Food for the Soul

If New Jersey poet laureate Gerald Stern has his way, public libraries will have many more volumes of poetry, tapping into our state’s wealth of native talent.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   At a typical public library in a town just outside of Trenton, there are dozens of books about auto repair, crafts, fashion, interior decorating and child rearing. The latest murder mysteries, romance novels and celebrity biographies line the walls from floor to ceiling. There are about 40 cookbooks. But there are only a handful of poetry books.

New Jersey Poet Laureate Gerald Stern lives along the river in Lambertville, where he plans to get more poetry books into local libraries. Photo by Bryan Grigsby

   Apparently Americans — at least the residents of this town — would rather feed their faces than their souls.
   If New Jersey poet laureate Gerald Stern has his way, public libraries will have many more volumes of poetry, tapping into our state’s wealth of native talent.
   "I had the idea to provide a fund to give books to libraries, to get our New Jersey poets together to give their books to public libraries," says Mr. Stern, seated in his sunny kitchen in Lambertville at a table strewn with books and correspondences. "There are so many poets in the state, I don’t know why there isn’t more New Jersey poetry in New Jersey’s libraries."
   Appointed poet laureate by former Gov. Christie Whitman, Mr. Stern now feels a little forgotten by the current administration. He hopes he can get his literary friends interested in his idea. More importantly, he hopes he can find someone within the state administration to back his plans.
   "I’ve been making so many phone calls," Mr. Stern says. "I hope we don’t waste this opportunity."
   The afternoon’s lengthy conversation is a lot like the stairways that wind up, down and around Mr. Stern’s 150-year-old house near the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath. He covers a variety of subjects, from his stint in Army counterintelligence after World War II, to which of his former students have positions at institutes of higher education.
   "I even know who is sleeping with who," he jokes, perusing the latest copy of Poets and Writers .
   In honor of Stephen Dunn, this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet — and a South Jersey resident — Mr. Stern reads his own work, "Steve Dunn’s Spider," aloud from his 1984 book, Paradise Poems . He chuckles, remembering and sometimes forgetting why he wrote certain lines. He explains the reference to Dante, to nude bathers in the man-made lake and to the piney woods near Mr. Dunn’s home. He remembers being wary of a spider with a white violin shape on its back — a venomous recluse spider. There is a reference to "cursing a sodomist," but he doesn’t recall what that was about.
   "I remember Steve being a little upset by that poem," Mr. Stern says.

"When I was young and politically active, I would get in trouble and I wouldn’t get tenure, I’d get fired," says Mr. Stern. Photo by Bryan Grigsby

   Born to Polish and Ukrainian immigrant parents in 1925, Mr. Stern grew up in Pittsburgh, graduating with honors from the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. He did not publish his first volume of poetry, Rejoicings , until 1973 when he was 48. He has collected countless awards since then, including the National Book Award in 1998, for This Time . He is a four-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
   For many years, Mr. Stern was a tenured faculty member at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He has also taught at Rutgers, Temple, Columbia and numerous state and community colleges.
   "When I was young and politically active, I would get in trouble and I wouldn’t get tenure, I’d get fired," he says. "Poets today in the universities are playing it safer than they did in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s not that they can’t be more political (with their poetry), it’s that they don’t want to. It’s just not in their minds. They were trained by the academic system to think that way.
   "There are three or four in every generation who are exceptional," he says, "You can’t teach poetry, but you can do a lot of other things at a program like the one in Iowa. For young writers, it’s a place for them to be with other people their age. It’s a support system. They can talk about their rejection slips, where they’ve been published, what they’re reading — it’s a networking thing.
   "For me, it seemed so ridiculous to go to the university and have these older people telling you how to write," Mr. Stern says. "Poetry was a visitation from the gods."
   He says he deliberately held back from publishing a full book of poetry, although he was seeing his work appear in major magazines.
   "I was my own best or worst critic," Mr. Stern says. "Part of it was fear and anxiety. I didn’t want to be one of those poets who publishes in their 20s and then, later, is horrified by his work and throws his book in the attic."
   While he was waiting to get the words right, a good friend named C.K. Williams — who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2000 — prodded him into letting someone else see a book’s worth of poetry.
   "Charlie said, ‘I know someone who will look at your manuscript,’ and I hemmed and hawed," Mr. Stern says. "Finally, Charlie said, ‘The publisher wants it in his hands tomorrow, send it overnight mail.’ So I did."
   Still, Mr. Stern advises young poets to delay publication and "to read, read, read everything — philosophy, theology, history, psychology, novels, poetry."
   And don’t worry about money.
   "That will take care of itself," he says.
   His poetry is enthusiastic and accessible, but at the same time hard to pin down. It reflects his encyclopedic mind and array of interests. He names his more classical influences as Christopher Marlowe, Robert Blake and Robert Burns. Modern influences include William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound and Theodore Roethke. One critic, Peter Stitt of The Georgia Review , writes that Stern is "an almost spiritual reincarnation of Walt Whitman."
   He says he has always liked living near a river and for a long time lived in Easton, Pa. A couple of years ago, he bought and fixed up the old house in Lambertville, with some help from his son, an architect. He also assisted in renovating a stately home for his lady friend, Anne Marie Macari.
   Mr. Stern insists on showing off his handiwork. Walking the few blocks to Ms. Macari’s home, he jokes with construction workers, flirts with a lady of a certain age in starlet sunglasses and wants to know the breed of every dog that goes by. He seems to notice everything and has something to say about it. Ms. Macari — herself a poet and teacher — is a "gatekeeper" for his public appearances and makes sure he doesn’t overextend himself.
   "After I won the National Book Award, I was doing way too many readings and I suffered from exhaustion," he says. "Now I’m only doing about two a month."
   At 75, he’s lived long enough to see poetry become dangerously close to being locked away in ivory towers.
   "The final result of the university system is to reduce poetry’s politicality," Mr. Stern says. "If you’re a poet, eventually you have to speak out, though. That’s a poet’s purpose, to disturb the peace. There are still countries where poets are killed for expressing political views. In America, they don’t kill poets. They just don’t give them tenure.
   "But I like the universities," he says. "I love their libraries, I love to visit and do readings."
   Apparently, visiting poets are treated like royalty. In their contracts they can request certain perquisites be provided while visiting, for example, a bottle of Scotch in their room. Mr. Stern knows of one late, great poet who had a request more akin to that of a rock star than a man of letters.
   "I don’t know exactly how it was worded, but he would be guaranteed sexual satisfaction during his visit. It had to be good sex, too."
Gerald Stern’s latest book of poetry is Last Blue
(W.W. Norton & Co.). For information about New Jersey’s poets, visit www.njpoets.com.