Usually when Connie Dover opens her mouth, pure-toned folk and Celtic tunes come pouring out in ways that have inspired critics to call her “the finest folk ballad singer America has produced since Joan Baez.”

But lately the Missouri musician has been garnering praise for a different sort of verse.

Her debut poetry collection is due out next April, and, after less than a year of writing, Dover already has won an award from the largest independent literary center in the nation.

Now her biggest problem is balancing her music career, which has yielded four albums since 1991, with her writing. How is she managing?

“I’m ignoring my musical life,” she says, laughing. “That’s not true. I’m performing, and I really love music. But I’ve been so focused on performing and recording for so long that I find it a great relief to have a creative outlet that’s not just musical.

“I feel like it’s been one of the greatest blessings of my life to have come across this genre.”

Fans of Dover’s music in Lawrence, where she last performed in winter 2003, will have a chance to hear the artist trade her powerful soprano singing for gentle, breathy recitations tonight, when she’ll join Kansas City poet Will Leathem, alt-country singer-songwriter Chad Rex and painter Kara Werner for a collaborative performance at The Dusty Bookshelf.

The reading, concert and visual art display are organized by Unholy Day Press, the Kansas City-based publishing house Leathem started in 2002. Lawrence wordsmiths Ed Tato and Jason Ryberg are among the writers on its roster, and Dover is set to join in 2005.

New territory

Connie Dover will recite her poetry at 7 tonight at The Dusty Bookshelf, 708 Mass., as part of an artistic collaboration of poetry, music and painting.

She met Leathem at Prospero’s, the Kansas City used bookstore he founded in 1997. Dover started attending the shop’s fabled monthly poetry readings last October.

At first she just listened.

“I was entranced by the power of what I was hearing, and more than anything, I think I was beguiled and swept away by the honesty of what people were saying in their poems,” says Dover, who began her career as lead singer for Kansas City-based Irish band Scartaglen.

“And I realized that I had not been truthful with myself with regard to a lot of what was going on in my own life. It took me being kicked in the gut, I suppose, to have this visceral response to what I was hearing from those people that really inspired me to start writing.”

So she sat down at her dining room table in Weston, Mo., with a spiral notebook and began writing in a very free-form style, later culling the words into more precise, meaningful shapes. It was a new experience for the songstress, who has been composing and arranging music since not long after she first fell in love with traditional songs and ballads as a teenager. But she has rarely written lyrics.

“I’m moving into a different area of my brain — and probably a different area of my psyche — when I start trying to formulate the sensations that inspire music, to try to translate that process into words,” she says. “I find it more freeing because I don’t find myself to be constrained by musical form, and I can say just about anything I want, in any order that I want to say it, and establish rhythms that I could never sing.”

Dover took her poems back to Prospero’s and began testing them in “The Pit,” the less-menacing-than-it-sounds center of the poetry reading circle.

Gentle but edgy

She connected with the audience right away, Leathem says.

“There’s a vein of gentleness there in her tone, but her subject matters are edgy as can be,” he says. “She’s just, I think, a remarkable poet.”

Leathem admires Dover, in part, for her breadth. She moves from conflicted love in “Pablo y Maria,” to pointed political realizations in “Cavort,” to a poor family’s plain but rich history in “Suler Monday.”

The judge who selected Dover as winner of the 2004 Speakeasy Prize in Poetry cited the latter poem specifically in her rationale.

“A lively blend of narrative and song, the voice in these poems, particularly in ‘Suler Monday,’ speaks out of the richness of family cannon and apocrypha,” Li-Young Lee writes.

Tonight’s reading also serves as the Lawrence release of Leathem’s book, “Terra,” which he describes as an exploration of the transcendent in the everyday. Also on the bill are Rex (“Songs to Fix Angels”), the Mars Motors recording artist whose wry, alt-country-blues song writing has earned him comparisons to John Prine and Jay Farrar; and Werner, whose animated paintings will set the evening’s tone.

“Begging” by Connie Dover “Cavort” by Connie Dover “Coming Clean” by Will Leathem

“We have worked very hard to do something nobody else is doing,” Leathem says of the program. “We try to make an experience that’s rounded, that moves, so we hold people’s attention spans and bring poetry in a broader context — relationships between words and music, words and visual art, visual arts and music.

“A three-legged stool is a lot sturdier.”

