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april may be the cruelest month according to poet ts eliot that that may make it the perfect time to celebrate national poetry month i'm kay mcintyre and today and katie our quiz than highlights from poet moriarty a gathering of twenty poets laureate from across the country kansas poet laureate carried miriam colbert organized the event which was held in lawrence on march thirteenth and fourteenth two thousand eleven today's program is a joint production of kansas public radio and new letters on the air it until you land later this hour we'll hear angela speak with the poet laureate who traveled the farthest for poet laureate the peggy schumacher the poet laureate of alaska but first two poems from ted kooser who served as poet laureate of the united states from two thousand four to two thousand six his book the lights and shadows one that two thousand five pulitzer prize for poetry kooser lives on in a great outside lincoln nebraska he's introduced here by the poet laureate of iowa mary squander when i was a young student at the iowa writers'

workshop i remember when they pick up a copy of the saturday review when we had a saturday review and the saturday review reviewed poetry and every week i'm amazing thing and in there was that will review them and said you know we've got these band oh it's better than that and that ended that everybody acknowledges that they're great but the really great poet is ted kooser in nebraska another interesting and the review said he'd he's the person to follow so ah but for the last thirty years i followed ted kooser and he i've come full circle with ted cruz there because i ended up on an early reading and loving his work in his prose and but actually now i live in ames iowa right around the corner from where he grew up and he has written in his prose work about that

neighborhood and how much it's meant to him so it says it's he and i are coming home together today and i want to say that he was so gracious and coming to us today when he just accepted my invitation and drove himself here an eerie as it's a real thrill to to present him to use to give him a warm welcome i'm delighted to be here i'm on the number france years and i see them in we had a pouring in like this in north dakota a number of years ago as it will go that and i'm get to see some of those people are going to pay for the first time i am i'm delighted that i get to read furst because when i've been honestly of poets like this and i have to read like six day i can't hear anything that happens ahead of my reading because i was

so nervous about so i i get to read first and then i'm going to take and establish a precedent by going and sitting in the audience i am man i'm an introvert or one supporter and reverse an act shortly after i was named borat my and my friends began coming to me and putting a hand on my shoulder and saying it doing this are you doing ok and how's your otherwise you are the dog's nose that you're gone a lot of sort of just on an answer this was my experience as the as the us poet laureate success i can feel the thick yellow fans of applause building up in my arteries france yet i go on a fool for adoration do it here that when it sloughs off it is likely to

go straight to the brain i'm already showing the first signs of poetic aphasia the words coming hard percent absence of metaphorical longer connecting but look at me down on my knees next to the podium lapping the last drops been rolling in the sting like a dog getting the smell in my good tweet sport coat the grease on my sweet elbow patches and for what well for the women i walked past the next morning the ones in the terminal wheeling their luggage it looking so beautifully earnest all for the hope that they will certainly donnelly their nostrils squeeze the hard carry on handles and rise to the right leaning odor of praise with which i have basic myself stinking to heaven i'm gregory just one more on this is a longer form on recently during

the us a review on it's a call about this time of the year when it is spring one day in winter the next day in spring the next day after that and his moving back and forth and i'm trying to describe what it was like or i live on a morning like this a morning in early spring first light and under stars are known glides out of darkness to settle on its nest of shadows spreading its feathers to shake out the night above a satellite one shining be mercury bearing thousands of voices roles for dr light in the east but they differ for months left afloat in a bucket of stars is starting to leak it's morning and sells a little and the north a rabbit bounces over the yard like are not at the end of a rope that the new day real stand touching the night and calling it away a fat robb and bobs her head having a cloth for table pulling the

threat of a worm in the neatly biting off my wife sharon olds who ruled steps off a fifty are going to the dawn out of the road to get the newspaper each step with its own singular sound easily linda when break dance of the breeze the windmill turns clockwise antics to a stop no other day like this one across it's like a wooden match ohio blue chip flavors in the shadows the drip from accounts about this is a morning that falls between wafers a morning that hangs a dirty gray from the sky like a sheet from a bachelors bit hung out to dry but not dry at here i'm a mormon or cool and my wife with an x bearing the news and both hands like a tree along the road to east and west on the dark north side a fence posts and fingers of shadowy snowdrifts plug and straighten the fringe on a carpet of fields clouds floating like

