Poet, songwriter featured in Writer’s Center series

Jessica Hagendorn
Advertising/Marketing Director
Wyn Cooper, a noted poet from Vermont, visited ECC earlier this month as part of the Writer’s Center’s author series. Cooper described his life as one of chance.

“My life has been a series of chance meetings with famous women,” said Cooper of himself. Joanie Mitchell sang at his elementary school. He went to high school with Madonna and his poem “Fun” inspired the song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow.

“His poems are always an experience in sensory engagement,” said Rachel Tecza, head of the Writer’s Center, to a nearly full auditorium of almost 30 students and instructors. “Another thing he’s noted for is his precision of observation.”

“At home, your wife frowns, thinking you’re drunk. So you stand on a chair on one foot and juggle three apples until she leaves the kitchen,” Cooper read from his poem “Opal Wyoming.” Lines like this one, set into mostly serious pieces, mark Cooper’s work.

“Good fences, good neighbors, good day to die, and good riddance too, nasty old coot,” Cooper shared from a poem titled “Frosting” that bashed fellow poet Robert Frost.

Cooper shared 10 to 15 poems from his books The Way Back and Postcards from the Interior. Cooper and his partner Madison Smart Bell have made two CD’s based on Cooper’s work. Several of them have been aired on prime time shows like “Scrubs,” “The Unit” and “Men in Trees.” He played one song, based on the poem Postcard from a Painting, at the reading.

Only the first half hour was spent on the reading. The last half was a question and answer session for the students. Student George Stenitzer wanted to know of any tricks Cooper had for starting poems.

“As you’re driving down the street, write down the names of streets,” said Cooper. "I just mean anything. Anything can work.”

Another suggestion he had was just to pick a word out of the dictionary. That’s how he wrote his poem Gaposis, by looking it up to see if it was a real word. He found it in the largest of his five dictionaries.

Cooper also suggested having someone come up with a title, or having a friend pick six random words, three nouns, two adjectives and a verb, to start with. He wrote three sonnets--14-line poems-- based on a dictionary’s pronunciation key. He went through the key and used every example word in order. Cooper titled them “Pronunciation Keys.”

“If I’m writing a poem and I know it’s crap, I just keep writing because you never know--the last line might be a good line,” said Cooper.