Monthly Archives: August 2009

My first radio show on High Plains Public Radio is up and ready! You can listen to the podcast or visit the the HPPR page featuring the show. Here’s the text of the show, highlighting Denise Low, poet laureate of Kansas from 2007-09, including seeing her poem, “Place,” along with a writing prompt you can try on your own, and then share your response below. For more on these writing prompts, please see the Write From Your Life pages.

For those of us who live here, the word “Place” brings to mind expansive vistas unfolding all directions DeniseLow and a whole lot of sky. In a sense, you could say that when it comes to place, we have front row seats to one of the biggest views in the country. No wonder that many writers from this region aim their writing toward place, asking not just what a certain place looks like but what living in this place says about those of us who live here. Denise Low, past Poet Laureate of Kansas and a writer known for in-depth poetry and essays on place and the Great Plains, often mixes memory and observations of particular places and places in time to illuminate where we live. In her poem, “Place,” she begins with a larger view of eagles landing and then funnels down to our most local home, the bodies in which we live.

Low is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, anthologies, and a collection of essays called Touching the Sky. She teaches at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas She brings to her writing perspective from being a 5th generation Kansan of mixed German, British, and unaffiliated Lenape (Delaware) and Cherokee heritage. Listen to the questions she asks in this provocative poem:

Place

Is it the eagles returning to Lecompton, Old Eagle town,

that stretch of lookout cottonwoods on the Kaw River,

or is it the rivers we measure towns by,

where we wait for flood and drought tides?

Or finding my grandfather during a storm,

clouds and lightning and his face by the window?

Is it the house I grew up in,

the way sun slanted through the front window,

warm bars of winter dust and light?

Is it the locus inside a muddy muscle,

the heart squeezing rivelets of blood

again, again, again?

One of the great gifts of living here is that all of us have stories about what place has been, is and could be to us, whether it’s memories of panoramic storms, quiet moments watching “warm bars of winter dust and light” or stories of “flood and drought tides.” For this month’s writing exercise, please put aside thoughts of grammar, spelling or making sense momentarily and, using Low’s poem as a prompt, ask questions about what place is. Start with the phrase, “Is it the….” and then fill in the blanks, drawing from moments you’ve lived.

Lately, I’ve been thinking how much of life is not the way I think. This summer, for example, has sported weather more akin to Portland, Oregon or Montpelier, Vermont than Lawrence, Kansas (not that I’m complaining about highs in the low 80s and lots of rain). Our kitty cat, Hideki, recently vanished outside (when he’s supposedly an indoor cat), and as much as we look and call out for him, he doesn’t reappear like I think he will (at least, not yet). Then there’s my children, all the jobs I’ve ever owned, all the cars I’ve ever driven, all the physical ailments I’ve suffered, and all the losses and joys: most of them not the way I thought they would be. In truth, life is more like a quirky yard sale down the block where you might find iron sculptures of clows on horseback or soup bowls painted like leopard skin far more than life is like an orderly department store full of stacks of neatly-folded shirts in various sizes.

I remember when a friend of mine and her partner, having a year before adopted a newborn girl, found a message on their answering machine that simply stated, “Would you like the brother?” (who was just born). My friend joyfully said, after picking up her new son, “Life has more imagination than us.” Thank heavens for that, in celebration of how life is not the way we think, I invite you to try out the following:

Option 1:

1. Make a list of at least 20 experiences you’ve had in your life that didn’t turn how you thought they would (it might be difficult to just list 20, so feel free to list more than that if you want). Your list can contain the mundane (”the garlic mashed potatoes didn’t taste garlicky”) or the profound (”childbirth was so much more painful and joyful than I imagined).
2. Pick the one item off your list that seems to call to you the most at this moment because it seems especially intriguing to you for whatever reason.
3. Write about what you expected and then what happened. Pay close attention to sensory description — what you could taste, see, hear, touch and smell.

Option 2: Using the phrase, “I used to think…….but now…….” fill in the blanks. Then repeat and fill in those blanks, and keep going until you have a long list of “I used to think…..but now…” For example, mine might look like:

I used to think pulling weeds in early August would still be worth it, but now I know to just admire the jungle and drink more iced tea.

I used to think camping in winter was exotic, but now I love down and a good book on icy nights.

I used to believe whatever old wounds I carried would one day dissolve to nothing, but now I know they’re the compost on my messy winter garden.

Please feel free to post your excursions below, and share comments about others’ writing.

Yesterday I went to the funeral for Cal Albert, my tax guy of some 20 years, a sharp-as-a-tact conservative Republican with a distinguished military record, an articulate distaste for where this country is headed, a wife he cooked and cared for, and several cats the size of big possums. In many ways — except for the love of cats and growing irises — Cal and I were as different as could be, yet I loved him, and our annual visits were sweet annual ceremonies of tax forms, C-SPAN in the background, and catching up on each other’s families. He didn’t have to do my or anyone’s taxes, especially in his later years, but I think he liked visiting with people, and also helping us too. For my part, I just figured someone with his political bent would be far better at keeping the government from getting any excess taxes from me than anyone else.

We talked about cancer (both of ours), car accidents that shook up and almost caused irreparable damage in our families, how our kids and his grandkids (and great-grandkids) were doing, the outrageous cost of college, the stupidity of George W and before that, the embarrassment of Bill Clinton (although one of us, and that wasn’t Cal, largely supported Clinton’s policies), why it was a bad or good year for tulips and daffodils, and how the tax code kept outpacing itself in new records for sheer confusion and idiocy.

In many ways, we brought to each other’s lives the opposite of the usual suspects, but our political differences made little difference. I was excited when Cal was honored as Kansas Republican of the year, and he was thrilled what I was named Poet Laureate of Kansas. He knew my children, and their social security numbers, childcare expenses or, later, earnings, and college ambitions. I knew some of what he was planning to plant in the vegetable garden this year, and lately, how — being the engineer he was — when he was teaching himself to cook, he would line up all the ingredients on the kitchen counter precisely, but when he turned his head, his wife (suffering from some memory loss) would hide a pepper or tomato, and he would have to retrieve it and put it back into formation.

Last time we talked, Cal told me, with his usual slight tilt of the head and wink, “Looks like the beast may be back,” referring to his bout with cancer. We both nodded and agreed he would just have to fight it off the beast back again. When I saw the obituary in the paper, which I had to read twice and then read aloud to Ken, it was clear the beast came back with a vengeance.

Cal, at 84 years old, died earlier this week. At his funeral, while his daughter, and then his son, told stories of his intelligence, commitment to using everything life gave you to learn something new, and dry wit, I could see some of his 21 great-grandchild talking or crying in the side room, a room that held the real legacy of Cal. I wish for his enormous family and especially his wife all manner of comfort, and I wish for Cal, wherever he is now, that he’s surrounded by the same warmth, humor, and care that he showed people like me all his life.