Cy*Burr // spring 2004

Copies of Poet’s Market and well-worn paperback novels are nestled between chemistry textbooks three times their size in Kent State chemistry professor Edwin Gould’s office. Gould is a University Professor, a special title bestowed by the university on outstanding professors. Two of the books, Inorganic Reactions and Structure and Mechanism and Structure in Organic Chemistry, Gould wrote himself.

“Nobody bothers reading those. This is more me,” Gould says, pulling open a gray filing cabinet drawer that houses his seven self-published volumes of poetry. Gould started writing poetry seven years ago, at age 71, after he enrolled in a poetry course with “15 girls one-third my age.”

Gould has attended Kent’s open poetry readings since they began in 1982 at Brady’s Café. When the readings moved to the gallery in October 2002, after Brady’s closed, Gould moved with them.

“Gallery readings have become a very important part of my life,” he says. “They know me there. They are, in effect, my family.”

Maj Ragain, a Kent State English instructor, was instrumental in organizing the readings 22 years ago, which he says are one of the longest running open poetry readings in the country. Ragain says moving the readings to the gallery shows the endurance of the poets.

“It shows how art replicates itself,” he says. “Art doesn’t need much. It’s self-sustaining. All you ever really need is a storefront and, in the winter, a little heat.”

“Art doesn’t need much. It’s self-sustaining. All you ever really need is a storefront and, in the winter, a little heat.”

Once a month poets gather at the gallery, sitting on the sparse chairs—and the floor when there’s no room—for the readings Ragain co-hosts with Ingram. Poets go back and forth reading their poems from ragged old notebooks and neatly typed pages. Their shoeless, holey socks thump out rhythms to the beat of words hanging in the air.

Senior English major Nikki Robinson is there with some friends from Ragain’s poetry class. When the poets take a break, they pound on hand drums. Robinson says poetry readings are a way for students to interact with the community.

“It pulls the students into this town and makes them a part of it,” she says. “It allows the students to step outside the university.”

Gould leans back against the wall and listens intently to everyone who speaks. Not every poem may touch him, but he waits patiently for the one that does. Poetry, to Gould, is the highest form of communication.

“It’s saying something I want to say in a way that may not be expressed in sentences and paragraphs,” he says.

Finally, it is his turn. Holding a sheet of paper with both hands and his blue All-Star high tops rooted firmly to the ground, he recites his love poem. His muse remains a mystery. “The world can never have enough love poems,” Ragain says after Gould finishes.