Support the Humanities! Comments from Ks. Poets Laureate

Poets Laureate of Kansas: Statement of Support for the Humanities

Eric McHenry, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2015-17

Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2013-15

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2009-2013

Denise Low, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2007-09

Eric McHenry

What does it mean to be fully human, and what is it worth? It is difficult to quantify the value of the humanities, but we know that investment there yields a big bang for the soul and for the buck. In the current cost-cutting climate, the value—indeed, the very existence—of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has been called into question, though it costs the average American 50 cents a year.  

 One local beneficiary of the NEH is the Kansas Humanities Council (KHC), with its 45-year track record of strengthening civic life. In 2016, KHC provided over 700 free programs to nearly 400,000 people in all 6 sections of the state. The benefit in terms of education, history, and culture is immeasurable, but the real crop KHC grows is community. 

Wyatt Townley

 KHC’s Poet Laureate of Kansas program, adopted in 2013 from the Kansas Arts Commission, is one of our nation’s 44 state poet laureateships. These programs point to poetry’s ability to explore essential values in an age of distraction. Poetry helps us find common ground and develop greater understanding of our shared home, from the tallgrass prairies of the Flint Hills to the windy high plains.                                                                        

 As poets laureate, we’ve crisscrossed the state many times, dodging blizzards and tornados to talk with fellow Kansans about things that matter. We averaged 50 public appearances a year—some at colleges, high schools, and grade schools, but most at small-town libraries and community centers. Anyone who thinks of poetry as elitist should ride along with us to Colby (pop. 5,387), or Kinsley (1,457), or Glasco (498), and see how many farmers, miners, nurses, children, and retirees fill up rooms.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

 Having a poet laureate costs Kansas taxpayers almost nothing (the modest travel stipend we receive is paid for entirely by private donors), but the position could not exist without the tireless support of the Kansas Humanities Council, providing staff and resources to help us reach new audiences, particularly in underserved and isolated areas. KHC supports the state economy, bringing people together—often across great distances—which in turn bolsters hotels, restaurants, and other local businesses.

Denise Low 

 Our state poet laureate program has a national reputation for excellence. We have organized conferences that brought dozens of other state poets and hundreds of participants to Kansas. We’ve published regular columns in newspapers statewide and produced award-winning anthologies featuring hundreds of writers for thousands of readers. Our thriving regional literary scene led the Association of Writers & Writing Programs to bring its 2020 conference—one of the biggest writers conferences on Earth, drawing some 13,000 attendees from around the world—to the Kansas City area.      

 We believe in poetry as deep literacy—an experience that engages mind, emotion, body, and spirit. We also believe in Kansas, and the essential work of our superb state humanities council and our national treasure, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Please do all you can—contacting legislators especially—to ensure their continuation for the good of us all.

#AWP17 Presentation by Denise Low: Poets Laureate & Government Agencies

This was my presentation for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs panel Uneasy Alliance: Poets Laureate & Government Agencies, Feb. 9 in Washington D.C. Thank you to Patricia Clark for adding me to the panel. Several people asked me to post my remarks, and thank you for your kind encouragement.

I’m Denise Low, poet laureate of Kansas 2007-2009.  Poets laureate positions are now among

AWP-Photo by Fred Viebahn of Kimberly Blaeser, Denise Low

the most important public political positions. They do come for the poets first.

Kansas is a canary-in-the-mine state for the United States. It was crucial in the Free State battle of the 19^th century. John Brown fired his first shots against marauding Missouri slavers in the Battle of Black Jack, 1856, near Baldwin City. A hundred years later, Brown versus Topeka Board of Education was the deciding legal case determining school desegregation. Kansas is a political hotbed.

In 2004, Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of health under Obama, was governor of Kansas. She established the poet laureate position. The Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, researched the position for her and determined its scope. Jonathan Holden was the first Poet Laureate in 2005, and I was the second, starting duties in 2006 and continuing appearances until 2009. Duties included judging Poetry Out Loud, giving an ecumenical invocation for the governor’s arts awards, and many other wonderful activities. The Internet was newish, and I started a blog, still going, that dates to 2006. I posted poetry broadsides every couple weeks, eventually published as a book, To the Stars: Kansas Poets of the Ad Astra Poetry Project  (Washburn Center for Kansas Studies/Mammoth 2010, Kansas Notable Book) 

All went well. Caryn Mirriam Goldberg was chosen 3^rd Ks. Poet laureate and began her term, summer of 2009. In early 2010, she organized (with my assistance, but she was the prime mover!) a conference of state poets laureate in Lawrence. 

