Reviewing Kooser Event in Kansas City

Ted Kooser signing books in Kansas City - Rockhurst University Thursday May 19


In a week which has seen an enormous number of poetry events in Kansas City, there was still room for over 600 to squeeze in another on Thursday. The Mid-America Arts Alliance had to be happy with their sponsored event, An Evening With Ted Kooser.

The audience was a wonderful mixture of age groups. While Kooser's selected poems were from a very narrow niche- primarily family inspired work, the overall response was a grateful audience.

The event opened with the unveiling of a new postal commerative stamp honoring the first U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren.

My personal preference would have been to hear a broader composite of Kooser's poetry, but night was truly enjoyable none the less. Just the quiet and appreciative audience hanging on to his words was a joy in itself. He has a simple but preciseness in his verse. Though just once, I'd like to have been shocked by something he said. I'm sure that says something about me.

My Dachshund Trumps Your Honor Student

Frenzied fur
On four manic driven legs
Awaits me inside each evening.

My face safe
From an overactive tongue
Only by the sheer height differential.

A dance
I'll call the "scamper"
Tugs my heartstrings.

Hey, look at me Dad!
Intones his little cavort
Daring my brush-off.

Astute as any child would be
He understands how preposterous
It would be to ignore this performance.


[Note: Barry, my long haired Dachshund is 2 years big today. Any resemblance to the character in this poem is purely intentional]

Tonight I Shamble

Ted Kooser is in town. That sounds kind of like announcing the arrival of some gunslinger that just rode in. But he is here, or at least will be by tonight. I'm going to see him at Rockhurst University and I'll take my copy of The Poetry Home Repair Manual for him to sign. I mean after all, he is the U.S. Poet Laureate and he has won a Pulitzer... I mean I might as well have the thing signed.

I got a kick out of Emily Lloyd's post yesterday about Kooser and I have to give serious thought about the implications of shambling up to him afterwards and asking him to sign my copy. Will my shamble mask the truth (that being that I already partake of and write poetry) and give him the false pretext of another convert? Or perhaps my shamble will in fact be lame. Maybe he can spot a fake shamble a mile away. In which case he might say something like, "Nice try with the shamble bit... how long have you really been reading and writing poetry?"

Two Links I Recommend

Today, I'm focusing on links to two other sites.

I recommend reading a piece in today's WSJ.com by Michael Judge on the late Frank Conroy. Judge relates some of his own personal memories of Frank Conroy from his school days... but mostly he recalls Frank dealing with the myths surrounding creativity and mental illness.

Conroy had vast exposure with mental illness, both on a very personal level as well as a professional level. As such, his acknowledgement of it within the creative arts community is significance. He had a refreshing balance of reality without romanticizing it. The story Judge relates concerning Robert Lowell is priceless.

On another note - I read a heart warming story about a young lady named Andrea Miller, a 17 year old who lost much of her hearing as a result of chemotherapy for brain cancer as a toddler.

Andrea is a National Honor Society student at Benilde-St. Margaret High School in St Louis. In spite of multiple surgeries and deftness in one ear, Andrea has chosen a proactive course with her young life and inspires others by her own example.

She has created her own foundation which has raised over $27,000 for an orphanage in India. The springboard for raising funds has been offering prints of a painting called "The Elephants of Kerala" and a recently published book of her own though-provoking poetry.

Andrea's website is linked here.

Whirlygirl

One of my poems was posted this week at Prosperos Book Site. Prospero's is a local Open Mic venue in the Kansas City area that I have read at a couple of times now. They selected a poem that Will Leathem of Prospero's & Unholy Day Press referred to as "much fun, lots o sass"...

Whirlygirl

Accessable Poetry Sonnet

(another google poem... Just for fun. This time a Sonnet)

Version of All Shakespeare Sonnets
in a free encouraging friendly Others
apc 57 jimi 57 sonnet 57 97027cps 57 savers
Scrapbook Alpha - on subjects

accessoir,2 - Shakespeare,
rate the poetry higher on He's
form - young Will begins to write
should be accessable to all and

is now becoming more accessable to
it in accessable modes. maybe i need
form, it is now becoming more
and hope that you can get back to

Asshole which begins "Dark and wrinkled"
Sonnet 73" (Shakespeare

Dance Of The GOP Puppets

The following was created with the help of Get A Google Poem and a thanks to Christine for the link to get this rolling.



Dance Of The GOP Puppets

by the
nation's top GOP spin-nurses in an incredible show of chutzpah on ...
To the
puppets writing for the mainstream press, this signals she may be ...


... is the
beginning of a hostile take over of our University system by the
GOP....
along with Hannity, is just one of Murdoch's dime-a-dozen meat puppets. ...

comment: Wilson showed a clip of GOP Allen asking his question, ... Layers of
puppets. Jerk the
string at the
top, and all of the
levels start to

The
GOP’s champions of this war had a hard time finding their own way to the
battlefield ... ,
White Boy, .
I suddenly really want some Pocky ...

... He's innocent, and the
is guilty
nothing more than ... This time, ol'
BartCop let you
f easy. Next time, you'll dance. ...

... act in Bush’s Theater
Pain starring helpless Democratic puppets. ...
…and the masquerades as the
party
fiscal sanity that must be kept in ...

... wouldn’t gamble and could never, ever be caught – God forbid – dancing. ...
Can the
GOP keep
the puppets under control? Stupid is as stupid does ...

Dylan - Master
Puppets (Metallica - Master
Puppets) ... They ripped
a page from the
old GOP
playbook as they ripped
the no-tax-but-still-spend ...

Because puppets are better. You can control a puppet. ... pledge that had to
be drafted, then redrafted to the specifications of
the GOP
leadership. ...

... Existential puppets contemplate the mysteries of
animation Dead Puppet Talk...

Genre Fluent in British Dialect Produces Paranoid Pleasures ...

... blurring of
the issue by the GOP
in the 2000 and 2002 campaigns. ... about foreign
intervention by making Iran's liberals look like Western puppets. ...

... A New Kind of
Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War ... opened a
warehouse for building puppets, attracted puppet builders from all over...

... But polls suggest the GOP's Clinton blame-game will have some resonance ...and we think that if he learned to do it with dueling sock puppets,...

-driven musical to the all-American songs of Billy Joel. ...