Suler monday

By Connie Dover

Suler Monday
liked his peas with
water gravy on the side
chicken necks fried hard
turnips mashed and shiny
mixed with collards in the grease
from Olive’s hog

Grandpa bit the heads off snakes alive
but that’s another story
like the klan

Lily always served three meats
no matter what
singing Barbry Ellen
wiped her wet face with an apron
as she wandered o’er the fields
and heard the death bell knelling
set out venison and ham
bacon curling like a fetus in the pan
said that girlfriend from the North

So they gave that girl an old switch-broom
and said
Just clear the outhouse seat of spiders
fore you sit, and those baby copperheads
and so she did, without a peep
for he was purely handsome

On an island in a river
he grew up, best of ten
popping supper with a slingshot
fearing haints but not his father
snagging monstrous catfish in a mighty storm
he chopped cotton
swinging barefoot pails of lard and sugar biscuits to the field

He stuffed greens in Lily’s poke
fixed her teeth
and praised her zinnias
fought his daddy
swapped his bee-bee gun to get Diane a doll

Thumbed a truck to Memphis in a borrowed suit
with pots and pans and books and tires
for the lady of the house
so he could buy a red piano
for his little girl, Pecan

and I thought he was too young
to be this poor

But I drank water
from that dipper in the bucket
scalded stinking pullets
broomed the outhouse
slept with cousins
stacked like Trappists in a woodcut
like the ones I saw in Europe,
which he paid for

I begged for Oxford, where he sent me
and I found his mother’s ballads
of the red rose and the briar

He was careful
so he mentioned to the wall just behind me,
Life is short and all is well
Smell the wood smoke and the pines
Find your solace in the mountains,
and I do because he did

with his old friend Suler Monday
chucking squirrels and skinning rabbits
Uncle Fate and Uncle Reno
pitching bottles down the privy
rawhide string wrapped on a
button held the door
dogs cooling
on the cellar floor

and all he ever mourned
was that time he shot a heron
just to see it fall

He gave his shoes to pretty Lily,
then drowned while diving for fresh water pearls
and this is a true story, so it is

Roadside Table

By Connie Dover

Handing off red bandanas,
I play capture the flag
with a grinning Arapaho road crew
in the Wind River Canyon

Rims and lips and arches
scarlet precambrian upthrusts
make me wild,
and my love’s tongue

Maddened bees
work hard little buds
along the Bighorn

A full and transparent moon
is pulled up through the clouds
past Debussy
past the Black Lodge Singers
and tales from desert prisons

Coyote, loping through the cottonwoods
turns and crouches toward me, flinching
He whispers without words

“The only way to conjoin
with this awful beauty
is to wander waist-deep among the sage
into the eye of the sun
and fall upon your sword.”

Winter count

By Connie Dover

Every day
I ride the cross-town bus
from Independence Avenue
to Blue Ridge Boulevard
to Prairie Village
and back

I pass tall buildings that block the sun
hard earth where nothing grows
people with tight mouths walking to no home

and I know I must make a dream for myself
to keep my heart strong

I lay my head against the glass
and call forth a vision to shield me

Moon of frost on the tipi
Moon of white ermine
Moon when the deer strip bark

Moon of returning geese
Moon of young grass appearing
Moon when the sun opens daisies

Moon of black chokecherries
Moon when the bison graze
Moon of dragonflies floating

Moon when the plums are scarlet
Moon when pollen falls from the tassel
Moon of dropping leaves

We mark the year
winter count of our content

and as for me

I can flesh the hide of an elk
I can split fine sinew
I can sew leggins from the smoked tops of lodges

I can bring fire in all weathers
call a trout into my hands
or a meadowlark
and stroke him until he sleeps
I know the secret of the seven arrows

and as for me

I would go away from my people and this place
I would braid my hair and put aside cloth dresses
I would cut up my credit cards

these needful things I would do
and all the day long I would sing at my work

He honors me
He honors me

if only the Human Being they call
Red Armed Panther
the proud one who follows me with his eyes
would trade his nine fat ponies to my father
and bring me under his blanket

This is the dream I make for myself on the bus
to keep my heart strong

This is the vision I call forth

Pablo y maria

By Connie Dover
Don’t take that tequila out while you are hoeing corn
said Maria to her husband
I must, he said
This one day
because the girl I love
does not love me any more
As of today, I am too old for love
and I must drink

Maria said
I knew you were with that whore
She has fat legs
Even her father won’t speak her name
Yes, said Pablo
and I am taking the tequila

She followed him to the field
She watched his thin back,
his six fingers wrapped around the hoe
She went inside

and came back with tortillas
filled with the meat of a goat, roasted
She sat in the shade and ate,
and watched him some more

Then she got up and took the hoe from his hands
and gave him the bottle
Go drink, she said
Pablo went to the shade,
and his wife began to work the rows

Cavort

By Connie Dover

I have learned
this year
so far
that:

orange is the new pink
amazing is the new awesome
and bread is the new antichrist

a smile is actually a vestigial combat position;
and fellow politicos rarely disagree
They simply view enigmas from different perspectives

I don’t meditate
I just lie in bed in the morning
and think about stuff
like:

unlimited nationwide long distance calling
niche film making for Mormons
and how unpalatable it would be to love without attachment

a vulture huddled over a corpse buzzing in the dirt
weekend winner giveaways at my local pontiac dealer
a child sleeping in the lap of a cadaver
one hundred days one million bodies
honey change the channel

