The first thing David Wagoner ever said to me was, “Oh kay.” with a long, disappointed oh. He sat silently, breathed in as if comforting his disappointed critic, then finished. “ I wouldn’t have read it that way. You sounded ashamed of that poem.”
David Wagoner wears denim buttons-ups unbuttoned to the third button with different colored turtlenecks beneath. A Native American inspired (perhaps made) belt buckle holds his pants tight with the dignity of eternal youth. He still does his hair everyday, snowy white it holds close to his head, combed with an unmatched slickness. His glasses are large, beautiful relics from the 70′s, if they were tinted they would immediately be the most fashionable sunglasses within 30 miles – that’s him, that’s David Wagoner; even in his old age he’s on the verge of being completely fashionable. His poetry still is.
Legends are legendary because of their elusiveness. As the recent attention on Tiger Woods has revealed, a legend rarely remains a legend when put directly in the spotlight, or when the facts of their life are explicitly revealed. To be a legend one must master the art of paraphrase, solitude, and performance. For the past three weeks I’ve been taught by a legend; a poet born in 1926 who worked with and outlived the likes of Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Elizabeth Bishop, and countless others. David Wagoner has mastered the ability to remain a master. The kind of person who can make a silly remark and yet, somehow, it’s received as a piece of backwards-wisdom; intentionally said in a silly way so that we’ll learn an important lesson.
“Stay alive,” he said wisely and not without a grim skepticism. “If you plan to write good poetry, you must stay alive.” I’ve scribbled these wise axioms all throughout my notebook. I take them, at first, as complete truth. Old folks, especially successful ones such as David, have an innate conviction that, unless you’re simply not listening, forces you to believe – even if momentarily – everything they say..
“Theodore Roethke was in this room,” David says, crossing one leg over the other, nimble even in his eighties, “when he was arrested for threatening a class with a can opener; the state police came and arrested him. He was incoherent, of course.” His voice is musical, it booms like thunder but soothes like cough syrup. He told us that to master poetry we must master the same abilities a classical singer does: pitch, tone, timbre, rhythm. “Two floors below us Allen Ginsberg performed one of his first readings of the poem ‘Howl.’ This building, Parrington Hall, is haunted by the spirits of many poets, Roethke, Ginsberg, and so many more. Roethke instructed me in this hall. That was back when instructors wore suits and ties and coats, and took their suit coats off as soon as they got the chance.” He always finishes his stories of old with a chuckle that says we could never understand and that we probably think he’s trying to be funny.
There’s certainly something demystifying about being in David’s presence – he insists upon being called David – not unlike if you learned the science behind love it would become less magical. So many people seem to believe that the ability to write poetry is some natural, magical gift that can’t be taught – honed, perhaps, but not taught. David seems to think it’s a bit of natural ability, but that there’s also a science to it. “You’re poetry is not sacred in this room,” he said on the first day. “We will tear it apart.” One of the first things he tore apart was the prose poem, something I hold rather dear to my heart. “It used to be that poetry and prose were completely separate forms, that’s no longer the case. I don’t see what you could gain from writing a poem without intentional line breaks. And either use punctuation correctly or don’t use it at all. You live in an era where there are no rules,” he says. “Remember that.”
A few minutes later he tells us not to capitalize the first letter of a line unless it’s the beginning of a sentence, and a couple classes later not to part an attributive adjective and it’s noun with a line break, then he tells us not to have more than twice as many attributive adjectives as we have lines. One moment he tells us there are no rules, then the next he lays them out clearly. And of course he makes the suggestion that we write out a poem in prose first, no line breaks, no poetic constraints – just write and write until we have no more to say on the subject. Even the oldest, wisest, most successful poets can be a walking contradiction, maybe that makes a poet. It’s humbling and yet a little scary, too. How would you feel if Jesus came to you, a devoted christian, and started saying hypocritical things and making confused suggestions? I suppose your faith would likely falter, but at the same time you’d realize that Jesus wasn’t that much better than you – what’s stopping you from being a modern day Jesus?
After a pregnant pause in which the fourteen or so students in the room glance slowly around at each other, he says, “Every time I say something a little voice in the back of my head says,” he reaches back and touches the back of his head as if he knows the voice’s exact location, “’yeah, but the opposite’s also true.’” And he immediately redeems himself of his previous contradictions. He’s quite possibly the most coherent human being I’ve ever met. Unfaltering in his beliefs, yet acknowledging of the fact that they’re likely wrong – everyone’s likely wrong.
David often spends 3-5 second intervals between statements, he creates these long and somber silences, not quite awkward so much as meditative. The subtext of his silence says, “You should all be thinking of ideas right now greater than the one I just had.” They’re intimidating silences in which I often scribble ideas in all caps in my notebook – I’ve recently learned that my writing is somewhat legible if written in all caps. He often counters his booming criticisms with a tiny chirp of praise; he knocks you off your feet and doesn’t grab you by the hand and pull you back up, but merely whispers in your ear, “I suggest you get back up.” He takes confidence and energy.
Coming into David Wagoner’s knowledgeable arms I was excited, thinking he must hold the skeleton key to poetic success. After his class I would be able to open any door, anywhere, and turn whatever was inside to art. His age, his reverence, his reputation – his first book of poems was published at 22 and he hasn’t stopped since; he’s well into his eighties now. All of these seemed to be evidence that he would be able to turn me into a successful poet. Of course, this was a naïve, overly excited, and headstrong belief.
Masters can teach us what they did to master a thing, but masters are considered masters because they did something striking and unique – something never done before. No one can teach you how to do something that’s never been done before.
“A plains Indian,” he once said, “does not think the same way that a woods Indian does. If you place a woods Indian on the plains he will feel vulnerable; a plains Indian in the woods will feel trapped.” The Indian out of his comfort zone will feel fear, the Indian must turn that fear to positive energy and will himself to innovation, and always say to himself, “Yeah, but the opposite’s also true.”
David once said his wife calls the following poem his “cash cow.” It’s been reproduced in multiple languages, in thousands of mediums, and read in thousands of different places; in keeping to this tradition, I am reproducing it here, for you, just in case you get lost:
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
At the counter was a woman. “What do I do now?” I asked her. As if the question was one she receives often, she replied without hesitation. “You find any and all of your space travel supply needs.” “What if I don’t have space travel supply needs?” “Well…we’re actually a front for a non-profit youth writing and tutoring center.” It all began to make sense. The atomic teleporter at the back of the store wasn’t actually a teleporter, it was an elaborately designed door that led to a classroom where tutoring sessions were held. All of these products weren’t really for space travel, they fund an organization with more valiant of a cause than NASA could ever hold claim to. Pam looked at me with the eyes of knowing. Her gaze said, “Danl, you need to volunteer for this shit immediately.” It’s the culmination of recent revelations. Of my need to help others, of my need for purpose, of my need to write, of my need to impart encouragement and support to a group so troubled by the aspects of growing up. 
