Long Lost Art Of Poetry Not Lost On Concord's Currie: Watch

CONCORD, NH — "String from the old baseball, uncovered at the playground. Hanging from the top of the fence, climbed in too much haste. Around that finger that can't remember why it is there. Pulled by the lobbyist, paid by the piece. Attached to the promises made with a price."

So begins "Ball of String," the first poem and the first poetry publication in a decade by author and Concord resident Glenn K. Currie.

The book is beautifully designed, with many color photos accompanying each piece. And it will probably be his last, he sheepishly admitted during an interview at True Brew in Bicentennial Square.

Currie isn't sad with the admission that time is creeping up on him; 76 is the new 40 after all (He reminded me, in disbelief for both of us, that it had been nearly 15 years since he first shared his prose on my daily arts program at WKXL). But lugging boxes of books around and the time it takes to publish, "it's a practical matter," he added.

"You never know what gift you're going to get or the years you have left," he quipped. "I hope I will be able to keep writing but there's no guarantee."

Unlike other poetry books which don't contain pictures or have black and white photos or are often small, books with many color photos are expensive to publish and put together, if a publisher wants to do it correctly. In the case of "Ball of String," the choice of the photos appears meticulous and time-consuming, too.

"I'm trying to make it attractive to the everyday reader," Currie said. "I really wanted to do this one, really well."

This is Currie's fourth book of serious poetry and seventh overall. Between these books, he published a book of essays and humor (the amazing "Granite Grumblings") and two children's books. Poetry though, Currie said, is his love and is somewhat a lost art. Not just spiritually but physically: The books are often stuck in the back of the stores, lost from the general public, he said with a frustrated giggle, which makes it all the more difficult to get to a wider audience.

"So much poetry was so obtuse it had driven people away from poetry because they would read it and they don't know what the hell are they saying," Currie said. "Some poetry is to impress college professors … it doesn't relate to the people in the street that used to love poetry. A hundred years ago, poets were rock stars. But we got away from that because we wrote stuff that was not understandable to people; it didn't relate to their lives."

At the same time, that is also the fun challenge of publishing. It is, as the worn out saying goes, a labor of love. And it's one of the reasons why it took so long to create this book.

"I was very careful in selecting the poems I wanted to use," he said. "And then, I wrote the little captions under the photos which one reviewer said, 'Man, I love that stuff.'"

The purpose of the photos, which also span many decades of travels by Currie, including a stint in Vietnam, is to try and strike a mood for each poem.

"It actually takes a lot of time to pick out a photo that you think will go well with the poem," he said.

Currie has also been surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reaction so far to the book, including many reviews and letters. But that could be because "Ball of String" has a certain tenor to it. There are messages, often subtle ones; some are historical, like one inspired by a visit to Gettysburg. Others are as plain as day to understand, like the role of family, personal chaos, and being powerless to change anything when you see things right in front of you.

"You have these things, that you know are not good, but you can't change them," Currie said.

"Charleston Tears," another poem in the book, touches up the violence of the times – but also the opportunity to forgive and have hope. War, as a theme, is also an important one, Currie said, because with every war, even the good ones, there is so much wreckage left behind. When he was young, his great-grandmother shared stories with him about the Civil War and how destroyed the soldiers were when they came home (the "thousand yard stare" before that description became popular with soldiers coming home from 'Nam). She lived into her 90s. Seventy years after hearing those stories, Currie is still moved by them, and took what he remembered and made them into something else (see "1865 – Fields of Uncut Hay," one of the poems in the book).

Our nation, Currie added, not unlike the 1800s, was also in a state of upheaval, with its people so divided while also being more connected in so many different ways than ever before – even if they have very short attention spans, which is perfect for poetry ("it gets people to think about what they just read"). Currie hoped his book could tie the strings together. Books and poetry, too, stir emotions in others that are shared; readers can effectively find and heal the split amongst each other. Instead of cutting the string of prose, it can be used to bring the public together.

"It's experiences," Currie said, "and issues; it reacts to daily lives. I try to write stuff that is important to all of us or was important to me and might reflect or make people to have the same reactions. Let's step back and look at our lives and try and find things that we can maybe do better or things we have emotional involvement in."

Currie also noted that a number of poems including the title of the book and "Flight of the Owl" had won Poetry Society of New Hampshire awards. Eight other poems in the book also won awards around the country, he said, and many other honorable mentions, too.

For more information about "Ball of String," visit SnapScreenPress.org.

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