Monica and I attended a poetry writing workshop at the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, Nebraska. Pulitzer Prize winning poet and former U.S. Poet Lauriate Ted Kooser was the speaker. He worked at an insurance company for his day job, eventually working his way up to a vice president. “In business sometimes you just sort of float to the top like a corpse full of gas,” he said.
Now retired from the insurance business, he writes every day, but he said he writes well only two or three days per month. He uses an artist’s sketchbook to write his poetry. He likes the rough feel of the unlined paper, and he often doodles as part of the writing process. As he comes up with usable lines, he types them on the computer, prints them out, cuts out the lines and pastes them in his sketchbook. Then he continues to write. Often he’ll go back to something he rejected. That’s why it’s better to write poetry on paper rather than the computer. His poems typically go through 30 revisions, in his case going from obscurity and difficulty to clarity and simplicity.
In writing poetry, it’s best to present the experience and let the audience respond. Don’t say how you feel. Come up with imagery to describe it. Above all, don’t moralize. Don’t say, “You have just eaten a piece of chocolate cake, and I want you to think about the value of chocolate cake in today’s world.”
The senses are important, especially the sense of smell. “When you’re writing, if you can get a whiff of something, it comes to life,” he said.
What makes poetry stand out is not the typical details, but the unique things that you experience, the unexpected detail that doesn’t belong in a scene. At an abandoned farmhouse, you might expect to see a rusty wheelbarrow and broken windows, but not a brightly colored Big Wheel.
He doesn’t put himself in his poems. He is the observer, the person in the corner of the coffeehouse, just watching.
Rhymes still have a place in today’s poems, but you have to be careful so that your rhyming poem isn’t too silly. Richard Wilbur writes some excellent rhyming poems.
Be careful of having your metaphors go off in different directions. “Once you introduce shrapnel into a poem, you can’t have an ice cream cone in it.” (Now there's a memorable Kooser quote!)
The most important way to learn to write poetry: Read poems!
Here are the poems Monica and I wrote that day:
The Bird
By Marcia W. Claesson
What is that bird saying?
Is it warning of danger from park visitors,
Jean-clad creatures with backpacks and legal pads,
Staring at brown splotches on the hackberry leaves,
Struggling to describe switchgrass in a new way.
Or is it celebrating the end of summer,
As a lone cottonwood seed floats past looking for a home,
In this small remaining bit of grass and trees,
Close enough to hear the whining of wheels behind the electric buzz of the grasshoppers.
(Ted Kooser said he liked the line about the brown splotches on the hackberry leaves.)
The Spiderby Monica Claesson
I once stopped to rest inside
a clouded nook,
that reaches for every leathered toe
of every careless step;
That’s always the first to pool with rain,
or to lock away
the exiled tears of a girl
who dropped her ice-cream when she tripped.
I lurked there, and stared into a glistening stone
prominent in those lifeless concrete walls,
like a lonely walnut
in a stale and molded cake.
But it gave me no life.
I sipped the salt of sour mud that drilled a spiral road
through the stony air
and to my door.
But then the echos from the footfalls, plummeted
towards me on that path,
on that crusade.
Tremors stung inside my legs until
I collapsed into a bed-ridden star,
before I could crawl
to a safer fortress.
And now I dream forever
of where I might stretch a quiet lace.
To filter the echos, and lick up the dew,
to harness the polished insects
who think the government still owns that golden shaft
between this tree, and that bush.
But I’d make sure they know
that I bought this estate
I paid for it like a fair gentleman should.
But I will never now,
because I chose to nestle for a moment
in a woeful roadside cleft.
(Ted Kooser said Monica had a real talent and she should keep writing.)
Here are some pictures I took at the Homestead National Monument of America
to order it.
Here I am as an Iditarider on Dee Dee Jonrowe's sled. Dee Dee is one of my favorite mushers. Although she has never won the race, she has come in second place twice, and she always runs a competitive race. In everything she does, you can sense her kindness, the love for her dogs, her joyful spirit and her strong Christian faith. She participates in one of the toughest sports, but she's always a lady. A breast cancer survivor, she wears pink for breast cancer awareness.
While on my fantasy trip, I met Martin Buser, another one of my favorite mushers. Originally from Switzerland, Martin decided to become a U.S. citizen on 9/11 because "this country is worth fighting for." Martin holds the record for the fastest Iditarod ever (8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes and 2 seconds, "but who's counting?"), which he raced in 2002, right before being sworn in as a U.S. citizen under the burled arch at the finish line.
Well, I decided that cats can have fantasies too. Here are our two precious kitties, Misty and Moggle as lead dogs . . . er . . . lead cats in the Iditarod. Do you think that if I shook a treat can, like a carrot on a stick, that I could get my cats to run a thousand miles through the snow?
For my birthday this year, our friend Ben took the whole family pleasure driving with his Suffolk draft horse named Red Rock Surge.
The Suffolk draft horses are bred for agriculture, Ben explained. They are smaller and shorter than other horses, and they "pull like crazy." Surge certainly seemed to enjoy pulling us as much as we enjoyed the ride.
a barbecue. A satisfying way to celebrate my birthday.
Monica and I attended a poetry writing workshop at the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, Nebraska. Pulitzer Prize winning poet and former U.S. Poet Lauriate Ted Kooser was the speaker. He worked at an insurance company for his day job, eventually working his way up to a vice president. “In business sometimes you just sort of float to the top like a corpse full of gas,” he said.
No, not the Red Sea -- the Sea of Red. Everyone who lives in Nebraska knows what that is: the phenomenon of football fans and "Big Red Fever." I got to experience that last Saturday at the Nebraska-New Mexico State game. I hadn't been to a game since my college days, and it was fun to be a part of the action again.
After the first score, the fans let go hundreds of red balloons. It's really amazing to watch.
My mother (age 87) is a fan of Malley Keelan, a local Irish tenor. She loves watching the show he hosts on TV every Saturday night, and she loves listening to him sing. She even looked up information about him on the internet and found out all about his family. She printed out one of the songs he sings, so she could play it on the piano.
The third of July is a much bigger holiday for us than the fourth of July. It started with the block parties in our old neighborhood. When we moved to our present house, we discovered that our dead-end street was a perfect place to blow up things, and so we decided to host a fireworks party on the third of July. It has taken on a life of its own, and our friends plan their holiday around it. This year we had a total of 47 people at our house! This photo shows the young women.
My pyromaniac husband had a "blast" (pun intended) shooting off things with the young men.
When I say everyone came, I mean EVERYONE! We even invited Kent, our favorite grocery clerk, AND HE CAME! He always makes my day when I ask him how he is and he replies: "Magnificently marvelous and elevating to higher plateaus of euphoria at warp speed."
The young men set to work blowing up things, while the rest of us watched.
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