Elise Eystad
Have you been looking for poetry that you can relate and connect to?
“From Superior, Washburn, and Ashland to Racine, Sturtevant, and Milwaukee. From Door County to Madison and the Driftless area. Wisconsin, you are here. Your lived experience is here,” reads the press release for a new poetry anthology. Titled Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems, this anthology was compiled and edited by Margaret Rozga & Angela Trudell Vasquez and includes poetry from all eight Wisconsin poet laureates, as well as various other poets from around the state.
The poet laureate is a long-standing tradition in the United States, its primary role being to give poetry “a public presence,” says current Wisconsin poet laureate Margaret (Peggy) Rozga. In a pre-pandemic times, this involved hosting readings and events across Wisconsin, but when Covid hit, this “public presence” had to take on new forms. In addition to learning about Zoom and online presentations, Rozga has also been working on this anthology.
Read on to learn more from Rozga about her role of the poet laureate, the release of Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems, and how you can snag your copy today!
Elise Eystad: Can you give a brief synopsis of Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems? Who are some of the contributors and where are they from?
Margaret Rozga: The fifty poets from across Wisconsin included in Through This Door contributed poems that resonated with the words of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, "When beloved Sun Rises, it is an entrance, a door to fresh knowledge." This quote is the epigraph for the book, and two of its four sections pick up terms from the quote for their titles: "Through This Door," "Fresh Knowledge," "In the Quiet," and "Each Sunrise." Among the poems are those that reflect on nature, those that consider personal or community relationships, some that focus on the pandemic, and one that gives a picture of the in-person voting during Wisconsin's April primary. The anthology concludes with a hopeful view of the future.
EE: Your press release quotes U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s book, Crazy Brave, as setting the overall theme for this anthology: “When beloved Sun rises, it is an entrance, a door to fresh knowledge.” What is the significance of this theme? The significance of doors?
MR: Doors are thresholds, passageways to new insights, often new beginnings. Poetry is one way to open up new insights. I particularly like Harjo's phrase "fresh knowledge." A poem may present something the reader already knew in a way, but the poem sees that knowledge in a new light, in a way that sparks a deeper understanding.
EE: What did the selection process of compiling the anthology look like? How is the theme of the anthology, explained above, demonstrated in the poems selected?
MR:
A couple of examples:
One poet, Ethel Mortensen Davis, writes about being awakened at night by the moonlight coming in her bedroom window. She then goes outside and to her surprise finds "bees at night collecting nectar" and 'honey-suckle branches / laden with bees."
In Max Garland's poem "Joy," the speaker is outside in such cold that is hurts to breathe. "I stood under the red pine, took a few more breaths // from deep in the glacial instant of my one and only life, / which hurt a little, by which I mean the edge of joy / where it sharpens itself for the work it has to do."
The selection of poems took over a year. We knew we wanted to include all 8 poets who'd served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate and as many local poets laureate as we could.
The selection of poems took over a year. We knew we wanted to include all 8 poets who'd served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate and as many local poets laureate as we could. Most poets sent us 3 to 5 poems. We had to think about which ones best fit the theme. Sometimes that changed when we saw how a poem by one person was complemented by a poem from another person. Once we had a good start on the collection, we noticed work by others that would fill a gap in what we had. We found at least three of what become poems in the book posted on Facebook where the person who posted them wasn't thinking about writing a poem for a book at all, but we saw how what they wrote opened a door to "fresh knowledge." We're very grateful to them, as we are to all the poets, for allowing us to share their work in this book.
Co-editor Angela Trudell Vasquez
EE: Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems includes poems by the eight Wisconsin Poets Laureate. Can you tell me more about the role of poets laureate in Wisconsin?
MR: The first poets laureate in the English tradition wrote poems to commemorate official public events. The most famous may be Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." In the U.S., national, state, and local poets laureate are seldom commissioned to write poems for specific events, but in other ways they work to give poetry a public presence. Editing this book is one way I'm bringing an inclusive range of poetic voices to public attention. Another example, Kimberly Blaeser, 2015-2016 Wisconsin Poet Laureate created an online poetry recitation map. All the poets laureate give readings and present workshops throughout Wisconsin, and now virtually
EE: As your time as poet laureate winds down, what can you tell me about your experience? What was it like to try to give poetry to the people in the midst of Covid? How is your role, and the role of books like this anthology, more important than ever?
MR: In the first 5/8ths of my term, I put 3500 miles on my car driving to poet laureate events. In this last 3/8ths of my term, I've driven 12 miles for poet laureate events. So it was a drastic change. In March 2020 I heard of Zoom for the first time. Since then thanks to Zoom and other online platforms, I've been able to continue to connect poetry and people throughout Wisconsin and beyond. I've learned strategies to keep online presentations lively. In the words of my introduction to this anthology, it is a way to "show the Wisconsin we have and help build the Wisconsin we need."
EE: This anthology is a display of the Wisconsin lived experience. In general, what ways do you feel poetry has the power to demonstrate our lived experiences? And more specifically, how do you feel poetry written across Wisconsin, from Washburn to Madison to Door County, can connect the people of Wisconsin?
MR: I think of poetry as an epistemology, a way of knowing, that is different from the way of knowing, analysis, most often employed in schools and business. Analysis divides its subject matter into component parts; poetry with metaphor at its heart, sees likenesses. So we see the subject in a different light depending on which way of knowing guides our approach.
“Poetry seeks to engage all the senses, so that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch what is being considered. In this attention to sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, there is more potential for engaging the emotions, and that’s where the depth of response comes from. ”
Poetry seeks to engage all the senses, so that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch what is being considered. In this attention to sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, there is more potential for engaging the emotions, and that's where the depth of response comes from.
I do not live in Eau Claire, I may not know how you love the river, but your poem can make that experience come alive for me. Then every time I drive west on I-94, I will not see Eau Claire roll by as just another freeway exit, but I'll appreciate it as a place where you live and a river you love flows.
There are poets included in this anthology that I've never met in person, but we've connected through poetry. They have and the poetry has enriched my life, my sense of what is possible.
An example from the book, Philomena Kebec writes of a cliff "once covered in trees and soft underbrush worn down to its bare clay foundation" and she concludes: "Water is writing its own story." The Bad River near her home in "Wiikwedong, also known as Ashland, Wisconsin" becomes for me a symbol of the living earth, even though I've never seen it and didn't know the indigenous name for what in English is Ashland. The person and the place become important to me, part of what makes me who I am.