 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics of interest to libraries across the Nebraska and across the country. Actually, we broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 am central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can always go to our website and watch all of our shows on our archives. I'll show you at the end of today's episode where you can get to those archives. We do both the recordings. Live show and recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think that may be interested in any of the topics that we have on the live show or on the archives. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, book reviews, interviews, demos of services of products, mini training sessions sometimes. Basically, anything of interest to libraries, our only really criteria is that it's something that libraries are doing. And we as the Nebraska Library Commission serve all types of libraries, public, academic, schools, corrections, museums. If you're a library, it's probably something I'll show for you. We do have Nebraska Library Commission staff sometimes do sessions, and we have guest speakers that come in sometimes. And we have a mixture of that. Do they have a hybrid today? Yes, we're doing a group. Yeah. Today, we are talking about the 2018 One Book One Nebraska Selection on Nebraska Presence and Invalid Prology of Poetry. And I'm just going to hand over to Mary Doe to start some food and post everything. And we'll introduce who and tell you who we have here. I'm Mary Jo Ryan with the Nebraska Library Commission. And I would like, I guess, the rest of the folks who are here to just introduce themselves. And Tessa will move the camera slightly so you can see everybody. And sooner or later, we'll get them all in the frame. Mary Kane still well one of the editors in the Nebraska presence. And I'm Greg Cosmiski, the other editor of Nebraska Presence and I'll be sure to back watch this. And I'm Rod Wagner, director of the Library Commission and ex-officio board member of the Nebraska Center for the Book. And I'm Becky Baker, a member of the board for the Nebraska Center for the Book and also the chair of the One Book One Nebraska Selection Committee. Thank you all. Just for kind of starters, what I think we'll do is just there we go. There we go. We'll go through a few slides here. There we go. We'll go through a few slides that will sort of introduce the One Book One Nebraska program. And then I think the primary, primarily what we want to do today is have a conversation with you folks. So we just say a few things. The whole point of this One Book One Nebraska is to encourage people all over the state to read the same book and talk about it. A committee from the Center for the Book, as Becky mentioned, selects the book and is sponsored by the Center for the Book Humanities Nebraska and Nebraska Library Commission. As you can see, we've been at this for a few years. And I think this is a pretty good growth gallery of wonderful stories by Nebraska writers. Or about Nebraska, by the way, there is actually a couple of books that are not on Nebraska writers, but they were about Nebraska. This particular book has poems by more than 80 contemporary Nebraska poets. And we won't get to all of them, but I encourage everyone of you to be sure and read this book and take a look at it. I think some of these poems are especially lovely, read aloud. So anything you can do in your libraries to encourage out loud reading would be great. Obviously, there are some famous poets, Twilight Hands and Arts, Nebraska State Poet, Ted Couser, our former Poet Laureate of the United States, and William Klepp, one of former state poets. But there's also many others in your wonderful poems. I wanted to make sure you know that the book club kids are circulating like mad, but that doesn't mean that you can't still get a book club kit for your reading group or your discussion group or your program that you're planning. Check out news and events so you can see what's going on across the stage. I wanted to mention that we're on Facebook, and there's quite a conversation going on on Facebook. We'd love to have you join us. Friend, our Facebook page, One Book One Nebraska. Obviously, go to Facebook.com first, type in here, One Book One Nebraska. Really to encourage everybody to create local programs, we've got a publicity toolkit with bookmarks and business cards. You can print off posters. We've got some discussion questions that are helpful. Again, there are lots of resources also from Humanities Nebraska. This is a very special resource, by the way, which basically pays for a scholar or a poet to come to your community and do a live program in your library. Basically, all you got to do is go to Humanities Nebraska website. Some of the programming that we've got available includes poet programs by Mary Kay Stillwell, who's here and she'll be talking with us. Also, Lucy Adkins, Marge Sizer. Here's where you go, book your speaker. When you book your speaker, you also get the information about how to get the grant to pay the speaker from Humanities Nebraska. Getting involved, book club, book talk, book a program with the author through the Humanities Nebraska Speakers Bureau, be sure and pay attention to local media, other ideas for programming. I guess at this point I want to mention that I know that some of you may have already done a program or have already got some ideas for programs and we would really like that if you would share that, either now or when the poets are speaking. At any point during the program, please share any ideas or thoughts that come up. But as Kristin mentioned, you can just type them in the chat box, or if you would rather use your microphone or your telephone connection, just ask us to unmute and one last thing I wanted to mention is that October 27th, we'll have a special program. Oh, is that right? It says 2018. Yeah, that is right. Good. I've got the wrong date up here, it says 2018, but I don't think it's October 27th. But it is. It's October 27th at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. We'll have the celebration of Nebraska Months and a special poetry program will highlight that celebration. So with that, I think we can for more information, I'll put this back up later. But for now, I think we can get rid