BY TOM ROBOTHAM

ROSEANN RUNTE is slightly breathless. as she walks briskly up the last few steps leading to her office suite and greets me with a warm smile. Most of her days, I imagine, are like this. Indeed, her schedule suggests as much.

"She can give you a half hour," the PR people told me when I called to block out some time with her.

This was problematic. I wasn't interested, after all, in some quick briefing on the Maglev project or the new convocation center. I wanted to talk about poetry. It's hard to do that in a hurry.

Sometimes, however, you just have to make do. And so, I arrived at the appointed time, ready to fire away and record the answers as efficiently as possible.

"My office is in here," she says with a warm smile and a gesture. "Have a seat."

I look briefly at a chair drenched in late-afternoon sunlight, then opt for one a little farther from the window. And as I sit down something remarkable happens. The office is quiet - as quiet as libraries used to be. And Runte, having closed the door and taken a seat herself, no longer seems pressed for time. She is ready to talk about poems. If I didn't know better - if I had only her body language, the serene expression on her face, and the tone of her voice to go by -I'd think we had all the time in the world.

When I tell her why I'm here she lets out a gentle laugh. It's not often, she notes, that American

journalists want to talk about poetry.

By way of contrast, she relates two anecdotes about the public use of poetry in other countries

"In Japan," she notes, "there is a poem on the front page of the newspaper every day. It's become a little ritual. The Japanese read the poem first, then go on to the news."

It occurs to me that I've seen such things in American newspapers. But more often than not, the verses have all the depth and subtlety of a Hallmark greeting card.

Not so in Japan, she tells me. The poems are written by some of the country's finest poets. "It's considered an honor," she says, to have one's poem presented in this way.

Runte recalls, as well, a meeting she had one time with former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. When she mentioned to him that she remembered one of his speeches in which he had quoted lines from a particular poem, he immediately knew what she was talking about and proceeded to recite the poem in its entirety. He then went on to talk about all the other poems he had incorporated into speeches.

She seems especially fond of this story because, as she notes, many people think of poetry as an exclusively feminine activity, or as something associated "with an English class, they didn't want to take."

"But here," she says, "was a prime minister of a country, and he recognized the value of poetry."

THE VALUE of poetry is very much on my mind as our conversation unfolds because, in the days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington I noticed more and more people looking to poems for solace and wisdom. When I ask her about this, she briefly lowers her gaze in solemn reflection, before responding to my question.

"At a time like this," she says, "we all are made strikingly aware of our humanity, our frailty, and our inability to change what happened. In the face of this, what do we have? "What we have, first of all, are words, and second, action.
     "Words may seem a paltry balm, but perhaps they can help us arrive at an understanding.

"Words are so important to us," she continues. "What do we put on tombstones? What do we treasure when our parents pass on? The stories our parents and grandparents told us. Every life is built

 around words and the meaning of words. They frame our existence."

For some people, of course, this process is entered into passively. Others make a conscious effort to cultivate the language that will frame their existence. Runte began building her own life around words, writing poetry at an early age in her hometown of Kingston, New York, near the Catskill Mountains.

It's difficult to pinpoint the catalyst for this impulse, she says, but one was certainly her family's love of words. Her grandfather, she says, spoke seven languages.

Runte eventually went on to get a bachelor's degree in French from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a doctorate in French from the University of Kansas. After completing her graduate work, she took a job in Canada. She thought she'd stay for a