National Poetry Month - Poetry Life Distilled

ru apprehensive about poetry well a lot of people are saved us poet laureate ted cruz surge is working hard to make poetry accessible poetry and they expect the audience to meet him halfway and this hour of life to still four decades of us poet laureate you also hear the first african american woman to the lake perhaps people rightly wonderful letters saying that this partner that on this meant very much to them in some cases has changed the direction so while still radios for what i'm no longer a terror also mark strand talks about his pulitzer prize winning book a blizzard of one stop the story of my life that it's the character of my inner life which is projected to stay with us for life to still with new numbers on the air i mean in chile evil us poet laureate ted kooser has been described by the librarian of congress james billington as a major poetic voice for rural and small town america whose verse

reaches beyond the great plains to touch on universal themes inaccessible ways kaiser shares his tips on using memory in the creative process so i did an exercise of mother when she was about probably in her mid eighties and i've been told that this is a good thing to try to do an oral history but i had or draw a floor plan the house where she grew up in a burned down in the thirties so there was no way for me ever know it was like i was curious about and we did the first floor the second story on a piece of paper and through the process of that all sorts of detroit i mean she could remember the patterns in the carpet she remembered at one point a bunch of wild grasses that my grandmother had picked and put in a basement window all the stuff came out of this process now if i had said to her do you remember anything about auschwitz but the process of doing this all the stuff was coming forward and the most interesting moment was we were on the second floor and she said this is the room where mother

and florence and mable i slept and across dollars were dead and elvis lived over her brother and i said your parents didn't sleep together and she said why i guess they did that sort of you know and that was something that was just a very good memory when it came out so i think you know as writers week oh to figure out any car trips we can to get back in those memories for trials of spring back in would you address in your book the poetry home repair manual there's a section on memory and using memory to create homes want to talk a little bit about that there is really a diverse and very rich with imagery of all kinds and when you begin to go into memory and other things come out that he hadn't thought about well i recommend distances that they select from now you won't find the details that seem most evocative and oftentimes are the peculiar

and exercise that i've done with people for years in workshops where i have to go around the room and supply for instance i would say on let's design the scene is an abandoned farmstead on the great plains i have each person going around the room supply one teacher when you get all the predictable things rusty wire broken windows whether borat soloist of all around and then i say ok we've assembled a sort of calendar picture of a dublin and farmhouse and it is fairly authentic feeling to us we've created this out of our imaginations but what really makes it work is the unexpected details that if you put the plastic big wheel strike in the middle of the yard all the sudden everything comes into focus around it becomes a very real and i think it's because at some level as readers would say what he had to be there to see that everything else she could make up but it's the unexpected details and memories full of unexpected much you begin to look at things like well there's actually a poem called memory in the lights in china so

young and so you write that this was just a whim memory works for me as far as being transformed into writing and diplomas build a whole lot of the kind of things people remember about their childhood memory spinning up dust and corn shucks is across the choppy exhausted feels it sucked up into it's hard hard work called work lunch buckets good horses bare horses their names and the names of mules or better or worse than the horses they unraveled the dreaded two sides of attrition machine shook the maneuvers for crank the tractors crank that broke the ankles are then swept onto the winter break taking the tree house and dirty magazines turned its fury on the barn murkowski over buckets and the gray cat sat for a squirt of thick milk and his whiskers crossed the chicken can and did the hook for plucked a warm brown eggs from the meanest hand then turn toward the house worth pressures were having dinner peeled back the roof of a kitchen

ceiling reach down and smashed up uncles and cousins grandma grandpa parents and children one by one to hold them like dolls looked on longingly into their faces then set them back in their chairs with blue and white platters of chicken and ham and mashed potatoes still steaming before them with blitz of gravy and balls of peace and three kinds of pie and suddenly with a sound like a sign drew up its crowded roaring dusty final and derek it's tip was mainly a bit of a pain memory by us poet laureate ted kooser from his pulitzer prize winning book the library of