of the slides and go back to the people, the real people. And we'll, I think turn it over to Mary Kay and Greg and Becky to start and Rod, if you have any questions that you'd like to ask them, let's put up for, there we go. Hi folks, there you are. I want to put up the, oh, the websites down there under export. There we go. There you go. That's the website. Go. And we can do more with the website later if there are questions or interesting. Yeah. So, so that's how this all start. I mean, I know this book is not brand new, but something must have started this idea of having an anthology of Nebraska poets. What happened Mary Kay and Greg? How did it happen? It was all a terrible accident. Actually, we were at the Nebraska Book Festival in Carney. And I think it was the year after, or maybe just the year that Ted Kuzer was going to be named poet in the United States. And one of a poet that the Backwaters Press has published, well, five books by now, Marjorie Seizer. At that time, we published two of her books. Came up to the table where the Backwaters Press had its books on display and said that she really thinks that we ought to do an anthology of Nebraska poetry. And I told her that that sounds like a great idea. Would she like to help edit it? And she said, you know, because she's been involved with me with a previous anthology that she and I Lisa Sandlin edited and titled Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace, Writing by William and the Great Plains, High Plains. And I always say that if Marge hadn't been involved, that we'd still be working on getting that together today. So I'm the most disorganized person in the world. And Mary Kay has been fulfilling that function, sort of, that part of my brain since. As best I can. So. And I guess I can pick up. Yeah. I opened up my, I got, went to my inbox one morning, and I wrote it down because it just tickled me. I got this email from Greg and the subject line read opportunity to work your socks off for no pay. So he tried out his idea on me and it really sounded like it was time. And Nebraska's been rich in anthologies, but there hadn't been one, a representative anthology for a while. And it seemed like a good idea. Also, I had to go to Nebraska, I mean, to New York to learn about Nebraska poetry. In the 60s, I didn't know we wrote poetry out here. I went there. And I really started studying poetry there. And my teacher was Bill Packard, and he introduced me to Couser and Cousma and Raz and the poets here. And I said, good lord, we got to get, you know, I'm sure other people in Nebraska knew about poetry, but it just run past me. So this was a wonderful opportunity to take a look at what we write, what subjects are interesting to us, and to have a conversation, not only with readers, but other poets writing in or about the state. So like Pandora, I opened up the box. And the rest is history. And it turned out just fantastic. I mean, you guys have, I know, sold lots of copies and really enjoyed the interaction with these poets. We got so many submissions. You did. I don't remember how many. Well, at the time I wrote down 1500 pages of poetry. Some were typed, some were on computers, some were handwritten. And it's a lot of good poems. I mean, we had a hard time when we went down to the manager. So we would have this poem. We met to edit face to face probably four or five times? Yes, most of them. And we had a process where no poem would get through unless all three of us agreed on it. So that's pretty tough, because usually I think most places you'll have like two out of three people have to okay it before it gets in. So that was a pretty high bar. And we had a lot of really excellent things to choose between, make decisions about, and it turned out, you know, in retrospect, given a couple of years since I got through and read this book, and I mean, if I do say so myself, I'm really surprised that the quality of the poems are really good poems. So exciting to read. And the nice thing about this website is you can, there's a tab for I think it's poems. So you can go write two poems. So there's one right there. So this is Nebraska. And there's one. Yeah. All in the right six poems. Yeah. So one of, I suppose one can't have favorites, one can't. It's an anthology. But one of my favorites is highlighted here, Father Dancing by Fred Sydec. And I can read it now or later. I'll read it now. Okay. My father liked to dance alone late at night when he was sure the rest of the house was sleeping. He would turn on the old silco and dance with the broom. One summer when mother sent me out with his lunch, I caught him doing the rumba in the very patchy. Music seemed to come from his pores. One winter he waltzed for the cows. I went to the barn to feed the cats. I found him doing a perfect pirouette. His arms spun out and up until he was like the grand, a giant top spinning before the stalls. The cows were going into their cuds. I could tell they'd seen it all before. Occasionally he would spin to a stop, bow, kiss one of them right on the nose and two step back into his turning. One day I caught him dancing new and the small meadow down past our creek. He and the dance were exquisite as prayer. I thought of Noah's sons covering their father's nakedness and wondered why. So that's a useful tool on the website is to get a sampling. And I think that that poem is a good, is a really good example of how much energy and life and visual character there is in this whole anthology. So that was a great one. How about Ry and Becky? Could you kind of give us a little feedback on what it was like since you're both on the committee that selected this? I know you had lots of books to read and take from. One of the things that I think is spectacular about one book on Nebraska is that the initial call for nominations comes from Nebraskans. They nominate books. We have some basic criteria which each book must meet. For example, having an ISV and being readily available, being written by a Nebraska writer or taking place in Nebraska or having a Nebraska theme. And once we are able to win around any books that might not meet those criteria, the committee sets off reading. And it's just a joy. And the anthology was a book that through rounds of readers kept moving forward. So the readers on the committee found the same joy in the