ships flying the penance of jesus and the trees like tuning forks began the home no light rain fingers the porch roof trying the same cold key over and over squares of raindrops cold is dimes and its worn gray curtain of clouds flows out of the broken windows sky icy patches of shadows race over the hills no other day like this one not ever again now for only a moment so he says across the singles he'll be stranded on film and sobering and the wind dies a threadbare dog is a slowly shake out than draped across the morning too thin to cover anything for long none other like this all winter the year it was sealed away leader frost like a layer of paraffin over the apple jelly or the white disk of chicken fat on simplistic rule but now in court in ships with dripping roofs or tractors

warm her engine's burning the feathery mouse nest from red exhausts rattling the jars of kerrigan's shaking gaskets on nails and stirring the dirty rags of cardboard and young farmers who already this morning put on the faces of my ancestors and it showed the call racists of grandfathers fathers uncles deep in their pockets stand framed in wreaths of diesel small looking out on a wet black fields from doors that opened in the spring in first life i'd been detained on me i still the old ball of my hands was wet leaves and listen to my face a rich broth of browns and yellows and breathe the vapor spiced with royals and i suspect it's a pinch of keene this is the life none other like this that was ted cruz a former us poet laureate and

the first poet to give a reading that poem moriarty two thousand eleven the recent gathering of poets laureate in lawrence next up marilyn taylor the former poet laureate of wisconsin thank you what a pleasure to be here i i was here on the year ago when all this was just a little figment of our menu to imaginations and it has blossomed into something so wonderful by virtue of the of the efforts of the people who live here and who in all the generous supporters of this event and thrilled and delighted i'm also thrilled and delighted to be able to read a poem that was featured on ted cruz ears american life in poetry which is such an honor only last week and so it's very new to me and i'm still hysterical about it it is called home to get home again i don't know how many of you have grown children i don't know how many of you have grown children who are back again this is the poem dedicated to all such parents' home again home again

the children are back the children are back they've come to take refuge exhale and i unpack the marriage has faltered the job has gone bad com open the door for their mother and dad the city apartment is leaky in cold the landlord lascivious greedy and old the mattresses lobby the ovens encrusted the freezer the fan and the toilet have rusted the company caved the boss went broke the job and the love affair all up in smoke the anguish of loneliness comes as a shock all heart in the doldrums all heart in iraq and so they return with their piles of possessions they're terrified cats and their mournful expressions reclaiming the bedrooms they had in there it is clean towels warm comforter glass figurines downstairs in the kitchen and the father and mother don't say a word but they look at each other as

down from the heel comes jill comes jack children are back the children and their marilyn taylor former poet laureate of wisconsin an author of a collections of poetry her latest going wrong was published by parallel press into thousand nine and next walter bargain the first poet laureate of missouri this comes out of my experience of being poor warrior for a couple of years and i did a lot of crazy things one of the things that i am i had a problem with was saying no and i eventually named the center of the alien the syndrome the girl in oklahoma who couldn't say no so you're looking at the girl who couldn't say no endowment and the title i think explains one of these crazy moments poet is grand marshal other fall parade doubting the gravitas

that decorum it's poetry after all and being led by a boy scout honor guard it's following a police car's flashing lights they're brown shirts stashed with merit badges and behind them the poet but get seated in a low writing lined dark sports car from a small bag he tosses candy to children who were wondering why they're not watching saturday morning cartoons knowing how we need is among all standing with their plastic wal mart and moser bags costume didn't sleep they way to the branch high school marching band as a graceless leigh plays what is half remembered after so few weeks of practice this early in the school year the coffee and clatter of two diesel tractors a wagon pulled by mules another by horses the women's garden club armed with rakes and shovels the women's red haired society a rebel from the chamber of commerce the nearby keenan

