Accessible poetry

About six years ago, The Commercial Review began running a weekly column called “American Life in Poetry.”

But its history goes back several years before that.

The brainchild of poet Ted Kooser, the column was launched in 2005 when he was U.S. Poet Laureate.

Now presidential professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Kooser, 80, worked for many years in the life insurance business, retiring in 1999. He and his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, live near Garland, Nebraska. She is the retired editor of The Lincoln Journal Star.

He has published a number of books of poetry in addition to children’s books and non-fiction.

His most recent books of poems are “Splitting an Order” and “Kindest Regards,” both published by Copper Canyon Press.

We thought readers of “American Life in Poetry” would enjoy a closer look at the man who puts it together.

An interview follows.

The CR: Tell us about the launch of “American Life in Poetry.” What sparked the project? What audience did you hope to reach? What outcome (if any) did you have in mind?

Kooser: “A number of the U.S. Poet Laureates have started projects to promote poetry. Billy Collins put together an anthology of 180 poems for the schools, a poem a day during the school year. Robert Pinsky did a ‘favorite poem’ project.

“I came up with the idea for my column and my wife, a newspaper editor, gave me sound advice about it, saying that no paper was going to pay for such a thing and that it would have to be free.

“I contacted the Poetry Foundation for funding and they have funded it all through the 13 years since we started, as well as managing the digital distribution to newspapers and also to readers who sign up for weekly emails.

“My idea was to reach average readers, and to try to show them that good poetry needn't be difficult to understand and appreciate.

“The late poet, Thomas Lux, said somewhere that we ought to stop writing poems that make people feel dumb, and I heartily agree.”

The CR: The column presents a broad range of voices and styles. Sometimes the work is by a poet we’ve read but more often it’s completely new. What’s the process involved in selecting the poems you share with us each week?

Kooser: “I have two helpers, one is a graduate student whose assistantship is funded by the Poetry Foundation and who spends time looking through journals and passing along her suggestions. The other is my assistant editor, a half-time university employee who, too, recommends things. She's a talented poet and takes care of the management of the column, which includes communication with the software people at the Foundation, handling our correspondence, etc.

“And, of course, I find poems I want to feature. My personal library has about 2500 collections of poetry.

“Because the newspapers don't want to give us more space than they have to, we try to pick poems of maybe 20 to 24 lines in length. Also, because of the title, I want to use work that reflects everyday life in America. Rarely have I used a poem about travels in another country. 

“I might say that while the column was originally intended for newspaper use, it has developed a huge internet audience. We have somewhere around 150 newspapers at any given time, and a worldwide email distribution. About 4.3 million readers at the most recent estimation.”

The CR: It’s striking how many little magazines and small presses are represented in American Life in Poetry. Most of them are unknown to the average reader. What does this say about the state of poetry in America today? Is it healthy? Is it marginalized? Both?

Kooser: “Poetry is indeed healthy, healthier now than it was 50, 100 years ago.

“It is much less expensive for the independent small presses to put out books and journals, there are now lots of online journals with only minimal expenses, there are hundreds of poets fortunate to be getting teaching positions as the creative writing programs proliferate, every community has its writing groups.

“There are of course lots of poorly executed poems out there that one has to push over onto the shoulder, but there has always been an abundance of badly made poems.

“But what would be wrong with a world in which everybody was writing a little poetry?”

The CR: What advice would you give to our newspaper readers when they encounter poetry? 

How should they approach it? How do they set aside all those rules from the classroom? Or perhaps you have found that is not an issue at all.

Kooser: “Any reader turning a page to a poem has an instinctive urge to jump back. A poem! Dear God, how do I deal with it?

“But it's only a thing or words, said to you by a stranger.

“You don't have to listen, you can go on. But if the first words engage you a little, give it a try.  If you don't understand it, you don't have to understand it. You can push it aside and go on to the crossword.”