Poets laureate assemble in ‘Through This Door’
What's the collective noun for a bunch of poets laureate in one place together? A of laureates? A of laureates?
How about a book of laureates? “Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems,” a new anthology edited by Margaret Rozga and Angela C. Trudell Vasquez, includes work by the eight people who have been Wisconsin poet laureate: the incumbent Rozga and predecessors Karla Huston, Kimberly Blaeser, Denise Sweet, Marilyn L. Taylor, Bruce Dethlefsen, Max Garland and the late Ellen Kort.
They also make room for Trudell Vasquez, Madison's current poet laureate, several Milwaukee laureates and poetic ambassadors for other Wisconsin locales, as well as other contributors who are laureates of the time they can carve out for poetry.
“Through This Door” takes its cues from a line by U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo: “When beloved Sun rises, it is an entrance, a door to fresh knowledge.”
Sometimes that fresh knowledge comes from close observation, as in Ethel Mortenson Davis' “She Did Not Know,” where a woman comes across “bees at night collecting nectar” by the light of the full moon. In “Rising Sun,” Margaret Noodin debunks that figure of speech: “The sun never really rises. / We only ride earth toward / that force and energy / and then rotate away.”
In the humorous “Blue Bird,” the fresh knowledge Nick Demske uncovers is much about himself as it is about the avian critter.
As Rozga points out in her introduction, “Through This Door” is “geographically
and racially inclusive.” With poems about the COVID-19 pandemic, contentious elections and the struggle for racial equality, it reflects the uneasy year that was 2020. A line from Max Garland's “There You Are” encapsulates so much: “Strange how loss has a weight, / how a thing / bears down, bows the will.”
“Through This Door” also offers chances to enjoy the creativity of people who can make music with words, as Bruce Dethlefsen does in “October Clouds of Door County.” “Call each cloud by its ancient name,” he thunders about these deathly cumulonimbi:
“tweed desalvo ditka butkus quantrill thatcher borden arbucklepol pot pilate shaka zuluchivington reagan mccarthyhitler milosovich nixon walker trump”
Other poets tell a story as dramatic as “Chicago Fire” or “Grey's Anatomy,” such as Oscar Mireles in “Behind the Door … “and Marilyn L. Taylor in “After the Midnight Phone Call.”
Profits from sales of “Through This Door” benefit the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. It can be purchased from Woodland Pattern Book Center and Boswell Books in Milwaukee, or ordered from artnightbooks.com.
Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.