book. It's unique for us because it is poetry and primarily the genres that have been selected for one book when Nebraska have either been fiction or non-fiction. This is unique and the state has been ready for it. Poetry is really on the upswing in Nebraska. It's not just that children in elementary school, someone was telling me the other day that her child had to write a poem in a fifth grade class. And I really smiled at that because that's what I wrote my first poem was in Mrs. Kikrow's class when I was in fifth grade. Kikrow. And I could still recite it to you if we had much more time. But the idea that that writing exercise is not just a blip. We have high school students now so engaged in louder than a bomb slam poetry. And we have people who are writing and publishing in ways that, as Mary Kay said, in previous times we might not have had any idea that we had so much talent in the state. So in the process of this book coming to the short list and then being selected for one book when Nebraska, the state was ready for that. And I think that shows through the programs that are taking place throughout Nebraska. One of our poetry out round state winners who went to the Nationals came in second place. And yes, it's reading someone else's poem out loud. But what it also tells us is students are reading poetry, connecting with poetry, and are sharing poetry. And we're making national, you know, placing nationally. We're a strong state. And it's a natural expression of thought. Yeah. The committee has had interest in this book, I think for several years. It's one of our nominees that has been on our mind. So it was just an opportunity for us to select this book this year. I know it's been a favorite of mine and others as well. So I was wondering what your experience has been thus far. We're still early in the year. You've been out and have done presentations in various places. So what's been the response you've had thus far? Those events that you've had thus far? Well, so far, let me see. I've taken part in reading at Auburn at the library and wanted the bookworm in Omaha. And there was one at Mojava here in Lincoln the first week of January. I think I couldn't make it to that one. And Bellevue had a really nice reading. That's at college, right? Yeah, Bellevue College. At the library. That was gotten together by Tiff Mason. He's a professor, department chair of the English down there. Let me see. I think that's all the ones I've been to. But I think there has been a couple more that I couldn't make it to the book story here. And there's a million coming up. They on the fifth. Friends with the Finch have one. Yeah, we may not have them all on the calendar yet. We will be getting them on here as soon as possible. But I see we've got a June 8th reading of chapter's books and gifts ensured. And June 24th, Brownville Schoolhouse Art Gallery reading. And I'm sure there are others that we need to get updated on here. I brought a list for you. June 8th chapters. We're going to do a book signing and reading out there ensured. It's to coincide with the bicycles across the grass. Oh, that's cool. They'll be coming into the town square and there's always a lot going on then. So we'll be reading there. As you mentioned, the Brownville Fine Arts Association on June 24th. June 10th, we'll be at the Norfolk Public Library. And we should probably talk a little bit more about the workshops in a minute. July 22nd, we'll be at the My Heart Foundation in Vancouver, August 25th, Nebraska Book Fest, November 8th at the Center for Great Plains Study. And there are a couple others that are still in the works, but these are the ones that in June 7th, I think here in Lincoln, right? For the at the Constellation Studios. I thought that sounded like such an interesting merging of poetry and art. It's going to be sponsored by the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association. And they're doing kind of a special program, right? Yes, Karakunst has selected a couple poems from the anthology. She's going to typeset them. And while we're there, we're going to watch, and I hope assist, in printing them on her handmade paper. So people who come will have some poets who'll read, there's a time limit, or we'll be there all night. Yes. So after they're made, we will have souvenirs to take home with us. And her work, of course, is nationally, internationally recognized. And so it's just a wonderful meeting, as you say, of the arts. So I'm really looking forward to that. That's June 7th, 6th to 8th. It's open to the public. So come on down to Constellation Studios. Yes. And it's open to people outside of Lincoln too. So you can go to Lincoln, make that a Lincoln, a trip to Lincoln, go out to dinner, come to Constellation Studios. Sounds good. Yeah. And I think the poems that she selected were one by Ted Cruiser and one by Eve Plattner. Wouldn't that be fun to get to do that? I would like to do it myself. That's pretty good. I understand why that might not be the case. I don't think she's the most... Oh, she's in an outset. I'm just thinking about it. Secrets. You heard it first. There's also... We were also approached by Greg Simon, who's a jazz professor at the emerging brass at Lincoln. He wanted to exert songs, to create a song cycle with poems from the book. And I got him in touch with... Oh, probably 10 or 12 of the poets. I think he's got eight or nine books or poems that he selected that he's going to set to music. And he's working on that on a fellowship right now when he's on vacation from the university. So he's hoping to have it ready in the fall sometime. I'm not sure. That is so cool. If he has that ready, we definitely need him at the celebration at the brass dance, don't we? It sounds very sort of beatnik. I love it. She has some poetry on. And some of the programs you're doing, they vary, don't they? I mean, obviously some are reading. Yeah. As we mentioned, someone mentioned, there are 80, I think 82 poets. So a couple, the Neyhart Center, and I think it was in Norfolk and other groups around the state, can go, there's a tab on our poetry page that says the poets. And you can scroll down if you want and give little bios. And they've several groups of chosen poets from their neck of the woods to invite out through a Humanities Nebraska grant to come out and talk about