A poet’s take on politics and more

Like most poets, John Casteen IV loves to quote other poets: William Butler Yeats, for instance.

“Out of our arguments with each other comes rhetoric,” Yeats once wrote. “Out of our arguments with ourselves comes poetry.”

For Casteen, who will read from his latest book of poems, “Free Union,” during Third Thursdays at Riverviews Artspace tonight (7:30), this nugget of poetic insight hits close to home. A professor of English at Sweet Briar College, Casteen divides his writing between poetry and op-ed pieces on national issues.

“The editorials are for things I’m convinced about,” he said, “and the poems are about things I’m uncertain about.”

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Casteen’s father has served as president of the University of Virginia for 20 years, including three of the years in which his son was a student there.

“That was kind of interesting,” Casteen IV said with a chuckle.

This was a father who read “Beowulf” and “The Canterbury Tales” to his children.

“I was fortunate,” Casteen said, “to come from a background in which literature was appreciated.”

No doubt John III approves of John IV’s current academic niche (he taught at his alma mater before moving to Sweet Briar). Yet before the younger John became a professor, he took a detour.

“After going through the University of Iowa’s writers’ program,” Casteen said, “I got into making furniture.”

And found similarities between the arts of woodworking and poetry.

“With both, you’re involved with the process,” Casteen said. “I guess poetry is about things that have already happened, and a piece of furniture in progress is in the future.”

Eventually, however, the gravitational pull of academia yanked him out of his workshop.

“I realized how much I loved teaching,” he said. “I wanted to make a difference.”

Conversely, as an editorial writer, Casteen has come to loath today’s combative, highly politicized intellectual atmosphere that turns almost every discussion into a verbal swordfight.

“My goal is usually to find a middle ground,” he said. “I’ve written a lot, for example, on gun laws in this country.”

Two of those gun pieces were for Slate, a high-traffic Internet site. And the reaction?

“I got a lot of feedback,” he said, “hardly any of it good.”

As for poetry, I asked Casteen the same question I ask all poets I interview: Why isn’t their craft more marketable in the U.S.?

After all, we are a time-challenged society that loves to get our information in sound bites and our inspiration in song lyrics. So how about poetry for instant wisdom?

“It’s not clear to me that poetry has ever been popular in this country,” Casteen said, adding that he’d love to see more emphasis placed on this art form in elementary and secondary schools. “I’m not sure why.”

Hand-made furniture has a more finite appeal, but Casteen said he openly has two of his own pieces in his house near Charlottesville.

“It was too expensive to make not to sell it,” he said.

His poems, however, he can keep forever.