LOWELL JAEGER, ON POETRY
Poet Lowell Jaeger in his office at Flathead Valley Community College.
It goes back to a young boy, a boy who was so young he couldn’t even read, but his brother came home with books from school. Wonderful books. Fantastic books. And the young boy would take his brother’s books, hide in the closet, and copy down the words.
The young boy was in love with words, words he didn’t yet understand, but still had meaning.
That boy was Kalispell poet Lowell Jaeger.
“There was something about the written word that thrilled me,” explained Jaeger during a recent interview at his office.
Jaeger’s love for words has never faltered since. The English professor has taught creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College and freshmen composition since 1984.
A poem entitled “After Second Shift” from his most recent book, “Or maybe I Drift Off Alone” was read last month by radio personality Garrison Keillor for the “The Writer’s Almanac.” Keillor is a best selling author and was the host of the radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion” for years.
So to have Keillor read your poem on the air, it’s a national honor.
For Jaeger, it’s happened twice. Keillor read one of his poems back in 2010.
Jaeger’s poems are Montana in the flesh. His best verse explores moral dilemmas, reveals scenes from everyday life in a succinct and more importantly, authentic way.
“After Second Shift” is about a woman helping a man with dementia
In the parking lot an elderly man
stands mumbling outside his sedan
The bulk of the poem doesn’t rhyme, but when it does, it’s natural and slips off the tongue.
In his poem “Okay” Jaeger relays a tale that anyone who has driven Montana’s roads has run into. There’s a man in the road and he needs help, but he looks a little shady and turns out to be drunk and you have your wife and family in the car.
Do you stop? Jaeger’s character does. It doesn’t exactly go as expected.
My wife trusts me to be the man she hopes I am. I don’t know what’s OK and what’s not.
Some of Jaeger’s poems are biographical. Some are not, he admits.
“My job is to make it as real as possible,” Jaeger said. “A really good dancer looks like they’re floating in the air. Poetry is a lot like that, too.”
This is Jaeger’s seventh poetry book. He’s also is founding editor of Many Voices Press in cooperation with the college and recently edited “New Poets of the American West,” an anthology of poets from western states. The Press is self-sustaining he notes. In the information age, poetry is still alive and well.
Jaeger grew up in Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin and Northern Arizona University, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council. He also serves as humanities division chair at the college.
While at Iowa, he opened and closed the place everyday. He was there when Kurt Vonnegut taught there. Vonnegut taught fiction writing, so the two didn’t know each other very well, but he remembers the author writing deep into the night, Vonnegut’s typewriter banging away after everyone had gone home.
Jaeger’s work with minorities in Iowa landed him the job at the college. He was in Kalispell for a conference, and inquired whether they had any job openings for an English professor. Jaeger always wanted to move out West. They said they did, but they were looking for someone who had worked with Native Americans and minorities.
This was back when the college was still at what is now the Central School Museum. They interviewed Jaeger on the spot and two weeks later, he was living in Montana, with no hesitation whatsoever.
“I’m outta here,” he recalled telling his Iowa colleagues.
Jaeger said he enjoys teaching freshman composition as much as he does the creative writing. He writes along with the creative writing class and the freshmen are like his grandchildren. At 65, he has no plans to retire and he writes every week.
His advice for young poets?
“Don’t let anyone put you down,” he said. “Stay with the people who help you grow.”
Poems are everywhere in this Western landscape.
Take Jaeger’s poem, “Questions” where a driver debates giving money to a panhandler on the side of the road.
Just who is this man, I’m asking
He catches my glance
He’s asking the same.