Lawrence.com

Usually when Connie Dover opens her mouth, pure-toned folk and Celtic tunes come pouring out in ways that have inspired critics to call her "the finest folk ballad singer America has produced since Joan Baez."

But lately the Missouri musician has been garnering praise for a different sort of verse.

Her debut poetry collection is due out next April, and, after less than a year of writing, Dover already has won an award from the largest independent literary center in the nation.

Now her biggest problem is balancing her music career, which has yielded four albums since 1991, with her writing. How is she managing?

"I'm ignoring my musical life," she says, laughing. "That's not true. I'm performing, and I really love music. But I've been so focused on performing and recording for so long that I find it a great relief to have a creative outlet that's not just musical.

"I feel like it's been one of the greatest blessings of my life to have come across this genre."

Fans of Dover's music in Lawrence, where she last performed in winter 2003, will have a chance to hear the artist trade her powerful soprano singing for gentle, breathy recitations tonight, when she'll join Kansas City poet Will Leathem, alt-country singer-songwriter Chad Rex and painter Kara Werner for a collaborative performance at The Dusty Bookshelf.

The reading, concert and visual art display are organized by Unholy Day Press, the Kansas City-based publishing house Leathem started in 2002. Lawrence wordsmiths Ed Tato and Jason Ryberg are among the writers on its roster, and Dover is set to join in 2005.

New territory

She met Leathem at Prospero's, the Kansas City used bookstore he founded in 1997. Dover started attending the shop's fabled monthly poetry readings last October.

At first she just listened.

"I was entranced by the power of what I was hearing, and more than anything, I think I was beguiled and swept away by the honesty of what people were saying in their poems," says Dover, who began her career as lead singer for Kansas City-based Irish band Scartaglen.

"And I realized that I had not been truthful with myself with regard to a lot of what was going on in my own life. It took me being kicked in the gut, I suppose, to have this visceral response to what I was hearing from those people that really inspired me to start writing."

So she sat down at her dining room table in Weston, Mo., with a spiral notebook and began writing in a very free-form style, later culling the words into more precise, meaningful shapes. It was a new experience for the songstress, who has been composing and arranging music since not long after she first fell in love with traditional songs and ballads as a teenager. But she has rarely written lyrics.

"I'm moving into a different area of my brain -- and probably a different area of my psyche -- when I start trying to formulate the sensations that inspire music, to try to translate that process into words," she says. "I find it more freeing because I don't find myself to be constrained by musical form, and I can say just about anything I want, in any order that I want to say it, and establish rhythms that I could never sing."

Dover took her poems back to Prospero's and began testing them in "The Pit," the less-menacing-than-it-sounds center of the poetry reading circle.

Gentle but edgy

She connected with the audience right away, Leathem says.

"There's a vein of gentleness there in her tone, but her subject matters are edgy as can be," he says. "She's just, I think, a remarkable poet."

Leathem admires Dover, in part, for her breadth. She moves from conflicted love in "Pablo y Maria," to pointed political realizations in "Cavort," to a poor family's plain but rich history in "Suler Monday."

The judge who selected Dover as winner of the 2004 Speakeasy Prize in Poetry cited the latter poem specifically in her rationale.

"A lively blend of narrative and song, the voice in these poems, particularly in 'Suler Monday,' speaks out of the richness of family cannon and apocrypha," Li-Young Lee writes.

Tonight's reading also serves as the Lawrence release of Leathem's book, "Terra," which he describes as an exploration of the transcendent in the everyday. Also on the bill are Rex ("Songs to Fix Angels"), the Mars Motors recording artist whose wry, alt-country-blues song writing has earned him comparisons to John Prine and Jay Farrar; and Werner, whose animated paintings will set the evening's tone.

"We have worked very hard to do something nobody else is doing," Leathem says of the program. "We try to make an experience that's rounded, that moves, so we hold people's attention spans and bring poetry in a broader context -- relationships between words and music, words and visual art, visual arts and music.

"A three-legged stool is a lot sturdier."

