The fabled four (out of five) past and present poets laureate: Denise Low, Eric McHenry, Wyatt Townley, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (photo credit: KHC)
Last night Wyatt Townley, outgoing Kansas Poet Laureate, bonked Eric McHenry, incoming Kansas Poet Laureate, with a sunflower as is our tradition in these parts. Although the Kansas Humanities Council officially launched his term earlier this month, nothing’s official (at least to me) until the sunflower hits the head.
Wyatt’s term, as she told KHC, was full and expansive:
We laughed, we cried, we got chills. We put over 10,000 miles on our 16-year-old van, never breaking down and managing to dodge all blizzards and tornados…..Internally, I found a path from private to public that I could travel, and made new friends along the way. It was all poetry, all the way down.
The sky the silo and I, a set of nesting dolls with a surprising poem inside.
Wyatt’s generous, tender, wise, and deeply contemplative ways inspired many of us not just to start writing Cinquains (my friend Danny has now written hundreds), but to more deeply consider how we dwell here — in community, on the land, within our bodies, as part of the swiftly-changing skies, and of course in poetry. But any gratitude for Wyatt also goes to her partner in crime, First Dude Roderick Townley, himself a very accomplished poet and children’s book author, who accompanied her all over Kansas. Having taken some poetry road trips with both Wyatt and Roderick, I’ve seen firsthand how much his presence and help can turn a crazy challenge into a walk (or drive) in the park.
Now we mosey on forth with our fifth Kansas Poet Laureate, Eric Henry. Here’s one of my favorite poems of Eric’s, published in 150KansasPoems:
Vanguard
Here’s what I remember: Coleman Hawkins
and I are sitting at a mahogany table
in the Village Vanguard, quietly talking.
He’s finished a set in which he was unable
to summon even one unbroken tone
from the bell of his once-clarion saxophone.
But now that’s over and he feels all right.
He’s smoking because he’s wanted to all night,
drinking cloudy cognac from a tumbler
and coughing ferociously; his voice is weaker
than his cough; he’s barely audible, mumbling
to me because he knows I’m from Topeka.
He says, “That’s where I learned to tongue my horn.”
I know, and that’s the only thing I hear.
It’s 1969; in half a year
he’ll be dead. In three years I’ll be born.
A professor at Washburn University, and a poet published far and wide, Eric recently told the Kansas Humanities Council:
There’s nothing I love more than sharing poetry with people, and I look forward to doing that in every corner of Kansas over the next two years. I think we’re all grateful when we encounter language that’s equal to life’s richness and complexity. Poetry can provide that.
Listening to Eric recite poems he memorized — something he does frequently to show us the value of getting that language into our bodies and psyches — I have no doubt that he will shine the light on a lot of poetry — and moreover, what poetry can do to spark magic and insight — throughout and beyond his poet laureate term.
So thank you for the wild, beautiful, and vivid road trip through poetry, Wyatt! And Eric, we’re now riding shotgun with you for where you take us.
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