Duluth poet Barton Sutter provides commentary on the importance of poetry and it’s status in the United States.

Sutter reads excerpts from poems: "Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River" by Robert Bly and "Lying in a hammock at William Duffy's farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Poetry flickers and burns at the very core of my life. I've been reading and writing it since I was 14, so I've had more than 30 years to wonder with considerable bewilderment why the prevailing American attitudes toward verse our hostility and fear on the one hand indifference and contempt on the other. Such attitudes are hardly Universal the Vikings of Scandinavia held poetry in very high regard even today the Irish put poets on their currency instead of politicians Russians fill soccer stadiums to hear poetry read aloud, but here in my country the majority of citizens tend to hate poetry or ignore it altogether. Why is this I've asked myself ten thousand times. I've come up with a lot of long and complicated answers over the years but here's my short answer dumb poetry makes many people feel dumb and who wants that bad teachers are mostly to blame for this lousy State of Affairs. We teach poetry in school because poetry is the best that language can do poetry is everyday speech raised to its highest level. Poetry is to ordinary Pros. What Brandi is to Wine? What whiskey is to beer more distilled more concentrated with more Spirit more kick, but instead of offering their students a shot of something sacred all too many teachers present poetry as though it were a problem to be solved with Pros a foreign language to be translated a riddle to be answered with a boring paraphrase. Why are teachers always asking what a poem means? We don't ask what a good painting means. We hang it on the wall and live with it awhile. I can't explain the meaning of my wife or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or the birch tree in my yard when you truly understand a poem your understanding may very well be wordless for poems attempt to say what can't be said they are in Thomas Merton's phrase raids on the Unspeakable. When you truly understand a powerful poem The Sign of your understanding might be tears or a great guffaw or deep stunned silence. So I would urge my fellow citizens who were made to feel stupid about poetry in school to kill off the ghosts of their old Bad Teachers who were always asking what's it mean? What's it mean? What's it mean? Try treating a poem as if it were music and you won't be far off poetry said Thomas Carlyle his musical thought. Then there are those folks who feel okay about their own intelligence, but think that poetry is dumb such people tend to believe the only proper purpose of language is practical to convey information like the words in a grocery list are most newspaper Pros, but literature said as a wraparound is news that stays news and poetry said my friend John Anglin is words. You can't forget Even people who think language is disposable like cellophane probably remember jokes outrageous pawns insults that stung something grandpa said 20 years ago the spirit of poetry the impulse to play with words to say three things at once survives in all such talk when to minnesotans meet on the street at 20 below and one says cold enough for you. And the other replies at least there aren't any bugs. They aren't just saying what they mean. They're talking poetry. whether we're aware of it or not poetry percolates through most of our conversations and whenever we're swept up in waves of emotion when we fall in love most famously or when a family member dies almost of itself our language turns to poetry Years ago now one of my best friend's a gentle guy who collected butterflies and could name you all the constellations in the sky killed himself. When I went to see his widow, I was shocked. I had never seen a face so gouged by grief. We talked quietly for some time. When I asked if she planned to stay on in their apartment or if she felt she'd have to move. She said many friends were insisting. She'd have to get out in order to save her sanity. And then she said this. But where am I going to move? What will I do about butterflies and Stones by the side of the road? What will I do with the Moon? Spontaneously out of the deepest grief, I'd ever seen she uttered for Pure lines of poetry a quatrain. I'll never forget poetry is always near smoldering beneath the surface of Our Lives ready to ignite. I suspect most folks who think poetry is dumb just haven't read the right phones say poetry to these people and they Envision the florid abstract Jingles contained in greeting cards that stuff deserves their contempt such prefabricated trash isn't poetry at all but sentimental glop arranged in rhymes. Or maybe these people recall real poems, but think of something difficult and British from another Century filled with references to Roman gods and places where they've never been such work seems alien and I sympathize with those who turn away thinking poetry has nothing much to say to them. Growing up in tiny Midwestern towns. I felt poetry was something that happened someplace else in England say or Italy the nearest poetry came to home was still far off New England has it figured in the poems of Dickinson and frost mostly poetry seem to be bombastic generalizations about things you might see in a museum. And yet I like to work with words. I was trying to write poems. But how was I supposed to make