An hour with Huascar Medina

it brought is national poetry month and what better way to spend it than with our new kansas poet laureate i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr prisons was carved medina was their congratulations and great to meet you think is great to meet you we'll talk about your term as poet laureate in just a minute but let's start with a poem or i'd per aspirant ad astra we were last in the plane's beautiful an ordinary sunflowers in the fields seeds of fallen stars standing tall and deeply rooted in this land i've admired how our flower shine grasping towards the sky beyond the prairie grass anchored down to earth men making the sun winegardner plants a seed affiliate this they're performing magic raising stars out of the dust or buzzing planted circle half red moon set and swarming comments flowed in orange comb us i've always felt that late at night and the bed of the truck and a kansas field

we were at the center of this universe knows exactly why should be amongst the flowers not below well that's very kansas yet i have accounts is calling a view of big as is poet i feel like is he knows a rite of passage western for many kansans this may be the first they've heard of you or heard your voice or heard your poetry tell us a little bit about about you i am originally from texas i will do two thousand one i am i do poetry are around the area not open mikes a re form a magazine and topeka seventy five and we are on the lead editor so i spent a lot of time promoting other poets sinai nowhere with a poet's all ours and i'd go follow them around in an involve myself at the readings i love poetry i'm puerto rican and

panamanian so my parents and i love cancers i don't think i'm going to move from here there were glad to have you and i miss the humanities kansas is glad the heavy because they named you the new poet laureate of kansas just this past week just yesterday who's announced correct well congratulations what's that like to get there to get the call and he did so myself or allow a nose it was interesting cause i could share with close friends my friends i trust him you know that will keep you know lock and key when they're say anything you know without permission and down there's only one instance i wanted to like actually share the house poet laureate and it was at eyes baggy on the hill you know at the capitol and i read this particular palm analysts discussing was reading it and now i just want to to say you know i was already so those

interesting moment but i've been given to myself and alice out of the cat's out the bag in the sun so right what are your last couple predecessors in the position kevin rapists who will hear from later this hour and eric mchenry both have an academic background you on the other hand are i guess what i would call a working a writer how does that shape your poetry and how do you think that affects how you write i write out of necessity a sense of the more with the i need to be understood but i believe academics to the same bomb were all poet i believe there's a free fall after a poet i believe there's academic poet the traveling toward which is dry where most people would put me i could i do go around quite a bit and then on the human tissue performing artist a spoken word poets i think we all you know have the capacity to at some point become poet laureates and this is a change of pace

i'm happy about it i just know that and on the right it's something i do every day and that's very true i don't spend a lot of time teaching poet use of a lot of time to work on my torture in your day job and seventy five you work as a as a copy editor and as a publisher how do you think that shaped the way you think about words i spend a long time choosing the right word it really matters though the way in a word you know evan wright worden right place arm is only way to get to the next word for me so it could take quite a bit of time for me to finish a bomb you know but there's no rush for me i just i just a process i just want to get it right and out that is one of my day just my regular day job where i do for a living as though i work in and

maintenance i fix things which i am doing quite a bit this is a gratification you know the palms takes so long you know to produce for me and some days they come right out in australia consciousness cliche get to but i'll sit there and an end at it and added to an added and so i'm tired of it yeah walk away from the pieces i can really suzuki as simple way for a moment and theory had to get back to its tv still love it well speaking of getting back to it could i get you to read a second home yes i am the stronger it is us surrogates city i told her mood by here from texas asked anton to be specific i missed a city i would go to kansas city quite of it just to kind of feel the harm you know the highway from circuit city mama estonian mother casey has adopted me she too wears iron garments of concrete and glass wing

separate across the streets reminds me and cared for through sirens in the air she hums the highway lullaby afford a cell plan their slime a pass the nights skylines don't resemble we've yeah son survived piece she embraces your son the son and sold my soul mother casey has been good to me that's wonderful think it's also partially in spanish which you are the first latino poet laureate of kansas what does that mean to you inclusion it's a symbol of diversity i'm proud of you know my mother came from panama my dad you know came from puerto rico to mainland so in arm first here yesterday to be in this position the slots my family and to the people around me and i think the optics are beautiful swallow you know she was at

