Duluth poet Louis Jenkins is used to hearing his work on the air -- he's been read by Garrison Keillor on his MPR poetry show as well as on "A Prairie Home Companion" -- but finding out that a poem of his was recited on the Tony Awards CBS television broadcast on Sunday was a surprise.
Mark Rylance, a British actor who won the Best Actor Tony for his performance as Robert Lambert in the Broadway comedy revival "Boeing-Boeing," performed Jenkins' "Back Country" instead of offering a more conventional acceptance speech at the awards ceremony.
Jenkins said he doesn't know Rylance, but he'd heard the actor had gotten his work from a mutual friend, Margot McLean, who illustrated the cover of his most recent book, "North of the Cities."
She is married to James Hillman, the psychologist who worked with Minnesota poet laureate Robert Bly to compile the poetry anthology "The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart."
Bly had included several of Jenkins' poems in "Rag and Bone Shop" and that was where Rylance first read Jenkins' work. Then, when Rylance was starring as Peer in the Guthrie Theater production of "Peer Gynt" in January -- a text that Bly had created for the theater from Ibsen's longer nontheatrical play -- MacLean gave Rylance a copy of "North of the Cities," and Rylance realized who it was who had written the prose poems he liked so much.
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"I was looking for something to do at the party of a friend, a big Queen's Bench barrister," said Rylance of his first performances of Jenkins' work. "So I decided to do these three poems [from "Rag and Bone Shop"]. I memorized them and spoke them at dinner."
He had performed another Jenkins prose poem at the Drama Desk awards ceremony in New York.
"I hate awards ceremonies," Rylance said, "but here in America they make you go, publicity for the play, you know. So I decided to do something more meaningful. I did 'Confessional Poem' and it went down well."
When asked what other poets he reads, Rylance was hard-pressed to choose among the many he favors: "Oh gosh, I read a lot of Rumi and Hafez, Rilke, Whitman. Robert [Bly] just turned me on to Tomas Transtormer ... I read a lot of different things, the Islamic poets lately. I like Galway Kinnell, of the American poets. Obviously I like Robert [Bly] very much, and I love [Lawrence] Ferlingetti, his 'Coney Island of the Mind.' "
He said he holds Jenkins' poems in high esteem. "I think they're really genius. Learning them by heart has been like learning a great speech by Shakespeare: Every word matters, the rhythm. ... I'm hoping to work with Louis on a play that involves them."
The poet and the actor have been exchanging e-mails on the subject.
ANN KLEFSTAD covers arts and entertainment for the Duluth News Tribune. Read her blog, Makers, at duluth.com, and at Area Voices on duluthnewstribune.com. Reach her at aklefstad@duluthnews.com .
