Correction: In our original article, we mistakenly said that Roger Weaver had a PhD when he has two Masters Degrees. We also said that he had been an instructor at OSU for over 20 years; He taught for 34 years. Our apologies to Mr. Weaver for the errors.
Roger Weaver taught at Oregon State University for 34 years. While he taught English to young minds, he wrote poetry, founded a nonprofit organization called Poetry Enterprises in Corvallis, founded “To Topos” – a journal dedicated to poetry worldwide, and participated as a member of the Lions club.
During the course of his career, Weaver published over 70 poems and six books. His poetry has been set to music and presented at choral concerts. And in his last book, “The Shape of the Wind” – a collection of poems written over many years, he showed his deft hand at drawing by including his own sketches.
The Advocate’s Joanna Rosinska sat down virtually with Weaver to elicit his thoughts about his road to becoming a poet and his views on role of poetry.
Poetic Inspiration and Voice in Society
Weaver began writing poetry in the fall semester of his first year at the University of Oregon.
“I would wake up in the middle of the night with a poem that I had gotten. I would write the poem down and work on it more the next day,” he said. “Poems also came to me from observing the world around me. I would write them in my journal and improve them by coming back to them until they were finished.”
This began a lifelong pattern of writing poems in a journal. As he finished a journal, he would start another and continue recording these poems. Over time he would read or recite a poem to his friends. This eventually led him to become an English major.
“For me, poetry is primary,” he said. “Poetry demands the attention of society. Poetry provides connection. It tells us about who we are.”
In his latest book, Weaver references how his travels, gardening, cities he encountered, architecture, and experiences stimulate his poetry.
He laments, “Currently, poetry is not that important to people. I am 86 and looking to a future where poetry will be important there.”
Advice to Beginning Poets
“Listen to your feelings. Find a place like a journal to write these feelings down. When you fill up a journal, get another. Polish them up later. Keep polishing your poems. The more you polish them, the better.”
Having been a literature educator at Oregon State University, he said, “I love to teach students and introduce them to poetry. Often, students would test me by reciting bawdy or bad poetry. I never got angry, and worked with them to understand the poetry and what feelings were being expressed. I was honest with them about my feelings and interpretations. Nothing was off the table in my discussions with students.”
The Latest Book
In Weaver’s newest book, the back cover calls the poems “developed and new, encompassing the breath’s importance in developing the line, the forms of stanzas, and newly created forms interspersed with occasional sketches.” The book marks his journey of “breaks with the past, the unplanned illnesses, and all the loves of a full life, the constancy of the breath of the wind.”
The sketches – two of which are included in this article – reflect the inspirations for writing poetry, according to Weaver.
“Architecture in the shapes of buildings sketched with breath shaping the poems, some sixty or so,” he said of the poems and sketches. “Gardens, favorite homes lived in, countries, and the great capitals correspond to phases of development, boy to man. Rome, London, Amsterdam—only a few of the cities I developed in, and dear friends and lovers found in them.”
A Way of Life
One of the poems in the new book is an intimate and tender, yet short, portrait of a dog. Weaver had dogs most of his life; he especially remembers Inky.
“Inky was a neighborhood dog. He would go around the neighborhood, visiting every house for treats and attention.” Inky was Weaver’s dog, but he was a neighborhood integrator.
“I also had a white collie. She was especially beautiful with some patches of brown. I bred her and sold the puppies for others to enjoy. I had a greyhound rescue dog named Jane. She was a great companion for me. I lived alone at that time. We enjoyed many walks together. She was poisoned and died a tragic death. It made me angry and very sad.”
Weaver, now in senior housing, was an avid gardener, very proud of the roses he grew.
“Gardening was important to me,” he said. “Both gardening and poetry are organic. Both involve nurturing and growing something that springs up in life.”
A Poet in the Community
“The openness of people to listen and go to poetry events in Corvallis was inspiring,” Weaver said. “I loved the collegiality among local poets.”
He did many things that benefited the community. He counseled high school students about the draft, had a health-oriented not-for-profit organization that distributed condoms at OSU, and organized peace vigils and rallies. He even sponsored, read at, and attended several poetry readings while hosting several poetry-writing groups.
“I don’t write much anymore, but poems still come to me,” he said, but at the end of the conversation an impromptu poem was born:
I dreamed I saw Saint Augustine.
I never dreamed before.
In my dream, it almost seemed
They put an end to war.
In the Words of Others
Roger Weaver has made an impression on the people in the area to this day.
“I worked with Roger after our son Kip died in a bicycle accident in 1982,” said Court Smith. “Roger sponsored a high school Young Writer’s Award for over 30 years in Kip’s honor.”
“I still remember vividly my first encounter with Roger Weaver’s poems,” said Madeline DeFrees. “It was the brevity of the poems that impressed me—their art of saying much in little. They often had a cryptic quality and the kind of surprise I associate with Emily Dickinson.”
“I’m glad to see that Weaver’s poems have the quality of blitheness and surprise,” said Richard Wilbur.
For this writer, Roger was a gentle but efficient critic at Marys Peak Poets meeting we attended. His poems were marked with pointy brevity.
Weaver’s books are The Orange and Other Poems (Press-22, 1978), Twenty-One Waking Dreams (Trout Creek Press, 1985), Traveling on the Great Wheel (Gardyloo Press, 1990), Reading the Stones: New and Selected Poems (Poetry Enterprises, 2003), The Ladder of Desire (Pygmy Forest Press, 2006), and The Shape of the Wind (2018). His work has been included in The North American Review, The Dog Review, Hubbub, Massachusetts Review, The Greenfield Review, Nimrod, and Manzanita Quarterly.
The Advocate would like to thank Court Smith for his help in conducting this interview.
By Joanna Rosińska
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