Kevin Prufer's Comments on Libraries Ditching Literary Magazines

Kevin Prufer, poet, editor, and board member of the National Book Critics Circle, has essential commentary on priorities in his local college library: "The library had relegated Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and many others to the databanks. To save money and space, no paper copies will be available for readers ever again. . . ."

To read more, go to this link! CRITICAL MASS: The Graveyard of the Database

Appreciation for Jonathan Holden Coming in Midwest Quarterly

The Midwest Quarterly is publishing a special issue about the first poet laureate of Kansas, Jonathan Holden. Stephen Meats, long-time poetry editor of MQ, is putting together a collection of commentary about Jonathan, an interview, and other highlights. Its url is http://www.pittstate.edu/engl/mwq/MQindex.html I have the opportunity in that issue to express my profound appreciation for Jonathan at some length.

Holden has been very supportive and gave me a gracious, kind introduction at the governor's arts awards in Topeka, June 7, for which I am very, very grateful. I have known and admired Jonathan for 30 years, when I first heard him read at Kansas State University, where he is a professor. I was a temporary instructor at KSU in the late 1970s, and I also knew his student Scott Cairns, who has become a great poet of faith. Jonathan has inspired several generations of poets.

Jonathan encouraged me to strive for excellence. His example of combining scholarship with writing made me aware of how much research, formal or informal, goes into good verse. His love of the art form was an inspiration also. As I reflected on his career for the MQ article, I realized how much he supported American aesthetics; women's values in poetry; and the inclusion of domestic within the tradition. He truly has impacted, through his own poetry and scholarship, the direction of American verse.

Because they own the copyright, I cannot reprint what I wrote for the MQ, but please do look for that issue. Greg German and Jonathan edited a selection of poetry for it, as well.

Here is a comment from Ted Kooser, which summarizes how many of us feel: "Jonathan Holden is one of our most intelligent poets... It is not always easy to be both brilliant and generous of spirit. It is our good fortune that Holden wears his learning lightly and with such unaffected grace and charm."

Again, my heart-felt appreciation for the commitment of this great mind, first poet laureate of Kansas. Here's a poem from his essential book of selected works Knowing (University of Arkansas Press)

Western Meadowlark

Through the open car window
Seven needles in a haystack
BoPEEP-doodle-our-PEOple!
snatched by ear out of the moving
prairie, like you
already fading, passed, gone.
BoPEEP-doodle-our-PEOple!
If I could find it, it would be
points of sunlight glancing
off a brooch so near shades
of gold in these moving
grasses I could scarcely distinguish
it from the grasses. Like you
it is always gone.

BoPEEP-doodle-our-PEOple!
The bird pulled it off like a string
of catches on this flying
trapeze which keeps swinging
back. If birds’ songs simple mean
I’m here! I’m here!
then why a song so baroque?
How many notes did it have?
Which notes were extra?

In the Beatles’ “Blackbird”
You can hear a meadowlark, its song
canned as the slow-motion replay
of a pass reception on TV:
Love studied into pornography.
BoPEEP-diddle-diddle-her-PEEP-hole!
The bird falls off a see-saw,
hesitates, picks itself
back up on the rising board,
completes its song.
It does it again.

I prefer the song that eludes me,
This one which we are passing,
Banjo music picked out
Through wind and distance
Already falling behind

Gone and not gone.
--for Ana

Arts Education Is Important to Balance

This is a recent article I wrote for Tribal College Journal's summer issue, vol. 18, no. 4, about the importance of the arts. You can subscribe and get information at this url (copyright Denise Low): http://www.tribalcollegejournal.org/themag/index.html.

The issue also contains a very generous review by Jonathan Holden of my recent book Words of a Prairie Alchemist.