the book. And this is a good time, I think, to talk about the Speakers Bureau of Humanities Nebraska. We're offering two workshops. One is called Nebraska Our Song, which is a discussion of the poetry in the book and the poetry in general. And the other is Nebraska News, which talks about the anthology, but also invites writers to come in. And we can talk about the writing of particular poems and gift props. So if they want to write there and then go home and continue writing, they can. And just a brief description, it's on the website. But the description is join the editors and poets of Nebraska presence in the exploration and celebration of our state's history and people. This program is part reading and part discussion. And then it goes on to describe the program. But we say, please let us know of your special interests with your request. And we'll try to find speakers who address your concerns or people who are from your neck of the woods, because we do have poets from all over the state. Or I suppose if you want to explore a theme, tell us your theme and we can put together a program for you, same way with our news. If you have a group of writers who want to sponsor a group of poets coming out, let us know. Again, maybe you can pick your favorites and we'll try to round them up. And the good thing about working through the speakers bureau, especially for cities, you know, that are pretty far away from where most of the poets live, it allows the poets to get a stipend and get their mileage paid for, because many of our poets still work nine to five jobs or teaching jobs. So this is a nice incentive to support their participation in their events. So I really think that's a way to go for libraries and groups, non-profit, I think they have to be around the state. So I think that if you have like a way maybe through your Facebook page to try to engage the writers in your community, maybe put out a call through Facebook to the writers in your community to join you and some of the poets for a writing news workshop or, you know, whatever you decide will be the best and you can ask them what would you like, would you like to have a poetry reading session, would you like to have a writing workshop and perhaps through Facebook you can engage them or through Twitter if you're using Twitter. Yeah, whatever you think would be the best way. And on the Nebraska as news theme, I'd like to read a poem by Don Welch. He's a poet who passed away recently who was widely known throughout the state and taught for years and years at University of Nebraska at Carnivore and this poem is entitled appropriately enough Nebraska and it kind of deals with the theme of Nebraska as a muse. Going west when the sun is going down following the highways like light cords. If Nebraska were the name of a Russian woman they would love her. There would be a certain large bone beauty about her or she would be dressed in black and lace. Her waist would be small and she would drag her long dress over a floor into a study lined with French books. She would be a pawn in huge novels of war. As it is she is a woman of spare beauty turning away from him so that the fine hollows of her back were toward the bed. She said why do you do this to me? Why do you keep imagining me in other places and states and why do you keep assuming our children are unhappy? Interesting. And that raises I think a very nice point because you both have read poems by major Nebraska poets who have passed since the anthology was put together and that doesn't mean that their works will not be read at these readings because the readers coming out are wanting to share not only their particular poems but also other poems that the audience would enjoy. And so Fred's poem has been read several times and the same with Don's work and any other poets who are a part of this anthology but no longer. Did you have something you wanted to read Becky? Yes I do. Thank you for asking. Yeah as we were putting work together as Mary Kay was putting the work together and I was sending her email every couple of days finding out what was she was doing. We had to go through the list of the poets and I think there are 13 of the poets in this anthology who have since passed away since. As a matter of fact we just lost pretty famous Nebraska a couple of days ago with her phone and she's got a short poem here about having started to lose her mental faculties since it's a really incredible poem so go ahead Becky. Okay well this poem is entitled The Fisherman's Wife and because I have lived in the center of the United States I'm always fascinated by how people live and work and eat in other places so The Fisherman's Wife. She waits tables at the Bayview Cafe demystifying the contents of seafood chowder for tourists. She tells me that her husband is a fisherman asks where I am from sighs and says she has never been west of Boston. She cannot imagine Middle America a place without coastline a place where people eat beef daily. Each time she moves from table to kitchen I notice a different tattoo legs and arms twirling in color like a globe. On long winter evenings I will eat chowder from a can. The main fisherman with red cracked fingers will trace each tattoo. The fisherman's wife will close her eyes and tell him that he is all of the world that she needs. Who wrote that? I wrote that. Any other thoughts that you might have or those of you who are in our audience anything come up for you so far as we've been talking in terms of what do you think about your community's reaction to poetry? I mean we know that there is like slam poetry and lots of poetry happening among young people. I guess we're curious about whether that's happening in your community. Can you take into your question section if you have anything to say? Learn chat box. Do you want to show us where that's at on the new screen maybe? Anyways it's sort of over here on the side. I think that Kit has questions right? And book groups have found this very helpful. Especially some people are kind of timorous when it comes to poetry. They haven't read it for a long time or when they went to school they read poets by long dead people that didn't really relate to their lives. And so they're coming to poetry to contemporary the brass with poetry but with some reservations and the questions. And we let the