Kansas Notable Books, Part II

still looking for that perfect gift for the readers on your shopping list consider a book from the campus know i'm connected tired and today and kbr percent we'll look at some of the best books written by kansans more about cannes is selected by the kansas center for the book at the state library of kansas on last week's show we heard from the authors of seven of the fifteen bucks if you missed it it's archived on her website tv artifacts hey you got this week we'll look at the rest of the kansas notable books starting with nothing right by antonia nelson she was born and raised in wichita she joins us by phone from her home in new mexico thanks for joining us today now tell me nothing right is a different than the other cancers notable books in that it's not a novel it's a collection of short stories other than the fact that most of them are set in kansas is there a common theme that winds its way through your stories reading that intentionally being wound

fit and i think or a year the fashion fairly very quickly make themselves known in town you know at our own work with a fairly high degree of unconscious business and jam for me working out whatever is happening in my life my aid my fire is in and in general the short story and fell atf the long effort to two fairly straightforward question but i think the nature of family relationship their personal relationship with small gestures between people who are internet the other thing that fit that intrigued me and these days because i have children who are having having into adulthood i think a hat i began writing a lot unfair middle age and the wave to that transitional period in life oddly enough reflect

manning can resemble one another so i think if anything i think that was probably the main the main business of the collection of stories from that benefit the thing exactly the definitely the subject matter of months but the story of you know as i was reading your story is the one thing i kept coming back to was how messy life is and how complicated families and relationships are and i came across a quote from another collection of short stories of yours female trouble the character peter mcbride who says now that he became one it's surprise mcbride how few adults were grown ups and i thought that really characterized a lot of the characters in your stories yeah yeah i agree that he had been one of the great revelations of my life that you know everything that you fly in seventh grade live in la he keep that happened right back out that yes if anything to help that gray area would be

no way the stuff of trouble and get ready for a feel it fits only hyena like this get good to get from coping strategies in place now you were born in which a tie and graduated from tay you that you now live in new mexico colorado and texas divided your time between between those homes in these stories ten of the twelve stories are set in kansas what do you think for having these stories in kansas lens you bet setting them in colorado or texas or new mexico might not afford you we thought that anyone if they get it can be frequently in one of the places where i gather with my family that often are fighting live it's a very evocative fighting for me because i grew up there all my formative experiences that the child teenager to play fair and you know flannery o'connor i believe one fad something about it if you've managed to

survive each for you know the story for a lifetime flow every day after the related to formative years and allergan experience without the word became a reader very educated for the most part it back there's been probably a month year and chances that that my mother's home with my feelings then and other family members and i think all of my stories require the fifth purely logistical that fungi meyer stores require a feed it five of which lived mostly with his life that story and yet small enough for one kind of interrelated nafta large enough for another an audio clip of i live if that feith i live in a small city in new mexico truth of about ninety thousand people a very small town in colorado telluride we have you know maybe twenty five hundred people and then an

enormous the tv you know the third fourth largest city in the country would deprive a ninety five due to work with for me for whatever reason and they have you know their house is that its own character in my mind and it appears the name of story populated by entirely different path of characters each time that the house remained with you know youthful container for me for my fiction andrea i'd like you to read an excerpt from when your stories the first heard of the three cause we and a wiry the neighborhood at its famous all around the block for being bad are large family was not the result of catholic faith and we didn't attend left in fact the church or school despite the fact that it would lift them throw away from a week through the sound that we knew every weekday morning michel the path by a home girls in plaid the poison blade there if they gave an ad if you have derek rose

the second tied around the neck you thought planning at the ankle be a record called the fbi or bs we could shriek curse thing you're never in trouble beata became the children had to put up with it all the live long day we like conditioned them formally quote at the mercy of the land the archetype old maid brandishing their legendary arctic picking up effects art torture in a well appointed didn't no wonder everyone left vs her bedraggled that's antonio nelson reading from nothing to write a collection of short stories and our first book from the kansas notable book list tony this has been such a pleasure talking to you and it i appreciate the country you know i really can't avoid hearing i think a likely my next guest is richard jennings the author of ghost town a novel for young adults i visited richard at his home

in overland park where he lives with his three toxins the stone is the story of thirteen year old spenser honesty who finds themself the last kid in the dying town of paisley kansas in fact richard most of the protagonist in your many books are eleven twelve thirteen years old once that i'm extremely fond of that age group first of all i believe them to be the custodians of optimism they are at the less a fully use of life when everything is possible they believe they believe in magic they believed in all possibilities they believe they can be a astronauts are bell ringers or president of the united states or you name it

