MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe distinctive style of and rhythm of poetry is often what makes it so powerful. A notion reflected in the love poems of Pablo Neruda, the activist works of Amiri Baraka, classics by Milton and Keats and intensely personal work from the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks, and our most recent poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. Because when that rhythm is there poetry can be magical, transcending time. And often, when it's not, well, it falls flat.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIOne publication has been looking for that bit of magic for 125 years now, making it the oldest continually published poetry journal in the nation. It carries out the search in our backyard. Here to tell us about the legacy and future of Poet Lore Magazine is Jody Bolz. She has served as executive director of Poet Lore since 2002. She is the author, most recently, of the novella inversed "Shadow Play." And her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and many anthologies. Jody Bolz, thank you for joining us.

MS. JODY BOLZThank you for having me, Kojo.

NNAMDIIf you have questions or comments -- do you have a favorite poem? Tell us which one or who wrote it. 800-433-8850. Is poetry a part of your daily life? You can also send us an email to kojo@wamu.org. Whether you're writing it yourself or hearing it on the writers' almanac, tell us where it fits into your day. You can also shoot us a tweet, @kojoshow.

NNAMDITwo Shakespeare scholars started this publication, which is now housed in Bethesda, though it moved around quite a bit before settling here. Who started it? How did it end up in this area?

BOLZWell, two brilliant young women, who were Shakespeare scholars, Charlotte Porter and Helen Clark, met in the mid-1880s and they decided to found a journal that was different from the other generals that existed then. And they believed in the evolutionary nature of art and in literature, as a way of actually changing society. And they believed in world writing, not just, you know, narrow focus on American writing.

BOLZAnd they started in Philadelphia in 1889, moved to Boston, where they stayed for 85 years, and then came here to D.C. They were gone by then, but the next generation -- two generations later of editors. And really the most vulnerable part of Poet Lore's long history was in the 19 -- late '70s and '80s, when it was here at a scholarly publication house and it was starting to founder. And some poets associated with the Writers' Center in Bethesda got involved. And then the Writers' Center became the publisher.

NNAMDID.C. has been dubbed America's most literate city for four years in a row. Where do you see the publication fitting into the largest sphere of this region's bookish community?

BOLZWell, you know, we're a national -- or international poetry journal, not just a D.C. poetry journal. But we're really proud of the fact that a lot of terrific Washington writers have been involved with Poet Lore over the years. I think there's this false distinction between politics/history and literature. And that one of the things the Poet Lore has always cared about has been the way in which poetry leaves a record of feeling, human feeling, which is sort of history inside out. Not just a record of events, but a record of human history.

BOLZAnd having skimmed through 100 years of archives at the Library of Congress, that experience is transformational. To read through the poems of the 1890s, to read the poems of, you know, the World War I era, World War II, and you start to see how literature is part of culture and part of politics and part of society and not something off to the side.

NNAMDII really liked your experience when you were reading through those poems from the 1890s and the early 1900s. You'd be reading and some of them would be quite ordinary, and some of them, you said, would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

BOLZRight. So I would say the most astonishing thing that's happened to us, Ethelbert and I are both poets…

NNAMDIThis is E. Ethelbert Miller, who is co-editor of this publication.

BOLZRight. And we've -- what's amazing about being a poet in this kind of a job is seeing the long story, you know, it's the long arc of poetry, not just being stuck in your own moment, wondering what's in vogue. And that -- what you are quoting -- what I have said sometimes is that I would be reading along and the poetry would be very beautifully crafted.

BOLZI would think, "Oh, this is a very nicely made poem for the 1920s." That was what was in fashion. And then I would read -- suddenly come across a poem and I'd go, "This poet's addressing me." And it was almost scary.

NNAMDIToday.

BOLZIt felt so urgent. And I thought, well, that -- I don't know if we can ever do it, but our hope, which is, you know, a high bar to set for ourselves, but we're trying to find those poems now.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

BOLZYeah.

NNAMDIMore broadly, some readers -- not all, but some -- feel like poetry is not accessible to them. Where do you think a disconnect might exist? And what do you think may have created that disconnect?

BOLZI think it's high school English class, really. Those of us who've taught college have often felt we had to reopen the conversation about poetry with students because they were so used to analyzing poetry. They had a very mechanistic view of how a poem is put together. And we all know children love poetry. And certainly my parents' generation loved poetry, they memorized it. And maybe the difficulty of poems, especially in the modernist era, as, you know, a lot of people felt they couldn't understand or the poems were too specific to the poet, not universal enough.

NNAMDIDon your headphones, please, because we have phone callers. And I would like to start with Paula, in Washington, D.C.

BOLZI'm sorry, who is it?

NNAMDIPaula.

BOLZOkay.

NNAMDIPaula, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

PAULAHi. Thank you so much. I love your program and thank you for this very special moment to talk about culture and poetry. I had the opportunity to host Gwendolyn Brooks when she came…

NNAMDIOh, wow.

PAULA…to a small conference in my first school in Kentucky. And she was amazing. I had never written poetry. She had us all attend her workshop, of course. And when we presented -- I had turned over early the next morning thinking, "Oh, my gosh, I've got to write a poem. I don't know how to write a poem. I've got to write a poem." I scribbled five very quickly, almost little stanzas. They're amazing. And when I shared them, she made it feel like it was the most important thing anyone had ever done.

PAULAThat's what she made us all feel like. That we could do something. And that poetry was manageable, that you could speak it, and that you could hear it and feel it and it would touch your heart. She was so amazing. I was so grateful. She filled me up. I wrote a letter. She sent me back the sweetest little -- I've still got it. It's in a frame in my office, next to me. It's always with me because it thanks me so sweetly with this simple little postcard. It said, "Thank you for your treasurable letter."

NNAMDIWell…

PAULAAnd for her, as an icon, to take the time to write a brand new little, you know, professor at a little small college, when she was poet emeritus already. She was so amazing.

BOLZThat's so great.

PAULAWe were so grateful. And, oh, what a human being. I bring her to my students every semester. And I'm so grateful to do it. And they love that story and the letter.

NNAMDIThat's who she was. She cared about poetry. She cared about…

BOLZShe did.

NNAMDI…poets. When we were preparing for this broadcast, our producer, Tayla Burney, asked me who my favorite poets were. The first name that came out was Gwendolyn Brooks. Remarkable woman.

BOLZI heard her read at the Library of Congress when I was -- when I was a young poet. She was remarkable. That's great.

NNAMDIHow do you reach out to those who may feel a bit intimidated by poetry?

BOLZWell, I think what we're trying to do with the magazine is to show such a remarkable range of approaches to poetry that people -- just sort of demystify poetry for people so that there's something for everybody. And we arrange the poems in Poet Lore in kind of narrative arc, so that poems are in conversation with one another, which the poets love and our readers seem to love because, you know, they -- it's kind of movement that they make through the book, instead of poems in alphabetical order by author's name or something like that.

BOLZBut it's hard to -- people have a natural feeling for poetry. And as Paula said in her call, you know, people respond to the music of poetry and to the psychology of the imagery, but I think they get too worried that they don't know -- they're trying desperately to paraphrase or analyze, which is a big mistake. Don't do it.

NNAMDIHow do you and Ethelbert Miller work to select submissions for publication?

BOLZOh, we have the -- all right. We have the best time. We get together about once a month. We'll have read close to 1,000 poems in that time and communicated with each other about which poets we want to discuss. I go to his home. We have hours' long meetings. We spar with one another. We have complementary strengths and weaknesses. And we read the poems out loud. So that's the most important thing. I think our generation -- Ethelbert and I are age-mates.

BOLZYou know, our generation kind of forgot about the music part of poetry in some ways. And if we read them out loud to each other and they don't sound the way they should sound, whoever read it will say, "I don't know what I was thinking."

NNAMDIBut you say you have a good time doing it.

BOLZWe have the best time. I -- it's one of the most serious and hilarious and delightful things that I do.

NNAMDISee, that's my problem with Ethelbert. He always seems to be having way too good a time.

BOLZThat's right. That's right.

NNAMDIPaula, thank you very much for your call. We move on to Kay, in Arlington, Va. Kay, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

KAYHi. When I was a senior in high school our teacher had us memorize 100 lines of romantic poetry. And there were a couple of other poems that I just fell in love with. One is by Sara Teasdale, who my teacher said that when he was in school her -- the only thing about her was that Sara Teasdale wore see-through blouses.

BOLZThe important thing to know.

KAYYes. Which seemed to stick in my mind all these years. But I loved the poem and it's "Into my heart's treasury I slipped a coin that time cannot take nor thief purloin. Oh, better than the minting of a gold crown king is the safe-kept memory of a lovely thing."

NNAMDIWow, that's nice.

KAYI love that poem. And there's another one by A. E. Housman that just -- there are two poems that I remember. And this one is, "When I was one and twenty…

BOLZOh, yeah.

KAY…"I heard a wise man say, 'Give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away. Give pearls away and rubies, but keep your fancy free. But I was one and twenty, no use to talk to me. When I was one and twenty, I heard him say, again, 'The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain, to souls the size of plenty and paid with endless rue.' And I am two and twenty and, oh, 'tis true, 'tis true."

NNAMDIWell, obviously Jody Bolz is familiar with that poem.

BOLZAbsolutely. And, I mean, Sara Teasdale -- actually, Sara Teasdale published in Poet Lore. And along with a long list -- you know it's Bastille Day -- along with Mallarme and a long list of -- Verlaine, and lots of European writers. But it's really something to hear you recite those poems because you're responding to the cadences and the, you know, the rhythm rhyme, all of the pneumonic devices that poetry's always employed that are often absent now.

NNAMDIBig names like Natasha Trethewey, who just ended her second term as Poet Laureate, have appeared in your pages. But so have many unknowns. Who, then, are your contributors?

BOLZOkay. Well, one thing that we're really proud of, in terms of our editorial culture, is that we made a commitment. Ethelbert and I read every poem. I mean, that's a lot of poems to read. We have no screeners. One thing that gives us a lot of autonomy is having an independent literary non-profit. The Writers' Center is a publisher. So we don't have layers of -- if we were teaching, you know, somewhere and we had layers of readers in graduate school or whatever, we wouldn't have quite the same autonomy.