kansas's sway more diverse as some people might think in isolation i share that experience what it's like for someone like me to being cancers and identify with kansas what's the like writing a poem like that one parsley and inglis parsley in spanish is ashley from ian says it's quite easy oh i am because i'm in the end the train i am no longer you know from panama to puerto rico and sometimes i feel like i'm still on that you know american and out and also those poems come a lot easier for me it's where i find balance and oh i have that identifies very much with with me what's common themes that run through a lot of your work right now yes this song working on the manuscript to mangle gross in kansas and it is really about what it has been for me to be a latino in kansas you

know that that experience and finding my place here and trying to show my love of kansas with other cancers but also knowing that there are portions of kansas to sort out ready to accept you know what he knows and a community and i struggle with that voice my mother struggles you work in health care and then how she should have sometimes in it says it's difficult you know she's one of the bestsellers she does but because of her name her accents you know her skin tone arm she's not welcome that softened so i wanna go around in an ann welcome people to me yellen invite them to the latino experience of kansas i think poetry maybe it's a good medium in which to do that is to sell it once showed german poetry committees to force understood and that is the basis for me with poachers wide shows it cause you can

feel before you think and when you can connect with someone on that level because i've developed empathy in a mess that human connection that is for compassion starts so poetry is that that avenue for me you first come to writing poetry audie young age did something a voice carried with me i've been very unsure it was my life i spent a lot of time around my father's a drill sergeant army so i'm read traveled quite a bit and um went to two city town school and um you know very much you know he knows i spend quite a time learning english reading books you know and then poach you just throw my lap and i love those abstract it sometimes it makes sense but i felt thinks now so those rules are is a connection for me was a good relationship from the start see you wrote

as bad as a child really on yasser of bushels either levin when you go back and look at those poems would you think off yet not good that's professor first denied because of my alma mater only two three lions and we're like about the highlight very much you know just expressing that they were pretty good poems for an eleven year old i would i would say so i unbutton bias i wrote them a mother was said to be safe seize your mom she has this jesse year fifty what is the thing you hope to do as poet laureate do you have an idea for why you're poet laureate set will look like a lot of traveling i wanna meet people are in rural kansas tonight i wanna can act i

want to china find that space between young is the rise of lines are they sometimes i'd we costly talk about urban or rural or of the service will grow american immigrant you know i just i want to comment on a very basic level so i want to travel speak my truth that i want them to speak the truth as well and i want them to have equal time in on to share their poetry with a bare wears a truth you know the saudis were speaking truth and we do it through art and it offers us a bit a grace and now we speak with grace people more likely to listen let's hear one of your poems yeah we can do that this was caught me slap and scott a unit is in spanish tonight i prize should preface with whistleblowers mean violent milan three got talent and who does the job longer ago

and those aren't chris is telling in puerto rico and is entirely aware will cause that komen is starts by taking saying goes on to many years it's a long fast we go house to house and cookie is a fraud from puerto rico and the lease islands story says that they can't live or survive so they have to live on the island and sea levels are peasant farmers and my father's father worked the land in amman deal cool you're out there there are green plantains may cut sugarcane was really hard labor backed and so his office at detroit's far seats he's a he was a peasant farmer and he was a negative connotations back home still for some people but here's the ponies line item mango today was mostly grain with reds and yellows and he'll get on is mostly green with reds and yellows my whole manson chanted foliage at

shady jungle mountains talking naked beaches slowly making ocean their sea breezes with a palm trees and keeping coconuts faint from holding on too long and sanders sleep daydreaming of me tonight leading the sport the papa let us pretend the crickets are drunk and cookies the bottom they're struggling with loss singing in the wrong key playing out of tune unable to find their way home let us pretend we are surrounded by vacation not work that all this week a speech that the above blue was ocean let us pretend you're watching me a ride in a hammock swoon strong to horizons with no ocean or beach sand near nor fear that i'd become landlocked here surrounded by he bottles who don't buy he bottles still an island that's a beautiful poem thank you it occurs to me that in that poem and perhaps with