they believe it's still possible there are at the cusp of the time in their lives when his urine turned sour because as teenagers and beyond there's hard times hit my calling is to speak to them at this time when they still have a choice and to let them know that crew they are is the part that matters they may need to shore they may be too tall their ears may hang down they may be too fat they may live and dysfunctional families but not a single one of them is expected to be taylor swift and you know

that's the message that they're being given and so my job is to tell them no that's not true you were to be who you are to find that person with him to make something of that person each protagonist in each of my novels is a kid who feels different from everybody else which is not my imagination because every kid feels different if we look at the book ghost in ghost town is a story from adult readers details about the last appeared in a dying chances so he falls back on some of the techniques that he used when he was very young

the first being the recall of his imaginary friend in this case it happens to be an indian chief but it could be ended and with the help of his imaginary friend and his own imagination in his own ingenuity and his own self determination he's a loophole himself out of the circumstances and ultimately about the end of the book in his own special way saved the town save himself and redeem his relationship with his one true love the girl who lived nine storm moved away and so it ends on a happy know but it takes a true grit and it takes a lot of faith but he discovers he can do it and i think that that is a truthful

authentic piece of fantasy the number of private richard have you read the opening of your book ghost town the settlers called les deux well i guess it makes it official us and to chief lippert for an oil stained gravel crunch beneath the eighteen big tires of the mayflower moving van of olive green will once clattered into the ditch is a heavily laden transport made a wide right turn on the highway ninety nine followed by the entire alderson family and their affiliated silver you i am now the last kid in paisley cannes is already a spider had begun to form a web on the boulders and mailbox the first of three mismatched resting galvanized steel boxes that stay and then the crooked road top and cut post rocks

like sentries dosing on duty somehow animals know this one a big fat yellow and black they're inspired dangled in the late summer kallman for tossing a stick us so to the tombstone shape door that for years had creaked open the brink and boulders and his monthly video game magazine it is well known that our lives hang by search for it it is less understood that the lives of an entire towns do first the factory close says it's working parts strips and shipped overseas the only able bodied people who owned the land decide to try their luck someplace else

foreclosed on mobile homes are trucked away like coyotes skulking through the night the future over who live in regular houses or bust thirty miles away to school in one by one the shops were cafe the gas station and the old folks' disappear as if there'd been a great adoption like creatures from another state the last to vanish of the grain elevator and the post office since my mother is a letter carrier contractor the very last wagon out of ten most likely will include me that's the opening page of ghost town by richard jennings of overland park richard thanks for talking to us today they can prove it just up the road is our next author on the kansas notable vocalist andrea warren her nonfiction children's book is under siege three children

at the civil war battle for vicksburg andrea joins us by telephone from her home in prairie village welcome andrea you what is your interest in writing a book about the battle for vicksburg they're drawn to stories of children in war ii can't i had a daughter adopted from vietnam during the vietnam war that i've been a major interest of mine and therefore all of my books for young readers are about children and war and i'm not afraid to tough topic of my bestselling book is called surviving hitler a boy in the nazi death camp five offering to keep from saigon how vietnam war orphan i became american boy hell you know and in both in fifth of them taking on a really tough topic fell for me to write their book bachelor them or and then to do this particular one if not unusual at all i don't think given my special interests in syria you go through this experience that why it's a topic

i got interested in victory eight years ago i think the first time i ever heard about it i was never a person who read history and you got it the name for the rigors of a crime for the general for the battlefields of what i always wanted to stop in hear more about the people who are going to the experience different for the reasons why even though it may not be so historically accurate we all love gone with the wind you know the whole war started there but we hear about it we get there we have a story that people and down and in this particular instance what happened was that i had an eighth grade boy at me one day after i had talked about dividing hillary about gay pride flag on he just very flippantly the fed turning to walk away good yeah but those things really happened to get another country and i got to thinking about that i thought he doesn't know he doesn't know what happened right here on our show i'll know it we just heard there in the back of my mind and i started combining it with my

