Poem in Your Pocket Day

Yesterday was “Poem in Your Pocket Day." I tried to trump up some excitement about going downtown to hand out poems on downtown—but, in the end, it was me, wandering around the Circle and over to the State House at lunchtime, a beautiful day, with a handful of poems.

Approaching people, I said, “It’s National Poetry in Your Pocket Day, part of the celebration of National Poetry Month. Here’s a poem by an Indiana poet from the Writers’ Center of Indiana.”

I gave a poem to a policeman, who took it with a smile; to a young clerk in a shoe store at Circle Center Mall, who turned out to be a journalism major who missed writing and was delighted to hear that the Writers’ Center existed. I dropped poems on the tables of people eating at outside cafes, handed them (or tried) to Men in Suits and down-and-outs at a bus stop. I handed them to legislators and lobbyists near the statehouse, adding, “Please support the arts!”

There was a guy on the street handing out flyers for a jewelry store. I took one, gave him a poem in return. A barista at Starbucks, a visual artist, said poetry often inspired his work and he took a bunch of the poems to hand out himself.

High point: handing poems to two businessmen in Starbucks and walking past a while later to see one guy, now sitting by himself, reading his. It was this one, by Norman Minnick, a poem I particularly love.

While You Work

While you sit at your desk
water striders dance upon the surface of a pond,
high, thin clouds stretch across the sky,
and acres of tall grass, reticent after a long dry summer,
practice nothing but grace.


Low point: I walked up beside a stout gray-haired woman, did my spiel, poem in hand. She took it (no eye contact), folded it in half without looking at it, and put it in the trash. “Bad karma,” I said in a cheerful voice, as she crossed in front of me to enter a building.

Most amusing: “It’s National Poem in Your Pocket Day, I said to a receptionist.” She looked confused. “Comb?” she asked. “No, no, poem,” I said. We laughed.

“I’d much rather have a poem,” she said—and happily took the one I offered.

Between Water and Song

Last night I went to a poetry reading at Marian University to celebrate the publication of my friend Norman Minnick’s new anthology, Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century. David Shumate, a Marian professor and prose poet, began the program with this poem from the anthology, by Ruth Forman:

Stand

why so afraid to stand up?
someone will tell you
sit down?

but here is the truth
someone will always tell you
sit down

the ones we remember
kept standing

He said that of his students loved this poem so much he declared he was going to have it tattooed on his body. The student was there, he admitted he hadn’t done this quite yet, but…he might. Which I hope he does—not because I like tattoos; I don’t, particularly—but because I think it’s such a fabulous example of how the right poem can totally blow you away.

It’s not the same poem for everyone. I’ve taken to reading poetry collections the same way I look at paintings in a museum—wandering through, letting myself be drawn to the work that seems to have been made just for me. Like Vermeer’s “View of Delft” or Jill Bialosky’s “Another Loss to Stop For,” which I carry, folded up in my wallet.

Malina Morling, whose work is featured in the anthology, said that when her high school English teacher read “The Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” aloud to the class she knew suddenly, absolutely that she wanted to be a poet.

Talking about how she collects the details and sentences that make their way into her poems, she observed that writing poems is a lot like remembering dreams. People often say they don’t dream or they don’t remember dreams, but if they make an effort to remember their dreams—they do. Poetry is like that, she said. If you make up your mind to write poems and keep writing them, the things you notice start to make themselves into poems.


I was glad I went to the reading last night. It made me remember that, in the right frame of mind, the whole world becomes a poem--and a a single wonderful poem can crack open the universe with its astonishing, ordinary truth.

Like this one by Norman Minnick:

While You Work

While you sit at your desk
water striders dance upon the surface of a pond,
high, thin clouds stretch across the sky,
and acres of tall grass, reticent after a long dry summer,
practice nothing but grace.

The Gathering of Writers

About a year ago, when nonprofits everywhere were crashing, I became the Executive Director of the Writers’ Center of Indiana. Long story. Mainly, I took on the job, as a volunteer, because the Writers’ Center was there when I finally trumped up the courage to try to write and I wanted it to be there for others who dreamed of being writers and needed a place to begin.

Believe me, being the Executive Director of anything was the last thing in the world I ever thought I’d be.

(Once, in Las Vegas, my husband and I watched a disgustingly scruffy, eastern-European guy losing big-time at the high stakes Baccarat table and being a really bad sport about it. When the Casino employee leaned down and said something to him, the guy leapt up, pointed his finger at the Casino employee, and shouted, “You! You are imbecile! I want never you should be in charge of nothing!”

This has become a joke in our family. When somebody screws up—or has major potential to screw up—it’s what we say. It says a lot about I felt about this unlikely turn of events in my life.)

Anyway.

With the help of an amazing Board of Directors, numerous volunteers and supporters, and the indispensible Roxanna Santoro, who keeps chaos at bay in the office, the Writers’ Center is not only surviving, but thriving!

Plus, I love this work. Who’d have thought?

Saturday we had our annual Gathering of Readers and Writers, coordinated by Victoria Barrett, who, in my humble opinion, should be put in charge of organizing the universe. Award-winning poet Alice Friman, who helped found the Writers’ Center in 1979 (just in time for me to take my first class)gave a keynote address that celebrated the Writers' Center's 30th anniversary by way telling of her own story--and ended with a reading of a half-dozen poets who were there from the start.

More than a dozen Indiana writers gave break-out sessions and participated in panels on poetry, fiction, memoir, mystery-writing, screenplay, publishing, and other topics. (FYI: there are many, many accomplished, award-winning Indiana writers whose work is recognized on the national level and beyond.)

It was a wonderful day. The foyer and galleries of the Indianapolis Art Center, where the conference was held, were lined with Day of the Dead altars, each one just waiting to be turned into a story, a poem, a memoir, a movie—maybe a mystery. Even the weather was inspiring; sunny and balmy, autumn’s last gift.

But my absolute favorite moment of the day was glancing into the library where Norman Minnick, a new, young voice in poetry, was presenting a session and seeing Roger Mitchell—

well, here’s his (abridged) bio:

Roger Mitchell is the author of nine books of poetry and a work of nonfiction. Roger Mitchell is the author of nine books of poetry and a work of nonfiction. The University of Akron Press published his most recent book, Half/Mask in January, as they did his previous book, Delicate Bait, which Charles Simic chose for the Akron Prize in 2002. Mitchell is formerly the director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University, where he held the Ruth Lilly Chair of Poetry. Other recognition for his writing includes the Midland Poetry Award, the John Ben Snow Award for Clear pond, his work of nonfiction, two fellowships each from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the River Styx International Poetry Award, and others. He was a 2005 Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

…sitting in the audience, taking notes.

“All writers are beginners,” Alice Friman said.

She’s right. And it made me really, really happy to watch close to a hundred writers spend a whole day beginning together.