We prefer our truth cut
with head-spanking images of pillow-lipped nymphs
who undulate through glossy SUVs and vault from high-res screens
into the viagra-spiked lap of a nation
that sits incubating in a sitcom induced haze
blink

and thus the world failed Rwanda

Who cares if I have mental cleavage
in a kingdom whose terrified rulers deploy smiles like weapons
as they play a fast and loose game of
pin the bomb on the Muslim
and dream of the day when the Fertile Crescent
is dotted with gated communities
called Fakewood and Arabian Heights

and who unload cargo planes full of Xanax
on a public that is now convinced that having a conscience
is actually Clinical Depression
and can be cured

And so,
as we are being outsourced, repurposed and pole-axed
in the name of a lantern-jawed myth stamped Security
As I lie in bed in the morning,
lounging in a sudsy bath of gratitude
to a certain omnipresent
intergalactic
fast food Unisource
for vowing to swipe my major credit card,
I grow weary of the shallow rhythm of my own mean invective

Cynicism tastes rancid

Every action I contemplate feels like a mistake waiting to be made,
and I want more than anything
to be reunited with the strength of will
I seem to have dropped along the way,

a child too burdensome to carry
and left by the road.

UNDER COVERS

By Will Leathem

Daybreak junkies
sit on buses,

pull close trench-coat recollections –
door hinges in need of fixing,
island getaway cruises,
a where, a who to call their own.

Cock-crow attendants,
thumbing newsprint strategies,

curse behind steering wheels,
spill coffee in their laps,
all the while lugging briefcases
filled with places they’d rather be.

Sunset demons
gun accelerators,

honk desperate horns,
cut off those that get in the way,
all those who would dare hinder
the velocities necessary
to carry them free.

Weekend professionals,
under-the-hood-procrastinators,

dabble in gardens,
architects of good times
with cold-beer aspirations,
pretending it is enough.

Midnight dreamers
rock on porch swings,

sit in windows,
inhale the cigarette imaginings.
With eyes closed, they pray
for an end t the work-a-day hostilities.

Late-for-bed agonizers
switch off the lights,

double check the doors,
slip between fervent sheets
in search of a star more distant

than a cold war.

JACKS OF FROST

By Will Leathem

The Jacks of frost idle
on cicada sidewalks
with noses cold as vacant lots,
sassing the summer lightning
which plays along the legs
of the emperor-beetle girls –
girls who sip cafe’ au lait,
chat hell-fire temptation
in the cafe’s yellow
onion-paper window.

the caterwaul of late night fire engines
races down skin too oven-hot to touch,
arches summer’s sweaty back.

Hyena mufflers cough
as cockfight radios blare
and the drunks amble toward
park-bench bedchambers,
mindful only of the dog-brown paper bags
hounding them, faithfully,
to an early evening’s grave.

Fresh mosquito thoughts buzz
above lawnmower grasses,
snapping suddenly, car-door shut like curfew.

And the honeysuckle breeze
portends harvest fires
as fences cannot contain
adolescent feet cornsilk running
‘cross the dry back yard of a dying year.

And the Jacks of frost dig
lightning bug hands into pockets,
play kick-the-can along curbs
that sweat paper wrappers,
never seem to stir
the necessary, starship nerve
to just walk up and touch
the daffodil dresses that waltz loneliness
beneath the cotton, panty-white streetlights.

Instead, frosty Johns seem content
to inhale cigarette wishes,
spit laughing lavender bravado
into the undertow

of the oil-spill, ocean-black night.

THE BONA FIDES

By Will Leathem

No letters of introduction, please.
No pedigrees or family traditions,
not even a word whispered
on the sly
to ears itching
for the skinny.

No secret handshakes,
or knock three times hard
and twice
soft-like.

What are you asking me for, anyway?
Don’tcha know;
don’tcha get it?

There’s no entrance exam
or down payment,
just a homing beacon
percolating somewhere deep inside.

And like all those geese
flying the coup,
heading south,
there’s no road map home,
no lighthouse to point us the way.

So go on, i can take it –
lucky for me i was born
with a good set of teeth and strong calves.

And if ever things get a little unsavory –
and they will, you can bet on that –
i won’t spill the beans
no matter how hard they squeeze.

So you,
don’t breathe a word,
and me, i’ll hold my tongue
’til the judgment trumpet sounds.

And the unsuspecting will never know
that the wool has been pulled
down over their eyes,
not by a sure-shot class salutatorian

but by a kid from the street
with a good ear
and a great sense of balance.

HOLIDAY TV SPECIAL BLUES

By Will Leathem

The streetlights all begin to blink,
as the tomcats scurry home
to purr and rub up against familiar legs.

…and the autos begin their scramble
as the neighborhood starts to nod,
and the desperate final cadences
play out in the corner bars.

It smell of snow and fireplaces;
and the mice, they scamper
between the walls.

…and the solitary lovers
curl up in front of televisions,
pull close their comforters
and hang on with white knuckles
to the clickers that serve as travel agents
for those too tired to love.