Interview: Winning Poet Susan Somers-Willett 

After the excitement of the live portion of the Frost poetry festival subsided, the Robert Frost Foundation caught up, by phone, with the winner of the 9th Robert Frost Prize, Susan B. A. Somers-Willett of Champaign, Illinois, long enough to talk about her winning poem, "The Effects of Light on A Woman's Body-- 
After Overflow by Andrew Wyeth."  

RFF: How does your poem follow the spirit of Robert Frost and what does the "B.A." in your name  stand for?

Somers-Willett: Beside the obvious connections to 
New England and landscape, both Wyeth and Frost share attention to detail and to form.  Both also attempted to portray individual people through their reflections.

And, yes,  my full name is "Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willett."  

RFF: And your specific connection? 

Somers-Willett:  Because I admire the work of Wyeth and Frost, my poem is an attempt to get the voice of the painting into my poem. The technical term is synesthesia. With the "the voice of everything," I meant that as a poet, I want to listen to the world openly in
a much more general sense.... that as a writer it is my imperative to listen and listen hard.

RFF: Like the repetition of the last lines in "Stopping By the Woods"?  In your poem, how do you account for  details such as the sound of the painter's brush?

Somers-Willett: Yes.  In my poem, I focused on the scene of the painter as he paints the woman.   I wanted to catch the light sources that illuminate the painter as he works and that includes the sound of his brush.

RFF: How does the theme of painting work within the context of your poem?

Somers-Willett: My hope was to view the scene from a feminist perspective; to encourage the audience to get beyond the woman as sexual object.  In my poem, Wyeth's subject, Helga, is an active participant in the creation of the painting. 

RFF: Anything to add? 

Somers-Willett:  I was grateful that the judges read the poems out loud to make their decisions.

Also,  I admire Robert Frost's poems for their unobtrusive forms and rhymes. To name my favorite,  I admire "Stopping By the Woods" for the attention it pays to the sounds of language.

RFF: Thank you so much. On that sound note,  we  encourage our readers to install or update their RealPlayer software so they can hear the sound of your voice reading  as well as the voices of a number of finalist poets and festival poets coming their way
 through the forthcoming issues of the 
Frost Enewsletter. 

Finalists of the 
9th Robert Frost Award Speak Out

The eleven finalists, announced by this year's judges, Ted Deppe and Annie Deppe, are:

• " The Bicycle Bells of Bejing" -
    M. Lee Alexander - Chesapeake, VA

• " Ring Ceremony" - 
  Charles Atkinson - Soquel, CA

• " Moving Sale" -
   Robert Crawford of Chester, NH

• " Small Town" - 
  Midge Goldberg - Derry, NH

• "Eclogue" - 
  Dawn Potter of Harmony, ME

• "Misappropriation"  - 
  John Pursley Tuscaloosa, AL

• "The New World" - 
  Sarah Sutro of Winchester, MA

• " Notes from the Good-Girl Chronicles" -  
  Marilyn L. Taylor - Milwaukee, WI

• " Once More Hayden Carruth" - 
  Immy Wallenfels - Syracuse, NY

• " Robert Frost at the Net" - 
  Daneen Wardrop - Kalamazoo, MI

•  Endurance" -
  Mary-Patrice Woehling - Whitestone, NY
  

Readers' Notes for the 
9th Robert Frost Festival

There is no poetry without reading.  Every entry that arrived at the Robert Frost office was read and read again by the staff member who opened the envelopes.  When these poems were passed along to the judges, they were read again-- and again-- often out loud.  I submit to you that is the way we learn from the poetry of each person.

Then the poets' books arrived for the festival.  They, too, were read, as I hope they will be read by you.  If this statement needs a label, then label it editorial.  There is no poetry without reading.  -- ms

Readers of B.H. Fairchild will experience ways that the poet can act as the "wide receiver" of the work experiences of ordinary people. In each Fairchild poem, we the readers make a journey that begins in the workplace, or some other significant place,  and ends in our imagination.

The books of B.H. Fairchild are available at the festival table and at Amazon/Borders

Readers of Michael Casey may experience the same excitement as Poet Stanley Kunitz did in1972, when he realized that Michael Casey was one of the first clear voices of the Viet Nam war.  The ways Casey caught the ordinary voices of American soldiers were not unlike the voices of the "millrats" he worked with on his first jobs in the Merrimack Valley. 

Casey's collections of poems are:

Obscenities, Millrat, Raiding A Whorehouse,
The Million Dollar Hole, and Permanent Party
They are available at the Andover Bookstore.

