Kicking off its third season, “Poetry in America” is coming to Arizona PBS.
Four ASU faculty members were featured in the Welcome to the West live event held at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Wednesday afternoon, Elisa New, director and host of “Poetry in America,” and a few other poets and professors spoke about specific moments in the recent season of the series.
“I think of this magical moment where you come to open a book of poems and when you’re done, you are not where you were when you started and yet you have not moved,” said Alberto Rìos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and ASU professor.
Throughout the event, each guest speaker spoke about a specific poem featured in the television series.
In one episode, a poem by Rìos is highlighted. The poem is about a rabbit getting caught in a fire. Rìos explains that this poem came from a personal experience, growing up in southern Arizona and rabbits roaming the desert. For him, he was writing about rabbits; for others, he was writing in metaphors.
“I still mean what I mean about the rabbits but I also understand that someone can read this in a completely different way,” Rìos said.
Poetry can be an intimidating word that many people will run from but at the same time, poetry is a cultural experience.
Two worlds can be combined through the art of poetry. Much like what Lindy Elkins-Tanton contributes to “Poetry of America.”
Joining in via Zoom, Tanton explained her current project working with NASA to create a robotic spacecraft that will aim for the space between Mars and Jupiter.
“Poetry in America” produces one science-themed episode per season and New collaborated with Tanton to gain a scientific perspective.
“Science is one way to try and apprehend the world around us and poetry is another,” said Tanton.
As the show’s creator, New wanted to use this series as a way to “bring poetry into living rooms” and continues to create online courses through ASU directed toward high school students.
“It felt like it was time to reach out to a much larger population of writers,” New said.
There are various courses offered for K-12 classrooms and even college credit for high school students, which can all be accessed on poetryinamerica.org.
Even for those that are not poetry-enthusiasts, guest speakers like Patty Talahongva offered advice for writers and journalists.
“As a writer, poetry can help you tighten your writing,” Talahongva said. “I look at the double layers of meaning behind words and how to put words together but they’re so descriptive and I think that helps with your writing.”
“Poetry in America” is moving to Arizona PBS because New is coming to lead the Center for Public Humanities at ASU.
New is striving to bring poetry into the lives of students because it can provide an “emotional and intellectual motivation” that many students need right now. And each person has a unique story, history or experience that will emerge through their writing.
“One of the goals of ‘Poetry in America’ is to remind us that poems do come out of environments, they come out of real people’s lives and they also come from exposure to other art forms,” New said.
Season 3 has eight episodes all roughly 26 minutes long, perfect for all ages in and out of the classroom. This season focuses a lot on the open deserts of the west and has a long list of guest speakers.
What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to stream for free the complete series of “Poetry in America”! Check out the latest episodes at poetryinamerica.org.
Contact the reporter at mrlovin@asu.edu.