other other work of yours that you're really bridging two worlds ends that by using spanish language that your you're communicating where maybe a broader audience and educating us about about was only known little about rows of exists within cats is already this was what you'd like us to know about you but when i asked you that i that i said i love jazz i like doing musical dear love running on playwright to a lot of places to us that experience seen people speak your words onstage that you've written in and every time they're out there to stiffer dismembered the same experience in as a shared experience with an audience you know so you know this is just trusts you now and also which you receive in return that energy is always difficile yours at the prepares so

for that and so delivery alliance so i take that with me when i do poetry now that to deliver my life it's what kinds of plays hilly written om i have one play recently that was shared those produced by an asset the tour company idles a homegrown play right projects by this past year analysts arm and it was an interesting story of ain't it's a woman to find out her husband had been in their entire lives had a little bit alive before her and it completely changes you who he was injured to come to terms with other people who knew so sure that fine forgiveness is not only an herself in him and the other people involved and also you know her congregation at the church but curious how sitting in an audience and watching a play of yours

performance how that compares to actually standing before an audience and say reciting your own poetry reciting poetry for me is so it's more personal for me it's as my words they come from a real place they are genuine you know when i write from a vulnerable place at all times at the va have to be sincere and open and that matter has you know it really is a genuine poetry that you know it has its effort to be genuinely at the you know to file a genuine is as a be felt one is written as a be felt when it is read it as it felt when it does hurt or spoken and for any of those are characters you know as i have been especially felt when it was written so i feel a lot my share of poetry i write poetry was garrett well one last poem to go out and physically that baum was caught us spanish nodded feathers stitching only neruda can

save us i've written him a plea for guidance addressed it to the waning crystal moon and add red branch of the now gone autumn in his window it's synced with red to apollo mile who refused to wear the satchel my willy donated through my nose unallowable before passing and omar do for practicality balance and against my knee for sentimentality the added weight of things makes quite onerous he'd say how i wish this bird was more passenger pigeon less dove willing to fight through wind and rain to get there okay with war and loss i've even taught him to fly in cursive in case he didn't make it so others may see the phrases passing by before he shot down but very few people see the need for soft round words free in flowing and here is grace

appearing and decisive almost lost from below how they've pitied him port by wilma a bag of you please take this note to insurers scene towards the sill in his view be candid have manners white the sand from your feet before entering david discuss their purchase self upon his finger of peace i just have to know can a song to despair come before love pong less gamma dna is the brand new poet laureate of kansas was great thank you so much for coming in today thank you you can find out more about how laureate of cancers including how to invite him to your community at humanity's kansas dot org coming up was the readiness predecessor kevin raiders reflects on his time as poet laureate of kansas i'm kate mcintyre katie our

prisons continues right after this is it's from the university of kansas kansas public radio we're ninety one five lawrence and eighty nine nine activists and you can find a timeline of kansas public radio dot org support for katie are present some kansas public radio comes from the league centers upcoming performances including comedian and handyman red green the broadway musical something rotten and more tickets are available at lead that k u dyke edu and from emporia state university theater presenting william shakespeare's tale of star crossed love romeo and juliet running nightly in the curls the breeder theater april twenty four three twenty seven at seven thirty pm more information act against dog emporium dot edu

today and kbr presents we're celebrating national poetry month i'm kenny macintyre we just heard from the newly appointed poet laureate of kansas was karma dina and now a conversation with the outgoing poet laureate kevin rate is ten and it's great to see you again majority of the year to pay for having me we'll talk about year term as poet laureate in just a minute but let's start out this hour with one of your poems ok sir this one has a little below wind up where my colleagues in emporia state and as the service learning projects in uganda and on the last day of their work there they go out for a fish dinners that they go on this kind of extravagant dinner and you know the poem talks a little bit about are you live by the rules about where you are or like when in rome do as the romans do or star trek the prime directive right

