Out of the Wild

Alaska's Fiddling Poet returns to his birthplace.


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Published: Jan 23, 2008

FIDDLE ME THIS: Waldman's artistic explorations started in the Philly area and took him to North Carolina, Seattle, Alaska and all over the world.

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Ken Waldman has traveled around the noncontiguous United States reading poetry and playing the fiddle, taught creative writing as a college professor and survived a plane crash. But Alaska's Fiddling Poet, a moniker he has used for more than 20 years, has never before brought his unique combination of naturalistic verse and old-time music to his hometown of Philadelphia (cue slow fiddle music in the minor key). That gross affront will be rectified this Sunday and Monday when he plays at Wooden Shoe Books and the Community College of Philadelphia, respectively (cue fast fiddle music in the major key).

Born in Lafayette Hill — which is technically outside the city but he's such a nice guy we can give him a pass — Waldman attended Germantown Academy before heading to Duke to study business. Now he spends his time traveling the country playing at schools, coffeehouses and music venues like the Knitting Factory. He didn't set out to become a poet, or a fiddler; like many twentysomethings he was just drifting.

"I never wrote a poem until I was 30 years old," he says. "After school I was living in North Carolina and I didn't know what I was doing ... I moved to Seattle, just got in my car and drove and I didn't know where I would end up. Seattle felt like the right place. It was the fall of '84 and I wrote two stories and after the second, something just clicked in and I went, 'Oh, I'm a writer now.'"

After a 'spectacularly devastating' relationship, Waldman decided to head even farther away from his East Coast roots, to Alaska. After receiving an MFA from the University of Fairbanks, he taught writing. And following a serious illness, Waldman changed his life yet again and started touring as Alaska's Fiddling Poet.

Like writing, Waldman didn't pick up the fiddle until his mid-20s and learned from friends and records until he could play old-time music, a form that predates bluegrass. His style is usually the fast, danceable, mountain music that the Smithsonian Institute and Ken Burns are always trying to record in the wild parts of the eastern U.S.

Using banjo, bass and mandolin accompaniment, Waldman plays like an Appalachian runaway, but lays his poetry out in a simple, clear, nonsinging voice. It works because Waldman is proficient at turning his observations of Alaskan life into thoughtful, optimistic work that evokes faith in humanity and the grandeur of nature. Lines like, "I mumbled thanks, pushed myself up/ Out of the seat, stood, and watched/ The sky pull color apart like taffy/ While Denali, that big old mountain/ Of mountains, rose like the iceberg king," from the song "Milepost 135" resonate with simple humanity and the hugeness of nature. Other poem/songs touch on one of his most momentous life experiences: surviving a plane crash while on a tour through rural Alaska in 1996.

"We hit a hill we didn't see, but we hit it in a way where we clipped it. If we had hit it you wouldn't be talking to me. I'd be 12 years dead," he says nonchalantly. At the time, his survival earned him some respect from lifelong Alaskans. It also inspired poems like "After the Plane Crash" and "Nome Celebrity," which includes the line, "I let drunks touch me for luck."

Another source of inspiration is contemporary politics. He wrote one poem for the 11th of every month after that big one six and a half years ago; and As the World Burns, a CD of sonnets from the perspective of George W. Bush set to music. Burns is notable not just for its inventive use of the sonnet form, but for how seriously it takes Bush. Waldman explores the insidious motivations that propel politicians like him to wreak havoc on their own people and the rest of the world.

All put together — music, poetry, life, politics — Waldman is an American troubadour in the style of the '30s folk singer finally returning to the area that birthed him. Sounds like a good topic for a fiddle song.

(w_dean@citypaper.net)

Sun., Jan. 27, 7 p.m., pay-as-you-can donation ($10 suggested), with Eli Smith, Wooden Shoe Books, 508 S. Fifth St., 215-413-0999, woodenshoebooks.com; Mon., Jan. 28, 1:25 p.m., free, Community College of Philadelphia, 1700 Spring Garden St., 215-751-8323, ccp.edu, kenwaldman.com.