| Poetry in life and death |
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| Written by Jordan Gray - Argonaut | ||||||
| Monday, 02 February 2009 | ||||||
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 Kevin Goodham answers questions after a poetry reading in he TLC Wednesday. Steven Devine/Argonaut One of the most common bits of writing advice is this: write what you know. Kevin Goodan does just that in his poetry. He uses experiences from his life growing up on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana and the stories his grandmother told him to create extensive visual pictures with just a few words.Copies of his L.L. Winship/PEN New England award-winning book, “In The Ghost-House Acquainted” were in the hands of several of the people who attended his poetry reading Wednesday night in the Teaching and Learning Center. “I didn’t write it hoping to win an award,” Goodan said. “I wrote it because I had to. It’s not the thing to strive for. At least for me it’s not.” Goodan’s poetry focuses primarily on farm animals, with mares often a favorite image, and death. “For Llamas” combines both of these themes and advises readers that to truly understand the creatures, one must deal with the dead as well as the living. Nature is also a popular theme in Goodan’s work. “(My stepfather) showed me how to see things in nature,” he said. “He made me pay really close attention to the landscape in order to see the little clues there.” Goodan even pulls poetry from his high school job of cleaning the gutbuckets in a slaughterhouse. “I’ve always had an awareness of mortality,” Goodan said. Drawing from family experience led to one of the more audience-captivating poems that Goodan shared with the audience. His grandmother and her brother used to drive wild horses off of cliffs to laugh at the sounds they made. “To know that your grandmother killed a bunch of horses, it kind of sits with you for a bit,” Goodan said. Karen Trujillo Burnett was one of the audience members carrying a copy of Goodan’s first book. “I’m very impressed by his lyricism and his deep connection with landscape,” Burnett saiwd. “He has a melancholy quality to his writing because he talks about death a lot, but in a way he overcomes the melancholy and turns it into beauty.” Brittney Carman, another audience member, expressed similar sentiments. “I thought it was wonderful,” Carman said. “His voice, the voice of the poems was beautiful and tragic.” Goodan is currently an assistant professor at Lewis-Clark State College. His new book, “Winter Tenor,” which he said has been in the works since January 2003, will be out on bookshelves May 1.  Add as favorites (79) | Views: 1096
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