Monthly Archives: March 2010

It’s spring, and come mid-March, the somewhat ancient urge to go dig up dirt and plant something makes a gal’s heart dance, but for those of us in Northeast Kansas, the urge has been continually rained or — gasp! — snowed out in the last two weeks. Just a short week ago, we received nine inches of snow at our place just south of Lawrence. Canceled were plans to break ground as well as plans to simply leave the house so I succumbed to a day in my pajamas with books, movies and soup. Before then and afterward, it seems I just arrive at the day when the ground is dried out (e.g. not complete mud is dried out enough for me) when the rain returns. Meanwhile, I dream of potatoes and onions, peas and spinach. Meanwhile, it rains, not wild and harsh rain but that soft steady drizzle of early spring. The peepers are peeping, the daffodils are daffodiling, and I long for a shovel and some ground that won’t clump into balls of mud.

Pictures: feeding the birds on the first day of spring, and the closest thing to a dragonfly in the garden.

Last night I had the privilege of participating in the Governor’s Arts Awards, the annual honoring of artists and communities who have helped illuminate the arts in our big, wide prairie state of mind. I am always amazed by the depth of talent and commitment, particularly in places many would consider “fly over country.” There’ so much here, and so I wanted to honor that with the poem I delivered (below). I also was moved by Governor Mark Parkinson’s excellent speech about how legislatures and government officials aren’t remembered years, decades and centuries from now, but art (and in some cases, the names of the artists) endures.

What’s Right Here

to the 2010 Governor’s Arts Awards Recipients

It’s all right here, they show us, the seemingly invisible

right on the cusp of our peripheral vision,

like the slender moon faded into the late afternoon sky,

ready to come forth once the light vanishes.

All the art that endures is always expanse of horizon

and pantina, letting the layers of what is, what could be,

what could have been, bleed through, whether it’s the life 

in film of we could have lived had the Confederates won,

or the deep river call of a single saxophone note that

gathers us out of what we were thinking to who we are.

The coppering of a 1960 Dodge truck, illuminating how

time angles through rust and memory. The dream of

a space open enough to hold children learning to sing together

as well as elders viewing gallery offerings of place and texture.

Or further west, a town where cellos merge with violins upstairs,

a woman calls out “first position” across the street, and

a group of friends paint what’s lost and found around the corner.

Even the years of archiving that story thousands of

working artists, showing us the layers and colors,

shifting risks in singular places, here all along.

Just like one photograph of golden hills, the light against

the curving stretch of grass, lifting up to us what’s right here,

a glimmering world generous with motion, earth and sky,

wishes and breath, ready at any moment to reveal itself

and the art of how to live right here where we’ve landed.

Top photo: The governor, Mark Parkinson, and me. Some of the the recipients: (from top) Kevin Wilmott, filmmaker; Susan Craig, archivist and librarian; Emporia Arts Council; Jim Richardson, distinguished artist award for photography.

I’m not sure what happens, but I’m exciting about finding out very soon when we bring together a bunch of poets laureate to spend two days visiting, giving a reading, hanging out with the public and generally descending upon my hometown, Lawrence, Kansas. The idea for a Midwest Poets Laureate Convergence — which we’re calling Poet Laureati — came to Mary Swander, poet laureate of Iowa and me when we were visiting last fall on the University of Iowa State campus, where she teaches and directs a fabulous MFA in environmental writing. We started joking about a poet laureate slumber party, and our jokes soon turned into plans. We also wanted to do an event open and free to the public that would help support local businesses and organizations, a great way to encourage the poetry-in-motion good works of community.

Now we have a good group coming to join the two of us, including Walter Bargen, former poet laureate of Missouri; Marilyn L. Taylor, poet laureate of Wisconsin; and former Kansas poets laureate Denise Low and Jonathan Holden, plus who knows who else may drop in? We’ll be starting with a reading at 4 p.m. at the Spencer Museum of Art (in the central court), followed by a reception, provided by our long-standing food co-op, the Community Mercantile, plus books for sale by our long-standing independent bookstore, the Raven. After that, we poets laureate go to dinner at Free State Brewery, and then the next day, after wandering around downtown Lawrence for a while, we have Lunch Laureati: Brown Bag it with the Poets Laureate, a more casual time for conversation with people from the community. The rest of the day, we’ll be off in the country, taking a prairie walk and talking about our laureate experiences, and what else we might collectively do together.

So what happens when you toss together a bundle of poets laureate in Lawrence, Kansas, a place where anything that can happen usually does? We’ll find out, and if you’re around, be sure to join us for the reading and lunch laureati. As far as we know, there’s never been an event like this, and I think it’s likely this first event will spur many more.

The event is sponsored by the Kansas Arts Commission, Lawrence Public Library, Free State Brewery, Community Mercantile, Raven Bookstore, Lawrence Arts Center, and Spencer Museum of Art.

For a podcast of this month’s column, please click here.

One of the main things we writers do is to make the invisible — at least the unnoticed — visible. Through images that speak to our senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and sound, we create traveling moments that can land in a reader and listener, and unfurl to invoke meaning and insight, inspiration and wonder. As winter just starts snowshoeing around the corner into this time of thaw and surprise (the first snowdrop! spring geese returning!), we’re also witnessing a time when the previously invisible is being made visible.

This month’s writing prompt is about how we can widen our peripheral vision and see more of the world as it’s really happening, even if we go about it in some inside-out ways. One such inside-out way is a writing exercise I found in Deena Metzger’s excellent book, Writing For Your Life. She suggests writing what you didn’t see today, and see where that leads. Here is my on-the-spot attempt today, something that surprised me when I wrote it because the first word that popped into my mind, “cousins,” wasn’t one I was expecting, and yet it opened the door to writing about the past:

Today I didn’t see my cousins, long gone from my life

decades past when the family exploded apart. I didn’t see

my father’s picture although I thought of him, seven years dead

but still telling me, his hands turned up and outward,

“What can you do?” when life gives me bad news.

I didn’t see the house where I grew up, hidden now

by aging trees and ribbons of distance. I didn’t see a cloud

in the sky or a deer licking the spilled bird seed under the feeder.

I didn’t see the wind, but I caught the shaking skeleton

of last summer’s sunflowers. I didn’t see the particulars of who

I was up until this point although I’m surrounded by the evidence.

Another writing prompt you can try is a sentence stem, that is, part of a sentence and then you fill in the blanks, such as any of these:

When I wasn’t looking………

I used to see…….but now it’s just……

The world shows me…….and I answer………

When I was sleeping………

If I turn a new direction………

Filling in the words is a great way to bring to the surface whatever is around us even if we’re not cognizant of it at the moment. So much of good writing comes out of tilting our usual thinking and seeing, perceiving and understanding, so that the words come out differently. Wishing you a new unfolding into the words that show you the visible and the unnoticed in ways that illuminate what you already know.