and also edits at cultural and socioeconomic differences and grappling with poverty so at a long windup here is the poem which is simpler than half of that has gone not done we eat tilapia by the sea that little black fish with a small pinch of salt to season the dish in uganda or this is a lot a treat more the most ever eat and we stop and the waiter says not done so we pick up the bones not done so eat the scales the fans not done so ed eyes warm and soft the tale teller is nothing left but a thin white bones like looks like teeth like the belly of a boat stripped open to the sun and see hall oh i'm out all the way open hungry for nothing now that's wonderful thank you yeah i went to a couple of talks that gary wife gave and i and then interviewed him and worked on that and so in some ways it's it's

his poem you know to work together on and he said it over and over in our time writing it down so so my heart goes out to gary thanks for work that's a bit of a departure isn't it for you to write something that's not within your own experience but someone else's experience yeah i love the collaborative so whenever i get a chance in some ways winding keeps on the story five times over i am happier keep writing it down in and adding to it it feels like just yesterday that you stepped into the position of poet laureate following in the footsteps of eric mchenry wife's family care and miriam goldberg the new flow in others like your term in office and what you set out to do you as the poet laureate of king right so i gave this talk on finding extraordinary in the ordinary finding beauty and every day and i got to go across kansas giving that talk i did about forty official talks or so as well as a lot of other pick our parents is just to support my fellow

poets in and be on the scene as they would say it's a in jazz where you're out there doing your thing i've done three this weekend upsets you know sort of thing and so i i've loved giving that talk of getting people into portrait showing folk supporters for everyone and also i did a couple of projects one was letters to a young poet where i'm starting poets or mid career poets would mentor with more experience poets and right back and fourth letters and sometimes emails and then we are taking the greatest hits of that and creating an anthology which will be not only in archival product but also but that experience for those who took part in that and then also we have our bars against hunger where are points in kansas wrote about about hunger and food scarcity in and poverty and other things too and then we took those and put them in an anthology and i did a much everything's where our canned food art was the admission price or a little bit towards

beyond towards a goal and then also some of the proceeds of that anthology sales went to harvesters of topeka i know one of those events took place here as in laurence and ladybird diner they did that was the best and humanities kansas even bought i think thirty copies and gave out those to the first thirty people that showed up and so there was a kind of artifact for those who came that night and no one was turned and everybody got something and that it was a wonderful evening of powerful poetry i'm denise low as their eric mchenry was there are a number of boys from the region or they're so we had a great representation and was a magical night we but just mention some of your predecessors as poet laureate how would you say your turn differed from those that came before you the easiest way is i'd drop the drums across the state and so everywhere i went ahead and drums in hand and i played

those well i did some of my poems and so that was a big difference and it was a joy and people said i love the drummond part now think well i guess calling that was worth it the weight shoulder and back strain cetera but it's so much fun to share that part of the porter for me which is jazz quarter of portugal's music or attend a performance poetry and opt to get more folks into the art form through that on a rant because you are a jazz poet in fact the first time i met you kevin it was probably fifteen years ago you had ads as poetry and then hear a k u in memorial union i had never heard of jazz poetry before that and i remember coming away thinking wow what was that yeah and you know it's in a tradition of langston hughes who grew up in was part of his youth was work is really the most famous of all the jazz poets there are folks who came after him were very famous to like and they're brought there joy harjo jack

kerouac allen ginsberg om etc beth lasik and on it goes on but you know one of that the great folks who formed that art form it's from more so langston hughes and so i'm in that tradition you not play jazz almost in iran doing it also worked in a jazz archive and so it's something that i really appreciate your jazz a one of the only true american art forms we got jazz got baseball just a few things and so i really admire about tradition and tried to arm honor it through my own work kevin when you write as poetry for you which comes first the words or the rhythm on you know literally the words come first and then i had the music to them but i used to do this gig at the cup and saucer in kansas city and the river market area and i wrote poems for that good and that changed my whole style the way i

write is is harkens back to that time when i was creating poems to be read aloud during the two hour stand once a month which usually just scott sklar a saxophonist him about your city om but also with a few other folks and so that gig change my poetry are radically and you know the thing i do now with the courtroom dramas the three or four tunes i do most of the time on backing from om in emporia they were doing a speak easy series and they said they wanted some ponds i said aw work of the beer and i've done that they're you know a whole bunch of times now so sometimes necessity is the mother of invention kevin ray bursts of emporia state university he is the current poet laureate of kansas his term is coming to a close at the end of this month and how about another poem ok sounds good you know i should make sure that i do the inaugural poem so laura kelly our was was campaigning in my in my city she