congress's chair in poetry was first founded in nineteen thirty six by torture in huntington potter of poetry who is also a big contributor to numerous arts organizations including the academy of arts and letters the idea was conceived by his friend henry putnam part of the putnam publishing family who happened to be the aids librarian of congress the next year putman appointed joseph auslander is the first consultant in poetry to the library of congress the process continued in that they never sets with appointments made by the librarian of congress and a stipend now thirty five thousand dollars paid by these private plans involving no tax dollars in nineteen eighty five the name of the post was changed to poet laureate consultant in poetry though the poet laureate title had been used informally for years the british poet laureate show which is held for a lifetime this post is designed to rotate frequently with few requirements an annual lecture and reading of his or her own work and the introductions for the libraries

poetry reading series so that frees up the poets to follow their own projects whether they're complicated or simple as bowing to answer all male from aspiring poets as was the case with mark strand who held the post from nineteen ninety to ninety one we'll hear an interview with him conducted by new letters editor robert stewart in which she reads from his pulitzer prize winning book blizzard of one but first let's listen to mark strand read his wry and widely and knowledge eyes palm eating poetry it runs from the corners of my morale there is no happiness like mine i have been reading poetry library and does not believe what she sees her eyes are set and she walks with a mansion address the palm circle of light is dim the closer on the basement stairs and coming up will's channel the poor

librarian begins to stamp for feeding leap she does not understand when i get on my knees and liquor head she screams avenue man has slowed her embark on a rug was joined the bookish tour eating poetry by mark strand from his nineteen sixty eight book reasons for moving an interesting precursor to appease to hear later from his pulitzer prize winning book the blizzard of one born on prince edward island canada in nineteen thirty four mark strand emigrated with his parents to the us as a child and went on to attend antioch college yale and the university of iowa his first step on the road to fame with the nineteen sixty four with this book of distinctive poems called sleeping with one eye open he's since returned to a dozen or so books and ciara books of poetry along children's books essays and fiction he's also edited and translated

numerous works and has been honored with a fulbright and macarthur fellowships as well as almost every major poetry prize including the two thousand and four wallace stevens award for his outstanding unproven mastery in the art and poetry while at the two thousand and four says he hated writing programs conference in chicago new letters editor robert stewart visited the former us poet laureate mark strand in his home for work over the years is really extraordinary and translations in anthologies and prose and fiction essays poetry it's a real body of work it's almost impossible for somebody to grasp fully i think it does say i wish i had more poems but i'm not sorry i spent my life doing what i'm doing i have of a single poet who regrets having spent a life writing poetry and that's an interesting statement an ally iran except to ensure

it and believe in the value of the ultimate value coaching it's the ultimate value in language is that something transformative about language the un in the life of poetry resides in language that language sets off so many things i mean it's a conduit for so much the character that poets bring to the writing of palms scrupulous attention to solved sense is something that helps keep language alive but not only alive helps keep language honest and responsive to what we feel we must say that our humanness in my reading about your work one of the things i notice a lot of people come out on some other poems being dark and

sometimes a little pre occupation in some ways with death and i noticed your poems in many cases are very funny i wonder if you'd say a few words about him or my attention when i began to write a poem is too can buy me a humorless any serious i can see why people think that my palms often are dark but they don't seem to take that other lead the dark is quite amusing sometimes and if viewed from the barber distance can be hilarious and i just thought of myself as a dark hole and you're perfectly right about the humor around it's become more and more pronounced in my coaches i get older and i guess closer to the dark in blizzard of warren you have a sequence of poems and written from the point of view of a dog many books now those are fighting yemeni ago it can say things that no human being cared for a

human being would get away with saying some things my dogs say those are really versions of myself as a poet i don't know how funny that is a surly asked if it's odd to have an animal speak in an animal's speaking speaks in such highfalutin terms and talks about his destiny as a poet well this a slightly surreal element to its logo speak not in a rougher unfinished language large yelping are carrying on emotionally was somewhat recent speech it's a somewhat long poem but as their water into sections and there you could read for us for years the palma which spot speaks i have a dog they call spot was about to say