Then, 2011, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback took office as governor. You may not have heard of him. He was a member of the Values Action Team and a leading social conservative in the Senate. He converted to conservative Catholicism in 2002 and is a member of Opus Dei. He, before Trump, subscribed to the policy of dismantling government institutions. He had presidential aspirations. 

Did I mention the Koch brothers are from Wichita, and they backed his career? If you have read Thomas Frank’s first book What’s the Matter with Kansas, you will see where I’m going. He explains how people are persuaded to vote against their own best interests, even if it means losing the family farm. Many family farms were lost.

One of the first things Brownback did was to defund the Kansas Arts Commission. He gave no reason. The KAC was well run and high profile in this rural state. Arts events were funded in remote areas where the tax base supports only bare essentials. In addition to the arts, the Koch brothers and Brownback despise public education. Home-schooled fundamentalist Christians are the ideal. So Brownback cut taxes to the point public education, the arts, the roads, health support for severely handicapped people, and social services were barely functioning. I can testify that after seven years, trickle-down economics in Kansas is a complete bust. This year Kansas has a 360 million dollar deficit, expected to be half a billion next year, in a small state. Brownback uses funding for schools to balance the budget, and they, once excellent, are faltering. 

Back to the arts commission. Brownback tried to establish a private arts organization that would approve fundamentalist Christian arts programs only. He appointed wealthy citizens to the board. Eventually, this failed—arts administration is not an amateur game. The tea party Kansas legislature even voted to fund the KAC, but Brownback vetoed the bill. The KAC is gone. Gone. Poets in the Schools, grants to artists, dance performances, art exhibits, concerts, quilt workshops--all gone.

Caryn Mirriam Goldberg, with allies, did a Kickstarter in 2011 to keep her position viable for a year. She approached many angels. Finally, the Kansas Humanities Council agreed to accept the program. This nongovernment organization is not at the whim of politics. With the KHC the focus of the position shifted from arts to humanities content, so there is more emphasis on community building rather than aesthetic/craft issues. No problem. To this day, the KHC is the home of the poet laureate, and the position is doing well. 

And Kansas people have awakened from the delusion that Brownback is helping anyone. His approval rating is way down, 18%. The Koch brothers abandoned his bid for the presidency, and even Trump has not put him in any position (we were hoping he would leave Kansas but feared for what he would do to the country). The legislature of Kansas is now, after 2016 elections, moderate Republicans and Democrats, so a slow repairing has begun. Tax cuts have been reversed by the state legislature, February, 2017.

There is a happy ending, perhaps. The poets of Kansas keep up an internet presence of poetry projects, and the latest theme, 2017, is resistance—you can see poems of resistance online at 150 Kansas poems, “Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity.” Thank you to Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for her heroic resistance to government sabotage and to the KHC for its support.

Do prioritize support for the arts. They do go after the poets first. The National Endowment for the Arts is in danger. Americans for the Arts is a general organization that supports all arts programs, especially the NEA. AWP is a member and lobbies each year through the Arts Advocacy Day initiatives on Capitol Hill, this year March 20-21. Making poetry is a political act. 

As poet laureate I went all over a large and diverse state, from inner cities in KC to sparsely populate High Plains areas. Libraries, arts centers, and schools all create a situation of deep literacy, critical to being a good, informed citizen. Today more than ever, this is an essential charge of our public life as writers. 

CARYN MIRRIAM-GOLDBERG's poem "Landed" mixes whimsy and details of nature

The Poet Laureate of Kansas reads April 25, Wed., at the Lawrence Public Library—see http://www.lawrence.lib.ks.us/  If you miss this springtime reading, check   http://carynmirriamgoldberg.com  for upcoming events. Earlier this spring, she and her husband burned grass as part of the renewal process for prairies. As Poet Laureate, she has brought Kansas writers together as well as state poets laureate from across the country. In 2011, she organized one of the few national gatherings of poets laureate, from Rhode Island, Alaska, Texas, and Alabama, as well as Midwestern states. She recently edited a collection of 150 poems by Kansas poets to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of Kansas, Begin Again. She has organized a dozen group readings from this anthology. She has more projects brewing.

