Utah poet writes at a fever pitch

If the good die young, then the gentle, witty Ken Brewer may well be a prime example.

Immensely talented and prolific as a poet — currently, he is poet laureate of Utah — Brewer has been suffering from pancreatic cancer for more than six months. When he was diagnosed on June 10, the doctor was blunt; he said it would take a miracle to save his life.

Brewer, a realist, appreciates candor. So he told his friends and family that he had only months to live, then he went into treatment with the aim of slowing the growth of the disease. A serious infection gave him an additional scare along with "the moaning kind of yelling pain" in late July, and he credits an ER doctor with saving his life.

In the process he discovered that "Ambulances are not comfortable. I suspect hearses are more comfortable."

While continuing chemotherapy three times a month, Brewer, a retired Utah State University professor of English, is producing poetry faster than ever. Already the author of nine poetry collections, he has written the equivalent of four new collections since he was stricken.

Brewer writes in longhand on a note pad and then transfers the words to his computer in his ranch-style house in Providence, just outside Logan.

"I have never written with such fever pitch before," said Brewer, 64, during a genial interview in his home. "I began putting out a poem a day, whereas it used to take as much as a month. I abandoned all the revision I used to do.

"I'm an oral poet. I don't follow the poetic line. For me the rhythm is the whole piece. That creates a problem in getting poems published. A lot of the breaks are pretty arbitrary, so I'd much prefer to be heard than to be read on the page."

Brewer said that for him, poetry is "a physical thing. When I do public readings, I wave my right hand like a conductor. My feet are bouncing out the rhythms, too. The final test of a poem for me is the first time I read it to a live audience — then the poem changes. That's when I find out what I've got. The ending is not right, the laughs come at a different place, etc. I like to end with images rather than statements. Images keep people connected with the poem after it's over. A statement slams the door."

He said that he really misses the readings, but his limited energy will simply not allow them.

In the next few months, four collections of his poetry will appear. "Ken Sanders will publish that first group of poems, dealing with my illness, in a book called 'Whale Song: A Poet's Journey into Cancer.' "