circles around that to slow parade and whatever else falls in the haunted the poet agreed thinking this is what football players aren't toward into doing but he's never led a team to victory much less played and he considered wearing shoulder pads outside his suit with porn scrolled an injured by letters on the plastic but he was afraid to confuse the mile long one person deep crowd more than they already were passed out homes once the candy ran out last fall monthly readers is called when the cows come home i swear that i was not going to read this poem anymore and then something happened along the way and being poet laureate i and i've ended up reading it all too often a friend of

mine wrote a paper and he said about this poem it's too stupid to be fiction so that should tell you something about this cold what happened was is i received a phone call to do an interview via the radio without a radio station in st louis i knew nothing about the radio station he never gave me the call letters all i had was the certainties that exchange of the voicemail messages and so i foolishly said that remember i can say no i said yes and so at age fifteen i received a phone call actually was eight fourteen in thirty seconds i had enough time to ask one question how long is this going to last oh about five minutes well i'm holding the receiver up suddenly i'm hauling the receiver at arm's length and here's what i hear on the phone and now here we are a smash smash morning radio i want all three point three and we're here to talk with the poet laureate i'm thinking train wreck train wreck i'm fine

mentally in a fetal position and i'm going how do i get out of this we're totally embarrassing myself well it turned out we really had a great time and outed less about fifteen minutes in a one point he says you know i applied for that poet laureate position and i wrote this poor and i never heard anything back well one you could apply that time he had been nominated and secondly you know he did write a poor man expect any feedback and he read me the pool in the end that come and it was what should i say i was back in the fetal position was something about birdie birdie in the sky drop some white stuff in my eye and it ends with i'm just glad the cows can fly and i'm supposed to respond on dead silent i'm dead in the water i'm laying on the tracks waiting for the train to run over me and what happens i blurt out you know smash the poor speaks for itself and then i said smashing are not above or

writing a poor mob out a similar subject and so here is a skull on the cows come home and it's about two boys to go camping where my friend and i can't once a year later in the summer was between high pines started hills it was my grandfather's dairy farm in their hurt pasture there sometimes but not recently enough to crop the grass back we cut a wide circle and pitched a canvas tent nights were already chilly and i decided to collect firewood along the edge of the field my friend stayed in a tent to arrange the food flashlights x water bottles and whatever else we call from the house from the pines i saw holstein heard twelve cows plowing toward upon the tent directly in their pay after i dropped a wooden ramps but they'd already reached the clearing bovine curiosity and lined them up shoulder to shoulder crowding together packing in their thick curly heads to stare into the odd opening their wide eyes swimming behind black and white snouts hardly

smart enough to ask a question to the answer they found my friend a dedicated howard trapped in the tent pressed against the back wall lunch for the pistol loaded with blanks inspired wildly the cows to close together to turn around to stand to run forward to shock to back up and wedged together by their fear rose in unison on art we're behind blades their front hooves galloping in the year honors indecently exposed a chorus line of the urban cores and as if on cue they empty themselves up an afternoon's grazing covering the entire circle of cut grass that's hidden inside and out sleeping bags and firewood after bowing to their own abundance they came down running away from a world that had suffered a mammoth over ripe hemorrhage and back to the barn where they didn't give milk for days twenty poets laureate from across the country

trying to lawrence to participate in poet laureate eighty two thousand eleven our next poet marjory wentworth is the poet laureate of south carolina she's followed by david brown that the poet laureate of wyoming you know we did get asked to do poems for all sorts of strangely occasions as poet laureate so i wanted to write a poem for a bridge opening with a lot of bridges were only armed but i recently was asked her rights up for a college graduation or i teach about it read it for the for the students here scott a place for you take time to hover at this still mouth of this ancient harbor then rises into the air which holds a place for you let the wind off to see hold let you up and hold you about the daily coffee any before your hours fill with unintentional clutter the way small cloud seemed to