At Haskell Indian Nations University, the earthworks Medicine Wheel is a reminder of the balance of life. Art students and professors developed this natural installation of stones and mown grass in 1992. Its principles inform educational practices at Haskell. I appreciate how the Medicine Wheel supports all aspects of education. Intellectual, technological knowledge is represented by one direction of the wheel. Another side corresponds to physical education—and Haskell has a great sports tradition of Buster Charles, John Levi, Jim Thorpe, and Billy Mills, to name a few. Emotion and spirit are also represented by this philosophical model. Poetry and the arts especially address these realms of human experience.

As Poet Laureate for the state of Kansas 2007-2009, my primary charge will be to promote poetry, and I feel this means I begin at my home institution, where I am Interim Dean of Humanities and Arts. I also am an advocate for all the arts. As a dean, I observe how arts-related education provides essential balance to students’ lives, especially for Native students, but also non-Native students as well.

Much college instruction is preparation, not immediate accomplishment of goals. I was a first-generation college student, and I remember how disoriented I felt as I finished one semester and then another, heading into a vague future as an English major. I could not imagine what lay beyond a college degree. Especially freshman-sophomore years are demanding as students take distribution courses outside their fields. One Haskell art professor, tells me when students come to his class after spending hours in computer-based classes, they art class is the only one where they feel they are really doing anything “real.” Because poetry and other arts projects have beginnings and end results, these are classes where students can immediately apply techniques and finish final projects. At a time when retention efforts are paramount in the minds of faculty and administrators, this is, I think, an important lesson about helping students balance their schedules.

Arts education is synthetic, as opposed to analytic. Most often students practice critical thinking in classes—how to break down parts of a quadratic equation, for example. But in creating poetry or other artworks, students assemble ideas and create original, personally meaningful works. This divergent, nonlinear process provides for emotional expression. In addition, as students make choices about artworks, they reflect on who they are and how they order their lives. Just as cultures create meaningful stories, so individuals construct their own personal narratives. We are complicated beings, and the arts help us find direction. They help us understand our spiritual natures.

At the same time, arts-related courses encourage individuals to support each other in noncompetitive, cooperative ways. As an administrator, I find that good teamwork is one of the most essential needs for classrooms as well as academic department members. Pedagogy of arts classes includes a peer critique process. In poetry workshops, for example, students distribute copies of first drafts and listen to feedback from their classmates. Then they can review the comments and polish their poetic works. Students learn to respect unique points of view and encourage each other’s best efforts.

Arts students learn to respect diversity of styles. Their works are different from one other, not better or worse, aside from craft. Students appreciate the variety of solutions to an assignment, without numerical ranking. The arts field may seem a long ways from business and other commercial enterprises, but an important side benefit of arts classes is fostering group problem solving—social skills that are needed by tribal communities.

Poetry and many of the arts also present opportunities for public performance. Poetry appears to be so very personal, yet it connects to ceremonies, songs, and other community word arts. Haskell students, under the tutelage of Haskell faculty Trish Reeves and Lorene Williams, present readings of their original works at regional libraries, arts centers, conferences, coffee shops, and bookstores, as well as Haskell. They learn courage as they overcome their nervousness about speaking in public. They practice to become future leaders.

The arts encourage a compassionate spirit. I first learned this years ago when I taught a class Writing from Nature for children at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. I took youngsters to a nearby pond where we observed red-winged blackbirds, turtles, sunfish, squirrels, rabbits, and butterflies. Then I asked them to write from the point of view of one of these animals. This taught them to use their imagination, and in the process, they learned to empathize with their subjects. At Haskell, as our creative writing students develop writings about their classmates, their families, their culture, and their surroundings, they imagine them more fully. They appreciate the four life stages of the Medicine Wheel, from childhood to old age, and they can imagine where they fit into them. With arts experience, students come to articulate for themselves their own values and spiritual beliefs.

Creation of art does demands discipline. Linear thinking is important in creating symmetry and craft. A poet or artist uses various intelligences in order to form a compressed piece of writing or object that reflects life. Elliot W. Eisner comments in his book Arts and the Creation of Mind: “Painting well requires thinking well” (232). Children indeed can create art, yet as student thinking matures, so do the products.