interest in vicksburg because i know when i first heard that big bird in a cup if little town of five thousand people on the banks of the mississippi river probably about one thousand of them were children and they all gather into a parable feet you know when they were being shelled night and day and that they were being starved and that went on for over forty day for this is really happening as an experienced it was just the fun for kiev and that was for a doll and down even as the gulf might try to shelter children that have meaning if a fairly could do it fell that that we've parted with shifted have american children read if you know what happened right here in the united states and a court in the process they often learn a great deal about the war andrea what i did not realize until i read your book was while vicksburg was under seize they didn't just stay in their homes and and watch the cannibals flyby date dead and the elaborate system of

tunnels around the town of vicksburg can you describe that for soares you know that's really what when a bear live by fewer than a dozen people in vicksburg were killed during the feature that that really strikes me as a really remarkable eat i have to amend that by playing that in the couple of years following the feature many many people died and how often they went back to the deprivation that they suffered during their feet or more one cause i'm not not only the starvation the heart of the incredible stress of all that one a remote cave but i am but i'm picking all of that how their village very fitted into their lungs all the chemicals from the pounding that they were taking without the gals from the federal defender of developed by the cave i am with ahab had circled vicksburg three five fourth tied with the mississippi river and the big effect either the huge guns and started telling

fema grant we've been a cake baked or no matter what whatever it be careful you not big bird would be huge benefit were on the cliff i mean the bluff overlooking the mississippi river and down the union could not get their ships up and down and if it be because they wake of that victory and abraham lincoln had found his generals big forgive the key and he handpicked grand and grant handpicked we ensure him and to come with him they were going to get this done they had no idea where they take nearly a throng of a dig that took a last eighteen months ending with the economy with the four ethan and they feed but going back to everything before the remarkable thing is that there were so few casualties and at the time of the features and bath the curve bricks were built up into the hills overlooking the river in very beautifully he gets high incredible view well if we allow me

and you can be a dad like a very easily up people didn't like cave because they were full of scorpion kiev they were hot and it triggered a one woman said that i'm living in a cave in vicksburg with like that with living like tree with and that probably described it pretty well nobody liked it but they were safe they were underground and unless there was an explosion that that could knock down the roof above them which is how we feed almost lost her life than they were safe in there and that's where they were spending their time they were in a cave andrea can i get you to read a passage from the underseas there's a wonderful story about a union soldier named bill aspinwall that i'd like you to share with us no i tell them all union folger had fought hard all day he'd been shot and shoulder but could not get medical attention because an injury with light compared to that of many others in pain into traffic get anything more he bedded down on a corner of the battlefield

nearby led confederate soldier who was severely wounded i think i find an offer to share a blanket on the shoulder accepted that they fought against each other hours before now they and the stars and topped the confederate was growing weaker fearful he died he get out and walk hard with the draft a name for these wife and children and afghan village family know what had happened to him after mark promised he would he drifted off to sleep and when he awoke the confederate with a dead after mark wouldn't right because the shoulder injury they found another soldier who penned a letter to the confederates why vinnie made its way to a confederate field hospital and gave the letter to an officer who think they would feel it was delivered recap of kindness for not uncommon grant later read a battle is raging one can feel it then he mowed down by the thousands or the ten thousand with great composure and after about the themes are distracting and one of them actually give birth to do much to alleviate

suffering of an enemy at a friend it's been a terrible day on both sides with a combined estimate of over eight thousand men dad describing the ballot champion you know one culture commented we killed each other as fast as we could that's andrea warren of prairie village reading from her children's nonfiction book under siege three children at the civil war battle for vicksburg one of the most enjoyable things about weeding through the kansas notable books list is it includes old wide variety of genres children's nonfiction and fiction adult fiction and nonfiction and on this year's list a graphic novel my next guest is matt violin he is the illustrator and author of the storm in the barn a graphic novel about the dust bowl he joins us by telephone from his home in philadelphia welcome that now where did you get the idea to write

a graphic novel about kansas during the dust bowl days mr oliver i carried my dad had three books now big coffee table photography books of the work the work progress administration photographers from nineteen thirty thirty lang and other people and i've been through this book and a little agrarian struck by the party than any young agent for a haunted me for years stan a fascination of the pulpit on that photograph in and i got older i just i kept my fascination you know i retired i booked on the boat for nightfall them and read them in you know it sort of and back my head of the great setting for a story but it took me a couple decades to actually come up with a story that would work with or other iowa went back to his photographs so just a brief description of the story behind the storm in the barn it's set in nineteen thirty seven kansas i've likened thirty five and kansas in the small town of the name the town an old boy named

