No, that’s not an Onion headline. I’ve spent the last five days showing visitors to Salem around, which should hopefully account for my not posting very much lately.
Two of my guests were a lovely couple from Iowa City, IA who are moving to Salem in the next few months. One half of that couple is a poet named Mike Chasar who will take up a position as poetry professor at Willamette University next fall.
I have a few hunches why someone like Mike could get a job in poetry during these trying times for men’s souls.
All one need do is take a gander at his blog, Poetry and Popular Culture, to understand that this guy is not some notebook and pen in the corner of the party kind of dude.Recent posts on his blog have included a guest posting of a much-needed shakedown of Khalil Gibran’s popular “The Prophet” and a post on a new anti-aging cream called “Poetry in Lotion.”
Mike doesn’t even really strike me as a poet of the academe variety. He understands that poetry is everywhere in our lives and is not confined to obscure literary journals.
And like me, he knows that even a place like Salem can inspire a few lines.
During his time in Iowa City, Mike began writing a poetry column for the Iowa City Press-Citizen, a smaller paper also owned by the Gannet Corporation, the same company that owns the Statesman-Journal. Sadly, his recent poem on Iowa City’s own urban chicken debacle didn’t make it into the paper because it was written in the popular, bawdy, Renaissance style.
I.e., it was too dirty… 
I am hoping that the talented Mr. Chasar single-handedly changes the poetry meme here in Salem so that never again shall I read another article about a poetry festival that starts out with some general phrase about how poetry is unpopular, how the masses don’t get it, and how they never will.*
*And by the way, here are these people who are still writing and consuming it.