on the night walks were freckled with leaves and the tiniest little emptiness crept over the valley floor i want to climb the poet so before the winter settled in i want to praise the whistle when they were told me not to waste my time already the frost a deep into the north wind trailing the work of its own screen pressed against wells the dog's sublimity is never knew this he said it's another poem in the end and i stood in the midnight ballet watching the great star fields flashing flour and the west for breaches and that's when i have a dog they call spies so that's the first part of a long poem called five dogs from the nineteen ninety nine pulitzer prize winning book blizzard of one by mark strand is talking here when you letters

editor robert stewart you have one of the biggest poultry followings i'd say the least among most contemporary poets that's another thing i want to ask you is where you see if you care at all really where the appeal of your poetry is it is not what you'd call topical poetry i'm not aware of by following them and certainly not reflected in the sales of my books but i can't tell you why people like my palms maybe they find amusing or maybe they're just dark enough or maybe that's the combination of humor and darkness that people find attractive you say actually in one of your essays on poetry and the weather of words you mentioned the fed just very briefly that poetry is about recovering something he i was talking to my students about your essays and really just trying to put into their minds the power of poetry to recover things that we really don't quite understand they're often capone will take the

place of something lost and could be the recovery of the sensation of loss i don't write poems in order to describe events once took place in my life and i really don't do that and i don't want my poems to be confused with what's generally considered the life i live that is by all external appearances that's why i make up my pants i believe that certain poets the post i really like create a world and that's a world that is wholly dependent on the language that they've made they're all when you read wallace stevens here in the world of steven's not the world of his everyday affairs of the world that he's managed to make up it's a metaphorical world swirled i can stand beside the world is not be diminished and learn this slowly be determined by

making reference to their a lot of poets who tell stories they moved back and forth between the actuality of their laws and the poems that they arrive at is suddenly the actuality of my life or my external it out of my poems and try to create an environment for the actuality of my entire life i think that's one reason the people traditionally and typically now have such a difficult time with poetry as an art form because they're thinking of it in terms of connecting in a more journalistic sense of what's going on i wonder if you'd mind reading some of your newer cones thinking just thinking of me he leans back in his chair rubs his hands stroke his beard and says i'm thinking this trend and thinking that one of these days of the outback swinging

my sights are holding my glass up to the mountain and stranded will appear in a jacket and tie and together under the boulevards leafless trees we'll stroll into the city of soldiers and when we get to the great the answer with its marble mentions the crawl that had been waiting there welcome us with rulers crisis and it tears turned violent impulses less or having been held back so long will fall and clatter on the stones below only piece in pieces us poet laureate from nineteen ninety to ninety one mark strand was interviewed for new letters on the air in two thousand and four by or magazine editor robert stewart sound you heard in the segment on my parents' dresser available at magnitude dot com for a list of titles go to new mothers dot org and click on life still four

decades of us poet laureate so stay with us here the poet laureate and first said poetry was life to still the late wendell and brooks in just a moment it's no born in june of nineteen seventeen in topeka kansas in her grandmother's home quindlen brooks was soon taken by are parents to the south side of chicago where she remained for the next eighty three years until her death in the summer of two thousand as a writer brooks was

always interested in poetic form but she went to the streets for her material depicting the chicago she knew and loved in her first book the street and bronze fill her second book any allen won the pulitzer prize in nineteen fifty making her the first african american to win that award and despite the fact that the security her career she elected to stay outside what she termed the hollow land of fame and remained on the south side of chicago she succeeded carl sandburg as a poet laureate of illinois oppose she held until her death and then in nineteen eighty five she was appointed to the twenty seventh consultant in poetry to the library of congress the last to hold that post before the title was changed to poet laureate she's one of the most accessible poets in that role especially for young people read your only corresponding in visiting schools prisons and correctional institutions despite her numerous honors she insist said that all her life was not about writing and that her greatest interest

was being involved with young people introducing them to the power of poetry or listen now to part of a nineteen eighty four public poetry reading by gwendolyn brooks made just a year before she became the poet laureate she was recorded for new letters on the air at the university of missouri kansas city hears gwendolyn brooks talking about her famous poem we drill cool i wrote because i've been asked by a pool hall in my community in chicago i saw inside the war room about his eyes and apollo seven youngsters shooting pool during school plan and instead of saying to myself why they in school i said to myself i wonder how they feel about themselves at saint germain that they would want to thumb their noses at the establishment and it owes the month of jonah's my establishment sobel those that non on over everybody loves june so