she came to the emporia state to do a debate and while she was there she said would you write me a poem and i said sure thing you win and i will write your column as he did and so here is the poem for now governor laura kelly i was reading for an operation on the fourteenth of january two thousand it went on on the steps of the house kansas awakening walk the early green fields and run your fingers across the wheats whiskers and you will know this land is not ours but we belong to these fields and this simple dirt and when we shake hands rough hands smooth hands we can feel that heat blood run through the blue green shoots of the heart this land poll says with us the city office towers with their yellow lights always on the wind turbines pin wheeling to the breath of god the main street teens music up windows down dragging that's triple blacktop

in the night and a one light town and at dawn the sidewalks full of noisy kids and backpacks with lime sachs walking to the yellow buses that heart hope and to the tough shouldered grain elevator it's white pillars and ribs that flashes a lonely light but holds abundant golden grain to all these and more we say welcome you belong to the state like we do some more in the middle at the heart of a body awakening and coming into its own that is so kansas regular gone for so what kinds of things when it when she asked you to write that that poem how did you begin yet you know i told that anecdote bird joke at the beginning about how when she was campaigning but later on she formally ask me later on so there were two times on but i had about two and a half weeks if i remember correctly and i wrote and i wrote that i wrote i did

all sorts of things that were like dress that went nowhere i wrote some beautiful things about laura kelly and what i knew about her as a person those didn't make it into the poem but bit one day i'll get them into the world and i wrote all these stories on how how can we embody the kansas around us from rural environments up to urban environments and everything in between and so i worked on that and i wrote some drafts and then my wife we said you know this none of rural stuff in here and so i said okay tell me about your town walk a bit it's about a mile in our neighborhood and i brought my i brought my notepad with me and she talked and walked and i wrote really worked out and worked on it and said being about four lines but it took a lot of time and so my parents are from rural areas with issa rae area but i wanted to get a ride and so i talked to a bunch of people and try to get all the details so that the ring true and also their representative tom it's not perfect but i did my best to get blanks

you originally come to write poetry yet you know i've told this story before her mom was a journalist and i followed around with your tape recorder slung over my shoulder and she encourages to read and write and to take our stories to write people stories and many poets are essentially kind of like journalists who write very compressed that's instead of auditing column inches you get four column inches and so that's kind of how i look at it in some ways in terms of what i'm doing right now and my mom really started that for me when you're not doing you're poet laureate gay guy you teach writing at emporia state university i would try to teach your students when it comes to writing poetry as opposed to writing prose or or nonfiction as if you know one of the things that i use as a note that i hear over and over on the keyboard is using imagery using the five senses to describe things and it goes beyond that but that's the first

level of imagery so talk about that a lot gets into the world you're creating what i see it is here it smell it etc on another thing is compression try to use as few words as you can on also find your voice and that sounds you know it's not exactly phrase correctly it's more like bring out your voice and make it louder and more resonant it's almost like that a saxophonist who finds that tone that he or she has been wanting and suddenly it sounds like that person talking to you through the instrument so it's not really finding your voice but amplifying the voices already and you and so those are some things and you know working or somebody one semester is not quite enough to get those about you can even start them you can jumpstart a person you can show the pattern say the path is three miles of taking a quarter of a mile island come back and get in if you want to know how do you feel like your own

voice has changed over your life as a poet yeah you know i guess the analogy for me is and drumming in that i don't play as complex when it comes to drones now or as busy as many notes anna in a beat but i found a kind of grounding that i was always looking for and i didn't really have to work at it i was working out at the take aim at its own pace and so eventually i got to the place where i feel pretty comfortable writing a poem now we're sitting down and playing drums as long as it's not really fast and so i've come to a place where i feel i feel more grounded and it's it was not easy but i usually can complete the draft my sit down and animate change radically later i got something that makes a kind of sense and so that's been something and over the last couple years i feel like people been asking me so how does a sport or work usually berating that sort of thing and so it's while looking for those answers are for others i find those answers for

