By Donna Monday
Roses are red/ Violets are not/ Poetry, it seems/ Has changed a lot… It’s come a long way since the first person in the class to memorize a stanza of “The Raven” got 10 cents. (I’m not kidding. I won the dime.)
Back then poems rhymed. Not today. Rhyming is out. Feelings, however, are still in. And two local poets who managed to evoke feelings both in their poems and in each other are Max Somers and Sara Gelston.
Sara and Max met in 2009 when they were two of only three poets accepted into the University of Illinois Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry program. They now sport MFAs, and each has been named one of the Best New Poets in the U.S. and Canada by the Best New Poets series. Each year the publication publishes only 50 poems out of thousands considered. Max was among the 50 poets featured in 2013 for his poem, “The Narrative Poem.” Sara’s poem, “Orbiter,” will appear shortly in the 2014 edition.
Max grew up in Zionsville.
“In the Village,” he said. “Mostly on Pine and Maple Streets.” He and Sara now live in the Carmel home of Max’s dad, Zionsville businessman, Craig Somers.
In grad school both Max and Sara taught undergrad classes in everything from poetry to business writing.
“It was great,” says Max, “to sit around a table arguing about poetry and get paid for it.”
A poet myself, I found it fun to sit and discuss poetry with the two of them. I told them I got the poetry bug growing up in Greenfield, the home of James Whitcomb Riley. I thought the road to fame and fortune was paved with poetry.
Max’s story was more interesting than that. He says his dad was “always a fan of the beats.” (We’re talking the beat generation of the ‘50s here, not the Beatles.)
“In fact,” Max said, “I grew up with a huge portrait of Jack Kerouac above the dining room table.” Apparently, that lit a literary fire under the kid.
And the Kerouac portrait?
Max took it to grad school, but said, “It’s now in a closet.”
Sara’s tale was more like mine.
“I grew up in Maine,” she said. “And I feel like I can blame Maine for being a poet.”
Then she adds that the town she grew up in is Raymond, the hometown of literary giant Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The message is obvious. Geography is a powerful force in the literary arts….
