tl19800222-002 "Lynne Dowell doesn't try to write its Poetry; it tries to write her. 8 The words grip her, struggling to t tome out, and she grapples with thetn, insisting they come out right. 191, These words are strong, but Dowell Ls stronger. She disciplines them into tbrnission, slowly forming sentences .[%toi, the formerly ungovernable feel- 14s. The new subservient sentences krnehow turn into poems. I. 71"".�.e poems form a book. Dowell's hs word-wrestling won her the recent v Plblication of The Vinegar Year, a il'Page collection of poems she wrote he lk,IT her English honors thesis. The 'evi Poets Series, a Baltimore *ganization, published the book. .rhe Vinegar Year is both an end da beginning for the Towson State `4.visor to disabled students, student, Irld mother. After five years of rritirtg poetry, the book culminates 4er effort, but it is also an introduc- On. It introduces the world to Lynne February 22, 1980 Towerlight page 3 Features Dowell celebrates her 'Vinegar Year' by Lisa DeNike The Vinegar Year. By Lynne Dowell. IN New Poets Series, publishers. Rik Available in the University liookstore and Towson Books. ;e rt ide le Dowell, the poet. Dowell the poet compared to Dowell the mother or Dowell the advisor is a Jekyll and Hyde story. She alternates between talking deep, metaphysical poetic theory and deciding what to cook for dinner tonight. She speaks of butterflies in flight and frozen banana popsicles in the same breath. And it seems perfectly natural that she does this. Her various roles are united by her poetic view which ex-plains the world by discovering simi-larities in seeming opposites. She is the similarity stringing all her dis-parate roles together. ""Me as a poet is very different from my other self. People who know me and don't know my poetry think I'm witty, yes, but distinctly the cheerful Mary Tyler Moore type. People who 'know my poetry and don't know me see me as some hermit on her way to suicide,"" she said. She is both, but she won't let either define her completely. Just like she refuses to allow words to take over, she will not be stereo-typed as mysterious simply because she writes poetry. She doesn't see herself as some lonely tree tortured by the wind, or a somber, introspective intellectual with a pen. She says she is not that dramatic; that poetry is fun because it allows her to play these different roles. ""I can be a unicorn or a Sleeping Beauty when I write,"" she said. She can also be a mother, an ad-visor to disabled students, a student herself. She cannot be just poet, because she sees herself as so many other things. Dowell just wants to be in control of what she is, to control the words, the phrases, the meter, the image. But there is one thing she can-not seem to control. It's her urge to write poetry. When the words, phrases, and im-ages start kicking her soul, it's easy for her to become frustrated. She can-not sit down to write whenever she gets the itch. She has three children, a dog, a cat, numerous house plants, tanks of fish and a full-time job in the way. And poetry, that flimsy stuff made of dreams and air, has a nasty, annoy-ing habit of being exhaled in a breath if Dowell does not handcuff it on paper with a pen soon after it arrives. It just won't stay. Because of this, she writes only Lunar Nights 'don't know what woke me that night 1,? stand naked behind the window. rerhaps the moon dripping through the leaves or the waves erasing the beach. Ditere was a nervousness in the wind bob-white questioned and minnows leapt to hear. 8etween the bleached dunes and the absolute shadows t'vo animals careened. Idon't know what woke me but there were Itrunge alliances, strange spawnings that night May Gardening today, I remembered if you cut a worm in half the old head will grow a new tail, the previous tail sport a new head. Both will recall the shocked pain the rusty hoe cleaving them. What I don't know is how long oozing worms remember: when I am planted how impersonal will be their appetite. sporadically now. She wrote the book when she didn't have the full-time job. The ideas are still there, but the time is not. When she can make time, the release is wonderful. ""It gives me more satisfaction than almost anything else I do, probably lbecause it is so unlike anything else in my life. A poem has a beginning and an end�in that way it's not like rais-ing kids. Satisfaction for me is in find-ing just the right word I need. I get a terrific sense of power in fighting the words,"" she said. So she goes on fighting the words when she can find time and privacy, modeling them into poetry. Although she controls the words, she cannot control the ideas. That's why Dowell keeps writing about death. She can't say why; all she knows is what comes out on paper. She doesn't choose the subject�it chooses her. One poem in The Vinegar Year she says came out of nowhere. The poem is called ""Lunar Nights."" ""I don't know where it came from, but I wish it would come back. Some poems just seem more given to you than others,"" she said, ""and this is one."" Dowell's poetry is something she LOOKING FOR A ROOMMATE? Get results by advertising in Towerlight Classifieds .......�?��?��?�����IIND � OW � MOO OS *IMO CID � OEM MD � OD � MI* �������??����?��?�?� � MO � P ,der� I I III g !, I 10 IF YOU ARE A HEALTHY MALE, 18-35 YEARS OF AGE AND 130-220 lbs. Ph COMQ Kinetics NEED EXTRA MONEY? You may be eligible to participate in studies to compare blood levels of different brands of prescription medicines. The safety of these medications has already been established. 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""There is a sense of loneliness about the book that I don't like to see in myself. Someone once told me, 'In your poetry you shrink so from life.' That hurt me. It suits a tree, neither alive nor dead, standing by itself at the end of the world,"" she said. Dowell sees herself as partly that tree, partly Mary Tyl e r Moore, part-ly a mother and partly a poet. On her office wall hangs a colored-pencil por-trait her daughter Beth drew, entitled ""The Poet: Lynne Dowell."" The Vinegar Year exemplifies that part, but a phone call shows another. ""Yes, Beth, I'm coming home soon. Yes, the TV is fixed now. Why don't you have one of those frozen banana things in the freezer?"" Towson State student and staff member Lynne Dowell recently published a book of poetry, ""The Vinegar Year,"" through the New Poet's series. 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