An article by Mary Swander:

How did you become interested in poetry?

This is the question I’ve been asked most frequently this past year that I’ve been Poet Laureate of Iowa...

Poetry always seemed like a natural expression. I ask: How could you not be interested in poetry? I’ve worked in hundreds of school situations throughout my career, from K through graduate students, and the younger the students, the more interested they are in poetry. When they hit high school, poetry suddenly becomes “difficult” or threatening. When most of us hit adulthood, we put away the things of childhood and rarely open another book of poetry.
So, I’m more inclined to ask: What are the things that nurture a life-long love of poetry? What keeps one reading and writing the genre? Even when poetry is no longer “cool?” Even when you are old enough to understand the complexity that faces you on the page.
Most poets were read to as children. The spoken word spilling from the lips of parents became a source of entertainment, of wonder, and of comfort to the child. The scene is one of human closeness-- precious moments when a child has the full attention of a parent. But reading out loud also allows the child to take in language, the fun of the sound of words, the lyricism of lines, the rhythms of the phrases beating their way across the page. Studies have been done that suggest that reading out loud to a child stimulates the child’s own desire to read. A parent’s interest in reading legitimizes the pursuit, makes it safe, makes it fun.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

I remember my mother reading these words from Lewis Carroll long before there was a motion picture of Alice in Wonderland, long before I had even seen a movie. Instead, my mind was allowed to tumble over the familiar syntax but unfamiliar words, make its own connections, and find its own meanings. My brain created its own image of the Jabberwock, its jaws that bite, its claws that catch.
A poet-in-training starts with the sound of words on the tongue, the way they roll around in the mouth, trip imagery in the brain, and click into memory.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head
  
He went galumphing back.

I laughed out loud at the thought of the dead, beheaded Jabberwork. My love of the humor of the grotesque was born, and I was able to slay my own childhood dragons, meeting the dangers of the world. And who doesn’t love to say galumphing? Who doesn’t automatically understand the word’s meaning? I delighted in the sly mastery of Carroll’s language, his invention of words. Never mind that I was learning the sophisticated linguistic technique of portmanteau, the combing of two words to form a third. Galloping and triumphing blended together to form what else? Galumphing. I was having two much fun to recognize technical terms and it would be years before I’d have to understand portmanteau on a quiz.
A poet-in-training also needs to see the world through a symbolic lens, to become exposed to the idea of metaphor. Now that we rarely write in form anymore, what do we have left? Without form, we’re forced to grapple with the heart of poetry—the transformative element that brings great meaning to the page. We are introduced to metaphor through ritual, religion, or observations of the natural world. My first impressions of Sunday Mass were stained glass windows, the brilliance of the colors—rich, deep reds and blues, the streaming of the light on the pews, the crown of thorns encircling the heart of Mary. Even though the meaning was obscure at the time, the imagery pressed deeply into my consciousness. Gradually, a world opened where common materials—bread and wine—were changed into miraculous substances.
This is my body. The line Jesus spoke at the Last Supper may be not only holy and prophetic, but one of the best short poems that has ever come down through the ages. Angels, those supernatural beings with bodies of humans and wings of birds, trumpeted the most glorious events—a rock rolled away from the cave, a missing body, and an ascent into heaven. Without words of interpretation or study, I grasped the idea of transcendence. Instinctually, I understood the concept of higher meanings, of higher plains of thinking and contemplation.
Outside the church door, another world opened. Low to the ground, I loved the world of bugs, insects, garden vegetables and garter snakes. What child hasn’t fallen into a moment of silent reverie when watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon? When watching a squash flower turn into a fruit? When holding in his or her hand the molted skin of a snake? All of these things are well-worn images and metaphors for an adult, but for a child who is grasping their magic for the first time, they release an emotion of “awe and wonder.” It is this very same emotion that gives poetry its grip. Nature excels at what Robert Bly has called the “metaphorical leap”—when one thing suddenly becomes another. An understanding of those leaps launch us into a far more complex view of the world, or as Rudolph Steiner called it “metamorphic thinking.”
It helps if a young poet has a teacher who nurtures this kind of metamorphic thinking and encourages the student to read widely.