poets ask questions about their own work that might we're dealing something about their poems but also other poets in the book. So in the kit you'll find questions that our poets came up with about particular poems and then some general questions about the book in general. And I think I can quickly read an example of how this might help someone in your library or your book with kind of poetry. I'm going to read a poem by Lucy Atkins. She's out from, she's from Genoa. She's here in England. She and Kathleen West another poet in this book. So it seems to be fertile ground out there in Genoa. So her poem is on Pleasant Valley Road and the title runs right into the poem and the poem is composed of one sentence and so the poem is all about connection. On the Pleasant Valley Road, Nantz County 1941-1945. On the Pleasant Valley Road that rolls from Palmer to Florida all the farmhouses sit square to the road and there are stars in the windows for those at war. Blue stars for service, gold for dead and above all gods stars shining. They're light, weak and cold but shining over these little farms, over the farmers and farmwives, the much beloved sons, the skinny armed daughters, and in cities and towns shining across the bomber plants over schoolyards and shipyards, shining down too over France and Italy, over the darkness of Poland and Romania, over Auschwitz and Dachau, the furnaces stoked and blazing and Hiroshima where all the lights went out. So she went to the State Museum here in town. There was a World War I exhibit on of artifacts and so she got to thinking about war in her hometown and what it represented, what it was like for her to grow up and then she started writing about how war affects the whole world. And the poems that she listed in the kit are first. The subject of on the Pleasant Valley Road is life in Nebraska during World War I. What do you think it was like living in Nebraska during the war times of World War I and II? Do any of your older family members or friends speak of this? For those Nebraskans on the home front, what other elements of pride and anguish and despair were endured? Well this opens up a conversation among the people at the book group but also they could take a question like this home to their grandparents or their parents. One woman talked about going to a nursing home with and getting recollections of people. I don't know that there are any veterans in the home but a war widow and a war wife. So poetry starts a conversation. It is a conversation but then it can ripple out through your whole community in really interesting ways. And so take a look at the questions in the kit and see where they lead you and your readers. I think that's a great idea. Many of our libraries have programming relationships, partnerships with nursing homes, assisted living centers, senior meals, congregate centers where seniors come together for lunch and play cards and that kind of thing. And that's an ideal outreach program is to take a few of these homes and read them and then ask questions and get people talking about them. So that is a question someone had actually about how it is hard to people don't read home tree a lot and this has been a difficult thing but these questions that they wanted to know that was a question they submitted that picture to their home. Is there questions to focus on every home in the book? I mean that would be a huge amount of questions I suppose but unfortunately for some of them they are not just about the book in general it's specific to certain homes. There are 23 pages of questions. Many of them are about individual poems. Some ask you to look at two poems about the same subject matter and compare and contrast them. It's not here but I know there's one about can you find the five poems about rivers in the book? Does that describe your river? What rivers are you familiar with? How does the poet convey the river? So it leads you into more than one poem or they're general ones. Let's see. I think that one about rivers would be a good one to take to the NRD meeting. I don't know where to get them talking at the NRD meeting about the poem about rivers. Here's what do you think that living in a place like Nebraska with expansive vistas and big skies affect us as individuals? How is this changing? If so is this reflected in the poems in the anthology in what way? This is a more general question by Lucy that gets us thinking about our state and how it's changing. And you mentioned that you could have a program, a librarian could have a program with a theme and I think that's a theme in this book of poems. That's a theme is Nebraska. What is it about Nebraska? What is it that gets people talking, that gets people thinking, that gets people creating? Exactly. So that would be the theme. Other themes that you think are in the book that are in the poems in the book might reflect? Well one thing I want not exactly on the themes but what I found in this collection is that there are poems about life and death and marriages and breakups and working the hogs out at the farm and you know being in the city and there are all kinds of different things in these poems that when I was growing up I hated poetry because it was all about castles and kings and stuff that I had absolutely no connection with and I just didn't like it and then so I was amazed when I started at the university and discovered that poetry can actually be about things that I know about and that's what's in this anthology. I don't think there's a poem in here that anybody will pick up that they won't be able to connect to something that was real to them at one time that happened in this poet tune that that poet wrote about and just like I was reading through it last night and there's a poem by Judith Sorenberger, is that how she says her name, Sorenberger about paper, wallpapering and taking wallpaper off of the walls with her mom and then they were singing a Patsy Klein song along with it and the song interacted with their memories and it's a cool poem, I'll read it and I think that that's what the poems throughout this book are poems that are related to things that we've all done in our lives and things that I didn't know when I started out getting interested in poetry you could actually even write about that. This one's Judith Sorenberger a wallpapering to Patsy