what they thought about these matters that and a conceptual way they would walk into has understand that thomas mann because of the word jazz which was understood to be a sexual reference that was not my intention though i have no objection if it helped save it but i was thinking of music the ballplayers seven at the golden shell weighed railcar only let go we were what we strike threat we say nice and we can wait yeah yeah we will feel like gwendolyn brooks recorded in nineteen eighty four forty years later she returned to you when casey and talk about the pressing for new mothers on the us it's

come as almost a precursor of the rats were i wonder what the registers with say about that but thank you and i really believe this so that's something and turn a carefree days are a traditional poet maybe assist the way you recite it oh ok a hilly hicks my name means that way for the normal so i can feel your listeners might be interested in knowing why put a wee at the end of a july and you get down to the last line first when i first wrote the book also many years ago i said we're real cool way low sperm whale or like but then it occurred to me that these airy youngsters that's why i wrote the poem really using youngsters who don't have much attention and way they would like to have some attention they'd like to be looked at with

respect and affection by their society so to separate the wheat than so you would have to pause just a split second and get them to us to split seconds worth of attention well i guess that's one year we will call comes from a third but the dean eaters that you and me you and me a pulitzer prize for second book at aon daters is a much better book that that was my question and so as in the mecca and perhaps the street in brownsville the very first that you know joseph judges are interesting i had been a judge i was a judge for the pillars or once in a judge for the national book award twice i can tell you some exciting things gotten those just an ap shouted at all as the judges are human beings and they do things for a variety of reasons and a honest reason either lay that they all walked to be honest

which brand it gets the most votes do you think from people who write and talk to after what i have to say that we real cool is probably the most popular poem that i've written but another poem which are arranged tonight's bizarre the life of like in west and that's about a little boy who has a hard time because he is not judged beautiful by his society this is because he looks african i read it almost all the ten and trends when people say really that wambach that little i believe why does all ideas he has not ugly it for a us about today's african liking which is wonderful only upon in that way and you may god he had no control over how people and visit at three iranian and of course that's one of the richness is of poetry that's that each one of us give something to applaud hopefully you'll get something that the poet put there for you

but because you are you uniquely different from everybody else and i've had different experiences you're going to give something to that poem make it richer for your own use in your first book and in fact i hope you'll read this poem ministry in brownsville you write about abortion in a way that is so bright and truthful that it's frightening to read even in nineteen eighty eight i wonder how a voice like yours managed to be heard in nineteen forty five on a center that maybe when people say when they read a mother mr puckett they're still saying sometimes that they prefer it not and claudette colbert and a program gillette included in our program because it's such a stunningly modern poem and i'd just can hardly believe it was written in a complete mystery well for such ideas that i wrote it cause i had a friend who had had several abortions and as she told me how she felt about her

experience and that is what i put into this poem i understand that not every woman feels for saying about that kind of encounter the mother abortions will not let you forget you remember the children you got there you did not get the dail small pool it's with a little or with no hair the singer is and worker is that never handled the air you will never neglect or beat them or silence our by with a sweet you will never wind up the cycling bum or scuttle off goats that calm you will never leave them controlling your ally shoots i return for us and lack of them with toppling mother i i have

heard in the voices of the women the voices of my damn kill all children i have contracted i have eased my damn beards at the brass they could never saw it said sweet suffice and if i say use your law and your ally is run your unfinished reach if i stole your brother is and your name is your strange baby to endure games you were stilted or i love lin loves your toe melt your marriage as a i said near death if i've poisoned the beginnings of your breath believe that event and my deliberate less i was not deliberate thought why should on wine wine that the crime is other than i so that and how you're dead or rather or instead you were never married

but that no i am afraid is faulty what shall i say paul is the truth tibi see it you were born you had it you day it is just that you never get old or planned or credited bin laden may i loved you all believe me i know you're both frankly an iron lung to i loved you all the mother from gwendolyn brooks first bought a street and brawn still published in nineteen forty five this is new letters on the air and you're listening to a nineteen eighty eight conversation between the late gwendolyn brooks rebecca preston as they discuss the mother and other parts dena loftin it has a kind of joy in life though here and i

