Honorary Guest Larry D. Thomas
In April, 2007, Larry D. Thomas was appointed by the Texas Legislature as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He retired in 1998 from a thirty-one year career in social service and adult criminal justice, and has since that time published nine collections of poems. His most recent book, Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems, was issued by TCU Press in March 2008 as the fourth volume of the TCU Press Texas Poets Laureate Series. He has two additional collections currently in press: an e-chapbook titled The Circus forthcoming from Right Hand Pointing in early 2009, and a book-length print collection titled The Skin of Light forthcoming from Dalton Publishing in Fall 2009. Among the numerous prizes and awards he has received for his poetry are the 2004 Violet Crown Award (Writers’ League of Texas), 2003 Western Heritage Award (National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum), two Texas Review Poetry Prizes (2001 and 2004), and a $2,000.00 grant from The Ron Stone Foundation for the Enhancement and Study of Texas History. His poetry has also received three Pushcart Prize nominations, a Poet’s Prize nomination (
Oak Bend Review chats with current Texas Poet Laureate, Larry D. Thomas
OBR: After hearing the KUHF podcast of your interview by Catherine Lu, it is intriguing that such a soft-spoken gentle poet has been involved in such rugged activities and career choices from the Navy to the Criminal Justice System to your interest in the Biker Community. How has that mix of spirit helped to shape your poetry today?
LDT: Ever since I started writing poetry seriously, in the 1970’s, I have enjoyed using as the primary subjects of my poems things outside my personal experience, especially phenomena of the natural world. I love writing poems about birds, certainly raptors and scavengers, and attempting to capture their beautiful yet terrifying essence in a few, carefully selected and artfully arranged words. For many years, I have been a strong admirer of the visual arts, and have enjoyed writing poems about my response to paintings by artists who challenge and intrigue me. And I have enjoyed writing about all sorts of other things too numerous to mention, whether it be concepts of philosophy, the nuances of human perception, the mystery and violence at the core of much of human experience, the fickleness and ruthlessness of fate as a determinant of circumstance, the backwoods culture of deep East Texas, or the outlaw biker.
I enjoy utilizing to the fullest possible extent the reaches of my creative imagination, convincing my readers of the authenticity of my subject matter whether or not it is based upon my actual, personal experience. Poems are first and foremost “made things,” and succeed at least on one important level if they come across to the reader as unquestionably “real,” whether in fact they are the residue of the actual or of the imaginative.
OBR: I understand you have a poem forthcoming in Rattle for their upcoming Cowboy Poetry themed issue. Do you consider yourself a “Cowboy Poet” and explain a little about what that means to you?
LDT: Dating from my childhood in far
I do not regard my poetry which is “Western” in setting as “cowboy poetry.” As I understand it, “cowboy” poetry’s primary purpose is to entertain the reader/audience. It is generally one-dimensional, based upon a single, interesting experience in the life of a working cowhand, is often laced with humor, and is written in the regular meter and pure rhyme scheme of the traditional ballad form. Hence, it is a highly popular folk art form, quite easy to memorize and recite, whose annual gatherings are attended and enjoyed by thousands.
My “Western poetry,” by contrast, is generally written in free verse and is composed in the tradition of mainstream literary poetry. On occasion, I also write in form, usually in rhymed quatrains, tercets, or couplets, and when I do so I employ a number of slant or half-rhymes hopefully so skillfully that the general reader is often unaware that I am writing in form. I attempt to write poetry which not only entertains the reader but, when it works effectively as I intend it to work, informs and instructs the reader as well in the complexity and nuances of human perception, subtle literary allusion, sophisticated metaphor and imagery, etc. I do not mean to imply that either of these forms of writing is superior to the other in either artistry or importance but simply to point out their major differences as I see them. The special issue of Rattle in which one of my poems is forthcoming is titled “Western and Cowboy Poetry.” I find it interesting that Mr. Timothy Green, the editor of Rattle, in using this title also seems to make a distinction between “Western” and “Cowboy Poetry.” My poem which was selected for the issue, “Steers in Summer, Lowing,” is composed in rhymed quatrains employing a number of slant or half-rhymes with an irregular although hopefully rhythmic meter.