jack clark an eleven year old boy in a family of they're farmers been devastated by that storm about the storms and they are at the end of the road i mean calvin's at the end of their rope and we want a friendly feelings if you're sort of useless on that farm because he said that the storm came when you're a very young age and living there for years i mean grownup but never had a chance to show his father that he could be a useful person on the form of the wi five drifts around for like tumble week and one day he discoveries in a neighbor's barn owl moon a sort of anointed things away but it's a rather dark figures that the name may be the key to wind the rain has gone away and yes to it for to find the courage to confront that we should explain that this unlike the other books on the kansas notables book was this book as a graphic novel and yet it's a really

serious story yeah well you know i grew up reading old comic actually in the seventies reprints of things like flash gordon and prince valiant but my dad while for me that he remembers the kid and and i didn't read comics at all really for a couple you know and twenty years ago when i came back to is mauro coming out of the media moderate than an illustrator picture books and then i realized that this would be a way to tell a story in my head that i could use visuals as much as i wanted to because as an illustrator everything visual and i cannot use violence i could i could tell my story through the pictures which was very fascinating to me and for its objectives of the double i wanted it to be a style and a possible second feel that that elation and because i did i get me because i'm not steeped in comic coloring them all the time i really have my own preconceptions that have to be a superhero

story or have to feel a certain way or why read a certain way you know i i fell a bit more free to do just published or that i want to tell using the medium of comics are sequential storyteller everyone a call at our end it didn't continue to me to be a reason why you couldn't tell a serious story or spooky story story with or emotional resonance they're certainly are graphic novels and comics that and i have the emotional weight out there so that's nothing new but it's just it's a medium you can tell pretty much any kind of story you want to weaken the medium of comics it doesn't have to be super heroes or you know something funny and goofy as we've already said this book is set in nineteen thirty seven kansas it's during the dust bowl it hasn't rained for years so not surprisingly most of the pictures in it are done in

brown's and graves talk to me a little bit about your use of color and in a storm in the barn i approached the colorful <unk> in a dramatic way of using color of liverpool so i wanted to have everything outside and the lions beat a dusty brown and gray because i wanted to show as much as i could through the pictures and give the reader an experience of the idea of cutting everywhere because during the dust bowl it was everywhere you could keep it out of your mouth and hair and a close the entire palate to feel like the surrounding everyone other people in the pics and me the pictures are in black and white and for the nod to the black or white the park and you know with such the groundwork for me and then i have the contrast of the brain which is personified in the storm came and that in the barn for everything in the barn every bahraini below in a feeling blue in the pictures you know when you're in the world of the barn by keeping the colors very minimal like that

i could bring in other colors when i wanted them for a dramatic our reader so when jack's mother tell him about the days before the dust bowl i brought in full color brewing green and blue skies so when she's throwing better memory what it used to be like i can use color in that way too to lighting everything up and show them how different their world the world was before the cain and then also i could hold back a color like red our continued until very late in the book and then i can use red in a very dramatic way because the first time he read around three hundred the pages the perfect how much about how i will approach the color a new authority to me a world that the colored injuring some of the wine across america with us so from that our way it from approaching it by thinking about the color and that way i could use the color dramatically now i want to read for just a minute from another kansas notable but albert marion's years of does your

reaction to two to this and i'm quoting here many planes people turn to religion for support and for rain the hopi indians in arizona dancer ancient snake dancers with rattlesnakes and other natives feces holding a squirming reptiles as they danced hoping and caress them with their hands to kiss them with their lives families time to beg the great spirit to send rain white people crowded into churches singing hymns and praying for an end to the drought desperate people turn to superstition thinking it might force rain from the sky some farmers killed snakes and to rape them belly side up along the fences in kansas highways were lined for miles by dead snakes on barbed wire their bellies facing skyward yeah i use the mekong beyond the fence posts snowden you barb wire used the critical wooden fences that that could actually mailed earthquake too i found out about that little detail in the worst hard time the show with a

