of late in its composition that that it occurred to me that like what if someone were to buy a house that they actually do like the appearance of because unconsciously they wanted to help prepare their children for whatever face they might eventually have you know if you're aware of your own

world most critical of the flaws of our own appearance is and so you're hyper aware of if there's an asymmetry in your own face or things like that and the idea that you could help mentally condition that child to be at home in physical asymmetries by forcing the child to grow up in a house that has asymmetries are elements that are visually displeasing on its own facade that that struck me as kind of interesting you know it never would've occurred to me before it's not a bizarre thought that i had but the idea that the that a couple would subconsciously choose the house for that reason was singing more interesting than what i was working with to begin with and sort of the target in that direction when the poem ultimately and that being about that that child growing into its features rather than it being up all about the house right right yes exactly yeah that's why i felt finally like it was a poem you know that it went somewhere other than where it had begun it in a sort of spirit's wheels and place and it did surprise me you know like a poem

surprised me and i think the poems that i'm satisfied with most they surprising in some way but they take me on a little journey erik isn't such a pleasure to visit with you and it's been such a pleasure to see you over there two years of year poet laureate set of this and the highlight of the two years for me to then chancellor come in and talk with you it's always a pleasure to speak with someone who is has an interest in poetry among other things and so the sort of about it so thank you to them for a steamy summer day he's been testing the water and again we're celebrating national poetry month on k pr presents i'd been visiting with eric mchenry he's the outgoing poet laureate of kansas kansas humanities council is expected to name his successor in the next week or so and just in time for national poetry month poetry unites kansas is taking your submissions for their statewide essay contest and documentary film project it's a statewide poetry contest where you don't have to be a poet to enter poetry unites

kansas is open to all kansas residents of every age to enter you simply write a short essay about how a specific poem has influenced your life the deadline for poetry unites kansas is may fifteenth two thousand seventeen as faisal be reviewed by a jury of poets writers and teachers video documentaries will be made of the three finalist those documentaries will be presented at special screenings in overland park and in new york city all participants were received an autographed copy of edward hirsch's best selling book how to read a poem and fall in love with poetry you can find out more about poetry unites kansas at their website poetry unites dot com i'm j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio president trump wants to do away with the national endowment for the

arts it would be another blow to a kansas arts community that took a hit when state funding was eliminated a few years ago from the kansas news service bryan thompson took a trip through central and western kansas to find out what government arts funding means to local communities the new york times caused a stir hear what it sent a reporter to haiti's last month to see how the budget cuts have played out there the online story read can the arts thrive without washington a kansas town says yes but brenda mater who heads the hayes arts council says that headline mischaracterized her message i would never claim that that's right but i also know that they will survive just like it off funding is cut off roads in kansas with electrodes and what kind of roads not be the web of routes vader is proud to say that the first arts council in kansas was this one in hades now its fiftieth year her office is in the haze arts center which is currently displaying a striking collection of framed pencil drawings on heavy paper in addition to serving as

the administrator mater is also the janitor and the caregiver she took on these duties after governor sam brownback wiped out the kansas arts commission's six years ago the governor argued that tax dollars shouldn't go to support the arts but later says the arts commission's tax bite was miniscule between twenty five and twenty nine cents per citizen for the entire year so when someone says i don't want my tax dollars to go to the arts how many people wanting to get the quarter if you see a site of the curve these days the state created a new arts funding agency in twenty thirteen but kansas creative arts industries commission has less money to distribute last week commission members visited the small town of lucas known for a hundred year old sprawling jumble of concrete sculptures called the garden of eden lucas as a thriving arts scene especially yard art and then there's the ball plaza a public restroom with an entrance built to resemble a toilet bowl commission chairman larry makers says the arts can make a town unique legacy is a great example right here a community that drives

because of the arts and that draws not just tourism but great people living near maker says the nea matches the funding his group provides the grants are often small but they can make a big difference in a little sound like lucas and i realize the larger station five thousand dollars and so might match that as that helps leverage other money that's rosalyn scholtes su runs the grassroots art center in lucas she realizes that the nea simply doesn't matter to many of the folk artist she works with that's also true for hayes photographer leon start the arts have been around long before there was public funding will probably still the year long after public funding is gone as an artist baking or doesn't become a walk on a funding f y or what i do and i do it because but those who run arts organizations say public funding is important joys harlow directs the lincoln art center about forty miles northwest of saliva her entire budget is thirty five thousand dollars a year are low says a lot of programs

ended when the governor scrap the kansas arts council we can't new artist in residence programs anymore because they don't have the planning and there's some exhibits and we can bring the lincoln art center gets no local tax dollars from the city or county saliva has an embarrassment of riches in comparison the saliva arts and humanities commission is a city department with a budget of one point four million dollars director brad anderson says federal taxes for the nea amount to about forty seven cents per person annually he thinks it would be a huge loss if the art we see hear and experience were funded only by private sources the most democratic thing we could do the most open and accessible thing we could do even on a limited basis is that federal and state funding help the vet representative a neutral voice for many who wouldn't otherwise be able to write a check arts administrator surround kansas are counting on congress to

continue support for the national endowment for the arts when the final budget is approved for the kansas new service i'm bryan thompson the kansas new service is a collaboration covering health education and politics across the state i'm kay mcintyre we'll close out today's program celebrating national poetry month with one of my favorite poems to gates is by former kansas poet laureate denise low two gates i look through glass and see a young woman of twenty washing dishes and the window turns into a painting she as myself four years ago she holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot i still own i see are outlined agents lamplight she knows only her side of the plane the porch where i stand is anti sunlight fades

it or water running the sink and he lowers her head blind to the future she does not imagine i exist i stepped forward for a better look injured as salsa the lumber and paint a gay guy pass through to the next life loses shape once more i stand square it into the present among maple trees and scissor tailed birds in a garden almost a mother to that faint distant that's two gates by denise allow she's served as kansas poet laureate from two thousand seventy two thousand nine we've been celebrating national poetry month on today's keep your prisons one last reminder about the poetry unites kansas contest it's the contest for poets and non poets like where you write a short essay about a poem that has affected your life you can find out more about poetry nights kansas at their website poetry unites dot com

i'm kate mcintyre kbr percent is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas hi scott horsley white house reporter for npr news we are coming up on the one hundred day of the trump administration it has been a tumultuous time an eventful time sometimes a surprising time and always an interesting time where our recap those hundred days in a panel discussion recorded the goal is to do it along with tim miller and you had a mascot i hope you'll join us and k pr presents that's on next week's kbr presents with npr white house correspondent scott horsley k pierre presents at seven o'clock sunday evening on kansas public radio