Around Des Moines

In 1996 the Academy of American Poets declared April to be National Poetry Month. Five years earlier the Des Moines National Poetry Festival began. While the former is gaining attention, the latter has reduced its reach.

Poetry is life. It can swoop in with the speed of haiku, linger with the rhymes of a limerick, or inspire through the structure of of a sonnet. It can target the mind, the soul, or the heart. It can heal and it can cut; it is emotions.

For 2008, the Des Moines National Poetry Festival features a presentation by Li-Young Lee in Drake University’s Writers and Critics Series at Sheslow Auditorium (2507 University) at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30th. Another event in the series will be held on Tuesday, April 8th at 7:30 p.m. in the university’s Cowles Library Reading Room (2725 University). Erica Anzalone, who teaches fiction and poetry workshops, and novelist Fred Arroyo, an assistant professor in English, will read and discuss their work. Both events are free.

The Des Moines National Poetry Festival used to stage a three-day event. The festival has not been held since 2006, a major loss for Des Moines. I was able to attend only one event and that was a panel discussion during the 2005 program. The panel included then-U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, former laureate Billy Collins, Native American poet Joy Harjo, and Swan Scythe Press founder Sandra McPherson.

The panel discussion was informative. I discovered that Collins liked structure in his poems, while a turn of phrase attracted McPherson. Kooser, a native of Ames, unintentionally demonstrated how poetry differs from prose. He made reference to an old, brown suitcase and the audience let out a soft sigh, each with its own memory. Then Kooser started to describe the suitcase, and the audience grunted. The cracked leather and musty smell suddenly came from somebody else’s life, not from each person’s own dreams and experiences. Harjo was my personal favorite because of her topics and the flow of her words.

Charles Simic is the current poet laureate of the United States. His eighteenth book of poetry, That Little Something, was published earlier this year by Harcourt Trade Publishers. A description of the Simic and his work was found on the publisher’s website: “…the superb poet of the vaguely ominous sound and the disturbing, potentially significant image, moves closer to the dark heart of history and human behavior.”

More poetry books can be found in the Spring titles from the University of Iowa Press. I have been a fan of university presses for quite some time and came across the interesting titles of the University of Iowa Press while editing Leading Voices: Iowa. Poetry books in the press’s 2008 list include, G. Matthew Jenkins’ Poetic Obligation: Ethics in Experimental American Poetry after 1945, James E. von der Heydt’s At the Brink of Infinity: Poetic Humility in Boundless American Space, and Women Poets on Mentorship Efforts and Affections, edited by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker.

M.R. Field designs notecards and other communication pieces based on haikus.