8A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2002
Student helps found poetry movement; focuses on sensations, not emotions
By Adam Pracht
Kansan staff writer
Beneath the glare of stage lights, Zach Straus read his poem "sunup" from a creased sheet of paper in his hand.
Straus, Topeka freshman.
"In morning, the sun slices me vertically in half, and makes me realize I am, above all things, frail," he said as he finished the poem.
Straus, Iv,
and his
friends Adriene
Banks,
Stillwell
freshman,
and Roy
Faces in the Crowd
Carter, Lenexa sophomore, are trying to create a new movement in poetry. Straus said that the movement was just beginning, and for now they were calling it "Sensationism." The style of poetry focuses on physical sensations such as sight and touch rather than emotions, Straus said.
"You really don't know much besides the things that you can see and the things that you can hear," he said. "You can examine them and talk about them and the cosmic importance of them, but really the only concrete things in life are the ones that you can experience through your senses."
Carter said that Straus was important to their mission of making poetry more accessible.
"He's sort of a romantic at heart," Carter said. "He loves being loved and loving people."
Straus said his poems were often the only way that he could express his personal thoughts. He said presenting those internal ideas to the public made his hands tremble from nervousness.
"I have trouble being honest a lot of the time," he said. "Not like compulsive lying, but keeping things for myself. When I write and when I read in front of people, it's me stressing things that are really true."
Straus said his poetry had been a personal outlet since he wrote his first poem in eighth grade in reaction to an anti-Semitic joke that a classmate told.. His family is deeply rooted in Judaism.
Since then, he has drawn from personal experiences and written more than 100 poems, and won a writing award for young artists during his junior year of high school.
He said he wasn't sure where he was going to go with his talent, but he could be happy in many areas, such as weaving, photography or teaching.
photography say that I think that "I always say that I think that I'm going to be a really well-read waiter." Straus said, "And I'll be able to make great literary references about the special of the day."
Sometimes he writes about the reactions of others to himself as a Jew and a homosexual, but he said that people were generally accepting. He said if he had experienced more discrimination, he would have turned it into more literature.
Straus said that sometimes he tried to be abrasive to get a reaction from people.
"I'm fallible and I'm human," he said. "Things are really no more than just observations that I make because I'm really pompous and callous and other '-ous' words in the rest of my life."
Straus said that sometimes his strong will had caused conflicts in his family.
"I've spent most of my childhood being a very ineffective
"He's sort of a romantic at heart. He loves being loved and loving people."
Rov Carter
Roy Carter Straus' friend and aspiring poet
rebel, choosing all the wrong battles," he said.
His parents, Neal and Laura, agreed that his moods could be variable.
"Sometimes he can be rather stormy, and sometimes he can be like warm sunshine and just brighten up your day," Neal Straus said. "He's just not always sure what the weather is going to be. He's a joy to have around because he's very interesting in that way."
Despite the conflicts, Straus said that his family had inspired and supported him in what he did.
"Basically what it came down to is I realized that the reasons that I write are for the people that I love," Straus said. "After we cut through all the inter-dependencies and screwed up relations and wrongs and lies, what it comes down to is the fact that the things that I do—that I love the most—are because of them."
Contact Pracht at aprecht@kansan.com. This story was edited by Kristi Henderson.
Contact Pracht at
Listen to Zack Straus read two of his poems.
AARON SHOWALTER/KANSAN
Topeka freshman Zach Straus is a budding poet trying to create a new movement in the art form based on physical sensations rather than abstract emotions.
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