In addition to advocacy for writing, she is herself a fine poet. This title poem for the collection Landed (2009) shows her balance of whimsy and observation. She walks the line of sentiment, as she writes a celebratory nature poem. She focuses on specific details, like a field guide, but her language creates the aesthetic. The curve of a crow’s feather, “where it bows,” echoes the “long crescent” of her partner’s body later in the poem. Her personal reflection complicates the descriptive details also, putting them into a larger context. She writes, “whatever we think of love is just the aerial view,” and likewise this poem gives us a new way to view the cedars, grass, wind, and stories about love.

Landed

Here everything is a list of its details:
the surface of crow feather where it bows,
or echo of whippoorwill through the closed window
over the bed. The chiggers and the slow-creeping
cedar trees, milkweed webbed with spittlebug,
and the grass above and below ground,
mirroring out from a single point
of root and longing.
I'm landed here, in the center of something
not my own doing, and although I keep thinking
I'm alone, I'm dying, I'm afraid,
I'm making all that up.
The man I love is coming out of the woods,
the long crescent of his body closer, bowing to touch
something, say its name.
When he stands back up, he walks slowly to show me
whatever we think of love is just the aerial view
that tells you nothing compared to the soft green stems
that curl and fall with the wind, compared to how each step
across the grass is a form of falling
out of and into what losses make life possible.
The quick flashes, like the sun balancing
on the lip of the horizon right before
it goes out, like that moment the field golds
everything opaque, like how love strips us
out of the stories we have for love.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the 2009-2012 Poet Laureate of Kansas, and a long-time transformative language artist. She is a poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, teacher, mentor, and facilitator. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College (where she teaches), and facilitator of Brave Voice workshops.  Forthcoming books are The Divorce Girl, a novel of art and soul, from Ice Cube Books and Needle in the Bone: How a Holocaust Survivor and Polish Resistance Fighter Beat the Odds and Found Friendship, from Potomac Press. Other books are Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, editor, 2011,Woodley Memorial Press; An Endless Skyway: Poetry from the State Poets Laureate, co-editor with Marilyn L. Taylor, Denise Low and Walter Bargen, Ice Cube Books;  Landed, poetry, Mammoth Publications; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community & Coming Home to the Body, Ice Cube Books; and The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader, co-editor with Janet Tallman, Ice Cube Books. More information is at her website http://carynmirriamgoldberg.com/bio/  

Small Literary Press Mammoth Publications Rolls Out New Titles

My husband Thomas Weso, and I have a small press, Mammoth Publications, which is presenting a number of book events this fall:

1. Aug. 30 Sunday 4 pm Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, poet laureate of Kansas, performs poems and songs from her new book/CD LANDED, with co-lyricist and outstanding musician Kelley Hunt, at the Lawrence Public Library. Dinner on your own afterwards at Local Burger.

2. Sept. 4 We Should Have Come by Water: Poems by Robert Day, a fine press (handset type on fine paper) chapbook with prints by Kathy Jankus (representend by the Strecker-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan), limited edition! Signing party details to be announced). Robert Day received his MFA in poetry, but is better known as a prose writer. This is his first publication of poetry.

3. The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories (signing & reading in Oct.) by Elizabeth Schultz

4. We are reprinting E. Donald Two-Rivers’ 2003 book Powwows, Fat Cats, & Other Indian Tales, late August

5. And we also will be publishing the collection of Ad Astra Poetry Project electronic broadsides, a Kansas poetry anthology with commentary by Denise Low, in cooperation with Washburn’s Center for Kansas Studies.

Advance copies of these books are available through www.mammothpublications.com or in Lawrence: the Raven Bookstore and Oread Bookstore.

Denise Low, former Ks. Poet Laureate

Poets Laureate with Kansas Flowers 1 July 2009, photo by artist Lisa Grossman

Kansas Poet Laureate Position Passes to Caryn Mirriam Goldberg July 1 as Rick Mitchell Provides the Sunflower

Ad Astra Poetry Contest #8 Winners

Congratulations to winners of Ad Astra Poetry Contest #8, Kansas Wildlife: Steven Hind (Hutchinson), Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (Lawrence, next Ks. Poet Laureate!), Stephen Meats (Pittsburg), Bill Hickok (Mission & L.A.), Priscilla McKinney (Lawrence), Robert Stewart (Johnson Co.), and John Blair (Arlington, Texas & former Jayhawk).Competition was very, very stiff this time, and I selected shorter poems to fit the space. I appreciate all the entries that have come my way this month.

