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Daniel Bourne, associate professor of English at The College of Wooster and a member of the faculty since 1988, is active in contemporary American literature and Polish literature and culture. Bourne received his bachelor's degree in comparative literature and history and his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Indiana University. The recipient of three poetry fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, he has published one book of poetry, The Household Gods, and has contributed poems to American Poetry Review, Field, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, and other journals. Bourne was a Fulbright Research Fellow to Poland in 1985-87, and has published a collection of the poetry and essays of Polish political writer Tomasz Jastrun, On the Crossroads of Asia and Europe. Other translations from Polish appear in Partisan Review, Northwest Review, and Ohio Review. As founding editor of the literary journal Artful Dodge, he was awarded the 1992 Ohioana Library Association's Award for Editorial Excellence. |
Poetry is more than Hallmark cards and high school torture, according to Daniel Bourne, associate professor of English at The College of Wooster. Poetry is a way of investigating one's life through colorful and lively language. Bourne believes poetry should be enjoyed by a broader audience, and that poetry is above all about telling stories and sharing opinions. What distinguishes poetry from prose or other forms of writing? Above all, there's the fact of the line break. All poets see the line break differently, but most still recognize its importance. Sometimes it might involve music or phrasing. Sometimes breaking a line a certain way is like camera work in a movie that channels the way the eye absorbs the story. There's a pause there that you have to pay attention to somehow. But an even more useful way to look at poetry is that it's often about making stories, arguments, connections. As an example, Joanne Lehman is working on a poem about catalpa trees and the death of her mother. It's an important poem to her because it tells the story of her life through exploring the relationships between this time and that, this person and the memory of the things that person loved. Yet another way of looking at the writing and revising of poetry is that poets work on language in the same way woodworkers work on wood. It's an art and craft that relies on tradition and experience, hard work and perseverance, but also a love for the activity, a desire to get it right. How does one distinguish between good and bad poetry? To paraphrase Walt Whitman, great poets depend on great readers. To me, the question of what is good is not as crucial as the overall struggle of poets to be heard by others, especially those who might not know them personally. How does poetry make its way into pop culture? Poetry is a laboratory of language. It's interesting to see forms and images that for decades have been standard fare in poetry suddenly become discovered by advertising in magazines or on television. We see it in politics as well, where people try to sell ideas rather than products. "Fuzzy math," after all, is a metaphor, the bread and butter of poetry. But poetry also listens to pop culture and talks about it. The poet William Carlos Williams said he wanted to re-create the brown bricks of common American speech. Joni Mitchell the songwriter wanted "to siphon the colored language off the farms and the streets." Then there are the poetry slams, part poetry reading and part Gong Show, where language performers compete with each other and interact with their audiences almost like stand-up comics. How do poets become public voices? Practically speaking, a major step for many poets is to start sending their work out to the many fine literary journals sprinkled across America. Poet's Market, which should be in most public and academic libraries, is a good place to begin learning about what specific journals look for and the poets they have published in the past. I, myself, have edited the journal, Artful Dodge, since 1979. We publish work ranging from Pulitzer Prize winners to poets appearing in print for the first time. We also publish work from all over the world, but we especially like work that has a connection to place. How is Artful Dodge connected to its place here in Wayne County? Ohio has been a good home. Since Artful Dodge came to the College with me in 1988, we've enjoyed support from the Ohio Arts Council, and I hope we've given something back to the surrounding writing community in return. For example, we were the first to publish a poem in English by the late Iren Negyesy, who wrote poetry in Hungarian while running her pastry shop in Smithville for years. We even arranged to have some of her work translated into English by Nicholas Kolumban, a Hungarian-born American poet, so she could offer a chapbook of her work for sale in the shop along with her strudels and cakes. In your opinion, who has been the most influential poet of the century? So much depends on William Carlos Williams, a baby doctor who did most of his writing after midnight. He not only showed how poets do other things besides write, but he also showed how the poetic gaze involved an intense noticing of what is around and within you. He also is known for writing with the white spaces, by showing how a few well-chosen, well-placed words can say a lot. In his later years, he was also the one who wrote the introduction for Allen Ginsburg's great long-poem Howl. Ginsburg is another major poet, whose influences include both Walt Whitman and the King James Bible. Controversial to this day, his vision has been characterized as both sacred and profane. For my own work as a poet, though, the most influential poet has been James Wright, a poet of Ohio's steel mills and farms. His vision, though, is a tough one. He's not a cheerleader for the land, but a tough critic who can't separate his love from his hate. Every year, poets from all over America converge on Martins Ferry, on the Ohio River right across from Wheeling, W.Va., to celebrate Wright's work. Do you think there's enough exposure to poetry in the schools? Probably not, but our current Poet Laureate Billy Collins is promoting a poetry program called "180." It's named after the fact that most school years have about 180 days. He wants to set up a program where a poem is read out loud each morning - just the poem, no commentary or lesson included. A good poem speaks with intensity already, with catchy language. It will turn your head 180 degrees. |
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| Last updated: January 10, 2006 · For more information, contact John Finn | ||