Education in poetry or other art forms is difficult to assess. Outcomes do not meet a single benchmark standard, and although some accomplishment occurs by the end of a semester, the ultimate outcome may be years in the future. Development of an aesthetic sense brings a lifetime of joy. As dean, I can measure the fact that creative writing, photography, graphic arts, drawing, and ceramics classes fill to capacity each semester. I often turn to the works of N. Scott Momaday, who explores the importance of the literary oral tradition to survival of sovereign tribal nations. He considers himself a “man made of words” as well as a painter.

Throughout the next few years as Kansas Poet Laureate, I will return to the wisdom embodied by the Haskell Medicine Wheel and attempt to understand how body, emotions, mind, and spirit can be part of each student’s educational experience. I hope to present this message of balance to Haskell and communities throughout the state.

Kansas Poet Patricia Traxler Writes about Her Father

One of the most distinguished poets in Kansas, in my opinion, is Patricia Traxler. Among her books are Forbidden Words (U of Mo. Press, 1998) and The Glass Woman (Hanging Loose, 1983).

I comment on the eroticism in her work in "Women's Many Dance Steps: Gender Differences in Poetry" (Review Revue 3.1 http://www.reviewrevue.net/index.html).

She has a well crafted, moving commentary in Newsweek about her father at this url http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18986986/site/newsweek/

New Poem by Stephen Bunch

I received this poem-gift in today's email, and poet Stephen Bunch, who has been active in Lawrence area writing and publishing for three decades, graciously consented to reprinting it here:

At the Billy Graham Library

An animatronic cow intones
the life story of the stadium evangelist.
As if a ruminant, even one that speaks,
could know redemption or chew the cud
of any abstraction, unaware
of a meat-hook last judgment.
As if the songs of mechanical birds
were still to be heard in Byzantium.

He sends this bio: Stephen Bunch's work appears in a number of magazines and anthologies. From 1978 to 1988, he edited and published Tellus, a little magazine that featured work by Jack Anderson, Edward Dorn, Harley Elliott, Jane Hirshfield, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf,and Edward Sanders, among others, and Carpool, a chapbook by DonaldLevering. Under the Tellus/Cottonwood Review imprint with Denise Low, he also published a collection of poems by Victor Contoski (A KansasSequence).

Poetry and Journalism: Close Cousins

These are some remarks I presented to the National Writers Workshop, Wichita, May 19.2007, about the connections between journalistic writing and poetry:

You may wonder what a poet is doing at a journalism conference. I am honored to be in this company, and I did start out right. I grew up in Emporia, Kansas, in the large shadows of William A White and William L White. Indeed, my first job was working as a high school stringer for William L., and I remember my first ever interview with this bear of a man.

Since then I have strayed from the true faith of journalism and gone the way of English majors into various directions including, most recently, administration and poet laureate for the state of Kansas, beginning July of this year. I do review occasionally for the Kansas City Star; I do op-ed pieces—in Tribal College Journal this quarter; and The Land Institute of Salina. In short, I find journalistic training an essential tool for my professional life.

Poets and journalists have much in common. Both are curious about reality. Over breakfast I overheard journalists regaling each other stories, just as poets do after hours. Compression of language is essential to poets as well as journalists, as well as careful selection of details to create a narrative. We both honor the 5 Ws: who what when where—though poets imply the “why” rather than state it directly. And poets use their license to stretch the “when” dimension of time to be an implication of season, time of day, and/or historic time.

In return, what I can tell you about being a poet that may be of help to a journalist? Poets specialize in compression of language; precision; emphasis on verbs; use of vivid, sense-driven diction; synecdoche and evocation. In addition, poems share organizational structures with especially photojournalists.

Walter Benjamin in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction tells how our senses are extended by technology of the photographic lens, and I’m borrowing from that extended metaphor to present a range of poets of place, who extend their imaginations in similar ways: Polaroid snapshots; time-lapse photos; photo-collages; multiple angles; sepia prints; depth of field and focal points; documentary-narratives; and use of the poet’s micro lens. Poets extend the two-dimensional, ego-driven diary-derived beginner’s poem into a more fully shaped experience for the listener/reader through use of these perspectives borrowed from photojournalism.

