BOB REEVES / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, June 25, 2005 7:00 pm
If you're strolling through the Haymarket on a Monday evening, you may hear some intriguing sounds coming from the Haymarket Square Courtyard. Laughter. Sighs. A low buzz of voices. Applause. Even an occasional whistle or cheer.
What you may not hear is any music. The audience, usually 20 to 30 people, is listening to poetry and having a great time.
The poetry nights, sponsored by Crescent Moon Coffee, are part of a flowering of readings and other poetry-related events in Lincoln and around the state.
They reflect a trend that bookstore owners, librarians and even teachers have noticed: a small but significant increase in people who pursue poetry for pleasure.
Linda Hillegass, co-owner of Lee Booksellers, remembers when the poetry section at the former East Park Plaza store had few customers except people wanting "bound greeting cards" such as Blue Mountain Arts books or religious poems by Helen Steiner Rice.
"It was the kind of poetry you buy for your grandmother," Hillegass said, "and whether she reads it or not is a question."
In recent years, however, there's been more interest in all types of poetry, from classical to avant-garde.
Kathy Magruder, manager of Lee's in Edgewood and a poetry buff herself, likes to steer customers to that section. "Every once in a while I'll have someone wanting a specific poet, but more often they're just looking for something good to read or as a gift for a graduation or other event."
Tried-and-true poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Robert Frost are still the most popular. And "Yeats (the Irish poet) sells well around St. Patrick's Day," she said.
But Magruder encourages people to sample the writings of current poets, including local writers such as Twyla Hansen, Bill Kloefkorn and Marjorie Saiser.
And, of course, Ted Kooser of Garland, the U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, who has had a big impact on poetry sales this year, Hillegass said. "For the last several weeks he's dominated our best-seller lists. We have every book of his that's in print."
Lee Booksellers also sponsors poetry contests and readings that usually draw a good crowd.
Even before Kooser became this year's most sought-after American poet, public interest in poetry was growing, due to a number of factors.
The Internet plays a big role, with a plethora of Web sites that post poems by noted and ignominious writers alike. Another factor is that a lot of the poetry being written today tends to be less esoteric and "high-brow" than was true in the past.
Both Kooser and Billy Collins, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, are widely described as "accessible" poets who write about situations of daily life in a way that is meaningful yet easy to grasp.
For example, in the poem "The death of the Hat," Collins shares this vision of the past:
"Once every man wore a hat.
In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities are broad rivers flowing with hats.
Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd."
Or take Kooser's poem "Carrie," which begins:
"There's never an end to dust
and dusting,' my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house."
Poems by other writers that are equally accessible are the grist for Kooser's poetry column that runs Mondays in the Lincoln Journal Star and 90 other newspapers nationwide, with a total circulation of about eight million.
The feedback from readers has been very positive, Kooser said. "A couple of state poets laureate plan to do mailings to newspapers in their states to encourage them to try the column, and we expect other word-of-mouth influences."
Exposure to poetry in easy-to-swallow doses such as his column or when browsing the Web can trigger deeper delving into the world of verse.
Younger readers, especially, find poetry less daunting than their parents did which may reflect the way poetry is taught in school.
Most people middle-aged and older remember having to spend hours memorizing poems. Mel Krutz, a poet who lives in Seward, can push a mental button and dredge up these ancient words:
"Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more."
She can go on for a couple of verses, verbatim. But while she can't forget those lines that she memorized in grade school, she couldn't recall the title until an Internet search revealed it to be "Horatius" by Thomas Babington Macaulay.
A poem that everyone of her generation had to learn is Longfellow's work that begins "Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands."
But even though students in the old days were required to memorize poems, they often weren't encouraged to enjoy them. As a result, many people ended up vowing to never open another poetry book after they finished school.
In the classical approach to education, memorization was considered a way to demonstrate literacy, said Pat Friesen, secondary English specialist for Lincoln Public Schools. "Now the emphasis is more on reading widely and being able to compare and talk about what you've read."