prize winning book about the dust bowl and i got really wanted to go to a draft of that people were carrying the superstition i also wanted to just have the brakes on the post had just come across another one show farmers putting them there or you know i don't want anyone to own up to an enormous and when to get across that if us they protect that they would maybe not play that they would win a minute there there were deadly ideas but this would bring the rain they were terribly desperate i also put in a fit of a flim flam man at some point and you know he's trying to get farmers to pay him to our youth and under apparatus to bring the rain and what he actually have if you look at the picture of the sort of like a big old kettle drum from an orchestra that you would write letters on and things like that that can pull people that this would be something that was sort of my way of kind of showing the desperation but yaffe of the fish and then they would try anything and it went on for a long time and were desperate sad another paragraph from years of dust inhaling does

have long lasting effects after a storm a survivor recall people spout up lots of dirt sometimes three or four inches long and as big around as a pencil many fell ill with still opposes a lung disease caused by inhaling to us from various minerals are coal miners called the disease black lung claims people called it just pneumonia by whatever name they just acted like powdered glass slowly cutting the lungs to shreds yet the money out when i first learned about that i knew i had to use that in the book it affected younger children and then the only most dramatically but everyone was unflappable two with the idea that you could have and be inhaling so much the thing that almost chokes you in as if it's red or long for marvel image i wanted to get that particular film and two jack orders for authority because i wanted them to introduce that the family obviously cannot show for performance dying girl flew in danger of losing one of her children

which objects or sister and the money was a way to bring it in and when i have a dirty inner room she shoot her bed is run by catholic people would put up all of the netting and there's an attempt to keep that the public which couldn't keep about there isn't much you can do about the ammonia being inspired by the money i also created the idea i made an economy that the idea that the man checked out with some of the local doctor suspects jack may be suffering from without it injects fathers and that meant it was my own invention but it seemed if you pull the ball that people construction of reality might feel older wild about watching their farms in the world and you mentioned his sister dorothy and this book has quite a nod to the wizard of oz yeah i yeah when looking at the events that faith were that were affected by that the small can vote with clearly the one for me that you've become a free storm in a bar and the what i really wanted to

explore the idea that american fairy tale and the closest thing we really have to american fairy tale there open palms of the word and they've been around nineteen hundred though i knew if you had a little girl in kansas and her name was largely then she'd be reading of books obviously that would be something he would throw of the internet and i found having at the villain unknown king and they have a reference to a deadly deadly like destroying desert in the book and i really i knew that i could have thirty reading that book in my book and find hope we find some quotations from bomb that would work with my story and i did so am i could you've got a commentary of my own american fairy tale that i was writing that's the storm in the bar and find that fail and matt thanks so much for joining us today my next author from kansas notable book list lived through the dust bowl days of the depression world war one world war two and most of the twentieth

century from her home in mansfield green kansas sees any of the flint hills or annul i'm sorry if i visited with abby and her coauthor daughter their breasts or a sportsman in june two thousand ten at the tall grass writing workshop and emporia state university and he talks about the first time she saw one of those big dust clouds roll into town i was out in the front yard and in our lives and that they are great and that when i looked down there it helps develop the west of our place and i i was praying for a month here these clubs peeked over the hill all got rain ms khan well when i got close they got dusty and dusty close the windows and doors and a

man came in from the fields covered with us we had dinner it got darker and darker when my sister and i went to sleep and it was black and white really want to sleep in the morning we awakened a song shiny but the wonder is streaked with much range rocket part of the pacific ring mom you know mom one of the things that you've shared with me was the confusion because there was no communications of people really didn't understand what was happening they were sitting here seemed for the first time this thing that was almost biblical and proportions this darkness surrounding the house and as i recall you said people sat around and said what's happening they believe the next dail will happen and thirty we went to go and everyone was talking about it but they didn't

really have any great comprehension of what had happened and i know it it's hard to realize how or when we needed rainfall vetted here we go this i don't think it did very much good for crops so you were a teenager during the dust bowl days as well is that the worst of the great depression what you remember is the hardest thing about getting to that period well i think it was the heartache of what you heard them what's happened to other people because on the farm where we had considerable security they only think one of the things my dad worry about with plain fact that he never saw anything until he heard that i'm saving the money until you get stuck in the blank however it was devastating to a lot of people because it's a tremendous bankruptcies all even banks were going into bankruptcy too so want a

private people and it was a very depressing time you know i think it's interesting because you're saying how relatively well off you are because you lived in the flint hills you have water you have land that helped arm and you had an ability to gather some crops and some feared and yet you also mentioned in the book how you went seven years your parents went seven years without any income and you considered yourself relatively well off and that just gives you an example of lawful we have another advantage we get that entertainment we had more with friends we had a baby holder never heard that tickets or swam again and that within this summer in the lighter timeline at the river rose over we skated toasted marshmallows and oakley played tennis and we play cards and we had the

