David Wagoner has been the writer in residence at the Richard Hugo
House since 2005. He’s been a teacher for 59 years and he’s taught
poetry for most of that time. He’s written 10 novels and hundreds of
poems. All this is to say that, even though he’s a gentle man who
speaks in slow, thoughtful sentences with an air of bemusement,
David Wagoner is hardcore.
Wagoner was taught by Theodore Roethke, the man who he says
single-handedly brought poetry to the Northwest. When the University of
Washington imported Roethke from Michigan State University to Seattle
in 1947, Wagoner says, there wasn’t “another poet within 500
miles.”
It’s Wagoner’s claim that we live in a landscape populated by
Roethke, by “his students and his students’ students and by their
students in turn,” and that the Seattle area is now “as rich in
poetry as San Francisco used to be,” in the time of the Beats. This
isn’t true—no local poet is doing the work that the Beats did to
bring poetry to the general public—but it’s indicative of
Wagoner’s enthusiasm. It’s the kind of hyperbole that a ringmaster
brings to a circus.
Though the interview is ostensibly to discuss what poetry should be
recommended to people who don’t read poetry, Wagoner is quick to
reject the premise: “It’s hard to tell anybody that poetry might
be useful to them.” Is that why it’s possibly as unpopular now as it’s
ever been? Wagoner blames the way poetry “goes wobbling around“
in the unconscious, bumping into raw thoughts and fears. It’s kind of a
perfect poet’s explanation for why people don’t read poetry. Wagoner
also suggests that bad teachers are slowly killing poetry, in part by
making children put the poems into their own words. “They might as well
have the students make a schematic drawing of a painting,” he says.
Wagoner’s latest play, Mr. Thoreau Tonight, will get a staged
reading this weekend at the Hugo House. Wagoner has a theory that
Thoreau could have been a contender as a poet: “If he had a good
poetry workshop, Thoreau could have been as good as Emily Dickinson.”
Wagoner pauses and corrects himself. “Or almost as good.” He reflects
for a moment, and you can almost see a memory of a Dickinson poem
behind his eyes as he says in a whisper, “She was awfully good.”
There will be staged readings of Mr.
Thoreau Tonight
at the Richard Hugo House, Fri–Sat April 25–26, 7:30 pm,
$12.