Connecticut’s Poet Laureate, Marilyn Nelson, read her most recent poetry 
at the Pomfret School on Friday, July 18, 2003. The reading was the 
culmination of a week of poetry readings by faculty members who 
taught Poetry Writing this week to aspiring young poets from across 
the country.

Nelson read from a poetic biography, Carver:A Life in Poems, 
published in 2001, and a symphony she just finished writing called Fortune’s
Bones, which is scheduled to be published in the Fall of 2004.

Carver is a poetic biography of George Washington Carver that took 
five years to complete. Nelson said that she decided to write about Carver 
because his story is so fascinating. When he was eleven, he left his master’s
home to find a grammar school that would admit a black child, and he walked
from town to town until he finally found a school in Kansas that would accept
him. He graduated from high school and went on to college, before beginning a
career as a teacher and a research scientist. He was widely recognized as a
genius, and he found hundreds of industrial uses for the peanut after
establishing the Science Department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Carver:A Life in Poems won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and, since 
it was so successful, I asked Nelson if she was considering writing poetic
biographies of lesser known African Americans.

“I don’t think so,” she said, “because it was so time consuming. 
My publishers would love me to, but there is no one else that I’d be 
willing to devote that much time to.”

Instead, she has been working on a poetic symphony, called Fortune’s Bones.
It is based on the true story of a slave named Fortune, whose master, 
Dr. Porter, dissected him after death. Dr. Porter then disassembled, boiled,
and reassembled Fortune’s bones so that he could use the skeleton to teach
medical students. He displayed the skeleton in his office, while Fortune’s
widow, Dinah, was still living there.

Fortune’s soul cries, “What’s essential about you cannot be owned. 
I’m not my body. I’m not my bones,” but Dinah is afraid to go into 
the room where her husband’s bones are hanging. Fortune’s Bones 
will not only be published as a book next year; it will be be 
performed by the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra.

Nelson also read a more light hearted poem, called Bali Jai, 
about the day in the life of a harried mother.  She finished 
the reading with poems about her great-great-grandmother, Diverne, 
who was a slave, and her great-great-grandfather, a white Confederate 
soldier named Mr.Tyler.
 
The poems about her family prompted me to ask Nelson about her parents, 
and the influence they’ve had on her work. “My parents wanted to be artists,”
she said. “My mother was a teacher, and my father was in the Air Force, 
but he always wrote poetry. My father also acted on stage before going 
into the service, and after leaving the service, and he was quite a good actor.
Although he wrote plays, I don’t think that any of his plays were produced.”

“There was a lot of respect for the arts in our home, and we had a lot of
exposure to the arts. Now, I’m a writer, my sister is in theater, and my
brother is a jazz musician. My parents would have been happy if I was a 
doctor, and my sister was a lawyer, which was our original plan, but they
wanted us to do whatever we wanted to do.”

Nelson’s son is a translator, and her daughter writes, and, although they don’t
often share their writing with her, they will ask for criticism from time to 
time. I asked her if she had given harsh criticism to the students at a 
Poetry Form Workshop earlier in the day. She said, “I’m always afraid of being
too harsh with young writers, but sometimes new writers think everything 
they write is wonderful, and they’re in a big rush to get a book published.
Sometimes they need honest, objective advice.”

Nelson thinks that the most important thing aspiring young writers can do is
read. “They should find one poet that they really like, and they should read
everything by him, then try to imitate certain aspects of his writing.  Then
they should read everything written by another poet, and imitate aspects of 
his writing. They have to be willing to do an apprenticeship, and they have 
to learn about traditional, as well as contemporary poetry.”

As the State Poet Laureate, Nelson not only dispenses advice to aspiring poets,
she makes speaking appearances, judges poetry, and has organized a gala reading
in Hartford.  She is also working on a project to solicit poetry book donations
for hospitals and doctors’ offices. Not only will this project make poetry more
accessible, but, according to a recent British study, reading poetry reduces
stress.