Today's students seldom are required to memorize something just for the sake of memorization. They may memorize their own writing in order to present it to the class or memorize something for performance in a speech class, Friesen said.
But when it comes to poetry, teachers make an effort to present it as an enjoyable form of writing that students will want to explore on their own.
Michelle Hohenfeldt-Spethman, who teaches English at Scott Middle School, helped develop a new poetry curriculum for seventh graders throughout the district. It exposes students to a wide range of poetry and encourages creativity.
"When I say we're going to do poetry, I often get groans," she said. "They think they'll have to mark the rhythm patterns or look for rhymes."
Instead, they focus on their own emotional response to the poetry they read, then try their hand at expressing themselves.
To demonstrate the link between poetry and music, Hohenfeldt-Spethman plays a popular rock or country hit, then tells the kids, "This was a poem before it was a song."
They also read "Out of the Dust" by Karen Hesse, a novel in verse. "They realize that poetry can take many different forms," she said.
The curriculum encourages students not only to like poetry but to "go outside their comfort zone" and write their own, she said.
Karen Saunders, elementary language arts and reading specialist for the school system, noted that poetry is "huge" in the beginning grades because of books like Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears. Older students get turned on to the wild verbal concoctions of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky.
"Poetry becomes a starting place for writing," she said. "They don't have to worry about sentence structure. It doesn't have to be logical."
Deborah McGinn teaches English at Lincoln High and also coordinates the Tuesdays with Writers monthly reading nights at the South Mill.
Now in its sixth year, the series gives local writers a venue with an enthusiastic audience.
Many of her own students step to the mike and read their works to the mostly adult crowd.
Getting them to that point is partly a matter of showing teens that poems can be an extension of themselves. "Kids today are very ego-centered," McGinn said. "It's all me or nothing, so they're harder to sell."
She said her students got inspired when they heard Kooser speak at Southwest High School in April for National Poetry Month. He talked about how he felt his own spirit had been squashed by teachers who made him write in prescribed forms or on specific themes.
This year she brought cowboy poet Edgar Clemens to class. He recited long narrative poems he had memorized, and kept the students rapt.
She also brought a member of the Slam Poetry Team from Omaha, which has competed nationally. Slam poetry, akin to rap music, relies heavily on rhythm, facial expression and body language.
Students thus learned that poetry isn't just dry words on a page, but can be a scintillating performance.
Librarians with Lincoln City Libraries report that teenagers are among the biggest users of the poetry collections.
In April, Anderson Branch Library had an open mike poetry night that drew 30 teens. Some read their own poems; others shared their favorite authors. Some came just to listen. A second night in May brought 25 kids, and the library plans to do it again next year, said Karrie Simpson , youth services librarian at Anderson.
"We think it's a neat program because so many of our teen programs are chaos. At this event they sit and listen to what others say. They're sharing a bit of themselves."
That sensation of someone opening up their insides for others to see is part of the appeal of a poetry reading, said James Howe, who was in the audience on a recent Monday at Crescent Moon.
It's more intense than listening to someone sing, he said.
"There's more of a person exposed in a poem by far than there is in a song."
It's a fun way to spend an evening instead of a movie or other entertainment, he said. This time he was accompanied by his daughter, Ciara McCormack, and her friend Holly Petersen, sophomores from Seward High School who read a duet poem during the open mike time.
The featured readers that night were Laura Logan and Terry Lee Schifferns, two poets from Kearney. Christy Doeschot, Schifferns' best friend, was there to cheer them on.
Schifferns' poems center on her personal experiences, love life, family and even her pets. "She gets real," Doeschot said.
Asked if it takes a lot of mental concentration to attend a poetry reading, Doeschot said, "No, it's just a relaxing event that people should come to enjoy."
The courtyard scene was definitely a laid-back atmosphere, with trees gently dancing in the breeze and a softly lighted fountain bubbling in the background.