occupy the sky on days you are not paying attention do not ignore the ordinary each drop of greater is so every stone and snatched twenty aig all the creatures thriving here because there are questions with no answers and many days you will wish to forget savor each hour of sunlight lit permeates the sky streaming through you like me listen to the glitter and wanes beating within the engine of your heart course that's the harbor in it and i didn't see a lot of hardware such as company says that in charleston where i'm from there's a light snow the rumor i've been very excited about that because i know you're not excited about that but i'm excited about that on song that area a homerun call

snow in the south i was asked to introduce an arab or aka our last winter on for the city who dont know he was he was a poet laureate who i got fired and he also that a thirty thousand dollars stipend them and then he was in south carolina and it actually snowed so he barely got there there was hardly anyone in the audience cause you know people you know hide when it snows in south carolina on and down is the medication snow in the south rare in rainbows hurricane or hail startling how this snow fell once in decades that came and went as fast as this winter dream that state cleaning and comments on shaded sides of the highway despite midnight drizzle and morning sun so many snow balls rolled out across cold fields of cotton

snow men stabbed in front of every home around the edges of the town and that night a hip hop singer and dj named rudolf feat sharon an oppressed black suit fiery wings in a metal tray above a bowl of blue flame that tall cousin with a little boy hit angola nigeria and pink tie dye leaning on one crutch her bright smile on stage by rock up beating the side of the podium with a flat palm still full of hard earned anger wool scarf wrapped tight around his neck like some kind of armor and how is it from the main ship i'm currently working on which is called the limits of the angels the first one's called bird singing for jesus that jesus was a

carpenter it's hard to picture him hiding mails along warnings of work that line sharing sandwich course job later walking to the olive grove to take a leak and though he was also a preacher's charismatic gays and cool tang made people want to touch him he was so famously indifferent to the sexual life that it seems pornographic to picture him in bed with his wife his leg thrown over hers much less interaction it's easier to speak of the better for the fatherly absence of dark memories that ground floor and so handsomely worn and what would it feel like to be the one who may only have borne of humanity with jesus hung on the cross there was little for the roman guards to do checking to see that no one was watching it put down their spears and pulled off their helmets their salaries were based only on being there they cut slivers of wood to clementi peace corps and so iraq and bet on which would land closest cake to water and rags around in the

dust and lifting their arms above their heads yelp good or wiped their brows at sunset they lower the demand of years who we are then so strange and ordinary when men climbing down from our crosses to drive trucks or repair tvs to cut meat or harvest so it means whatever wait for lunch go for coffee dream of sex today i got a letter from my father who died in nineteen fifty two weeks before i was born unbelievable after so many years in the dead letter file the candidate's time is the least of it as my address the postman explain nothing my father knew he was dying and said his greatest regret was that we would never meet he'd already started writing when they're said the rains finally stopped would you like to look out the window she propped him up with pillows they saw the sun shining on a metal surfaces of the cars on the galvanize blades of a rooftop that the letters and on a puddle

where a flock of sparrows had landed and were bathing they flap their wings and the water flow up or fracking the light into red yellow and blue i know people say this all the time my father owed but i would have noticed it before he joked that it was the oldest talking and ended by saying those birds were singing away like they were giving a concert even if i was the only person who'd come the truth is there was a letter i was an adult when my father died an unhappy not quite old man and though he was a carpenter i don't believe he could have worked on a true jesus he could only work with anyone still i wanted the truest have another chance and i want those birds to be singing for him a letter a very personal and private thing in some ways i

guess you know we write about are families we think about the family life for this is cold sunday morning early i have a granddaughter for been pointed out that some of us have grown children and so i want to read something for her sunday morning and actually i think i'll just say it for you my daughter not held at the redheads across the like owen hart we slipped easily through the water far from other shore gets me my daughters young woman and suddenly everything is a metaphor how for how brief time we are grand honors the rent boats and the blackwater the wrestling gold of late summer sun burnt grasses the empty sky we stop and listen to the stillness i say it's sunday and here we are in the church of the outdoors then wish i had the sense to keep quiet as the trick in life learning to know when to leave well enough alone are boats drifted north where the cheering