What age were you when you began writing poetry?

This is the second most frequently asked question I’ve received during the last year. Poetry is an adult art. Even though I’ve taught poetry to all ages, children rarely sit down to write a great poem. They do love to play with language, to capture a mood or an image. But the real work of a teacher of future poetry lovers and writers is to expose the students to as many approaches to poetry as possible. And to display a real passion for the genre. Many teachers had their own bad experiences with poetry or became intimidated by it, so they push the genre to the end of the semester or ignore it all together. The great teachers demonstrate the electricity of poetry, connect with it on a visceral as well as intellectual level, and encourage their students to read far and wide.
When I went to Georgetown University for my undergraduate work, I was lucky enough to have Roland Flint (who later ended up the Poet Laureate of Maryland) as a professor. A big man with a fuzzy red beard and black horn rimmed glasses, Flint stood in front of class with a well-worn copy of the first edition of X. J. Kennedy’s An Introduction to Poetry. But Flint didn’t need the book. He knew most of the poems it contained by heart. He began the class by reciting the Shakespearian sonnet 130:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red.

Flint crawled inside the poem, showed us how funny it was, how satirical. Each image, one piled on top of another, became more ridiculous than the next. Eyes, lips, hair, breasts. The speaker created on a ghastly picture of his lover. But when the poem reached its final couplet, it took a turn. Despite the fact that the lover could not measure up to the ideal of romanticized love, the speaker pledged his deep affection.
In that freshman class, I fell in love with Shakespeare, with Chaucer, with Milton, Browning, with Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Theodore Roethke, and Elizabeth Bishop. The class launched me into a lifetime love of great poetry. I went to the Georgetown Library, found old vinyl 33 recordings of William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost and T.S. Elliott. I put them on the turntable, lay down on the carpeted floor, and listened to the greats read their own work. I picked up the needle and listened again and again. I skipped my other classes, went to campus poetry readings and saw James Wright and Allen Ginsburg. Ginsburg played the concertina and sang William Blake poems:

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,

Soon, I began writing my own poetry and making the time to read even more deeply. It is vital that the poet-in-training have this self-directed reading period, creating time for the important work of understanding the tradition. I tried doing more “practical” things, only to find myself returning to the poetry—the oh, so impractical pursuit. Many of my male poet friends came to read poetry in the military when they had enormous amounts of time on their hands. There they tumbled head first into volumes of poetry and began their own attempts at the genre.

But isn’t poetry a gift? Aren’t you just born with it?

Yes, I do think that there are genetic forces at play in poetry. I have visited the grammar school in my grandfather’s village in Ireland. There on a remote peninsula where the people live simply, poetry and storytelling are high arts and have a place of honor in the culture. Poetry brought a spark to the lives of the Irish, a people given to oral tradition. In a place where money was always scare, poetry was honored, not for its economics but for its metaphysics, the lift it gave to the soul. Poetry connected one to the age-old tradition of the bard, and the history of a people. To School through the Years, a book of recollections about the Claddaghduff School published in 2003, is filled with poetry by the students, teachers, priests, and local townspeople. In contrast, I would imagine that a similar book in the U.S. would be filled with sport scores and stories about various football games.
For many years, the State of Iowa has tried to nurture the reading and writing of poetry, making a significant contribution to our literary culture. All the poets in the state have been through their own forms of training and education about poetry. More than likely they were read to as a child, had a good teacher, or developed symbolic and metamorphic thinking through religious services or observations of nature. Somehow they cleared their busy schedules to sit down and read and write poetry. They turned to their craft out of a love of language and expression. Enjoy this website and use it to create poetry or other works of literature that you’ll love to recite out loud, love to return to again and again for fun and meaning. *

*This essay was originally written as a foreword to the 2010 Lyrical Iowa Anthology.