Emerging in Poetry

I had a pleasant surprise – the editors and staff of Hawk andWhippoorwill poetry journal have nominated my poem “How a vine staves off eviction” for a Pushcart. The poem was in their Summer 2019 issue. Hawk & Whippoorwill, published in Boston at summer and winter solstices, focuses on the relationships between nature and humankind. 

 

Many of my poems were written with the idea to reflect human life through the natural world. Besides vacationing in the Northern Woods as a child, I used to go on fishing and apple picking excursions with my father to southern Wisconsin. My dad expressed what many say, that he felt his religion when he was in nature. He also liked the computer and kept up weekly email contact after I got on the internet and had poetry published there. I was surprised, during his last year, when he wrote wondering if I had a new poem for him to read there.

How could religion not be a point to ponder? Having a fascination for the first and last books of the Bible, I concluded in the 1990's that environmentalists were doing God's first mandate. They were taking care of the garden while too many were living outside of it. I tried to write poems as if they might express a theology but of course that failed. Poetry is an art form and, I felt, true when it is concrete and in perspective. 

I wished I'd photographed the yard tree hosting a vine that grew into the form of a man standing on an upper branch.  However that happened, the sight inspired a poem as it might have inspired visual art.

Image by Jolee G @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I don't often refer to myself as a poet though I've had many poems published. I liked poetry and early, made a little book called “My Favorite Poems.” My own poem inclusion disappointed. I remember going to my fifth grade teacher in despair because I blocked on a poem. She suggested that I start with a different subject. So I wrote a narrative science fiction poem, finding that her suggestion worked. I was comfortable with stories in prose.

And I was to become more taken up with flute playing so that I had to consider a performance career. Many years later, I opened a drawer of paper documents, bank and such, but also a cache of poetry I sent as application to the University of Minnesota writing program. I'd read much more contemporary poetry and finally re-read what I never submitted for publication. I thought, oh, even though this stuff was inspired by Tess Gallagher, it is something different in rhythm and resonance. It was written by a flute player. I felt I entered poetry after leaving the daily practice of music.

Poetry became a cryptic diary for me. It captured the year, the atmosphere, the ideas in my head, the relationships I had. Sometimes it reminded me of the books I read.  I was always afraid of too much influence from a well-known author. The cure for that, I'd thought, was to read many. Even then, I was influenced by Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Louise Bogan, Nancy Willard, W. S. Merwin, and Dylan Thomas, poets that come immediately to mind.

After writing in other creative genres, I felt poetry was the most honest. It's been a lulling late afternoon break for me, poet or person writing poetry.

Found I liked less driving in my future

At a bus stop on a Saturday morning:

“Do you know if the bus is coming?” A woman sitting in the newly installed shelter, what actually imitated wrought iron decoration.

“Let's see, it's 8:31,” I said. “A few minutes.”

“I didn't know if it would show up. I usually take the bus on weekdays.”

“Oh, it's coming. Maybe on time instead of five minutes late. Less riders on the weekends.”

“Well, it's really much simpler.” She showed me her pass like an advertisement. “My car was in for repair and because I need to go across town, it's much easier.”

In a city of 100,000, most people don't rely on buses. But near Lake Superior, above which are steep hills and in the winter, snow and ice, I was surprised that there isn't more bus use.

I ride the bus because of an eyesight issue. My sight problem is not usual; I had an eye muscle operation as a child that isn't done anymore. Like a character in a short story I wrote, I barely passed the driving test, getting 71 twice. In grade school, I dreaded the art teacher but later could do well enough in photography because my eyesight tends towards the two-dimensional. That made it fearsome to drive on many laned highways. In fact I could drive anywhere in Minneapolis and St. Paul without taking a freeway. I don't think eyeglasses helped because of the muscle limitation.

Image by Ben Schonewille @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I refrained from repairing an old car before I moved from the metro area. It was really because, with express buses in Minneapolis, I found public transportation more relaxing and a better prelude to a workday. Riding home was good for reflection. Reading on the bus, then using a tablet and next, a smart phone made that time useful.