Further details and examples of my own Kansas poems are on the Kansas Arts Commission website: http://arts.ks.gov/. My thanks to Christine Dotterweich Bial and all the good folks at the KAC. Greg German hosts the wonderful site http://www.kansaspoets.com/, which also supports this project.

This is the last contest, and many of you have up to eight new poems. I encourage you to use them as “poems in your pocket” today—take one out and read it to folks you meet. November is novel-writing month. Perhaps by then you will have a book-length manuscript of poetry completed.

All best, Denise Low

Sternberg
by Steven Hind

The fish that swallowed the fish
carried its last living victim in
the delicate raft of its ribs, as if
art had molded a story of
gluttony, or how unlucky hungers
end every story in the wealth of the
sea. On my spongy soles I stand
before "the most photographed
fossil in the world," as my bones
hold up the soft machine of my
breathing, my blood as salty
as oceans, and I study the jaw,
the awful jaw, made for reaping
first to last suppers, design frozen
into the slab of accumulations,
an awful tale from the depths of
a timeless time, and I imagine
accumulations: a million pictures
of the double fish, drifting into
another pocket of the past.
#
When The Rain Comes
by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

The clouds roll in,
shadows holding up light,
titled silver at the edges.
Trees everywhere turned,
sidewalks dry and wanting,
grass silvering
in stalks of wind.
The branches heavy
with blackbirds,
the old wall of sky etched
with worn lightning.
The whole fields lifted
to the breaking world
where, for a moment,
all that wants to be said is heard.
#
Evening Callers
by Stephen Meats

Just at dark three barred owls
whisper into the backyard elms.
For thirty minutes they circle
and swoop, or sit in silhouette
on dead branches high
against the fading light
and rollick a cacophony
of howls and coughs and barks
while a flurry of squirrels
skitter for safety on the under
sides of limbs.
#
Scrambled Eggs
by Bill Hickok

The drab diminutive cowbird
hops like a rabbit behind
her bovine friend.
Makes gourmet meals of
what’s left on the ground.
Her moxie does not stop there.
In spring she drops her eggs
with mercenary zeal
into the nests of strangers.
Meadowlark becomes motherlark;
killdeer, mommy dear;
the prairie sparrows and grouse—
all oblivious surrogates
for these street-smart cruisers.
Gone the nursery and teenage
tyranny. These master sleuths
of the midland flats have
feathers of their kind and
brains that gleam.
#
Avis Tyrannosaurus
by Priscilla S. McKinney

Growing pale under feathers,
most birds back off from a predator,
giving a bluejay some space,
when he comes to their feeder.

I saw a poor wren pecked to death once
who failed to defer to his dominance.

Watching him run, stalk, and attack,
I see in this present-day seed-eater
his less sleek, unfeathered ancestor,
the monstrous Jurassic meateater.
#
Hunt It Down & Kill It
by Robert Stewart
I think I could live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained. Whitman

There it is, placid in the tall-grown
Kansas backyard, the rabbit that loves
to flaunt its white behind if our back
door creaks open, or if I stand and look
at it long and long; the rabbit knows
it can stretch its legs far into this state
toward the six-foot privacy fence,
the gleam of morning light in wet grass.

There it is, so self-contained no one
has heard it whine or lie awake weeping
for its sins, though warned by poets,
failing in its duty to God. We kneel,
Dog and I, by the lilac bush to stalk
the demented mania of all things
poking around, ears hand-signaling
the birds that fly and fish that swim

the limitless prairie lakes and skies.
There it is, eyeballing its escape hole
that it might live, also, with animals
not respectable or unhappy even if
a shadow drifts over the earth, sharp-
shinned or Cooper’s hawk, or me
loping in the tall, wet, grass neighbors
sneer at. Lazy, they say. Oh, placid.
#
Birdfeeder Karma
by John Blair

