Saturday, April 25, 1998 | 4:35 a.m.
"...Love wakes men, once a lifetime each; They lift their heavy lids, and look ..."
The words of the 19th century poet Coventry Patmore rang out in the small paneled room decked with silk flowers and chiffon bunting.
Manfred Michl clasped the hand of his bride-to-be, Tanya Handel, and listened solemnly while the bespectacled stranger in the ill-fitting navy blazer finished reciting the love poem.
Then the couple turned to one another, exchanged their rings, and recited their vows.
Michl and Handel had traveled all the way from Germany to be married here, at the tiny white Candlelight Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip. They hadn't planned on having any spectators at their ceremony, so it was a surprise when Andy Carroll, the 28-year-old executive director of the American Poetry and Literacy Project (APL) appeared, donning a suitcoat at least a size too small -- compliments of the chapel -- and offered to read a poem during their wedding.
Carroll, who is now in the third week of his "Great APLseed Giveaway" -- a campaign by the APL and the Academy of American Poets to promote literacy and an appreciation for poetry by distributing more than 100,000 free books of verse to people throughout the country -- had expected to arrive earlier in the day.
His plan had been to distribute copies of "Great Love Poems" at the Strip chapel before moving on to the Excalibur hotel-casino to dispense collections of Shakespeare sonnets in honor of the Bard's April 23 birthday. But he got waylaid in Nothing, Ariz., earlier in the day by a group of bikers on their way to the Laughlin River Run rally, who eagerly clamored for copies of the sonnets.
"The response has been amazing," Carroll says of the public's reaction to his campaign. "I was never pessimistic about this country but I'm just so much more optimistic now. There's just so much goodness out there that you never hear about."
At farm stands in remote areas of the country, overall-clad men, women and children have gathered in throngs, waiting for Carroll to appear in his bright yellow, donated Ryder truck filled with tons of books.
At supermarkets, truck stops, prisons and diners, people have been lining up for their free collections of verse. "Everywhere I've gone there have been people waiting, people wanting books," he says.
At the Walt Whitman toll bridge, on the New Jersey turnpike, he offered up "Leaves of Grass" by -- who else? -- Walt Whitman. At Gettysburg, he gave out collections of "Civil War Poems: An Anthology." Inside the St. Louis Zoo, he presented kids with copies of a book called "Animal Poems." And in the middle of the night, at a White Castle hamburger joint in Chicago, he distributed "Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey," a poem by Hayden Carruth about a white castle tower.
At Graceland, he was almost arrested. "You're not supposed to give out free things on the grounds, and I didn't know that."
Occasionally, people give Carroll what he calls "the Hare Krishna look. But once people see there's no strings attached, there's no catch, I don't hit 'em up for donations, there's no political agenda, then they're kind of like, 'Oh this is cool.' And then they come back and ask for more books," he says.
Spreading the words
Prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison, gratefully took the poetry books and told Carroll how much they enjoyed reading verse. Many recited poems off the top of their head; some admitted they had never even owned a book before.
"I'm sort of partial to giving books out in prison," Carroll confesses. "Because Brodsky, our founder, had been in prison in the Soviet Union for writing poetry."
Joseph Brodsky, the late Nobel laureate, who founded the American Poetry & Literacy Project with Carrol in 1993, had first come up with the idea of distributing free books. For several years, the pair tried to accomplish their goal from a modest office in Washington, D.C.
"We'd call a hospital and say 'Can we send you 500 books?' And they'd say 'Sure,' " Carroll says. He and Brodsky would send the books through the mail "and we'd get a letter back saying, 'It went really well; thank you very much.' But I didn't really know how it was going.
"I thought, 'To make this organization as efficient and as responsive as possible, I need to go out there, to all different settings -- rural farm communities, suburban, inner-city communities -- to find out how are the books being received.' Because it's not worth our time or our funders' time if the books are just being tossed in the trash can."
The idea excited Bill Wadsworth, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, who agreed to underwrite part of the cost, and offered logistical support, Carroll says.
Also, the Book-of-the-Month Club, an ardent supporter of the APL from the start, donated a thousand hardcover copies of "World Poetry," and publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich gave 5,000 children's books.
The Washington Apple Growers, attracted to Carroll's "Johnny Appleseed" approach, also joined the campaign, offering to cover the cost of thousands more books. The details of the trip had not been fully ironed out when Brodsky died of a heart attack two years ago. But the plan was very much on his mind.
"It was the last thing he and I talked about," Carroll says, recalling how Brodsky had commanded him in his heavy Russian accent to take to the road, saying: " 'Vheels!' Meaning, 'Get in a truck and drive. You need to give out these books,' " Carroll says.
Validity of verse
Though Carroll is now a passionate advocate of poetry, he never cared much for the literary form when he was an English major at Columbia University.
"I thought the poetry world was very sort of insular," he says, "that it wasn't something I had access to."
Instead, he was intrigued by the dying art of letter-writing, and had begun research on a book, entitled "Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters." Published last year by Kodansha, the book is drawing rave reviews.
Then a friend gave Carroll a copy of a speech Brodsky had given in the Library of Congress, in which he advocated putting an anthology of American poetry "in every room in every motel in the land."
Brodsky believed poetry was the language of all people, not just academics and elitists. To make it physically more accessible to people, he proposed giving out free books across the country.
The idea struck a chord with Carroll, who was a fervent advocate of literacy. "I read the speech and I was just electrified by it," Carroll says. "It was just so wonderfully democratic in its spirit."
Carroll dashed off a letter to Brodsky, expressing his admiration for the idea. "I love this idea you have," he told the poet laureate. "Good luck with it. I hope it works out."
Much to his surprise, Brodsky wrote back, telling Carroll he needed someone to help him get the project started. "He said, 'Let's meet.' And the day before we met, I went out to get one of his books, just to see what his poetry was like, and it said, 'Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.' "
Carroll was dumbfounded. "What have I gotten myself into?" he wondered. Brodsky, however, proved an unpretentious man with a passion for poetry and people. And before long, Carroll was hooked.
"When (Brodsky) passed away, I started talking about poetry too," Carroll, who had previously focused on the literacy issue, says. "And I started realizing how extraordinary it is: It offers us solace, it inspires us, and it offers us wisdom."
In a society inundated with so many forms of media and information, to some it might seem odd that people would crave a literary form such as poetry.
"But they're really eating it up," Carroll says. "In this day and age, there's this yearning for words that define us. I think we're yearning for truth."
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