By Alicia Kelso

Sometimes poems are difficult to understand. The words might be too intricate or the message might get muddled. At least, that’s how most of us learned to study them.

But that’s not how poetry should be, not according to Jerry Roscoe. The 57-year-old Westerville resident has published three books of his poetry and written thousands of poems over a 37-year span.

Roscoe’s poems don’t entail Greek mythology references or philosophical verses about nature. His work is about everyday life we can all relate to – work routines, family life, travel, friends and home. In fact, he says poetry’s simplicity and familiarity is why he began writing in the first place.

Roscoe graduated from Villanova University with an English degree and then stayed to pursue graduate studies in theater. He originally wanted to become a playwright. But while at school, he realized he liked poetry better.

“As a playwright, I’d have to be produced and work with others. It’s a collaborative effort,” Roscoe says. “But with poems, when it’s done, it’s done. It’s creative, it’s a work of art and it’s yours. You don’t need anyone else.”

With this revelation, Roscoe dropped out of his graduate program and tried to decide what to do. Perhaps ironically, he wanted to get as far away from academia as possible.

“I didn’t like what they were teaching. I liked writers like Jack Kerouac and in class I was told he was terrible,” Roscoe says. “I realized academia was too formulaic. I was writing and getting into jazz and they wanted me to write and study classical.”

Roscoe often uses musical metaphors when describing poetry. He says he thinks of poetry as part of a broader musical umbrella rather than a literary genre.

“There is a song-like quality to poems and I imagine writing poems is similar to songwriting. Poems are lyrical and people can connect to them as they do with a song,” he says.

Originally from Connecticut, Roscoe moved to Westerville about 22 years ago for a job with Turner & Seymour, a company that manufactures hardware supplies. He is company vice president and travels around the country for the position.

“It is completely different and that’s exactly the way I wanted it. Most poets are teachers or full-time writers, but I needed something different to clear my mind in order to re-focus when I get around to my writing,” Roscoe says. “Plus, I can coordinate my readings with my travel schedule for the job and I get to see a lot of places, which I can then write about.”

Roscoe devotes at least two hours every morning (and has only missed “maybe two days” in the past few years) to writing, whether to revise an already-written piece, brainstorm an idea or create a new poem. This has been his routine for most of his poetic career.

“I used to write after work and that doesn’t work because there is too much on my mind then,” Roscoe says. “I need to start fresh, right out of my dreams, when I have a lot of energy and I have everything to myself. Nobody else is up at that time, so I can focus and let my mind wander. It’s almost meditative.”

He describes his poems as “very autobiographical, which means people can relate and be familiar with it and maybe like it more.” There is humor, there is darkness and there is everything in between. Roscoe has written about his marriage with wife Barbara in poems such as Annotated Courtship, and raising children (he has a son, Jared, 25, and a daughter, Elizabeth, 23) in poems such as Adequate Love.

His first published book, Two Midwest Voices, which included his poem Mirror Lake, was co-authored with Robert Mott and released in 2001. It won the Ohioana Book Award for Poetry for 2002.

Roscoe’s second chapbook, S-E-X, was published in 2006 and his latest, Unexamined Life, came out in 2007. He is a recipient of two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has also been published widely in literary journals, including The New England Review, The Ohio Review, The South Carolina Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Madison Review, The Louisville Review, 5 a.m. and more.

Roscoe spent 10 years, from 1987 to 1997, as a poetry reviewer and columnist for The Columbus Dispatch. He also schedules about 12 readings a year, mostly throughout the region, and frequently attends local readings to hear other poets.

Roscoe has revised old poems over and over before they are completed, and he’s finished poems in an hour or two. He knows a poem is done when “something just snaps shut,” he says. “A lot of my favorites are the ones I just think I said right.”

He is currently compiling another collection of recent work, which will inlcude 100 poems at 14 lines each. He also plans to continue his routine – poet by morning, hardware salesman by day, and observer of life for new material in between – for as long as he can.

“Poetry is very emotional. You’ve got to have everything in there. It’s sort of redeeming when you can make art out of your life,” Roscoe says. “I always wanted my poetry to come from the everyday stuff, not from history or mythology. It makes it fun and interesting and I’m always excited to wake up in the morning and start writing.”

For more information about Roscoe’s latest work, visit www.custom-words.com.

Alicia Kelso is editor of Westerville Magazine.


Jerry Roscoe’s poem Adequate Love was featured on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor in September 2007:

My son cries
Until I zip him into the denim pouch
That ties around my back like an apron.
Inside, with only his dreams,
He can believe life is still perfect.
But as I work, his forehead knocks against
My breastbone, reminding him this world
Is hard. All we have
Is the musculature of words
To protect the notion.
His eyes open on
warmed, reconstituted powdered formula,
A plastic pacifier, adequate love
To wean him away from heaven.