Poems as examples can be found at www.kansaspoets.com. This photographic tour of Kansas poetry of place includes: Jo McDougall’s “Spring comes to Leawood, Kansas” (snapshot); Jonathan Holden’s “Tornado Symptoms” (time-lapse photo); Harley Elliott’s “What to Do Around Here” (photo-collage); Victor Contoski’s “Douglas Count” (multiple angles); Steven Hind’s “Excursion” (sepia print: histories); William Sheldon’s “A Kind of Seeing” (narrative); Caryn Goldberg’s “Magnolia Tree in Kansas” (micro-lense); and my own “American Robin” (focal point).

See National Book Critics Circle Defense of Book Review Pages

Newspapers have been cutting book pages for decades now or covering only books whose publishers contribute advertising dollars. The National Book Critics Circle blog Critical Mass has updates on this issue. See recent discussion by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Ford, Jane Ciabattari, and many others at http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/

See my own comments below.

Newspapers Abdicate Literacy Responsibility

Newspaper editors struggle to retain readership, yet they do not promote a culture of literacy. I have taught college freshmen English classes for almost forty years, where I see the failing outcomes of high school language skills education. First, 30% of students drop out of high school, according to 2003 Manhattan Institute researchers. Of those who do graduate, only about one-third have college-level skills, including basic literacy. Yet as education levels decrease, newspapers replace their coverage of book news with slick advertising circulars.

Newspapers have had a declining readership for years. In March, 2007, the Wall St. Journal reported an overall decline of 2.6%. In 2006 The New York Times circulation dropped 5.8%, and The Chicago Tribune dropped 12.4%, according to Reuters. Newspapers no longer have the cachet needed to drive sales. I remember when the New York Times book review arrived in our household and we children, as teenagers, searched its pages for new fiction. Novelists like J.D. Salinger and John Updike were like rock stars. I remember reading about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s flamboyant stateside tour. This was when literary quality was the prerequisite for review space, rather than advertisers’ leverage. I learned books and authors were important, and this aura of prestige led me to a lifelong love of language. I am honored to be the 2007-2009 Poet Laureate for the state of Kansas.

In addition to teaching English, I review books for newspapers such as the Kansas City Star. In the 1980s, the Sunday edition included a healthy budget for reviewers, and I helped the books editor fill three to four pages. As a local reviewer I could put my own spin on national publications or reflect on local writers’ efforts. I still meet people who remember those early years of the Star’s commitment to books, and my small part. Then costs rose and advertising replaced much of the book section.

I commend the current Star book editor John Mark Eberhart, who makes the most of his allotted space to review local writers or at least briefly note their books. He is one of a handful of editors who publishes poetry every Sunday, even before former U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated column. Yet I must search through pounds of paper to find the few book pages. In my local newspaper, the Lawrence Journal World, I turn to a section called “Pulse” to find a few reprinted reviews, features about local authors, and, luckily, because of anther enlightened arts editor—Mindie Paget—a poem.

Newspaper publishers seem to forget that it does take an entire village to educate a child. My college students seldom read books, but instead download tunes, send text messages, and surf the web. If they were to read a newspaper, they would dig to find book sections or a few columns related to literary arts. Instead they would find colorful pages designed like web pages, filled with sound-bites about movie stars.

As more news organizations increase online offerings, space is no longer a problem for book editors. On May 19, The Chicago Tribune moves its Books section to the Saturday edition to capture more readership, and additionally they expand the web version to include a blog. My local paper sponsors online author readings and interactive literary chats. These efforts can reestablish some of the former role of newspapers as advocates for book lovers.

I hope all newspaper publishers notice the connection between book culture and their own need for a well educated readership. They have an opportunity to attract new readers and also to affirm their role of educators. New generations need to see that literacy is more than just a job skill, but also entry into an exciting intellectual forum.