poetry out of the world? I knew cornfields and motorboats hot rods and hay bales. Imagine my astonishment then when at age 17 in a little bookstore in Bemidji. I opened a book called silence in the snowy fields and read these lines. I am driving it is dusk, Minnesota. The Stubblefield catches the last growth of son. The soybeans are breathing on all sides old men are sitting before their houses on car seats in the small towns. I am happy the Moon Rising above the turkey sheds. I almost fainted here was the world I knew in language is fresh and obvious as newly fallen snow. I was thrilled to see my state mentioned in the first line. I liked it that the soybeans were breathing as if they were animals. I loved it that the old men sat outside on car seats instead of wicker chairs, and I was absolutely delighted by those turkey sheds. I'd seen plenty of turkey sheds in real life, but I'd never guessed that you could put them in a home this poem called driving toward the Lackey parle River had been written by Robert Bly a man. I'd heard about who lived in Western Minnesota. I've been over there in Lackey Powell County. The Palm went on to mention towns. I driven through Willmar and Milan the final stanza made Lamplight and water seemed like people and Rural Minnesota as mysterious as Japan. Nearly to Milan suddenly a small bridge and water kneeling in the Moonlight in small towns. The houses are built right on the ground. The lamp light falls on all fours in the grass when I reach the river the full moon covers it a few people are talking low in a boat. Driving toward the Lackey parle River rearranged my brain suddenly. I understood that literature was local. I realized that when an English poet wrote about the Thames his readers didn't have to go locate that River in an atlas. It was more as if a Minnesotan had mentioned the Mississippi. I saw that when one of the ancient Greeks spoke of Dionysus his audience didn't have to look up that God in a book of Mythology. It was more as if someone I knew had mentioned Jesus who still during my Boyhood lived in The Little White clobbered Church out there in ducts be, Minnesota. As I thought about bly's poem poems from the distant past came rushing toward the present. But the truly great breakthrough for me was the sudden understanding that good poetry like good Pottery could be made from local clay. Shortly after my encounter with bligh's book. I discovered the work of his friend James, right? He too was writing wonderful poems set in the midwest poems with long fascinating funny titles like this one a message hidden in an empty wine bottle that I threw into a gully of maple trees one night at an indecent hour. And then I found the poems of Tom McGrath who wrote about threshing Crews and coal fires in Winter and lonely Farm wives baking bread. And then I found John Berryman who wrote about Lake Street in Minneapolis where he said the used cars live. Those poets were literary pioneers of the midwestern landscape and I can't begin to say how crucial their palms were to me. When I was young how they continue to sustain me for Palms do many things but most importantly perhaps they give us back the world we know or thought we knew shining with significance. I'm older. Now. I've absorbed thousands of poems over the years difficult and easy ones ancient and brand-new. Sometimes I forget how amazed I was to discover powerful poems right close to home. But sometimes younger readers will remind me. Last year, I close my course on 20th century American literature with a poem by James write a poem I grew up with a poem that's famous now included in most important anthologies. It's called lying in a hammock at William Duffy's farm in Pine Island Minnesota before I read the poem allowed. I asked if any of the 55 students in the room happened to be from Pine Island. One student raised her hand a large timid girl. I'll call Kathy who had done well on exams but hadn't said two words all term. Well, then I said this poem is especially for you. Lying in a hammock at William Duffy's farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. Over my head. I see the bronze butterfly asleep on the black trunk blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the Ravine behind the empty house the cowbells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon. To my right in a field of sunlight between two Pines the droppings of last year's horses blaze up into golden stones. I leaned back as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over looking for home. I have wasted my life. I told my class goodbye and once they'd filed out. I turned to gather up my things when I looked up there stood Kathy. I said Kathy, can I help you? Say she said I'm from Pine Island. I know I saw you raised your hand. Isn't that a wonderful poem? I grew up in Pine Island. She said lived there all my life. Did you know the poem I asked know she said, but I'm from Pine Island. My whole family's from Pine Island. My grandparents aunts and uncles all my cousins were all from Pine Island. I realized for the conversation was beside the point. That large young woman and I stood there in the empty room grinning at each other helplessly stupid with happiness. And I finally understood that Kathy really was from Pine Island more deeply than she'd ever been before. and even though I'd never been there I was from Pine Island to and I knew that James Wright who lived in our home state making poems instead of money did not waste his life.