The News as Usual

i'm j mcintyre for the rest of today's key pierre presents the news as usual nope it's not time for the latest npr or k pr days cast the news as usual is the name of the latest book by wichita native john kelly answer this interview was originally broadcast on keep your prisons on april twenty first two thousand nineteen i asked kelly enzor to start out with my favorite poem in this collection railing against people railing against kansas first of all the fields are not endless and there's no point saying that just for emphasis this is a soccer field that is a field of alfalfa you can see the difference that care for corn and those are beings and that something else and so on rockies will rise second there's an order here you can't imagine you have to imagine the old days when not much was measured mirage or monotony and tell you got next mission

third no one marshes from rome to for banks in february that you drove from joplin to junction city in august stay home or fly across or make a phone call but stay out of the fields of canola brighter than me are the burned under marlo kelly i think there's a backstory there well you're you're from the midwest and you've lived in kansas a long time so i'm sure you've had this experience people say do you are already living is a low kansas and then there's his moment and i don't know what to say and usually in the end as hell i was there once i drove through at once and then they maybe roll their eyes and they don't know what else to say and so maybe you say well what i knew was right ms haigh on

test is he well of course now when people in kansas don't go outside market why would you why would you want to do their china tired of this conversation the variance of which we've all had people when you look at kansas city it's something else if you're driving through sure it may be boring but i grew up here and i'm used to looking at him and it doesn't look all the same in the fields are not all the same and if you can't tell a soccer field from an alfalfa field egypt should not going anywhere yet so that's the story it really does stem from their annoyance i used to have a friend who said anybody can admire the rocky mountains it takes a good i said to her admirer hire women so happens he was from ohio texas on july he said you cried in what's a tie you now live in new

mexico but these poems the news as usual really resonate with kansas talk about your sense of place and in and how that figures into how you write i'm glad they resonate that way it will always be from kansas and the language that i'm most comfortable with i think is for lack of a better phrase a midwestern vernacular i very often hear things my father said for instance were freezing that mark pearce served that strike me as aunt or unusual or meaningful so the idea of place and language having close connection he he does present i hope that most of what i write cause i'm trying for a certain kind of vernacular less than fancy language to

describe what i see in often the landscape is less fancy as we just discussed political language fits the landscape in a way and one item on finally when i come home to kansas and i always feel that way i'm comfortable here imperiously feeling about kansas that i don't live anywhere else i've lived far researchers haven't other states because it really is home to read lines at the flint hills diner bunch of the flint hills pine i don't think there is a dangerous line to cross anywhere in this country it's all squared up and agreed to we don't live on the edge of anything know canyons no shores a little gravity not even the old folks can recall when the cottonwoods were cleared for plowing now there's no end of land all day the regulars

common to go and we speak greetings family the weather the football team has four but this summer help this morning rolled up her sleeves to show us rejects of flesh on her arms healed now but as carefully measured wants as yard lines on the high school field that actually did happen to me waitress in some garner a young girl a girl had obviously harmed herself so i understand her point but she was so bright and they were so bright and everything seemed so bright but there was a careful arrangement of pain here

so that's what i tried to capture your collection is the news as usual media here i think you for asking i used to be a newsman i used to work in journalism i produced the news well i arranged the news for a long time and yet there are there is a kind of enthusiasm and energy that comes with arranging images in a kind of same old same old nature that complicated the news so there's a poem in this book called current events where the speaker says i think things have always been getting worse and that was my sense after working at the newspaper for quite a while that the news as usual was always bad in some way but there would be more tomorrow until palin you know

and said your poems not that i should be mentioned down the aisle but i will pound said the poems are news that statement is something like that this idea that the news as usual there are several poems here that discussed the news in all bleak ways and sometimes directly addressed in years this would seem like carried caught both of those the paradox of the news as usual appeal to me i'm visiting with the john kelly enzor his collection of poetry is the news as usual kelly can we go outside note to self note to self promotion more recent poems note to self get a grip it's time to admit no one's in charge of working it out in the end no ending of tricks no explication of prior contradictions not seeming

at all you went to all the fragrant weddings and all the funerals you wanted one of each for the fool who's sox finally matched no shoes and the reviews my lord not even a nod to past performance know handout no clapping all she knew at all flattering and floating out of her gas maybe it's a note on the internet but nothing in print no question of standing foes the only guess peeled good as your own above the abyss so buck up so be it no doctor no script john kelly enzor as the author of the news as usual published by the university of new mexico press kelly thanks so much for coming in today it has been more complete pleasure thank you terry this interview was originally broadcast on april twenty first two thousand nineteen

and kate mcintyre at our present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas is there