I was the first of my peers to get involved with a car. In high school, I drove our Volkswagon two hours on Saturdays to Minneapolis for flute lessons, taking 35 W, a flat, straight trip. A week after I graduated from college, I bought a car. 

While at my first job in Minneapolis, I began using public transportation. At 7:00 in the morning, I didn't feel like driving some days. It became the best alternative, I decided a few years later while trawling for a parking place near the University of Minnesota. There were other benefits. In the winter, I didn't have to warm up a car or sit on a freezing car seat. A few minutes waiting at a bus stop seemed less jolting. Especially if the bus was a good route. 

Image by Sicha Pongjivanich @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What I finally disliked was the dependence on a car. With less car repair, I noticed the general dependence and the constant issue of parking. Walking was my main exercise so I didn't mind walking to a bus stop. I knew there weren't many people on my sidewalks at the time, so not many who could identify, which made those thoughts fuel for fiction. Two of my short stories in the collection Curiosity Killed the Sphinx dealt with car issues.

Image by Ben Schonewille @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I realized that others might, if they stopped driving some of the time, enjoy riding. The setback is that our public transportation isn't often suited to a pleasant trip. If in places like the Midwest, there were more of a demand for public transportation, it might become more comfortable, especially for commuters. This year, a few electric buses have been introduced up here and apart from their being the newest, they are no different for the rider.

After the successful campaign against cigarette smoking, and with the statistic from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency - 52 percent of outdoor air pollution in Minnesota comes from vehicles such as cars and trucks - a similar campaign could be launched. Yet I believe that if people tried using their cars less, some might prefer the change. Car-pooling is usually less dangerous than driving alone. If many made the switch, it would lessen the climate issue in the atmosphere.

Influences of the Farm Crisis and Its Recovery

Like many mid-westerners, I visited a farmer relative as a child. The farm was about ten miles from our small city and the relative was Norwegian, not a bachelor. One never forgets the barn, the tree swing with long ropes, the roomy breezy house, and the fields spread around. 

An early 1900's photo of the farmhouse I visited

Our relative and his wife used to visit us in town, and there, they were obviously relaxing on the couch, observing us on their day off. Then, there was joking about farmers coming in, their stalwart, contracted speech, and their clothing styles. Some drove in on tractors, slowing traffic. Yet everyone loved visiting the farm. People drove to outdoor markets and to dairies for eggs and butter because the quality and prices were better.

We went to college, to the city, and heard in the 1980's how the farms were foreclosing. About that time, I learned with sadness that my elderly cousin sold his farm. I'd frequented my first food co-op near the “farm” campus of the University of Minnesota, in St. Paul. After that, I found the closest co-op in other neighborhoods. They were like corner stores when the corner stores were closing. Farmers markets in downtown Minneapolis were festive. But things were changing.

The farming losses had an effect on me. My children's novel, Josiah's Apple Orchard, was revised from a fantasy into a realistic story. (I liked one reviewer saying that it had a “surrealistic feel.”) At the time, I couldn't see the answer to an orchard of specialty apples when in the 1960's, Delicious apples reigned at the supermarket. The foreclosures, though, were fueling an environmental movement that I would be watching. It would have dramatic success.

While I wrote Tug of the Wishbone two decades later, foods free from pesticides and unnatural treatment of animals expanded from farmers' markets and co-ops into the supermarkets. A supermarket began with a corner in the produce section marked “Organic.” The section widened and new organic brands began to fill the aisles. 

 

Image by tawatchai @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mainstream shoppers are now given choice as information reaches them. In the 1990's, the conditions of corporate farms were suppressed. Driving in the countryside, one had to wonder at the animal warehouses appearing while facts about the lack of pasture time leaked out. Humane farming costs more, especially for the farmer, but the demand for it has resulted in a quiet revolution. Mealtimes now retain traditional organic farm foods and are also transformed with new menus. Just as products are advertised in a graded system of their own, the grading of farming methods and animal treatment streams into consumer awareness.