Klein and it's dedicated to my mother for my mother and sister we're here to cover the cracks in the wall to forgive the bad taste of previous owners to bury the orange and brown daisies in the service transforming this house into yours sister we don't drywall or dry veils but like our mother's mother a good seamstress we know how to make an off-cast garment fit our wishes we form a procession we've practiced before kitchen to dining room this time bearing drop cloths utensils Dutch ovens of paste Patsy sings us through some Patsy sings us through some stripping I fall to pieces a tune we all know too well we work as when my ballerinas your floral stripes and mom's tea cup scenes met in the hallway's neutral egg shell there are too many generations of wallpaper here to strip we stop when we come to fully petaled cabbage roses Patsy says she has to choose today between a poor man's roses and rich man's gold choose the gold we're yelling giddy in the futility of warning we're brushing bubbles to the bottom giggling but they won't be brushed away and we find they're buried under the old paper an error made so far back we can't hope to mend it choose the gold Patsy and buy yourself some roses and now she loves him so much it hurts her I don't know that part of the song a song in her voice we recognize having heard it often in each other's but mother sister deep within my heart lies a melody one that doesn't twang with regret Patsy's right we need some loving too yes we do indeed we do you know we do but look at the room we've created pastels and triangles lovers triangles but not in that old stripped down usage think of them as pyramids homes to hold us forever a woman at each angle that's a cool woman just about you know wallpaper you with your mother sister you know no free page sauna bores and peace and a wonderful technique of bringing musical lyrics yeah and finding how that level of creativity which is playing with words works so nicely with the poem how you can melt those together and I think of Nebraska presence as driving across Nebraska on two lane roads instead of the interstate and all that you see there you should be going a little slower but you see things you absorb things that you're going to completely miss by going through very rapidly we're not a flyover state there's just a tremendous amount of beautiful life and creation going on in this state and and I think a wonderful way in talking with people about these poems is to begin by asking them what are the stereotypes of the Nebraska well that it's flat no it's not all flat that it's boring if you've ever been in Lincoln on the both sides and so starting to break through some of the stereotypes or play two of the stereotypes and this book just has something for everyone and when you were reading that all I could think about was how much fun it would be to do a program with like middle school or high school kids reading that poem and asking them to then create with their own music lyrics that are in their head that they hear when they're trying to do something else that music that and then see what they could do with that it would be so fun to see what they came up with if they put in a little wrap I'm sure they would I don't know but we'd have to see any other thoughts from our audience thank you for your questions and your comments and while you're checking them in addition to the poetry I found the introductory observations Greg and Mary Kay especially interesting one one that struck me was a question that Greg or no maybe it was Mary Kay that he said you are frequently asked and that is there such a thing as Nebraska poetry and then you also comment on is there a relationship between Nebraska poetry and American poetry in general now this book was published 10 years ago about the observations changed a lot from there without those questions oh wow one of the things that struck me over the past couple of years is the influence of Carl Shapiro who came out here in the 50s to teach and to take over the editorial responsibilities of the Curry Schooner not only did he influence a whole generation and even subsequent generations of poets because he taught Taylor and Clefkorn and Sheil and Welsh and he was a good friend of Hilda Rans um where was I going with this oh that was a time poetry took a big deep breath and sort of reinvented some of itself more women started writing during this period of time Judith put out I think one of the first anthologies of women poetry in the early 80s but it came from that generated from that time there were presses that started out enjoying rooms or all my great saying there yeah um great who's may have a press who's or had a press she'll have a press chat books and there were other little presses here in Nebraska so I think we entered a national conversation at that time um but I also think well I think some emotions are international you write a you read a poem about the death of someone and it doesn't really matter where it is but when you read a poem um the setting your state somehow it has some resonance you know the places you probably know the people Nebraska is such a small place um in some ways that I think of Nebraska as much more international on its poetry at the same time more local so I've kind of changed it that way it's sort of Janice two-sided but Greg you've been in the publishing of poetry you're a lot close what changes do you see um now you're putting me on the spot oh well sorry but we can come back to that I uh I'll pass on that question because I don't really have an answer well I think it's been well it's a lot has changed in in a lot of respect one thing uh since Carl Shapiro was here in 1950s starting in about the 1980s there has been uh or late 70s the rise of the master fine arts programs throughout the country and and now there are literally hundreds of colleges and universities running master's of fine arts programs and cranking out certified poets by the by the bushels so uh that's there's a lot higher level I think of uh ability out there that you see in magazines and so on and there was 20 years ago I mean the poems seem a lot more polished and finished I don't know if they got any more heart to them or depth but they they they sure are well worked and there has been a tremendous increase in the number of literary magazines uh uh at