myself they can and have another poem ok sounds good so i've been received searching charlie parker enough if you live in kansas city there's about twenty charlie parker to do you have to know if you want to get to and so oh everybody's were researching charlie parker ah but in going back to look at a staff and on his influence and also some of his connections to my own poetry so those ones a kind of a narrative poem about being in kansas city where on new yorkers also say parker as their guide improv that hi guy in the subway station shows us the way which train and says from kansas what you do and i say poet professor and he says tell me one and i'm quiet shy but i do recite birds horn one of the only ones i know by heart smoothing the words to him and the others in the subway car our hands clamped to the silver poll his

head cocked my way and he tells me this is parker's town and i say we climb into bop genius born in k ck curtis do you think a scene though his fast jazz sound stretching to the coast like a cigarette ghost like a long flat cirrus cloud like an unending river coming from the mouth of his golden gold and saxophone coltrane said he didn't hear a double time to leave heard bird didn't know how the things you could do so you just mentioned the you know the one poem that you know by heart is your other pop out charlie parker yes you say about that yeah i can do that for you i'll be happy to do it on our look at my nemesis and on a message but i i can do it from memory edges changes a little bit age terrified is so there's a bird tornado this is in the voice of a fellow saxophonist to somebody that would land charlie parker a horn for a good nights i went to my horn and afternoons i wrapped my hands around the horn a

bird blue this was not unusual bird was often without a horn he'd blow and the town and everyone would offer him one he'd play anything but a plastic saxophone specially made it just about level of victorian toronto i'm told they kept it but in a museum piece of plastic played once full of only his spirit i didn't learn anything from him except to keep my hands on my worn key my hands on my warning keep my hands on my born whatever worn i have they spent a good part of the past two years traveling around the state of kansas summer your favorite moments as poet laureate right right when i was out west arm i drove through work he me and i beat a hailstorm that knocked out car windows by about fifteen to twenty minutes so the sky turned green it felt like the houses were going to come off of there their foundations an hour's drive in like crazy and i got my cymbals

and drums in my car i didn't even pack a maestro amanda got out of there i loved the talk it was there was a great we had a wonderful time that everybody is also sank carrier gavin so after i was done i got i spent out of there and got to hasan just be that that he'll storm by my minutes and that that was that was wild arm you know me and nature i've i've missed on ice many times i'll come out in the morning and there's ice on the lot but it'll warm up a little bit now go do my thing and then the eyes you know i spot <unk> sauce become that way too so you know people against nature was one of the teamsters during that answer everybody is that at and two thousand eighteen i put a little more than sixty five hundred miles on my car as i put it in my taxes and so i drove around a lot to these events in a love doing i mean i've done a lot of things in this has been my favorite thing

of all things to do what has surprised you about being poet laureate or already in your travels talking to people and sharing poetry with people he had any real surprises you know everybody has interesting questions about portrayed i've had a your old as the questions i've had eight year olds asked me questions and they're always interesting and engaging on as each other so it's been gracing people of curiosity about it an appreciation for it so everybody can i appreciate it and enjoy it and that something that i really truly believe and you know portrays them at a saving grace for me it's helped me out in my own life i had to get through rough spots and also to praise the good moments and so i think it's for everybody and in that way you know writing a poem about the events in your life were writing for an occasion like valentine's day we can all do those things and were all poets in that moment or riding so go on right now we go

out on another poem ok that sounds good so this one arm this one gets a little bit darker on in nineteen ninety nine i was knocked down a pickup basketball game had head injury now though it'll probably a dramatic brain injury at cbi arm and so i would urge a long was about healing and this is one of those it's called take one take to my head's going crazy so i take a pill from the big red bottle a jacket one to angie aid dries me through wendy's and i down those little pills with coke take a gold full crippled back the top never a straw and i bite into that big burger hot meat and melted melted cheese ketchup mustard on my channel my cheek and eat it all in under a minute and close my eyes and think my wife who puts a small hand on my thought i and drives kevin ray this is the outgoing