of grasshoppers reach the us from the rocky hills a clap of thunder beyond those hills how well sound travels over water i want to say just the right thing something stronger and truer than elaine i love you i want my daughter to know that through her eyes of a life that was close to me before i had a lot to side here we now from a boat and touch her hand starts speak and stop david brown that is the poet laureate of wyoming and j mcintyre at this is k pr presents on kansas public radio if you're just tuning in you were listening to highlights from poet laureate at the recent gathering of poets laureate in lawrence along with readings and workshops poet laureate he featured a panel of poets talking about their

mentors other poets that influence them as writers we'll hear from dale evans poet laureate of south dakota and then car like a morton poet laureate of texas a light up to the age of about twenty twenty two was the light of a an athlete a jock i was leaning toward other things in our torah career and so on but but really my interest was was ford's pretty much i didn't start writing til are in my early twenties but my father had been a very om book each person also an athlete and he had got records of the john barrymore reading excerpts from our reading us a little queasy from my hamlet and i used to listen to those now and then and i i got a sense of them on i got a sense of his love of that language and so when i was a boy but

i didn't have a lot of poetry going for me then but i do it i quit football than i want to i want to college on a football scholarship don't record on and then it on a balmy announcer bomb attitude toward the ball because of gender start writing start writing and a creative writing class in the end of my junior year in college and have a very good credit rating teachers like my work and so on but then it i saw it i just kind of pushed my athletic like a side and i start writing songs like emily dickinson and robert frost master rhyming i started using the years on never never any good at it and then about three four five years into my permission europe or do you go through years of your morning i came across the halls of james dickey and that they

had a great effect on me i i was in a library in just happened to look at a book of dickey's and salt home called inch in the tree house at night which begins and now all the greenhouse cold it's dark the half moon completely is shining on the tops of the trees and i hadn't seen it like that before my life a very personal honest one of you in a very physical kind of life and all that i realize that answer after i did that realize that dickie had also been an athlete in school and he was they had written about being an athlete and so i wrote this phone call paul walter and it's it's a seminal kong for me it's it's important for my career because as the first time i really wrote something that came out of my academic experiences which i knew very well pull the altar i was a full term high school the approach to the bar is everything unless i had gotten

my steps had my markers feel up to it i refuse to follow through i'm committed to beginnings or to nothing playing the poll out runways and jolted me out of spreading i take off kicking in then up my whole weight trying the frailty of fiberglass ever foresee myself trusting it is right to be taken to the end the tension poised for the powerful thrust to fly me beyond expectation you're the peak i roll my thighs n word art my back clearing as much of the bar as i can knowing the best job can be canceled by a careless available and will put my hands and so i wrote that and the first the first in every written that that came pretty much my life very directly fiat happen to have been living in colorado or two later i met a dickey at a writers' conference in boulder i sat down with them we talked i had michael waltrip home with me he liked that a lot he liked

my work ethic and he told me he said he said that he was a big man about six or they're a very impressive fellow he said he says you know he says he says shakespeare never been a global thing i'm karla good morning i had the great honor of being the texas poet laureate my mentor is a man i'd never met his name's walton mcdonald one of the great laureates of texas he lives in lubbock ends i agree with editors when it comes to the idea of a i think one way we can learn poetry learned how to write poetry as is learning how to read and i know that sounds odd that i think when we find someone that that touches a level and as tech touches that saul and suddenness

and then write a response to that to that point to that point and that and that's what what what would prompt us to me he reaches some sort of level and if you've never read him i i highly recommend that i've always wanted to meet you know i've never been able to he says he's done with poetry which are all oh that sounds but that you know that was his choice that i'd written to him and i had to tell him exactly how he influenced these self but this is a wonderful book it's called blessings of the body gave wallach don't i think has said and written about twenty one books poetry amazing man in islam is about his brother crossing the road what i'm going to do well she used caught in the torah the road past our house turning to street and me a chicken trying to reach the other side an early as uncle

