Notes from my Knapsack 5-2-19

Notes from my Knapsack 5-2-19

Jeff Gill

 

Laurels among the lilacs and redbuds

___

 

Granville is, indeed, the kind of town where if a local is featured in "The New Yorker" word gets around fast.

 

If you don't subscribe, you'll still hear about it sooner or later from someone. Even in a newspaper column!

 

David Baker not only got a review but an illustration in the April 8 edition; he's had his poetry published in that august platform before. You can see his recognizable image foregrounded against what the article will tell you are a couple of our much bemoaned, often hunted, rarely appreciated Granville deer.

 

A Denison professor since 1984, he's written about the natural side of living in our village, of traveling about its margins, and how our lives and hearts can be in tune with the music to be heard all around us, even when we live off key.

 

Reading this appreciation of our local bard got me to thinking. We do have a long tradition of literary excellence in Our Fayre Village, from David back through Minnie Hite Moody at Tannery Hill, past Charles Browne White the sage of Mount Parnassus, beyond even Ellen Hayes and Edgar J. Goodspeed and Mary Hartwell Catherwood.

 

If you don't know who those folk are, shame on me. I'll keep writing about them, and Jacob Little, too.

 

But for our working writers, of which we have many, I would offer my appreciation, and a thought. Should we have a Granville poet laureate?

 

Spring is a good time for poetry; this might be a good year, with a new performing arts center being completed at Denison on Broadway, and as public discourse is redacted and inflected and impacted by partisan debate, for us to have a little more poetry in our lives.

 

Maybe Dr. Baker is busy, perhaps there are other candidates. And no doubt some will say public time and resources could be better used for infrastructure or services. But I wonder if a poet laureate for Granville might be just what we need.

 

It's an honor, of course, but laurels are a sign of victory. That's why a crown of them was given to a winner, to someone outstanding in a particular event or contest. To say that there are words or outcomes that speak to a particular moment in an exceedingly successful way. Dave Lucas is our current Ohio poet laureate, who was himself mentored by Ohio's own Rita Dove who was the United States poet laureate; our current national "poet laureate consultant in poetry" is Tracy K. Smith.

 

It would be no real insight for me to nominate David Baker for our first village poet laureate – the challenge would be to pick the second one. The first, though, would be a step in the right direction. We are community that values education, which has near its heart both a College Hill and a Mount Parnassus, after all. The Muses themselves would call on us to crown with laurel an exemplar in expression, a poet laureate.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him your suggestions for various laurels at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.