‘I have been eating poetry’

By Jayne Spencer

And we in the homeland have literally been feeding our individual and collective anguish this past month.

Katy McLaughlin reported in the Wall Street Journal last week that the demand for high-calorie foods has spiked. High-end households that employ personal chef services, she reported, are asking for "comfort foods" such as pot roasts and pot pies, in place of standard personal-chef fare, such as the oh so healthful "seared ahi tuna." Comfort foods, writes McLaughlin, high in carbs, calm the brain and remind us of childhood.

So how about a big juicy slice of poetry?

It is, after all, April. And April is National Poetry Month, a commemoration sponsored since 1996 by the Academy of American Poets.

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth./There is no happiness like mine./I have been eating poetry." writes Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand in Eating Poetry.

So have a bite or two. You deserve it. And there’s some upcoming poetry events on the IU campuses of which you may wish to partake.

Catherine Bowman teaches poetry writing and literature on the IU Bloomington campus, and tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. at the DeVault Alumni Center, she’ll be reading from her new book, Word of Mouth: Poems featured on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered,’ published last month. As a "poetry DJ," she’s been a commentator on National Public Radio since 1995 and her book includes 33 poets, including former IU professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa, and current IU professor Maura Stanton, winner of last year’s Richard Sullivan Prize. Bowman’s reading tomorrow concludes the second season of an IU Alumni Association Authors’ Series which showcases the literary talents of IU faculty through readings and discussions. Come by. For $10, you can enjoy a continental breakfast with your slice of poetry.

Later this month, IU South Bend will be hosting author and poet Stephen Kuusisto, also an NPR poetry commentator. His lecture, entitled "Lying in Wait for Happiness: A Common Mistake," will be at 7 p.m. Friday, April 25, in the Alumni Room of the Administration Building on the South Bend campus. He will also read the next evening at 7 p.m. at Wiekamp Hall as part of the 2003 Lester M. Wolfson Literary Awards ceremony. He is this year’s judge for the literary contest and the author of both Planet of the Blind: A Memoir and the poetry collection Only Bread, Only Light.

Why read poetry? The reasons are as long as a banquet table.

But Bowman explains it nicely in her preface (from which, by the way, you can read excerpts online at Amazon.com and listen to archived audiostreams with her poet guests at NPR’s Web site):

"Our greatest national illness is our isolation: an isolation that breeds fear, forcing us to live a life deprived of real intimacy. Fear breeds more fear, and the longer we live in isolation, the more we are vulnerable to the wiles of power-mongers and the more we are willing to engage in group-think, making sweeping generalizations about our neighbors.

Poetry cuts through this isolation, as particular voices speak from particular backgrounds and experiences, refusing to generalize on the human experience."

She also quotes poet Paul Muldoon, named this week the 2003 Pultizer Prize winner for poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Princeton and moved to the U.S. from Northern Ireland in 1987.

Bowman writes that the poems in her anthology "often speak to what Paul Muldoon calls ‘the conditions of joy,’ a condition much underrepresented in the news and, it could be argued, in contemporary poetry."

Here’s an HP archive of some IU poets’ works, including Bowman’s, you might enjoy reading--go to the site and scroll down to the Poetry section:
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/4-14-2000/default.htm