related to the cold and abortion form as it's often is called i will old catalog pair of law the qualities of motherhood which i hope is not customarily missed for instance this is elly ever amen yes her are scuttled we were never wind up the second leading this is not a lot of ghosts that you would ever laid them controlling your last aside that is glad to get away from him for a while but richard for a snack of them with godly mother i think yeah there's an aspect of motherhood that i think is familiar to most mothers going and looking in the cradle of mary no no going getting out of the house away from those children you love so much that and going downtown and liking and the shop windows are shopping going for lunch with a

brand whatever you like to do doing it but at a certain time in that experience you want to get back to those who could not wait to get back and see their dear little faces well this particle they mother sad like all the aspects of motherhood but they considered them kidnapped you've really stayed in chicago all your life but you were nonetheless affiliated with some of the major members of the harlem renaissance only one it is and that's pretty important ally city is i met because he was coming to recite it the church my family went to say my family my father never went to church and all the time i knew him but he had grown up in the church and i think was glad to have a little rest of it but he was the kindest all i ever met

had wonderful parents well i my mother insisted that i show my poems to why he stood there and read some of them and said you're very talented caper it someday you'll love a book published so he was your pride know him after i got married in your party for and won seventy five people in a two room kitchenette had six twenty three sixty peer straight chicago said then did he keep reassessing our current know that was all now do you think maybe that's what your country's about though is teaching self love self acceptance it would make that kind of an announcement my poetry is here to teach self reliance and self acceptance i have poems about four hours and as dire writing when i was seven trending when i was eleven

was that i said for poems to us chicago paper and they publish them they did know i was eleven so they published all four of them and recipient but a lot like the life of lincoln western cars are frankly call an identity poll though i didn't sit down and say i am now going to write an identity poem i wrote about a situation that is very very familiar to blacks all blacks the poem begins oddly as little buy that everyone ever saw that is what the free ones all blacks know exactly what i'm talking about up and at the un when this little boy is able to say after hearing somebody else say it who had no intention of praising him at elbow retail day i hope people will pick up on that and understand it and as i say black certainly will

little caucasian ladies however have said to me oh i just loved that poem because i had a sister she was prettier then i and i know just how lincoln west well and any right well i think this was a good poetry you know you take what you need from it you're credited with an ad that surprised me i didn't realize that that you were the first one to say this but you're credited with saying that poetry is life distilled oh yes i've been saying that out now say om i feel guilt is a visitor's cell so cliche ish he does at this point i guess it didn't the first time he said it use seem to be a person who makes her life a whole the way you live in the way you write it all seems to work together or you say mature life

reflects your poetry as well as your poetry reflecting your life you still live on chicago's south side even though i'm sure you don't need to say that my life and you and you seem very much to try to to reach out to your community and to people within your community your audience you are your obviously you live your commitments yes but you make its allies such a conscious thing at agro up with a wonderful family grandparents who believed in kindness and or my mother for instance subscribe definitely to decency and dignity she wanted to do right and those were the days when somebody knocked on the door and said i'm hungry if you're my parents you would invite a man already birds sitting down at the at the table and sort of a nice hot meal i wouldn't do that for a

couple of these dates did everything is all different now but it's just natural i feel that i should write as i do it and i write what i believe and i don't have to sit out and shake it all out because it's like something in me going in and he's going to save her nsa is perfectly natural that i would be concerned about a poor little boy whom i have namely going west and i hope everybody gets everything i put into that name out of it to have a muse is what you're saying no i have never liked that idea so it doesn't do is determine interest in like well we want to be that a wide circle you can say that

certainly do love it more and more is icons of the end of my particular choice of former us poet laureate lynn brooks who died in december two thousand at the age of eighty three in her beloved chicago leaving behind a legacy of poetry that makes her one of america's most respected literary figures she was interviewed for new letters on the air by rebecca first a segment we heard today is taken from tree archive programs recorded in nineteen eighty four and eighty eight and originally produced with help from judy re korea and carla fish john hartson and donna trussell the music you're hearing right now is pretty girl blues by jack available and nine dot com you're listening to live to still four decades of us poet laureate will be back with the current poet laureate ted kooser just alone yeah yeah