Logan read several poems, concluding with "My American Dream," which got lively applause and catcalls. It was a list of things she would like in her perfect vision of America, including "a fat black lesbian president an end to poverty a church where god is a goddess."
Two of Schifferns' poems them dealt with her dog, Thelma Lou, who had cancer. One was a list of things Thelma Lou wanted to do before she died, including "knock over the trash, chew up paper plates, lick soupy cans clean, eat greasy chicken bones lay in the sun on a dog's day afternoon."
Schifferns said she likes the audience to be comfortable, but it's also nice if they pay attention. She remembers reading at an Omaha coffee house where everyone was talking. "It was distracting. It wasn't the best venue."
She also reads at poetry slams, where participants are judged on their performance. That takes a lot more work than a "regular" poetry reading, she said.
Crescent Moon also sponsors songwriters' nights on Thursdays. DeAnn Allison attends both, bringing her latest crochet project, sipping coffee, making friends and reading or singing herself.
"I believe it is the power of story that is drawing people to these evenings, the raw glimpses into another's life or perspective, and the invitation to share our own," she said. "The poetry nights and songwriter's nights are more like a conversation than a performance, more like a call and response."
Readings help closet poets overcome their inhibitions, Logan said. "Everybody's always secretly written poetry, but now people are bringing it out" and sharing it. After Kooser read his poems in Kearney earlier this year, she said, attendance at other poetry readings increased.
Some old-timers can recall the days when "beat" poets sat on stools in smoky coffee houses intoning complex poems that left people nodding, oftentimes more confused than enlightened. Today's poetry readings, by contrast, encourage writers to compose verse specifically for listeners who don't have the luxury of re-reading a difficult passage or looking something up in a dictionary.
Kooser said he actually prefers to sit at home and read other poets' works from books or journals, "but every reader is different and if hearing the poems read aloud enhances the experience of poetry, I'm all for that."
There's an old adage that for every 10 poets there's one person who buys a book of poetry.
In fact, more poetry books are being published. According to R.R. Bowker, the number of new titles in the category "poetry and drama" increased by 40 percent between 2003 and 2004. Most of those were published by small presses rather than the big publishing houses.
Hilda Raz, editor of Prairie Schooner, the literary quarterly published at the University of Nebraska, said her office receives about 200 new poetry books to review each year, a figure that has remained constant for the past five years. She also noted that there are about 600 regularly published literary magazines around the country, plus another 400 published sporadically. Most of them publish poetry.
"Human beings have been writing and reading poetry since the first Sumerian texts were written," Raz said. "The Bible itself is filled with poetry. It's part of every literature. Our appetite for poetry continues unabated."
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com.
Poetry readings
Local poetry readings that are open to the public:
* Crescent Moon Reading Series, 7 p.m. Mondays (open mike 8 p.m.), Crescent Moon Coffee, 816 P St. For information, call 435-2828 or e-mail Rex Walton at jwalton@neb.rr.com.
June 27, Steven Langan
July 11, Don Welch
July 18, Brian Bengtson & Scott Pincsak
July 25, The Omaha Slam Team
* Tuesdays with Writers, 7 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month at The South Mill, 4736 Prescott Ave. For information call 327-9391 or e-mail Deborah McGinn at dmcginn@lps.org.
July 5, sixth birthday celebration with featured readers Carole Barnes Montgomery, Linda Lambert, Ardiss Cederholm, Carol Zanetti, Greg Kosmicki, Ben Clark, Rex Walton, Pat Pike, Heidi Hermanson, Ruth Armstrong, Kim Tedrow, Anna Jamrog, Thomas G. Franti, Lucy Adkins, Marge Saiser, Twyla Hansen, Jeff Tinnean and Nancy Savery.
* Open mike nights, 6-7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Zen's Martini Bar, 122 N. 11th St. Prose and poetry night; share something original or read from your favorite poet. For more information call 475-2929 or e-mail Jennifer Behm at jenbehm@ hotmail.com.