so warren's shook their shovels laughing my mother waited on the porch trying her hands on her apron my big sister teased her gockley girlfriend howl and someone's great art at eight i swear i tried and cursing the only words i had learned squats down in july asphalt like a bun like captain marvel of mechanics turned into a tree and unable to birds and all the days on my birthday carl would see me soon and mary jane all kids i'm a pointing on the curb and dancing like god roaring up on his motorcycle my brother dismounted and stated talking a camel in his lips he lit the match

away came strolling down this double snorting smolder not smiling massive tearing up love me he cherished me without my shoes and hallway like a sack of boats back to the grass his own i remember him that way not the box of belongings they brought from okinawa not the flag mother tongue in the window for all cars to see a speeding past that four lane street pounding my sneakers down it felt with poet laureate of texas coming up the poet laureate that traveled the farthest for poet laureate in two thousand

eleven peggy shoemaker of alaska but first a little closer to home we'll hear from three kansas poets laureate our first poet laureate jonathan holden who is now poet in residence at kansas state university his successor denise lowe followed by carrying miriam goldberg our current poet laureate and organizer of poet laureate he hears jonathan holden we all just really really close so i was still it might have been warning of even before the worms don't we said progress is to regress white and gray it didn't make any difference in the temperature of the air outside the borough was normal don't cast also shows the soundtrack that the focus he could see under that horse really good judgment he waited blade of grass and a black shadow and again

was really against the sky a rebuke a joint in front he squeezed under his heart twittering switch scratch here they re ab visit rosen and daisy always restless crows in the higher reaches of the oak trees behind him we've been causing fields for miles versus me a spiral trapped uses wind and send to cover his tracks don't don't to make slot which is famous substance of grass couldn't others still the creatures the political firing of mr mcgregor as peter no sickness hunger credit for that pledge or the latest thinking don't stay hidden parts you've heard about don't think but please don't spare the main stop the church in the shadows don lee's voice it was the party's about cool palm of his hand it's hollow of safety is silk suit to slip into phone castoff never notices to rain

whiskers console his heroes reveal about mr mcgregor he might never have seen a park before stop things like as a nuisance it was a boost to scramble party the second question is the word of the answer that gives a daydream and he was one of that one he's worthy of the title and only william inch nineteen thirteen to nineteen sixty for many years before i moved to kansas the movie picnic by william inge fascinated me is understood the craving so money was used to have for glamour and the true story of his life and it was just such a craving i think that most americans anyone who's been to the movies

anyone who's been in a lot of vicariously or actually understands not just the temptations of how artificial it is we've all studied donkey holy and activists hours of murder mystery madame bovary or official was the typical story and it or when we've forgotten and thought about it we have analysts and almost to death love's conventions of began in the novel and in the rise of the middle class it studied walker percy's the moviegoer it's upholstery tired worn and yet only last week i made the three hour drive south of them the legendary wrote us seventy five best lowly form of long form passed the small tern standing like brick stay h c'est for independence kansas to see his house wondering if it were a disease such craving for sure but the craving makers to work for hollywood i think that what walker percy's moviegoer i would never

fully assessed dues first he's turned decertified unless i see myself in the film unless unless our craving or crave an american word unless to gates and i'm honored that the american experience in poetry by ted cruz there is taking this for one of their weekly columns which is another vital wave that ted kooser is poet laureate tenure has enraged american life two gates i look through a glass and see a young woman of twenty washing dishes and the window turns into a painting she has myself forty years ago she holds the same blue bowls and brass teapot i still own i see are allied against lamplight she knows only her side of the pain

the porch where i stand is anti sunlight fades i hear 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 fight it is i was asked to write a poem for kansas turning a hundred and fifty years all that which i just couldn't help but think how ludicrous it is to say that a lamp that

tens of thousand years old there's now a hundred and fifty it's got a nice to find anything to celebrate their houses to look at our land so i got to read this sitting beside the governor unless speaker of the house and so on and i behaved very nicely and i'm glad to share with you celebrate this kansas celebrate this guy this land beyond the measured time that tilts the season the light dream the return of the stars the syrian rise up he'd or fall of storm crossing through the secret holding cedars and witness rocks for thousands of years the air we breathed belong to those he spoke languages forgotten as the glaciers caspian ridges these fields we walk once rushed in the ocean long after long before what we knew as matt