born in april nineteen thirty nine ted kooser took a seemingly unlikely path for the post of us poet laureate he worked in the insurance industry until the age of sixty all the while writing his poetry but when you retired to find the rightful time he found himself facing cancer and lost to solitary glance to the disease his ten books of poetry showed that he's always valued the ordinary details of life but now he's even more aware of their extraordinary nurse ted kooser lives in garland nebraska not far from lincoln were i interviewed him at the public radio station in e t the first week of april two thousand five just after he discovered he won the pulitzer prize for his book delights and shadows here is some background on his poetic path which was

interestingly enough influenced early on by another us poet laureate carl shapiro who held the post in nineteen forty six listen now to find out how ted kooser sustained his poetry as an entrance and i wanted to have some kind of structure that would pay the bills for her was being the poet and i was being a poet from for three in the morning to work every which i find remarkable that your mind is so clear when you wake up and in a cluttered with all that job that you pick up during a very good time for me because i write you know highly metaphorical sayings it's very interesting timing decision come about a sleep very strange connection sometimes happen if you're there an occasion like the hunters soviet be the remedies come fly well you took the job so that you could support your family but all along that you know that she wanted to be a poet i mean was that something that you're already dedicated drivers and yeah from the time i was a teenager so in effect are the new owners of the sixty six the twenty fifth of april i've been

doing this for fifty years it's about time ago a great part of being a writer is show up for work every day and just hanging in there there's also i think literature is a tremendous moment don't walk in and speaking of dumb luck my first book was published by the interesting impressed the press when i was thirty and i had come here to lengthen to study with cross shapiro and karl got in trouble with the universe he impressed the press and he was the editor preschooler he wanted to publish a story gets a little bit risky and pre schooler is unlike a lot of literary magazines in that it has an outside publisher university press is the publisher of prairie schooner and at that time they had an editor there who actually exercise some censorship from time to time just so carl as they would publish that story right he resign from bruce kluger the big flat about it was back in the mid fifties when he took

my manuscript of the press to see if they publish and i just began to wonder this last couple years if maybe they felt it would insult because they had gondolas trouble with immigration like this that maybe they thought that would be something that took the manuscript partly because of that you know to kind of making feel better i doubt that the delay is an interesting you know those things and there are things like that at almost every juncture i mean i was a very lucky i published a book with a very small present california solo press in seventy four and they pry printed five hundred copies somehow or other one copy wound up at saturday review and bill cole who wrote the trade winds called saturday review refuted very favorably interesting how would you ever get that accomplished and without this lock five hundred copies spread across the united states how big one of them attract his attention for the chances that someone or long pick up a book or going into something they like and take off you know it's a

memory i think that says a lot about how you view the world so that these little moments are the miracles in our law is absolutely the book that has won you the pulitzer prizes delights and shadows a gorgeous book that has a lot of these wonderful images that i can imagine rising up as you get up in the morning and i thought i might get you to start with one that has a lovely kitchen is perfect for april which is national poetry month old locks through early april call the stingray horses have come near the house goes to a fence and lean they're hungry for some are nodding their heads with an anchoring of tweaks their long legs or dusty from standing for months in winters store and their eyes are like a cloudy skies seem to be are glitches they're waiting for maybe come up

from the bar with their overalls pockets stuffed with the fodder of green in a month it will be slow and heavy their little snorts so sweet you want to stand among them breathing my life from the lights and shadows by ted kooser you're listening to new letters on the air i love that image of the mine likes as horses have a discomfort an idea this is one of those waking moment they're like probably wrote early in the morning those metaphors noyes economy sort of as a surprise you know as in the process every was solemn working with students assume will say well i think i need a metaphor right here in here i think and that isn't the way it works and readymade store a metaphor she does plunge into a pool they don't work unless they actually evolve with a poem then of course in that poem i think probably the metaphor is that trigger you're initiating subject you know bros