Suler monday

By Connie Dover



Suler Monday

liked his peas with

water gravy on the side

chicken necks fried hard

turnips mashed and shiny

mixed with collards in the grease

from Olive's hog





Grandpa bit the heads off snakes alive

but that's another story

like the klan





Lily always served three meats

no matter what

singing Barbry Ellen

wiped her wet face with an apron

as she wandered o'er the fields

and heard the death bell knelling

set out venison and ham

bacon curling like a fetus in the pan

said that girlfriend from the North





So they gave that girl an old switch-broom

and said

Just clear the outhouse seat of spiders

fore you sit, and those baby copperheads

and so she did, without a peep

for he was purely handsome





On an island in a river

he grew up, best of ten

popping supper with a slingshot

fearing haints but not his father

snagging monstrous catfish in a mighty storm

he chopped cotton

swinging barefoot pails of lard and sugar biscuits to the field





He stuffed greens in Lily's poke

fixed her teeth

and praised her zinnias

fought his daddy

swapped his bee-bee gun to get Diane a doll





Thumbed a truck to Memphis in a borrowed suit

with pots and pans and books and tires

for the lady of the house

so he could buy a red piano

for his little girl, Pecan





and I thought he was too young

to be this poor

But I drank water

from that dipper in the bucket

scalded stinking pullets

broomed the outhouse

slept with cousins

stacked like Trappists in a woodcut

like the ones I saw in Europe,

which he paid for





I begged for Oxford, where he sent me

and I found his mother's ballads

of the red rose and the briar





He was careful

so he mentioned to the wall just behind me,

Life is short and all is well

Smell the wood smoke and the pines

Find your solace in the mountains,

and I do because he did





with his old friend Suler Monday

chucking squirrels and skinning rabbits

Uncle Fate and Uncle Reno

pitching bottles down the privy

rawhide string wrapped on a

button held the door

dogs cooling

on the cellar floor





and all he ever mourned

was that time he shot a heron

just to see it fall





He gave his shoes to pretty Lily,

then drowned while diving for fresh water pearls

and this is a true story, so it is

Roadside Table

By Connie Dover



Handing off red bandanas,

I play capture the flag

with a grinning Arapaho road crew

in the Wind River Canyon





Rims and lips and arches

scarlet precambrian upthrusts

make me wild,

and my love's tongue





Maddened bees

work hard little buds

along the Bighorn





A full and transparent moon

is pulled up through the clouds

past Debussy

past the Black Lodge Singers

and tales from desert prisons





Coyote, loping through the cottonwoods

turns and crouches toward me, flinching

He whispers without words





"The only way to conjoin

with this awful beauty

is to wander waist-deep among the sage

into the eye of the sun

and fall upon your sword."

Winter count

By Connie Dover



Every day

I ride the cross-town bus

from Independence Avenue

to Blue Ridge Boulevard

to Prairie Village

and back





I pass tall buildings that block the sun

hard earth where nothing grows

people with tight mouths walking to no home





and I know I must make a dream for myself

to keep my heart strong





I lay my head against the glass

and call forth a vision to shield me

Moon of frost on the tipi

Moon of white ermine

Moon when the deer strip bark





Moon of returning geese

Moon of young grass appearing

Moon when the sun opens daisies





Moon of black chokecherries

Moon when the bison graze

Moon of dragonflies floating





Moon when the plums are scarlet

Moon when pollen falls from the tassel

Moon of dropping leaves





We mark the year

winter count of our content





and as for me





I can flesh the hide of an elk

I can split fine sinew

I can sew leggins from the smoked tops of lodges





I can bring fire in all weathers

call a trout into my hands

or a meadowlark

and stroke him until he sleeps

I know the secret of the seven arrows





and as for me





I would go away from my people and this place

I would braid my hair and put aside cloth dresses

I would cut up my credit cards





these needful things I would do

and all the day long I would sing at my work





He honors me

He honors me





if only the Human Being they call

Red Armed Panther

the proud one who follows me with his eyes

would trade his nine fat ponies to my father

and bring me under his blanket





This is the dream I make for myself on the bus

to keep my heart strong





This is the vision I call forth

Pablo y maria

By Connie Dover



Don't take that tequila out while you are hoeing corn

said Maria to her husband

I must, he said

This one day

because the girl I love

does not love me any more

As of today, I am too old for love

and I must drink





Maria said

I knew you were with that whore

She has fat legs

Even her father won't speak her name

Yes, said Pablo

and I am taking the tequila





She followed him to the field

She watched his thin back,

his six fingers wrapped around the hoe

She went inside





and came back with tortillas

filled with the meat of a goat, roasted

She sat in the shade and ate,

and watched him some more





Then she got up and took the hoe from his hands

and gave him the bottle

Go drink, she said

Pablo went to the shade,

and his wife began to work the rows

Cavort

By Connie Dover





I have learned

this year

so far

that:





orange is the new pink

amazing is the new awesome

and bread is the new antichrist





a smile is actually a vestigial combat position;

and fellow politicos rarely disagree

They simply view enigmas from different perspectives





I don't meditate

I just lie in bed in the morning

and think about stuff

like:





unlimited nationwide long distance calling

niche film making for Mormons

and how unpalatable it would be to love without attachment





a vulture huddled over a corpse buzzing in the dirt

weekend winner giveaways at my local pontiac dealer

a child sleeping in the lap of a cadaver

one hundred days one million bodies

honey change the channel





We prefer our truth cut

with head-spanking images of pillow-lipped nymphs

who undulate through glossy SUVs and vault from high-res screens

into the viagra-spiked lap of a nation

that sits incubating in a sitcom induced haze

blink





and thus the world failed Rwanda





Who cares if I have mental cleavage

in a kingdom whose terrified rulers deploy smiles like weapons

as they play a fast and loose game of

pin the bomb on the Muslim

and dream of the day when the Fertile Crescent

is dotted with gated communities

called Fakewood and Arabian Heights









and who unload cargo planes full of Xanax

on a public that is now convinced that having a conscience

is actually Clinical Depression

and can be cured





And so,

as we are being outsourced, repurposed and pole-axed

in the name of a lantern-jawed myth stamped Security

As I lie in bed in the morning,

lounging in a sudsy bath of gratitude

to a certain omnipresent

intergalactic

fast food Unisource

for vowing to swipe my major credit card,

I grow weary of the shallow rhythm of my own mean invective





Cynicism tastes rancid





Every action I contemplate feels like a mistake waiting to be made,

and I want more than anything

to be reunited with the strength of will

I seem to have dropped along the way,





a child too burdensome to carry

and left by the road.

UNDER COVERS

By Will Leathem



Daybreak junkies

sit on buses,





pull close trench-coat recollections -

door hinges in need of fixing,

island getaway cruises,

a where, a who to call their own.





Cock-crow attendants,

thumbing newsprint strategies,





curse behind steering wheels,

spill coffee in their laps,

all the while lugging briefcases

filled with places they'd rather be.





Sunset demons

gun accelerators,





honk desperate horns,

cut off those that get in the way,

all those who would dare hinder

the velocities necessary

to carry them free.





Weekend professionals,

under-the-hood-procrastinators,





dabble in gardens,

architects of good times

with cold-beer aspirations,

pretending it is enough.





Midnight dreamers

rock on porch swings,





sit in windows,

inhale the cigarette imaginings.

With eyes closed, they pray

for an end t the work-a-day hostilities.





Late-for-bed agonizers

switch off the lights,





double check the doors,

slip between fervent sheets

in search of a star more distant





than a cold war.

JACKS OF FROST

By Will Leathem



The Jacks of frost idle

on cicada sidewalks

with noses cold as vacant lots,

sassing the summer lightning

which plays along the legs

of the emperor-beetle girls -

girls who sip cafe' au lait,

chat hell-fire temptation

in the cafe's yellow

onion-paper window.





the caterwaul of late night fire engines

races down skin too oven-hot to touch,

arches summer's sweaty back.





Hyena mufflers cough

as cockfight radios blare

and the drunks amble toward

park-bench bedchambers,

mindful only of the dog-brown paper bags

hounding them, faithfully,

to an early evening's grave.





Fresh mosquito thoughts buzz

above lawnmower grasses,

snapping suddenly, car-door shut like curfew.





And the honeysuckle breeze

portends harvest fires

as fences cannot contain

adolescent feet cornsilk running

'cross the dry back yard of a dying year.





And the Jacks of frost dig

lightning bug hands into pockets,

play kick-the-can along curbs

that sweat paper wrappers,

never seem to stir

the necessary, starship nerve

to just walk up and touch

the daffodil dresses that waltz loneliness

beneath the cotton, panty-white streetlights.





Instead, frosty Johns seem content

to inhale cigarette wishes,

spit laughing lavender bravado

into the undertow





of the oil-spill, ocean-black night.

THE BONA FIDES

By Will Leathem





No letters of introduction, please.

No pedigrees or family traditions,

not even a word whispered

on the sly

to ears itching

for the skinny.





No secret handshakes,

or knock three times hard

and twice

soft-like.





What are you asking me for, anyway?

Don'tcha know;

don'tcha get it?





There's no entrance exam

or down payment,

just a homing beacon

percolating somewhere deep inside.





And like all those geese

flying the coup,

heading south,

there's no road map home,

no lighthouse to point us the way.





So go on, i can take it -

lucky for me i was born

with a good set of teeth and strong calves.

And if ever things get a little unsavory -

and they will, you can bet on that -

i won't spill the beans

no matter how hard they squeeze.





So you,

don't breathe a word,

and me, i'll hold my tongue

'til the judgment trumpet sounds.





And the unsuspecting will never know

that the wool has been pulled

down over their eyes,

not by a sure-shot class salutatorian





but by a kid from the street

with a good ear

and a great sense of balance.

HOLIDAY TV SPECIAL BLUES

By Will Leathem



The streetlights all begin to blink,

as the tomcats scurry home

to purr and rub up against familiar legs.





...and the autos begin their scramble

as the neighborhood starts to nod,

and the desperate final cadences

play out in the corner bars.





It smell of snow and fireplaces;

and the mice, they scamper

between the walls.





...and the solitary lovers

curl up in front of televisions,

pull close their comforters

and hang on with white knuckles

to the clickers that serve as travel agents

for those too tired to love.