time this rain was once a man's last breath this he would've warmed a weathered run enough for a woman to rest on with her baby these fossils once love songs of memory and long jean after the beloved spy everything we know of kansas comes from this river is aching east after scouting out and winding their mark through horizons and grass sky's myriad orange to black moon to the sun the hail to jail kerry's ready to get everything to us like any true heart always see the ghost an angel of the land slightest touch a trail through the prairie a hard rain in the words beyond may mean and yet name that step into where you already are where once the

grandmothers and grandfathers sang out their songs of weather and loss wars and burr is the bones of this land and the feathers of the sky composed this kansas that knows us better than we know ourselves that is always ready with the wind shimmer falling grass and stone routes to show us what it means to live with the earth and sky for that care and miriam goldberg the current poet laureate of kansas reading i celebrate this kansas karen miriam goldberg was the organizer of poet laureate he two thousand eleven which drew twenty poets laureate from across the country from south carolina to texas to alaska the poet laureate of alaska peggy shoemaker took some time while in lawrence to stop by the kansas public radio studios

escape your present is a joint production of kansas public radio and new letters on the air a literary radio program produced by the university of missouri kansas city and hosted by insulating mom angela e lim spoke with peggy shoemaker who talked about the story behind her memoir just breathe normally i didn't set out to write a memoir what happened was that my husband and i were riding bicycles on a bike path in fairbanks alaska a seventeen year old boy can afford willie tv was on the bike path to legally and came screaming around a blind curve and hit us had my husband flew over the four wheeler and i can't tell you what happened to me because i don't have memory of the rhetoric but i was very severely injured and even though i had a helmet on i had a skull fracture mini strokes and burns and lots of internal injuries so when i could breathe by myself off the machine and when i could concentrate enough

i wanted to read and wanted to write but my eyes didn't focus properly and when i could finally focus enough and hold a pencil i began to write these little things and i wasn't calling than anything simply trying to get out of a bad place and write myself out of a better place so i had a bunch of these little pieces of prose an agenda and together and said the nsa but it was a complete delusion has not and as a mother i sent them to a sympathetic editor who told me i think it's a book which terrified me because i didn't know how to write a nonfiction book i've never done one and i didn't intend to one by certain reading more little pieces that i showed it to another writer for indecent well peg is pretty fragmented and innocent maybe you could make it more fragmented and i thought you know i understand what he's telling me because in many ways i was living outside of space and time and the way that memory works at least in my mind is not alone here it's not logical it's not

chronological it comes from all sides and so the structure of the book reflects that slanted upward whole bunch of little tiny pieces and then put them together what i was trying to think of a metaphor for the book some people talk about oh there is these are beads on it a stirring more of their essays are a mosaic mine were not that organized months that this book is more like a kaleidoscope lots of little broken shards many of them are reflective for a sharp turn a disability evolution so you know it's almost more like a wind chime you know because there's a movement to it in some ways in it catches different pieces of your life and yet i i do feel that they're way that you've arranged it it has a three story because you know it deals with this this recovery that you're going through but it's not just there physical recovery

of what happened to you with that accident in some ways it's a recovery of dealing with your child heard end your mother died when you were very young when you were sixteen i your parents were divorced her father had an alcohol problem and was very i have to say sail fish would be probably a way into or it might be a way to do it but they were married very young they would and and i got the sense that in this time of physical recovery also allowed to time to recover your past i think it's a good the way to phrase it and in fact when these things began to come on some of them had things to do with the wreck and some of them were ancestral stories that had been interested to me some were family stories that i didn't want to lose others were those memories that you'd like to leave behind but they're not gonna let you carpool so there were lots of different sources for these little bits