poet laureate of kansas kevin thank you for coming in today and congratulations on a great two years as poet laureate they sketch i did my best again we're celebrating national poetry month and to basically pierre presents for the rest of this hour the news as usual no it's not time for news from npr or k pr the news as you saw it is the name of the latest collection of poems by john kelly answer kelly thanks for coming by let's start with my favorite poem in your collection railing against people railing against kansas could you remember as i am happy to really gives people ruling 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 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 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 when

people say ad you were eleven years ago 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 would tell you was ms leon cast 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 after 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 it shouldn't go anywhere i guess so that's the story it really just stemmed 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 day mr e pierce said that strikes me is

on or unusual or meaningful so the idea of place and language having close connection he he is 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 as less than 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 have in other states but this 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 shortage 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 girl so your 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 you know i think your first kid 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 that there would be more tomorrow until power you know pound said the poem says 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 discuss 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 there's a recurring character in several of your poems walter fails walter and i played clue to know walter walter luke walton

a character named walter lived next door we lived next door to each other in moscow idaho to small college town not unlike lawrence not as hippies wartime us a burden that it wants to be like lawrence for half walter was in if i slip into using his real name will just have to forgive me comes and goes with me when i don't want to live next door he was about my age and he had dog in a couple dogs when i had a couple dogs in the work of the university and i work at university he was a retired dean so he had some power you'd he actually had some importance to his heart out but we're both retired and we would find ourselves in our backyards mutual back errant caught only by france are separated only by an iron fence talking about the university or the news as usual or whatever it was and it began it dawned on the water was like me and i was like walter least well and it has enough so that we

could so almost exchange places from time to time so i began writing a series of poems about walter's yard which was the name of the chapel co wrote some time ago and i couldn't tell whether it was walter week we come and go and it sometimes and make fun of walter's about water makes fun of me it was a kind of topple garner experience and that it was it was a very rich metaphor for me to work through so that i could find out who aren't where i was so that that's who walter was he's in for five points against perhaps because i love the board game clue isis or like that one could you read a clue is happy to read that poem for what it's worth i've always had a fondness for professor plum all really well plumbed really gets a short and here this isn't this isn't academic poem you know and it's meant to make foreign i think of

academics oh i'm sorry that you feel that way okay walter and i played a wall tear in the parlor in the book in the little book a walter sharp he as waters broke his leg he falls breaks his leg and he has any number of ailments physical ailments so we would sort of have to take care of walter white is so weak we had pizza and we'd have drinks on his deck and we'd play clothes a sense of order and i played clue things change for instance this wall to wall carpet used to be bright parquet my favorite token to lead pipe has become flimsy aluminum and scarlett in our day was a hollywood siren her version of elizabeth's got classic more with her blonde for a lark and one high appearing now now she's asian confusing i

can't imagine her doing it with anything as colonial was a revolver and secret passages still connect the corner and plump is still useless bundled in his cd tweeds driving down for the shooting over sherry continues grousing to the colonel about tenure they accused principal owner but walter fleischer is a grim and the truth he's got him and he's got me i suppose i could have expressed mere suspicion that at our age i'd rather know something before the next role i'd like to know the victim's name at least in all the false steps that led to this mass the guest says so called friends must know most of the story they traipse says hall's chalk his cues play the piano that's badly out of tune

they must gossip about him in his absence but no one lives a finger to help with prince to approve alibis the blue collar work that's left for us meanwhile their linens collected cause it's upstairs this is white bones the chickens and fetches shabbily there's a polished surface to their game but things can worsen they lead swirling lives wants that so many years have straightened their affairs and now they retire separately with copies of call your second life hoarding clues for the last crime i'm visiting with 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 ingenue 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 at your script

kelly answer is that other of the news as usual a collection of poetry recently published by the university of new mexico press kelly thank you so much for coming in today and there's been more complete pleasure thank you terry and happy national poetry not think you'd say and do kansas public radio has a copy of the news as usual to give away if you like it seems to when cathy leave a comment on kitty are caves if you'd like to hear my interview with the new poet laureate of kansas was firm it enough or with the outgoing poet laureate kevin raye this year archive on our website kansas public radio dot org you can also listen to them on like a pr i'm j mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas

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