house party and i think that with an idea of thought that they could be a good because the event tremendous support from the community and that they had so many activities i ask you to read a selection from your mom's bike and then it if i get your reaction to two those statements that he made in europe are sure to hear is the first one i listened to the tv and radio and they all seem to indicate that this could be a terrible time but if i close my eyes i remember back when i open them and see what we have today i think today's haven't i feel like it felt untrue but i am today unemployment rate is only ten percent in the thirties it was twenty five percent today i read newspaper the other day the corn selling for eight dollars a bushel my father could hardly get underway

and we have for religion so much of finance today that i have a hard time associated with the depression in writing this book with your mom what do you feel like you learned about her and her generation that you didn't know before well i've learned so much about my mother i really got the chance to see my mother as a young barefoot girl and i sort of fell in love with the little girl kay mabie the flag tells it was really a wonderful sense of discovery and surprised to see your mother that way and i've always known that mom had just wonderful personal traits and i think one of the other things i learned is that kansas a special mama's a product of kansas and experiences she had in kansas and that the values that she learned there helped her achieve many of the things that really mattered to her my arm i think she says at best the very end of her book and

if it's ok with you i'd like to read the last sentences of the blog where she sounds that she's does the book really covers the first twenty years of her life in this last section she's looking back from a ninety year perspective on her life overall and the last two glass sentences are there was a lot of the living but parts of the never left the flint hills of kansas i knew what it was to work hard to be frugal i expected to a little of others perhaps but i also knew that the desire for a future the gift of an education the joy of learning and the abiding strength of the human spirit which is a strong and it's deep as the prairie grass so i guess when i learned is kansas a special and the people in it that's ninety five year old adeline story is the author of abbey

of the flint hills i talked to abby and her coauthor daughter deborah story spreads men in emporia in june two thousand ten we finish our look at the kansas notable books with two collections of poetry the first is to the stars kansas poets of the ad astra poetry project a collection edited by denise low former poet laureate of kansas she joins me in the k pr studio i can he says hello tell me what exactly is the and asked her poetry project as poet laureate of kansas two thousand seven to two thousand and nine i collected a series of poems and then wrote explanations of them and biographies holden about the poet all to babe contained on one page so that these could be printed out and posted are used in schools as they were armed and then at the end of the two years i collected

what i had into book form how did you select what poets and which poetry and made it into your collection well i feel bad because there are many many good poets that i just ran out of time and energy because i could've doubled the size but i started to thinking i would do a lot of historic poets i start with langston hughes and love william stafford in gordon parks and then as the project evolved it can tend to be more committed to making people aware of contemporary poets around them and so then i buy a kind of collected there needs to be a second volume of the pre nineteen ninety eight el now poets and gotten the oysters just focus on living poets denise as the poet yourself what type

of pleasure would you gain from publishing a work of other people's poetry you know the great pleasure of being a poet is learning from the inside how the art form works so that when i read other people's poems especially good poems i can understand how they are crafted and then also how they transcend craft so our maria many people can write a perfectly lovely rhyming couplets about something that can be very mechanical but there is that moment with poetry where jumps off the page it transcends those two dimensions in to a third or fourth dimension and by working with dewey in the process myself then i get great pleasure in reading other people's poetry it i think the real mark of the good poets is that they've read widely and deeply into our art form

now i know better than to ask you if you have a favorite or two because i'm sure that would be like asking a parent who their favorite child as i am and how you can pick out one or two that you read for me today ok ok one of my favorite characters in kansas is a chicago born guy albert gold bars that which does state who's lived here so long now again i had to think about what about these immigrant hanson's arm he's then air which just ate over twenty years and i think he now if he can survive the climate that lawyer deserved to be called a kansan and so he is one of the most celebrated poets of our day he's won every kind of a warrant you can imagine including the national book awards national book critic circle award and so forth and i'd like to read you an excerpt from his poem

wings and this is a racially published in a book from graywolf press down and i believe it's remote it's reprinted and in the kitchen sink the kitchen sink new and selected poems and this is wang's i always wondered why they called them wings perhaps because somebody's always waited in shadow in them with a rope with a rope like a great graded nerve and while some suisse ing being or a bloody melee completely filled the central light this person would raise or lower for god it's some are hard some are the land enameled i find the bird already have dismantled by ants the front half it's flying steadily into the other world so needs to be