Image by Simon Howden @ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When some news seems to stultify, this seemingly grassroots movement had swept the nation. Even today with the challenges of flooding and tariffs, it shows how courage and persistence can result in a successful environmental story. Writing in the midst of that inspired my fiction and poetry.

Looking for used books for my eBay store, I know that readers still visit the farm in novels as I did with favorite authors - Thomas Hardy (Far From the Madding Crowd), D. H. Lawrence (The Rainbow), Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm), Willa Cather's novels, Katherine Anne Porter's short stories about Texas, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, to name a few. Collectible editions of books with farm settings catch my eye and they don't stay long on my used book shelves. It's another warning that farmers and their stories shouldn't be taken for granted.

Land Found by the Self-taught and Audiobook Island

There are taught and self-taught methods for learning, depending on a person's desire to explore. Sometimes I imagine being brought up with the internet. Exploring. Rather than a library of books, there are myriads. As a child, I went from authors to genres in my search, fairytale, animal novels, magic, and finally mystery. Few juvenile books are made into movies. I'm sure audiobooks would attract a younger me like islands viewed from land.

So I released my first audiobook, TheWide Awake Loons, narrated by Aven Shore. Promo codes for the free book can be requested at Message on its Facebook page.

One thing I learned from memorizing Peter Rabbit so that I could point at each word was that my four older siblings and my parents weren't all that interested in picture books. The advice for relationships is to find joint interests. Pictures with headlines came daily in the newspaper and weekly in Look, Life, and Time magazines. Sitting next to someone on the couch, I picked up words like flood, ice cream, or win and won accompanying pictures of local basketball stars. 

 

Drawn on as a reader, I was eventually forbidden to use my allowance money on comic books, Superman and Archie bought at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket. No more tilting graphics. What if there had been audiobooks to give a children's novel more sensation? Reading and watching movies don't go together. Reading along with an audiobook would feel like a shared experience and give a sense of involvement.

A reading specialist explained findings in a Scholastic article “Why Audiobooks Are Great for Kids”:

“She’ll be able to delve deeper into complicated topics and listen to better-quality books than she might find at her own level. That exposure strengthens comprehension skills,  particularly for children who have reading difficulties, says [Mary Beth] Crosby Carroll [reading specialist].”

Here are statistics from a The Booklist Reader article, “New Research Shows Audiobooks Have Powerful Impact on Literacy Development”:

Listening to audiobooks:
• Increases reading accuracy by 52%
• Improves comprehension by 76%
• Increases recall 40% when combined with print materials (vs. print alone)

The first audiobook I heard was in a set of Tolkien, found at a book sale. That was wonderful since I read all of his fantasy series. And I actually preferred the audiobooks to some of the movie material.

Ever since the VHS movies became available, I have found that I can switch from books to another medium as easily as anyone. I've realized that story is all for me. However I continue as a used book dealer to explore and buy books that are new to me, even when they are decades old.

Audio is sometimes silent hearing so it is a part of reading. I hadn't expected to read the ancient historian Herodotus until I was savoring a voice with the rare quality of Socrates in Plato's Republic. Then I wanted to find out how Herodotus achieved his travels north to Thrace, east to Persia, and south down the Nile in a dangerous time. At Google Books I found an “imaginary biography”, written in the 1850's. I hadn't planned to read much of that either but once I got started with the author James Talboys Wheeler, I couldn't put it down. Scenes with dialogue and description enhanced the ancient world. That happens when exploring. Subject is land where, if a person disembarks, they might stay awhile. How much better to experience it in more than one dimension.

My new cat Irene, a Maine coon mix, was a rescue from the North Woods resort region. This winter she is ten months and responding to “Wild Sounds of the Northwoods” by Lang Elliott and Ted Mack. As if this tape was made to be a cat audiobook. Cats are among the greatest of animal explorers!