Making poetry and fun

By Darrell Laurant

Published: May 28, 2008

The name of the gig at Givens Books at 7 p.m. this Friday is “Making Friends for Poetry,” and Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar are perfect for it.

Not only are they poets, but the decades-long friendship among this trio is poetry in itself.

“The great thing is that we know each other so well, our strengths and weaknesses,” said Bass. “That means we can bounce ideas and poems off each other, and get an informed opinion.”

Laux and Millar are married. Bass is sort of an honorary sibling. Together, they have attended workshops, exchanged writings and taught poetry as a team at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif. This month, the three are in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts near Sweet Briar College.

Their lifestyle is common to many poets, a seasonal movement somewhat akin to that of sheep herders. They teach at colleges during the school year, then emerge from this semi-hibernation in the summer to attend or teach workshops and broaden their portfolios.

“Our goal is a poem a day,” Laux said. “I just finished one on fungi.”

She pronounced it “fun-gee,” and Millar imediately countered with “Isn’t that fun-guy?” (Or maybe it was the other way around).

“You see the kinds of things we talk about?” said Bass with a laugh.

What they seem to like most to talk about is poetry itself.

“I think one reason poetry gets a bad rap,” said Millar, “is that teachers are always making you try and find the hidden meaning in a poem. Maybe you don’t see any hidden meaning, but it puts pressure on you.”

And all of these well-meaning but relentless middle school English teachers have, without knowing it, greatly affected the lives of people like Laux, Millar and Bass. It is partly because of them that there are only a handful of “professional poets” — those who survive strictly by writing verse.

The rest do what they have to do. They teach in colleges, do readings, conduct workshops. Sometimes, they even wash dishes or sell Amway to feed their habits.

“There was a man in California who started putting poems on billboards,” Laux said, “and Joe and I both had our work displayed on buses in Portland (Ore.). It’s all a way of getting it out there. I’d rather be on a bus than in a magazine, because more people see you.”

One of the beauties of a poem, she added, sitting at a sun-washed table outside her VCCA studio, “is that you can memorize it. People in warfare will carry poems with them, folded and refolded, something to comfort themselves with.

“You can’t memorize a novel.”

“Poetry,” said Bass, “is the most intimate form of communication.”

In our society, we get our poetry mainly in the form of song lyrics. Yet poems are also songs, in their own way, and Friday night the voices of Millar, Laux and Bass will supply the music. They will be one-person bands, providing all the nuance and feeling and percussion.

Len Anderson of Poetry Santa Cruz in California (Ellen Bass’ current address) recently said of Dorianne Laux, “She is one of the best readers of poetry in the U.S., currently. She takes you away.”

If you come to Givens for the reading, you may hear this, from her poem “Dust:”

“That’s how it is sometimes; God comes to your window, all bright light and dark wings; and you’re just too tired to open it.”

Or this, from Millar’s poem “What Is Given”:

“If death is natural, as we believe; then the death of the world is natural; Nature’s mistake was creating its own weakness.”

Or the voice of Ellen Bass:

“What would people look like; if we could see them as they are; soaked in honey, stark and swollen; reckless, pinned against time.”

Serious stuff, but Dorianne Laux adds, “We’re not without humor, either.

“If people come to hear us, we promise to be fun.”