atheists still do a mumble yes though i actually pray yes yes but not for the bird when we love enough people a bird is a rehearsal that's lovely isn't that amazing another one for me at home let's say hey i at our little love when the rod tree does is scary ot invades your dreams our she says living kansas city some years but she grew up he and file are our graduate from manhattan high school are when the k state and then dropped out to the hitchhike to haight asbury and you'll have to read the book to find out the conclusion another good chance and with her in her quest to california and back and she is

of cherokee dissent and so this is coyote invades your dreams you're staying clear of him just because you noticed him once or twice doesn't mean you want anything to do with him he's been a few and above you an inside you and your dreams his smells drinks you deep and you come up empty and gasping for air and for him that trade or your body clings to him like a life raft in this hurricane you're dreaming his face above yours loses its knowing smile as he takes you again this night you drown in your own desire coyote marks you as he is you wait to the memory of a growl that's denise low former poet laureate of kansas and author of to the stars

kansas poets of the ad astra poetry project a collection of forty eight poems from forty eight cans of poets one of the poets featured into the stars is kevin raye best of emporia he's also the author of his own book on the kansas notable books list leases flying electric piano i caught up with kevin at a recent reading at the lawrence public library where he explains the story behind the name of the book and we're very serious it was just always yeah i was

so how is the keyboard and it always flying into the busy intersection a forty seven to may you know one hit it and we said let's just throw it into this dumpster when you carried it out on the road now i said let's take a tear you apart and we did it has to it is a perfectly for us i practiced time that's really base than in atlanta last century or slow we're rising and when it will groucho

it is and if they get some sampling here when i read is a section called head injury is releases one wonder you know and these are not told in order there were scrambled are partially because that's how militaries sometimes works it's a little bit like watching all the action and some things where he and bill preston still see the scarf over and over and i remember what i decided to do this on a mexican portrait then i saw most on austin city limits was mixing and i thought that i could do something like that are perched on a low budget and with a portable cd player so obvious his head injuries and his whole fragility would not

we're weak and you position our jupiter journey back down but senator alaska i think that beginning july after she has dark hair that flows around her shoulders as their magic joan baez is here then girl is about it and she refuses to eat we'll cross she says her name is jodi i say great match for a full support for offshore while across the table and i think that if i die now i will have done one thing or toe

touches on the table but then the dog scan it is time my wife arrives a job he leaves just as he sees my wife i think the blue humor and i had it as over ikea's there i realized that her expression polls regarding the wife was the year cats here is one is called bad credit cards i had a credit card in my hands and i don't believe that until it came apart again you have to be so good about all of this and go out dancing tonight we were deciding to divorce this will be the last time i spoke out a corpse afterwards the art that you made our clothes are given as well although they would not talk between us to silence woods hole is in the whole

city merry christmas there was the joy is still in your voice last doris burke his store where this happened i was lying down i don't grace and he's like this is our

neighbor the world germany's find much faster going to the grocery store was like walking into the combat everything assaults of the alliance be over or conversations did you it is mr traylor that's kevin merida is an oreo reading from his collection of poetry lisa's flying electric piano before that to the stars by denise lull idea of the flint hills by adeline stories the storm in the barn by matt

failin under siege by andrea warren ghost hound by richard jennings and nothing right by antonia nelson i hope you've enjoyed this look at this year's kansas notable books the best books by kansans or about kansas selected by the kansas center for the book at the state library of kansas for a complete list of all the cancers notable books visit the website of the cancer center for the book at debuted debbie debbie you that casey at the bat info again matt casey as be that info a special thanks to roy byrd director of the center for all his assistance with this week's programme if you missed last week's k pr presents part one of the kansas notable books list it's archived on our website k pr director jay you dot edu i'm kate mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas a week from

now the gifts will be unwrapped the holidays and christmas will be over or will in december twenty six is boxing day st stephen's day only the second day of the twelve days of christmas time and katie are present will look at the days after christmas with a special broadcast of the long running kaleidoscope radio series that if not next sunday evening on kansas public radio until then we've got lots of holiday programs to get you in the spirit including highlights from the university of kansas holiday investors a festival of nine lessons and carols and much more for a complete list of kansas public radio's holiday programs visit our website tv are actually and from all of us to kansas public radio happy holidays