Readers of Annie Deppe, one of the judges of the 2005 Robert Frost Award, will find a story of the poet's first job tucked in one among many of the fabulous poems of Sitting In the Sky,  her first collection.  This book was included in the 2004 Forward Book, the United Kingdom equivalent of the American Pushcart small press award.  

Annie Deppe's Sitting In the Sky is available at the festival table and from Amazon.uk and the 2004 Forward Book is available from this site.

Readers of Ted Deppe will find poems that Mark Doty called "painstaking, loving observations."   For two decades Deppe worked as a registered nurse.  After serving as a poet-in-residence- at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut, Deppe and his wife moved to Cape Clear Island to live and write for a year in the southernmost house in Ireland.  Currently, Ted is finishing up a highly successful three-year term as writer-in-residence at Phillips Academy and a new manuscript.

The books of Ted Deppe are available at the festival table and from Borders/Amazon.

Readers of Dominican-born Rhina Espaillat will learn from her each of her eight collections of poems in English that she was deeply involved with the poetry of Robert Frost.  For that reason, the Frost Foundation has given her an open invitation to translate Frost poems.  In the next year ten of her translations will be placed along the Robert Frost Trail on the Lawrence Common. Many of these are visible along on the Merrimack today at the Frost Festival. 

The books of Rhina Espaillat are available at Amazon/Borders.

 Readers of the recently published Visiting Frost edited by Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro (University of Iowa Press) will find that it includes a Rhina Espaillat Frost-inspired poem along with many others.

Cesar Sanchez Beras and Rhina Espaillat have broken ground in new translations of Frost and round trip translations of Dominican and American poetry.

Readers of Professor Emeritus Chuck Levenstein will find that inside some social scientists there is a poet to be found.  Levenstein worked as an economist at UMass Lowell specializing in workplace issues. When he found that poetry was an important way to record and improve workplace conditions, he created a website on the poetry of work at: http://www.niederngasse.com

Thanks To Poets Who  Donated Their Books

The poetry of Chuck Levenstein, Lost Baggage,  is available from the Frost Foundation in exchange for memberships or one-time donations.

The poetry of Emilio Mozo in now available from the Frost Foundation in exchange for memberships or one-time donations.

Thanks To Everyone Who Submitted Working Drafts

Thanks to the beautifully designed card by Peter Dhang,  "Send Us Your Story,"  over eighty stories of working drafts arrived at the Frost office.

A Saul Bellow character once said, "Attention should be paid." and, thanks to a beautiful display by the Frost board,  a lot of attention was paid to these drafts at the festival.  

 Thanks to everyone who participated in Chuck Levenstein's panel discussion, attention was paid.

Thanks to Eleanor Penisi, Mary Ellen Janeiro, and Carol who gave special focus to the working drafts assignment.

However, because we want to have even more people pay attention to the extraordinary array of work that came in, we will be returning to this exhibit and calling for even more working drafts in the year to come.

                        *                *                    *

For all the above reasons, and then some more,  we have poetry in our lives today.

 Send the books, poems, and exhibits on this page as suggestions to your local library, and let your community experience this year's Robert Frost Festival one book, one poem, or one exhibit at a time.

Thank You, One and All

o  To Frost board chair Les Bernal,  for your most welcoming welcomes. for inspiration up front as well as behind the scenes, that includes everything from posting signs to the poetry of direct mail and phone banks.  

To the trustees of the White Fund for constant support and encouragement for the community poetry concept.

To Matt Kraunelis, Kara Brown, and Karen Kline for your work on the Frost board as well as for putting together the most fun literary raffle ever.

To Joshua Miner and the Stevens Foundation for extra help when most needed.

To Joe Barbagello, Mouniers, and Raspberries, for bringing food to the table.  There should be no food without poetry, but there is no poetry without food.

To Ray Landry, for batting cleanup, before, during, and after the event.

To Julie Carlson, Rodney Rogers, and Andover Community Access, for covering the festival photographically and videographically.  To Comcast for the loan of equipment and marvelous flash software.

To John Griffin, John Faro, Nelson Butten, and the whole DCR staff for arrangements and help above and beyond anybody's job description.

To the Lawrence Cultural Alliance, Rumbo, the Eagle-Tribune, the Andover Townsman, the Boston Globe, WUML 91.5, and the New York Times for coverage beyond the beat of your regular heartbeat and to Frost board member Lois Frankenberger,  who coordinated our publicity effort.