greek ancient while bush reminded me of course it's election or a nightly show inflatable around an image that was you know pretty common practice for me and then built that that language and you've got a really delightful manual called the poetry home repair manual or which i wondered because they got poet laureate of the united states at the top of it so it came out after you became a poet laureate but this must have been a long time in the making and yeah i have been working on it for a couple years and actually what happened was i don't know a little bit of part time teaching at the university for the last five six years it usually would just pick up on and right in the middle or my students coming on this poem one or the other and i collect all those things and some of my students are who you're trying to make a book out it's a restaurant that started and that book was not really scheduled for publication until this coming fall that once they got wind of the fact that i

was in korea they pushed up production and let you know it's funny about aaron i have a lot of very nice comments from the writers and so it says it's for beginners but i think it's it's really more of a philosophy of writing them how to manual i think i can see where it would really help beginners but i think anybody who's an admirer of you work would be very interested because it just really explore your philosophy in your approach to literature what i like about it and maybe one of the reasons that you were chosen to see us poet laureate is that you always believe that you should be clear and you have the reader in mind which i haven't heard a lot of poets to talk about that and other audience it has always seemed so clear to me that that's the way we ought to be writing it will be thinking about the expectations of the audience and what we can do for an audience and how we can serve a community of human audience and i was baffled by people who say well you know writing difficult poetry and they expect the

audience to meet him halfway the audience has no obligation to meet anybody that way you don't see them running to meet somebody halfway you got a go for the audience and give them something that they can use and sort of all my revision as always toward clarity and simplicity away from difficulty i like to have my poems when they're finished look as if i remember in five minutes you know i spent hours on that kind of openness to one of the things that i tried to tell people who have difficulty with her to poetry just let it wash over you know don't try to be single word because i can sometimes take the pleasure out of it sometimes it's just the beauty of the language i think one thing that is more a little bit is to just simply tell people that a poem is not me problem it does not have to be solved it does not have to have one cancer and only the teacher knows he'll fail the problem with that approach is in which many of us head kind of education you know paul

has a meaning in the teacher knows it and it's passive faith is that then when you get out of school and you see a pawn in a magazine you think that i pass the course many read it because it's a problem so i try to convince people that opponents of experienced like anything else like a meal or a lawyer trip in the car or anything like that and the poet has prepared and experienced force and we can do with it what we will and we can either fall over and try to find meaning in it if were of a bit to do that or we could just simply as you say a letter can wash over a son i don't know that and my personal reading i've never paid any attention at all to dylan thomas is what he was really trying to say other than a poem about his father dying that's one of the meetings where the robbers but when you listen to thomas it's mainly for the noise for the music you know the music for harp

consort know the porcelain and i'm not smart and for some of the stages and i'm just a guy with an average iq i think that in ireland what it was but i know that it's considerably less than my wife's butt but i thought i would have you read a spiral notebook ok this poem is quite typical of the kind of things that i've been doing in recent years in which i try to every ordinary thing in the kind of thing that everybody's familiar with that really doesn't seem in a poetry to try to make something i've been working with a kind of metaphor an explanation of technique in the last few months which is like a kaleidoscope but it doesn't have a color glass of the year to just simply the mirror too and you know when you turn it and you look on something very ordinary become sort of magical orders are designed to and that is the technique that i think a lot of much use a sports we we turned the the tube of mirrors on this some very ordinary thing and it becomes remarkable through the process or whatever the device is called this sort of the

device of the pawnee and then we hand over to the reader to look through the same thing so here i am working with a spiral notebook dr maurer rules like a pointless in the mouth of a cool bluesy of the condos or perhaps like a sleeper twisting in and out of his dreams for it could hold a record of dreams if you want to buy it for that what seems to be meant for more serious work with its college ruled lines and it's covered states an emphatic white letters five subject your book it seems a part of growing old is no longer to have five subject each demanding equal share of attention set apart by brown cardboard fighters but instead to stand in a drugstore and hang on to one subject a little too long like this no book you wave your hands passing their fingers over its surfaces as if it were some kind of us poet laureate ted