the time when I started writing there were probably I don't know maybe a hundred or two hundred little handmade magazines like great was doing and Ted was doing and um now there are thousands of them online uh you can even uh I don't know how many fine magazines are online but we don't publish print anymore I'm kind of married to print I just I love holding the book in my hand so what do you think about the small presses are is it a growing thing are there more small presses or less I think there are I don't I've never I don't have any stats but I think there are a lot more that's what it seemed like to me but I don't know yeah the you know the international director of small presses and and poetry publishers or whatever that used to come out but uh when I first started back in 80s was about that thick and the last time they published a print version of it that I saw it was like that thick getting bigger and bigger all the time and uh so there's a lot of people out there there's probably I think two or three online magazines and like you're alone and we haven't really said anything about poetry with young people but I just want to encourage you librarians especially those of you who work with children to um experiment with poetry programming with your children I mean um I had I had a previous life in working in daycare and we did a ton of poetry programming with children in those days at that time I was a poetry writing student under Ted Couser so of course that was the way I lived my life but um we we would work with the kids we would read poems that we thought would resonate with them and there are there are many in this book that would resonate with kids um and then we would get them writing poetry and even the little kids the daycare kids who couldn't write could begin to tell a poem and we would write them down and print them for them and then they they could take them home to their parents so I mean that is a terrific program with even little kids and even more powerful I think with your elementary age kids so just to let you know that this isn't this isn't just a one but one to rest in for adults it's from everyone oh and and kids are born into a a world of nursery writing books so they're still hearing that when they're in daycare and in school it's I think when we come to poetry is adults it's more foreign because we've got away from it for a long time but when kids come to it it's still a bedtime story yes and I have a poem that I could read that's just perfect perfect I guess by David McCleary he and his mother both have poems in the anthology that's cool the title is my mother reading to this day when I see a volume of the Child's Christmas in Wales it's 1967 and my brother my mother is opening the book and reading to me candle darkness shadow woods even now I hear her words and put the soft pillow of them to my ear she would read aloud of poems with snow so deep she had to lift her voice to walk home through it she would take me to the edge of the dark forest and suggest I wander off alone oh what a wild mother to feed such sweetness to a child so young I sat on one side my sister on the other and together we learned to listen and be still we learned there was no shame in believing we loved beginnings and hated endings we wanted books to go on on we loved what was beautiful and wicked the poor children that slept out on the ground the fierce old women and the small rent sitting in the window singing are you listening she would ask I always was and once my sister fell asleep when she woke we reread page after page but I didn't mind it was a road I knew well the animals were still grazing in the fields the children came home again found the door open the table sat the fire burning we do have a comment that someone has here um thank you about um said that this book for being one book one abrasive compared to all the other ones they really it's you always had previously as the author was still alive one person to maybe hopefully travel the state going to all the events and libraries really appreciate all of these off the poets so many of them being available to that you don't have to just well I can't get the one person there's just so such a you can find some of this from your area or just just makes it so much easier for them to be able to plan some event where they can pick some of that maybe well 82 poets but not a lot but and that that's really like that we're happy that's working for yeah we're happy that that was one of our and that was one of the initial conversations I have with Mary Kay when we started this whole idea of what we would do what would promote and we thought that's one big promotional point and that's a different people every year yeah so many that you can choose from to come here library or event absolutely bring multiple of them and my experience has been that the writers have been very open to staying after the program and answering questions and engaging with people so they're not going to shoot out the door and and not give the audience the chance to communicate that's great that's great can I make a shameless plug for sales to please make a shameless I did send out an email to all of the libraries in the state of Nebraska that I that I could there were high schools colleges city libraries and offered one book one Nebraska I mean I should say Nebraska presents to for the for the occasion of one book one Nebraska at eleven dollars a copy so that's better than 50% off and we we had several people several libraries to put up on it but I just don't want people to miss out on the chance to get a copy of this book in their in their collections presents it's a really super book and we're we actually have a cost cut cut back to the bone at eleven dollars but and I'm not charging shipping for either so we can put that here to make that yeah yeah I just go directly to Black Lives Press and have you seen an uptick in sales since you saw we sold I don't know the exact count but a lot more than we were selling last year before before it gained some before it's profile raised again the first year it came out the first year to result quite a few copies of it it was our biggest seller for a number of years about two years and then and then you know sales drop off sure well what one of the reasons I asked is that I've heard and I don't know