well i thought i would get you to read something that's in the center of the book i just tell you know this section the section's called breaking of a never knew that breakup could be something people look forward to until i lived in alaska and of course when the ice goes off the river that's a huge relief for everybody it's a great promise i think i mean they had been home from the hospital three days sleeping mostly after the exhaustion of care so intensive i couldn't rest mitch has flown out from washington to help us and brought nathan age two and his great great unity how you're doing peggy he smiles we just finished our lunch and halibut corn chowder and nathan runs together yogurt pop brings it for me open i ripped the rapper and that fast can't get here can't get it here i can feel breath going into my body but it isn't getting where it needs to go i pull in more

air faster i find a way to call out busy working harder than i've ever worked i begin to float above my body niche reassures nathan nobody cries joe calls my surgeon who tells us to get to the hospital don't wait for an ambulance that somehow lift me and the wheelchair i remember nathan's asking where we're going from the backseat mitch holds my head up talks to me pats my face the first attended fairbanks memorial males that you have all the signs of pulmonary embolism usually we give you claude busters let's see nope you're not a candidate head trauma and recent surgery too risky they take me for x rays so they can see exactly what they're dealing with the technician winds just right inside a machine that will move full circle around my chest ok

relax just breathe normally she advises if i could do that i wouldn't be here i think i don't have a year to say anything the film show us allen builders and blocking both lobes massive by now no one can find the polls i'm so tired they discuss a ventilator they discuss a dose of t pa which might make me bleed in her place is in my body in my brain they discuss putting me on a medivac plane to anchorage where jurassic surgeon could possibly openly to remove the quote what we don't know is that the surgical procedure to remove a pulmonary embolism has never been performed successfully in alaska and rarely anywhere ounce what i do know is a lot i will die if i go in a plane i tell them i want the drugs that might break up the client joe agrees to tell joe my love i've whispered

messages for him to tell my family just before they answered the ventilator tube down my throat and mouth what could be my last spoken words the grind gnomes what needs numbing i do not remember fighting him he gets me another dose so i can't resist and plums my ear way it's a new kind of hopelessness to be without a voice with the machine greeting for me i slip in and out of awareness dr arthur chu a courageous young introduced the ministers the risky drunk in a few hours we'll know i dance long settled up for the end of a six bras i am the nightmare who was my writer of all those who've gone before could it be the one that most long to see or pat corso overloaded and my liking

heaviest long blocks strapped to my chest all the children i never knew this spring me down the stretch let it beat you you my life and grab a curiosity before the tube choked off words i spoke to my husband i said what might be the last i'm barely understood what they intended only that they wanted desperately to help after the first moment i thought after the second my resisting an instinctive was no match for the gentleness for forty five minutes and need squeezed plastic bullets full of air into my lungs weeks later reading dictated notes and then to find out a machine preserved for me for two days where are they those states where those days that slip away as

surely as prayer ever notice that when you get that advice just breathe normally you can never do it when you're handed a six foot rose ebola but a torrential and tangles his arms here in your eyes we sneak up with a dixie cup to catch a scorpion when you're maintaining and for your friends' parents when before surgery you're counting backwards from one hundred when for the first time you've hit a snorkel between your teeth put your mask into the water when the dog they said doesn't bite clearly intends to when you tell that a necessary lie when you scuba instructor tells you to take the giant stride into two hundred feet of ocean when they slide you tight in to the mri to when you stand to give your speech when yellow cups of oxygen fall from the plane's ceiling

when the respiratory therapist clips together your nostrils with the dentist pack your mouth with cotton long us when you get the news you've been waiting for when you get the news you've been dreading when you stand up before god and everybody to pledge love to your mate just breathe normally that's peggy shoemaker poet laureate of alaska visiting with angela eelam of new letters on the air i'd like to close today's k pr presents with a very short poem also by peggy shoemaker that she read at the lawrence arts center during poet laureate it again here's peggy shoemaker i would describe my relationship with my father as troubled this is 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 since you've been listening to highlights ron hellwig moriarty recorded march thirteenth and forty two thousand eleven at the spencer museum of art and the lawrence arts center special thanks to enjoy eleven susan tape and cyril and restarting i'm j mak entire k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas