In preparation for the 2007-08 basketball season, the Portland Trail Blazers' most prominent fan-blog, Blazer's Edge, elected its first official Poet Laureate via an open contest. This year, Blazer's Edge did the same, and Lucas Bernhardt—an avid Blazers fan and recent graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop—was voted in as co-poet laureate of the site. Poetry & Popular Culture recently caught up with Bernhardt and asked him to, well, jump through a couple of hoops.Poetry & Popular Culture: How did you become
co-Poet Laureate of Blazer's Edge?
Lucas Bernhardt: Blazer's Edge
held a contest during the off-season, and the voting was so close that they awarded the position to both me and a writer who uses the screen name T. Darkstar.
P&PC: It sounds like it was a tight race. In fact, the contest coordinator had to dispel suspicions of ballot stuffing when your poem
“The Assistant Coach” received a wave of last-minute support from voters. “Apparently,” he reassured readers, “people were just stirred by [the] verses and had to vote. Nothing untoward went on. It's simply the mark of a great poet!” How closely did you follow the election—and how did you celebrate?
LB: I don't remember how closely I followed the contest, but I did feel the suspicious people had a point. I had mentioned the proceedings to a few friends in the Workshop, and word got around. I hadn't told anyone which poem was mine, nor what my screen name was—and, actually, another writer from the Workshop had a poem in the running—but I imagine some of those last-second votes came from nearby. My intention was to get more writers in on the act, but I probably should have known better. The celebration must have been something....I can't remember it at all.
P&PC: How many poems have you written for Blazer's Edge?
LB: Bunches of haiku, a crown of sonnets, an ode, a little number on the Spurs, and the contest poem.
P&PC: Bunches of haiku indeed.
One hundred twenty of them, in fact, in a poem that was subsequently described as a “mighty endeavor.” What compelled you?
LB: Admiration for
Yosa Buson. Some people are moved to write by happiness, others by envy or resentment. For me it's usually admiration, which is why I feel so lucky to have been writing about the Blazers this year. They're such an easy team to pull for. Their good-humored approach to the game, their lack of hubris—what's not to like?
P&PC: Does your approach to poetry change when you write with a specific topic in mind (the Blazers), or for a particular audience (the Blazer's Edge reader)?
LB: I always pretend I'm writing for people who are more or less like me. Flawed but polite. When I'm writing for Blazer's Edge, I do allow myself to try things I might not otherwise. For example, "The Assistant Coach," is a pretty brazen
Fernando Pessoa rip-off. That's something I wouldn't normally do, but there's something about inserting basketball references that can save an otherwise bad idea.
P&PC: For example?
LB: For example, well, every poem I've written for the site. I think it has something to do with anti-poetry, the way one generation of writers can say the same things about janitors or ink cartridges that a previous generation said about roses. Those dislocations can be beautiful.
P&PC: Why the sign-on “St. Bayno” and not “Lucas Bernhardt”? Is St. Bayno to Lucas Bernhardt like Slim Shady to Marshall Mathers?
LB: It's a tribute to Bill Bayno, a good coach.
P&PC: What’s it like being a co-poet laureate?
LB: Throughout the season we've had a supportive, non-competitive relationship. Having a co-laureate is a mixed blessing for me. On the one hand, it's great to have such a generous partner, someone who always has nice things to say about what I've written and who can pick up the slack whenever—and it's often—I'm slacking off. On the other, I feel totally outclassed by him. He's a much more complete blogger than I am. He writes all sorts of interesting posts, including a recent one about finally seeing a Blazers game with his wife (they live in Milwaukee). He also is a lot better at commenting on and recommending others' posts. I'm more of a silent participant in the site, outside of the poetry. I didn't have a login until the poet laureate contest, even though I had been reading Blazer's Edge for a long time.
P&PC: Have you gotten any endorsement deals?
LB: Nope.
P&PC: How did your training at the
Iowa Writer's Workshop prepare you for this responsibility?
LB: The Workshop is an amazing program, but it's hard to say exactly why. I suppose working closely with so many great writers broadens a person's scope—assuming one is willing to pay attention to what others are up to.
P&PC: In a post-election comment on the blog, you outed yourself as a workshop-trained writer and confessed to circulating the finalist poems to your friends and peers. What sort of reactions did
they have?
LB: Most of them had a lot of fun reading the poems and commenting. Naturally, those who didn't never brought it up. Some people admitted they had no idea which poem was mine, and others thought they knew but were wrong. Generally, people seemed to like the idea of posting poetry where people who don't generally follow contemporary poetry might read it.
P&PC: Are there any plans to have you read at the Rose Garden Arena?
LB: No—what a terrifying idea! I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fly. I get the feeling that elements within the (Blazer) organization are aware that Portland is an atypical sports market. That said, trying to appeal to the eccentric side of the audience would probably slow things down. The Rose Garden is all about amplifying the loud, fast, superhuman spectacle of pro basketball.
P&PC: Hmmm....You could call it a poetry slam dunk.
Maybe if it involved being shot out of a cannon reading a poem, and culminated in a dunk...then maybe.
Yesterday evening, following a welcome and introduction by novelist and current Workshop Director Lan Samantha Chang, Marilynne Robinson delivered the reunion's keynote address, "The Workshop as Phenomenon," in Iowa City's historic Englert Theater. Although some notable figures were absent—some were off hearing Greg Brown performing at The Mill, one of Iowa City's historic music venues—it was a packed house that heard Robinson praise the Workshop for setting a precedent by which people would be encouraged to write within the auspices of higher education. Anything that gets people to think and write seriously in an age of rage, worry, half-truths and non-truths, she argued, is a good thing; better to have people writing as teachers and students within the relative freedom of higher ed, she continued, than meeting the expectations of a royal patron, succumbing to the market, or "cranking out dime novels under assumed names." Except for the fact that Workshop graduates have cranked out cheap novels under assumed names to pay the bills, there was little to object to in this thematic strand of her speech which sought to praise what creative writing workshops do well.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Robinson's talk centered on the pivotal role of the University and Iowa City in the history of university and college-level workshops and graciously acknowledged the region's literary culture of writing clubs, workshops, and other such meetings that predated the Workshop's official formation in 1936. While she praised the model of exchanging and critiquing work that the Workshop would inherit and develop, though, and while she offered a long catalog of prominent writers who visited Iowa before the formation of the Workshop, Robinson didn't name any of the people who actually lived and wrote in Iowa themselves—people who were cultivating and caring for the literary soil that would ultimately (even unpredictably) support a publicly-funded institutionalized creative writing program in the Midwest: once nationally-known people like poets Jay G. Sigmund (the Cedar Rapids insurance executive who mentored the Workshop's second director Paul Engle), Arthur Davison Ficke, Floyd Dell, and novelist Ruth Suckow whose gravestone is pictured here. Indeed, the literary scene that helped lay the foundation for the Workshop was capacious and inviting—as populist, if we are to believe the historical record, as the Workshop is exclusive. Here, for example, is how Suckow (writing for H.L. Mencken's American Mercury in 1926) described Iowa's literary culture: "It is snatched at by everybody—farmer boys, dentists, telegraph editors in small towns, students, undertakers, insurance agents and nobodies. All have a try at it."
After the keynote, this correspondent attended a soiree hosted by Workshop M.F.A. and now well-off businessman Glenn Schaeffer (who donated the money to build the Dey House's addition and new library). Lan Samantha Chang, T.C. Boyle, Allan Gurganus, and Ethan Canin were in attendance. We then wandered down to Dave's Foxhead, a favorite Workshop watering hole, which was packed to the rafters with alums including 2010 Pulitzer winner Paul Harding. Sightings early the next morning included Philip Levine, Robert Hass, Z.Z. Packer, Francine Prose, and Edward Hirsch. Despite the thrills of such encounters, this correspondent couldn't help thinking about all the nameless people described in Suckow's description of 1926 Iowa, as well as about the writers who went unmentioned in Robinson's talk but who stoked the fires of the state's literary culture in the first part of the 20th century. Indeed, when I dropped the name Arthur Davison Ficke (pictured here in a photo by Carl Van Vechten, an Iowa native) at Schaeffer's place the night before, the published writer with whom I was talking stared at me for a moment and then asked, "Who?" Who indeed.
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