“There’s no other American city of comparable size where you’re actually forced to make difficult decisions about which reading to attend on almost any given night,” said Johnny Horton, a local poet and teacher at Seattle Central Community College. “I might be exaggerating, but in Seattle, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a poet.”

One of the highlights of the local literary scene is the annual Roethke Reading at the University of Washington. Held in honor of Theodore Roethke, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and UW professor, the university annually invites  a well-known national poet to read from his or her own works. Many also read some of Roethke’s poems as well.

Adam Farley, an English and psychology student at the UW, enjoys poetry because of the preciseness of the language. “For me, at least, the form kind of forces new interpretations of words, so I like seeing what can come of those when I write,” he said. “Being interested in poetry and creative writing definitely fosters a sense of community with other writers. It’s like a community that forms around anything that people have in common.”

Farley will be studying abroad this summer in the UW’s Creative Writing in Rome program, led this year by Horton. The coursework challenges students to use poetry as a medium to explore the city; some student work is reviewed by faculty, but the emphasis is on creating and appreciating poems.

The 46^th annual Roethke Reading on May 18^th featured Paul Muldoon, whose accomplishments read like a decorated soldier’s list of medals; chief among them is poetry editor of The New Yorker and a professor at Princeton University. More than 300 eager listeners turned out for a reading that Horton appropriately called “kinetic”: Muldoon slowly moved around the stage throughout the hour-long reading, just as his subject matter made slick transitions from the highway system to the birth of his daughter.

“It was a bit like getting the runaround, like being taken, which would have been a bad thing coming from a lesser poet,” Horton said.

A squat man with Einstein-like frizzy hair, Muldoon spoke in heavy tones and with a slight Irish accent. His works frequently draw on his experiences growing up in northern Ireland, such as visiting cemeteries with his mother and her friends so they could catch up on local gossip.

Many of the poems Muldoon selected for the reading, like his own “Gathering Mushrooms” and “The Frog” as well as Roethke’s “The Waking,” are deeply rooted in sound and lyrical elements, what poets call melopoeia. Muldoon employed repetition and meter with startling precision, which he doubly proved by knowing when to break his own patterns within a work.

“The sounds of his poetry were great,” Farley said. “I spent more time listening to those than the words, so I’d really like to check out some of his work and actually get what the poems are about.”

Muldoon didn’t use his time onstage as solely a one-way reading. Before beginning the poem “Turkey Buzzards,” he asked the audience members if they were familiar with the title phrase, which many correctly assumed is the Irish term for a vulture. Muldoon also double-checked he was pronouncing the word “hospital” correctly through his accent, and at one point asked the audience to join him in repeating a work’s refrain—which they did.

Muldoon said he draws inspiration from everywhere he can, even while his wife was going into labor: “The moment I heard this term, ‘footling breach,’ [to refer to a fetus positioned feet-first] I felt a little poem coming on.”

Muldoon now joins the prestigious list of past Roethke readers, including Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill and W. D. Snodgrass, among many other notable poets. UW professor Rick Kenney, who introduced this year’s reading, said he was confident that the Roethke Reading would continue in coming years despite budget cuts, and would maintain its high quality of readers.

“I doubt there’s a more distinguished reading series anywhere,” Kenney said.

This year’s Roethke Reading was a resounding cry that poetry, and the creative arts in general, are far from dead. Horton noted that he incorporates poetry into non-creative writing courses when he can.

“Bringing poetry into the classroom is a little like bringing your dog to school,” Horton said. “Most students respond well, and some are surprised. And poetry, like your dog, can faithfully perform a few old tricks, can help you make a few points, but the greatest thing about playing with your dog is how you can get carried away, how you risk those wild moments where the wolf in the dog reveals itself and you remember that poetry really is play for mortal stakes.”