I think I should note that although much of the poetry in my published collections is set in
OBR: I was surprised to read that your grandparents actually came to
LDT: My father and mother were the age of forty and thirty-nine, respectively, when I was born, so my grandparents were old enough to have been my great-grandparents. Each of them, unfortunately, passed away when I was in my teens or early twenties. I never lived in the town where they lived and didn’t get to visit them very often, so I didn’t hear as many of their stories as I certainly wish I could have heard. A number of their yarns, however, have stayed with me over the years, from those they told about the plow mules of my grandfathers (each was a tenant farmer and my paternal grandfather also a horse and mule trader) to the one told by my maternal grandmother about a cottonmouth moccasin which chased her through the woods of Tennessee shortly before she moved to Texas with her family in a covered wagon.
What impressed me most about my grandparents was the hardscrabble existence they eked out of the hard, arid
OBR: I read where you were quoted as saying “The regional is merely a vehicle through which the universal may become manifest.” I love that quote. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
LDT: A writer’s familiarity with his place breeds a special intimacy which may bestow his writing with a convincing reality otherwise very difficult to capture and convey to his reader. Living in a place over time allows one to absorb the nuances which make the place unique and shape character, whether it be the fall of sunlight on the landscape through the seasons or the dialogue and daily habits of the townspeople. The regional, when authentically captured and conveyed to the reader, becomes a powerful vehicle for the subtle revelation of universal “truths” common to all humanity regardless of locale, the “truths” of love, passion, revenge, yearning, loss through death or otherwise, anxiety, doubt, the mystery at the core of existence, and transcendence through something greater than the individual such as art, religion, or knowledge.
OBR: I understand you are a huge fan of the visual arts and enjoy writing poetry in response to paintings, etc. Among your favorites is the late Edward Hopper. Can you tell us what about his paintings you feel a strong connection with.
LDT: I so admire Edward Hopper’s work that I really don’t know where to begin to answer your question. I love his juxtaposition of light and shadow, but I especially like his handling of bright light, whether it be sunlight on the façade of a building, artificial light on a person, or the light infusing a diner at night. In my opinion, only Vermeer in the history of painting captured light as powerfully and effectively, and gave it such an animal presence. I love the stunning geometry of his paintings, his intricate interplay of color, planes, angles and intersecting forms in a frozen dance of flawless, asymmetric balance. I love the solemn loneliness and sense of isolation conveyed by his human subjects, even when they are in the presence of others. Each has an expressionless, stone-like countenance, monumental and timeless as the brick and stone facades of his buildings. It’s as if he pared down everything he saw to its essential, elemental form, much as the sun, wind, and dust pared down over eons the desertscapes of my native far West Texas.
OBR: You mentioned in a recent interview your concern that poetry is no longer valued in the public schools and is often not even a part of the curriculum in some cases. I understand you are making an effort to promote poetry in the schools. What can we, who love poetry, do to be catalysts in those efforts?
LDT: We can take advantage of every opportunity we have to share, both in writing and in oral presentation, our poetry with others of all ages; tell them why we write and how writing has changed and enriched our lives; talk to them about the process of our writing; and encourage them to write a poem themselves even if no one else ever reads it or to try another avenue of creative expression, regardless of the form it takes, and just see what happens.
OBR: How does a Texas Poet Laureate spend a typical day?
LDT: Since my appointment as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate in April 2007, I have been privileged to be featured in well over fifty major events throughout the state. When I am not somewhere outside my home in
OBR: What is your definition of “good poetry”?
LDT: A “good poem” is the exhaustively revised version of a few, carefully selected words which are artfully arranged in a highly skilled manner to capture and convey the barest essence of something (i.e. a “subject”) in such a way that the reader sees it as entirely new, profoundly important and breathtaking and will never see, read or hear about it again without thinking of the poem which seared it in their hearts and minds forever.