BOLZBut we've been able to discover people who might have been -- not passed along to the senior editors if we had had screeners. For example, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Dwayne Betts who's now a very well-known American poet. He was incarcerated for a juvenile crime in late 2003. He sent us poems from prison. Sometimes people don't read poems from prisons. Sometimes they have no self-addressed envelope, no cover letter, you never know. But it was a beautiful poem called "A Different Route."

BOLZAnd we took it. And that was his first poem. I've heard from lots of poets in our generation, you know, whom I'm friendly with, people like Carl Phillips. Carolyn Forche's first prize -- she was 25 years old. She won from Poet Lore. Carl Phillips' first poem, Dennis Nurkse's first poem, Dana Gioia's first poem. So I think reading without regard to reputation is what allows us to discover the unknowns.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Our guest is Jody Bolz. She has served as executive director of Poet Lore, since 2002. She's the author most recently of the novella inversed "Shadow Play." Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and in many anthologies. Despite that sort of intimidation factor that may exist for some, you point out that return to poetry at key moments in our lives. Why do you think that is?

BOLZOkay. I -- this is the great mystery of -- there's this huge gap between the way poetry is seen within our culture -- and it's seen as peripheral. Really. I mean, far from mainstream. Even on your show and other shows, when summer reading lists are -- book critics come in and talk about what you should read, very rarely or never is a book of poetry mentioned.

BOLZBut individually, personally, it's the one kind of language people want at their weddings, at a funeral, at a naming ceremony, at a coming-of-age ceremony, in times of national crisis, after 9/11 everybody was reading W. H. Auden's "Musee des beaux Art." "About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters." You know, it seems to serve -- it goes right to the heart of us. And I think people forget that day to day, sometimes.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. But indeed, when there are key moments in our lives, the wedding, the coming-of-age celebration, the funeral, for some reason or the other we think that poetry is more appropriate to capture the feeling of that movement. Of course, we can capture the news and history, but when we want to -- we can capture the history of the event in the news, but when we want to capture the feeling we go to poetry.

BOLZI think it's a couple of things. One is the sense of ancientness of it, that it might outlast its moment. It's not something just of this moment. It puts you in a long line of lives, not just in your own moment. And I think, too, it's the beauty of the language. It's the music, it's the imagery, it's sacred, in a way. I mean, without talking about religion here at all. But there's a sacredness about it.

NNAMDIWell, I'll tell you somebody for whom it's sacred, Teri, in Washington, D.C. Teri, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

TERIWell, poetry is definitely something that's very sacred to me.

NNAMDIThis is Teri Cross Davis, our former producer on this broadcast.

BOLZI recognize -- I recognize your voice.

NNAMDITeri and poetry go together. Go ahead, Teri.

TERIWell, it's the -- one of the quick romantic stories that I have. I've been married to my husband, Hayes Davis, who's a poet, for 14 years now. And in one of our early conversations he brought up this poet Cornelius Eady. And I knew Cornelius Eady. I knew that name. And then we began to talk about this one poem he had called, "April."

TERIAnd we both talked about that poem so much it just became synonymous with the beginning of our relationship and how April's the beginning of spring. And so we told Cornelius about this. And we actually have a signed poem by Cornelius, framed in our living room, of "April," because…

BOLZThat's so great.

TERI…that poem just means that much to us. So that was…

NNAMDICornelius Eady helped to bring you and Hayes together.

TERIHe did. And we keep telling him every time.

BOLZAnd he's a Poet Lore poet.

NNAMDIOf course.

TERIYes.

BOLZAnd, in fact, Teri has been very helpful to us. We're going to have our 125th anniversary celebration at the Folger because our founders were…

NNAMDIThat's where Teri works, yes.

BOLZ…Shakespeare scholars and that's where she works and so we're -- really, it's the most appropriate possible setting for this event. And Cornelius will be reading there, along with other poets.

NNAMDIHey, Teri, thank you for calling. Good to hear from you. Hi, to Hayes. Since this is a big anniversary year, how are you celebrating?

BOLZWe've done a lot of partnerships. We did a Maryland, you know, sort of a local partnership with the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, where we ran a contest and appeared, you know, had an event with the poets who won the contest performing. We did something with the Library of Congress around translation on Burmese poetry that we had just published. And, of course, the Folger event. The anniversary issue of the magazine will come out in September in time for the Folger reading.

BOLZAnd that is a remarkable issue that has Paul Laurence Dunbar on the cover. Not because Poet Lore published his poems. He was only 17 when Poet Lore got started. But because its editors recognized him as a poet, not a Negro dialect poet, but a modernist, a bohemian, a cosmopolitan poet of stature. And their essays on him, the things that were published about him, were really powerfully different from what others thought at the time.

NNAMDIJody Bolz has served as executive director of Poet Lore since 2002. She's the author most recently of the novella inversed "Shadow Play." Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and in many anthologies. Thank you so much for joining us.

BOLZMy pleasure. Thanks, Kojo.

NNAMDIAnd good luck to Poet Lore. Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.