that there have been a lot of stats on this that once a book is selected for a one book one city or one book one state or a special nationwide book club that sales really do follow and of course oh that's true one yeah and I think there may be libraries that picked it up like going through directing through Ingram are there are a publisher are manufactured for our books and they may and rather than going through the press because yeah I talked to a couple of libraries one winter and they'd already got through right so this is a little less expensive way and I'm not even sure that we didn't go through your publisher to probably so bad yeah as you know we have like 100 copies around the state we have book club kits here at the library commission that you can check out we also have book club kits that we placed it in the system offices so there should be a book club kit for when your book club wants to read this I think we've gone over our time is there anything there's anything any of you would like to say for the good of the group before we close any thoughts any any poems that didn't get read they should have well we don't have 12 hours it's true we don't I'd like to say it's been really fun working with the board and this just happened and I especially wanted to thank Mary came for picking up the balls using Nebraska metaphor I seriously wouldn't have been able to do this on my own well thank you but I you're the guy who said the email work your socks off okay well and when we do think that Nebraska Center for the Book Board has been very excited and thrilled to be to be working with all of you on this one for Nebraska and also humanities and basketball we thank them for their support so the next thing coming up that we know about is at that June 7th here in Lincoln yep we'll get all those dates up on the calendar right up here this week as soon as possible we'll have them up here and so the rest of you when you schedule your events let us know we'll put them on the calendar and I'd love to hear from librarians to to hear what they're doing and what kind of feedback they're doing yeah what poetry means in their community because that's really helpful to us and encouraging too sometimes you get the feeling you can talk to yourself so it's always good to get a postcard or a letter or an email and also please do hop on our facebook page and share what you're doing it'll inspire other people who are trying to figure out what would go over in our community I have a blog too in honor of the one book one Nebraska Nebraska let's see University Nebraska Press asked me to do a blog so I came up for a way to celebrate Nebraska all year long and I posted it on the facebook page but I'll read post it oh yes so month by month it gives suggestions for what you might do that's a great idea please do repost that we'll be sure to pick that up on the website as well I have the blog address too if you want to put it on the website we will so definitely I'm gonna type that right now but I don't think we're okay looks familiar look for the link it'll be up okay thank you everyone thank you this has been fun what are you gonna do next week Krista all right yes all right so thank you everyone for being here really appreciate it we have some great interaction and like I said I think I well people are saying I think this is a great choice for doing something really cool yeah certainly a great so very good thanks so much and Compass Live so far is the only thing on the internet called in Compass Live so if you just google us use your search engine choice excuse me I'll call up with our website um today's show was recorded and it will be here these are our upcoming shows right underneath them is the link to our archives and today's will be at the top of the list so look for that later this afternoon it'll be posted here as long as um youtube cooperates with me we'll have a link to that we'll have a link to the websites excuse me and to the slides that Mary Jo had all beyond there I'll let you guys all know that's there um and I'll just give you a tip this is our archives um for Encompass Live going back to the very beginning of the show this is the 10th year of our show and we do have our archives going back all the way to the beginning um that house all the way back to January 2009 if you get dizzy I'm gonna scroll the bottom here quickly whoa all the way back to the beginning where we met the NLC does anybody remember I don't remember that one but I'm sure I was right here yeah but January 7th 2009 that was the beginning of session three it is yes there are a lot of us so um do go back at our archives do be aware it is going back to 2009 there will be things that are outdated missing links and whatnot but we're librarians is what we do we archive things um I'm gonna scroll back to the top again we do have a search feature on here now um or you can also search all of our archives as well we'll look for a particular topic for speaker if you want to um next week on Encompass Live I'll hopefully join us will be a big-time library support in small towns um this is a session by um going to have Roman Tile Timon which is that session now what's your name um she's the author of To the Stars Through Difficulties it's a novel about a woman going back her hometown in Kansas actually to write a dissertation about Carnegie Libraries um and how she goes about that so it's about the Brat um Kansas Libraries but we have Carnegie Libraries in Nebraska as well um and uh the author only has also done work with their um Arts Council National Development for the Arts so she's um supports the kind of things doing small town um getting support for your library so join us next week be here talk about her book and um what she's been doing with um that and also please do on any of our other upcoming shows we have here we're filling the schedule as we do we also are on Facebook as well Encompass Live is a Facebook page give us a like over there we do post our um updates to when we got new shows coming up the recordings are available reminders about upcoming shows so give us a like over there if you're big on Facebook other than that that wraps it up for this morning thank you everyone for attending thank you everybody for watching this morning and we'll see you next time I mean something bye bye bye bye good bye