To Mayor Michael Sullivan for getting us all to "Take a Good Look at Lawrence."  More are doing so at every Frost festival.

To Sixto Bobadillo, for help with the audio that was used as well as the video which wasn't, and to Jim Habba and Bill Moyers for extending the reach of the  Geraldine R. Dodge poetry videos to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

If a Wyeth painting could speak...

A few days after the festival,  RFF received an audio recording of the winning poem read by Somers-Willett. 

To listen, click here.  A link to the Wyeth painting that inspired the poem is also displayed.  (If you need to install the player, a page at American Public Radio explains how to listen.)  While the RealPlayer plays, you can display the text of the poem in another window.

Read the text of the winning poem by clicking here

If poetry book covers could sing...

My graphic artist brother David Schorr steadfastly maintains that you can judge a book by its cover.  

Watch highlights of the 9th Frost Festival; a slightly flashier version requires FlashMedia 8; this slide show includes books by all of the poets who read at the 9th Robert Frost Festival including this year's judges, Ted Deppe and Annie Deppe.

Ted Deppe

ISBN01-903392-28-4

Annie Deppe

Ed Note: This book cover features a painting 
by Caitlin Deppe

ISBN0-9544752-0-8

B.H. Fairchild

ISBN0-393-32566-0

Michael Casey

ISBN1-59661-017-4

Chuck Levenstein

ISBN 0-931507-13-8

ISBN 0-8050-6985-2
When Robert Frost made his own selection of poems of work for Noel Perrin's edition, he included 

"The Tuft of Flowers," 
"A Time to Talk," 
"Brown Desert," and of course 
"Mending Wall."  

These poems are part of  a book that Frost dedicated to his mother, Belle Moodie Frost, a teacher who started a school in Lawrence. 

To Belle Moodie Frost

WHO KNEW AS A TEACHER

THAT NO POETRY WAS GOOD FOR

CHILDREN THAT WASN'T EQUALLY

GOOD FOR THEIR ELDERS

Video Poetry versus 
Live Poetry: 
Astute observers of the 9th Frost Festival noted an elaborate setup for video with the help of Lawrencian Sixto Bobadillo.  The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation provided a tape of poet Phil Levine with some key excerpts on the poetry of work.  Unfortunately, the depth and breadth of the festival did not allow for a segue to the video portion of the program at the festival proper.

The purpose of this setup was to explore the boundaries of video poetry and live poetry together. Was T.S. Eliot correct that 'human voices wake us/ and we drown..."  or was Newton Minnow right in suggesting that the "vast wasteland" was the video itself?

This winter, with the support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the experiment will proceed at Cafe Azteca and other venues and this summer in a special small tent, the Frost Foundation will explore the boundaries of this live vs. video question by featuring live poets and videos on the same program.

Watch the main page of frostfoundation.org for details.

And More
Thank You Notes

To Beth Patano and Joe Barbagello for making it possible to sell poets' books in the same room as they read.

To Nancy McGhee and your LHS choristers for finding the true poem in each piece you attempt.

To Cesar Sanchez Beras for reading on the same day as you had to pick other poets from the airport

To Rhina Espaillat for threading difficult traffic jams to read your new marvelous translation of "A Gift Outright" and to Lauren James of Senator Kennedy's office for attempting to schedule a reading for a busy time.

To Alfred Moscowitz, the Poet Consort, for getting Rhina there.

To Pete Fairchild, for enduring an eight-hour plane ride to and from nowhere to show us the there there.  That there is there.

To Ted Deppe, for discovering the former in the bathtub of manuscripts at the Alice James house and for hearing the bicycle bells of Beijing and the other marvelous poems in the avalance of entries.

To Annie Deppe, for taking us deeper into poetry in the portion of the afternoon when people often assume they cannot reach further.  You did and we did. For not picking tomatoes but seeing the light shine on a Wyeth painting and other good poems.

To Michael Casey for giving voice to more of the voices.  The well-kept secrets are beginning to come out.

To Natalie Schorr,  Sarah Schorr, and Cameron Warner for hosting, feeding, and chauffering the out of town guests.

To Paul Marion for suggesting Chuck Levenstein, and to Chuck Levenstein for being Chuck Levenstein.

To Frost board member Helena Minton for believing that this whole program could work so well.  It did.

To the trustees of the Josephine Russell Charitable trust for early belief in the Frost Foundation that continues to this day.

To H. C. E., anyone omitted from the above list, which is still growing with better intentions than systems.

Mark Schorr
Executive Director
Robert Frost Foundation