Take care before
You hang a birdfeeder
Imagining how mellow it will seem
To see your feathered friends
Clinging to its sides
Or hopping all around
On the ground beneath.
Unless you aspire to be
Dispassionate, objective,
A self-distancing observer
Of these non-human species,
You will soon discover
You have linked with other lives
And are a part, in no small way,
Of their existence.
And when one winter day
You find small bones, a skull,
A pair of ragged feathers
Half-hid beneath the leaves
Where last summer
Sparrows hotly chirped
And bluejays jeered,
The tiny pain you feel
Is the gift you gave yourself.
#

Mary Wharff Comments on Caryn Goldberg's Poem "Spring Song"

From an email to Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg:

"I wanted to let you know what had really struck me in your poem -- and yay, that gave me a chance to go back and be with it again this morning. What I think I love is that it is, really, a "being" poem, a life poem. Completely human. Why do we keep asking? That last line is so startling and right, right, right on the money. So it really gets me in my heart, after truly delighting my head, and my writer soul -- like I barely can finish it because observations and the words you choose make me want to write. Seeing the space but not figuring in the space -- precise and incredible way of describing that just woke up disorientation. "wet as fire" -- man, things like this thrill me and I get almost breathless with wanting to try it myself. In the second stanza, I enjoyed wings and thunderheads, but was really grabbed when that led to a crashing car, a lamp post, slivering bark .... what did wake the narrator? I really like that you include the car, move into the human world. Third stanza, here, your word choice especially grabs me. insects ... like breath! birds LOOSEN the sky! Wowee -- how'd you do that? Then again, you go human, kisses stop. And then, oh, those cracked stones, a long time! And I just wasn't expecting where that stanzas goes -- to the minutae, to the "this is all it really is" .... And maybe that's what wakes us up most often, who knows. I just love it Caryn, and have printed it out and will keep it forever as something to aspire to. Thanks for the inspiration! Mary"

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT #16 CARYN MIRRIAM-GOLDBERG (1959- )

One of the most active poets in Kansas is Lawrencian Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg. She conducts writing workshops and readings across the state. She teaches poetry to journal keepers, songwriters, lower-income youth and adults, and cancer survivors. As a professor in a low-residency college, she reaches students across the nation. Further, she is a founder of the transformative language arts curriculum, which promotes spoken and sung language as “a tool for personal and community transformation.” She has a global perspective on poem-making.

Mirriam-Goldberg’s verse plumbs the depths of consciousness. In “Spring Song” she situates the poem between waking and dream states. The poem also hovers between night and day; between winter and summer; and between imagination and reality. Sky, gravity, trees, birds, and stones are elements of nature—and so also are moments like sudden waking from a dream and love. The ending image of a stone, solid yet carrying an internal crack for years, is yet another paradox. What seems solid may shatter at any moment. This is fertile ground for the poet.

SPRING SONG

What it is to wake at night not watered down
in overdrawn voices from the day, to see the space
and not figure in the space, to fall backwards
in a dream and realize it’s a dream?

What waits, wet as fire, on the end of the line?
The rushing of wings, the billowing of thunderheads,
the crashing of car into lamp post, the slivering of bark
from tree, the waking suddenly for no reason?

Meanwhile, insects reproduce themselves like breath,
birds loosen the sky with flight,
stratus clouds streak across the moon,
kisses stop, and stones break apart
so easily that it’s clear they’ve been cracked inside
for a long time. Each life a transference of water.
Each act just a way to move light around.

Even knowing this, why can’t the heart stop asking?

Education: Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg was raised in Brooklyn and Manalapan, New Jersey. She came to the Midwest to attend the University of Missouri (B.A. History, 1985) and the University of Kansas (M.A. in Creative Writing 1988 and Ph.D. in English, 1992).

Career: Mirriam-Goldberg’s books of poetry are Lot’s Wife (Woodley 2000); Animals in the House (Woodley 2004) and Reading the Body (Mammoth 2004). Since 1996 she has been a professor at Goddard College in Vermont, working with the Individualized MA program. She founded and coordinated the Transformative Language Arts conference and Goddard’s degree emphasis. She also has written books for teenagers, Write Where You Are and a biography of Sandra Cisneros. Her blog is carynmirriamgoldberg@blogspot.com. Her website is http://www.writewhereyouare.org/ .
______________________________________________________ © 2008 Denise Low, AAPP16 © 2006, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg “Spring Song,” Animals in the House, Woodley.