A Poem for Sonny Kenner in Honor of All Those Musicians Who Travel and Sing

Sonny Kenner is another KC area blue musician who loved the American musical tradition so much he became a walking museum. Sonny played with Jay McShann and Charlie Parker and others. I glimpsed him as a side musician, uncredited, on the McShann segment of Ken Burns' jazz documentary. He greatly impressed on me the importance of passing on the best of our traditions to the next generation.

I Miss You, Sonny Kenner

A year dead and still

I miss those china-blue eyes

set in that wise master face

and those stories about Bird

and growing up Black and poor

and memorizing poetry

for sustenance.

I miss those all-night dances

and your band easing along

experienced like old lovers

knowing just what touch

to electrify our blood

as Mustang Sally rides

the sunny side of the street.

I miss the bass-line sermons

set in amongst the tunes

like rubies in gold.

I miss your stories

about where bebop came from

and singers who shouted

and all those music men

who held up Count Basie

and traveled long roads.

But you came home

to compose parables

to sing those lyrics

phrased just so right.

So natural you should be

always part of this world.

BLUES, BACH & LEE McBEE Affect Poets

April 3 was Jonathan Holden's final Kansas Poets Shop Talk Series, moderated by Jerry Reeke and Greg German. As I listened to Jonathan read the poem "Shoptalk," I felt music--and a very specific music--informed the lines. I asked his wife Ana, also in the audience, if he had taken music lessons, but she said no. His memoir Guns and Boyhood in America (U. of Michigan Press) does not mention a musical background (it is a wonderful read in its own right).

Nonetheless, I asked the poet about this, and he brightened up. His father loved Bach, and so as a child, Jonathan heard recursive rhythms of Bach regularly. He noted the Bach Cantata 106 influenced him most. The turns (versa) of this great poet's lines follow the same hypnotic regularity of Bach phrasing, in my opinion. The accretion of details twined around one theme seems very musical. Jonathan also talked about how every poem is, in a way, a catalogue-poem (listing)--so this theme-and-variation is an easy parallel to musical structure, but termed in an alphabet of letters, not notes.

My older sister was a serious piano student, so I heard her practicing hours, every day. This indirect influence--and also my own mediocre career as a high school band and stage band musician--shapes my approach to poetry. Diane Wakoski has a wonderful poem "Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons": about her single, working-class mother paying for piano lessons, at great sacrifice, and Wakoski's guilt about not using this training--until she realized she uses it extensively as a poet.

And also I listened to blues and jazz as a youngster. Kansas (west of KC) has an unrecognized history of jazz tradition. My great-uncle John Dotson owned the Blue Moon nightclub in Wichita, and I remember my father's stories of all the great jazz legends who appeared there: King Oliver, Sydney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Charlie Parker and others. Wichita was on the train line from KC to LA, so it was a natural stop for musicians. Charlie Parker first recorded in Wichita, at a radio station (this is in his new biography).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

April 2 was the last Mon. evening appearance for awhile of Lee McBee and Pat Nichols, blues musicians, at the Jackpot saloon in Lawrence. What a show. McBee has played in the Lawrence area since the 70s, and I've seen him in Topeka, Lawrence, and KC. His performances are history lessons, as he reels out tunes from earliest decades to the present. This is a living oral history, and since recordings, more documentation sorts out the lineages. His career is a testament of commitment. I thank him and all the musicians who work ragged hours and travel to preserve and celebrate musical heritage.

Sonny Kenner is another KC area blue musician who loved the tradition so much he became a walking museum. Sonny played with Jay McShann and Charlie Parker and others. I glimpsed him as a side musician, uncredited, on the McShann segment of Ken Burns' jazz documentary. He greatly impressed on me the importance of passing on the best of our traditions to the next generation.

Jack Micheline was one of the first poets I read who opened my eyes to American, real-language, present-time poetry, especially "Streetcall New Orleans," set in a walking cadence rhythm. Because of musicians, I am a poet.

Photo by Anne Tageman