kooser on the spiral notebooks from his book delights and shadows the book that wonderful surprise you're listening to your letters on the air and the ocean i think that in some ways also puts together who you are suppose that taking the ordinary and remaking an extraordinary i think a lot of people upset about it but i do think it's not just the role of the poet but it really is your goal for your poetic light that end i'd like to convince people that when they say that their lives are so boring things that there are interesting things around the mall a time years ago the first insurance company i worked for they are an artist with a name right marks housing and taught at concordia college in seward nebraska lutheran school they hired him to come to an end convincing employees that there was a beautiful place to work and that was a big insurance company glass walls and he came in with three five millimeter cameras and took hundreds of slides of reflections on the

water fountains various full details throughout the building and then he put on his magnificent slideshow just filled with color and now i was really impressed with this because a when they were all things that we've been walking by not paying any attention to me and i think in a way that was an experience that i've been measuring myself against for years in my book local wonders which is a prose book i call it a very short poem that i wrote about the painting that is on the cover of delights and shadows it's by george alternate shows up are oral crossroads at night and i had been asked by some people are put together an anthology was never published write something about a painting where i wrote was a little short poem goes if you can awaken inside the familiar and discover its strange unique never leave home which is a color coded for this sort of thing but if you look around you and find things of interest around then your life is richer for that but it takes to look at i think that's betty hoff financial if you heard people say oh so

every so boring here really is now i know really isn't you know that book winter morning walks was written when i was recovering from radiation from cancer treatment and it it is a singular book for me is very unusual in that i wrote a column after column day after day in most of my books are made up implausible in literary magazines over period maybe two years til i get sixty of them alive in this book i said and i regret every day as a part of really try to come up out of and regain my life i think it's one of my better works but i had to get cancer directly and one of the things about this poet laureate she opened this pulitzer prize that i think about every day is that six years ago i didn't think i'd live six months you know i had a stage four cancer i thought it was over you know and i get everything my doctors told me and i just pressed on bedel moment and get it and survived all these wonderful things come to me

so i hope that encourages a lot of other people who are very old hang in there something good could come on you know every day people come back from serious cancers like the most notable was lance armstrong really beat back a highly volatile may just add a cancer is known agreed health i spent quite a bit of my time frankly corresponding with people who are in that she didn't routinely ratings it's interesting that book on of brought back your voice in some ways than it did you know i hadn't been able to write during the charges to stick it just began to emerge and i've talked a lot about the way i feel it that porter is a way of making a small piece of quarter of a very chaotic and disorderly world little tiny square of order and that book is an example of the chaos and disorder of having cancer and injury or being weak and sicken yet every

key question for some sort of order that i could capture well i think we're about out of time so i won't have you close with something and i don't know whether to have you close with a delight overshadow what we do is just have you can't with the beginning of her book walking and walking onto two long ago we quit lifting your heels like the others horse dorgan tiger though we thrilled to their speed as they flee even the mouse bearing the great weight of another dog food is enviable a graceful there is little spring into our walk we are so burdened with responsibility for all of the disciplinary actions that have fallen to as the punishments the killings at all with their feet down stiff in the schemes of the conquered but sometimes in the early hours we can feel what it must've been like to be one of them up on our toes stealing past

doors for others are sleeping and suddenly able to see in the dark walking on tiptoe from the book delights and shadows by ted kooser i interviewed him in april two thousand and five just have very wonderful surprise for that collection as sue us poet laureate since two thousand and four ted kooser has traveled the country to give readings that is main initiative has been that good poetry that continues he's teamed up with the poetry foundation offered paper and online publications around the country a chance to run a free weekly short poem by different contemporary poet which is commentary in hopes that people will see that poetry can be for them it seems to be working he now has a circulation of over eleven million and growing to find out more about ted cruz's initiative american life in poetry visit our website new ladders dot org and click on like this still four decades of us poet laureate you'll also find a list of the music used for this segment

by john williams that's available at magnitude dot com support for this special series at new mothers on the air comes from the public radio exchange at pr x dot org has produced wine lovers magazine at the university of missouri kansas city i era potter alex smith dennis connor okay new hampshire like evil thanks for listening to this hour of life distilled from your letters on the back