There was a time when I had next to no experience of the rural life of my home state, North Dakota. During college years (1968-1972), I had learned to stack bales on a wagon and to make a haystack with the bales on the rolling hills above Lake Lida, for farmer Cliff Hanson, but that was in Minnesota. As a child, I had no hankering to live a rural life either, or even live in a small town. I would come to have experience of rural life.
After college graduation in December 1972, I accepted a position as a replacement teacher in Neche, North Dakota, for January 1973. I remember getting off the Greyhound Bus in Pembina and hitchhiking into town with a very beautiful but forlorn woman who knew Neche first hand and knew the address where I had quarters with another teacher. I never saw her again but her kindness in helping me out is not forgotten. I enjoyed my students but felt totally detached from the community and was not even sure there was a community. Fellow teachers left Neche to have a social life in a neighboring town at a bar. I thought then I was not meant for life in a small town.
When the quarter at Neche public school ended, I returned to Fargo-Moorhead and went to work in a farm store where I worked with another young man, Dennis Gerger (a friend from Moorhead State University). He lived in Barnesville, Minnesota, where he was raised on his father's very prosperous farm. As a town kid, I had to admit small talk with farmers was a stretch for me. I was selling them plow shovels, harrow teeth, and harvester blades with only a mental image of the equipment the part fit into.
Dennis on the other hand knew exactly what the part was. He was into history and sparkled when he talked about his family heritage. His ancestors were German immigrants to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great because of their agricultural acumen. Later in time, his grandparents had fled the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 for the United States.
I remember attending Dennis's marriage to Julie in southeastern North Dakota. I did not think I was headed for small town life such as Julie and Dennis knew. I married that summer myself to a sweetheart from Carrington, North Dakota, Jean Bronaugh.
Even though I would go to law school in 1974-1975 at the University of North Dakota, I would end up in really small town North Dakota as a rural English teacher. At the end of first year law, I was busted up having worked two jobs in addition to attending class with a really low grade in Property Law and seemingly little prospect of finishing my professional degree. Wife Jean had to do almost all the child care and housekeeping when our first child Kendra was born that year while I kept going out the door to work or to the law library and class. We did not have an easy year to say the least.
Fortunately after the harshness of first year law, I was asked to interview for a position teaching English in a rural village, Grace City, North Dakota. It was the best thing for me it turns out as I came to know the land which is my home state and to garden prodigiously (until wife Jean could not stand canning another thing). The people of the school district were welcoming and kind. We joined the local Lutheran Church and I served as a trustee and Sunday school teacher. The three years in Grace City for me were very heartening.
At this point in time, it has been years since I physically lived in North Dakota. The keepsakes I have are the poems that capture for me the experience of the land, the people, and the the thoughts and feelings of living on the great plains in my native state.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Poets Against the War
In 2003 I was so fortunate to hear of a poetry reading of Poets Against the War and then later to attend this poetry reading in downtown St. Paul. In attendance among others was Robert Bly. This reading convened poets to read poems of their own, or another, against the war mongering which was rampant in the run up to the Iraq War. Similar readings were held elsewhere in our country for the same purpose. I subsequently purchased Samuel Hamill's collection of the poetry he anthologized at that time by Poets against the war.
The country seemed caught up in jingoism at the time but not everyone bought into that popular sentiment to go invade Iraq. I recall first lady Laura Bush disinvited poets to the White House when she learned of anti-war sentiments that were rife in the literary community.
One observation I would make is that poets, even the most political of us, are unlikely to set out to write anti-war poems. I remember writing an anti-war poem as a young man as a language experiment. It is the least successful of poems except as an experiment but even that contains concern for the youth offered up as cannon fodder.
Poets of anti-war verse more likely are caught up in the moment by an underlying concern or passion about our fellow humans. Poems I wrote later in life that can be characterized as anti-war are a product of concern for my country and the human race. These poems ended up in a collection of my own anti-war poems (available upon email request to this blogger).
The country seemed caught up in jingoism at the time but not everyone bought into that popular sentiment to go invade Iraq. I recall first lady Laura Bush disinvited poets to the White House when she learned of anti-war sentiments that were rife in the literary community.
One observation I would make is that poets, even the most political of us, are unlikely to set out to write anti-war poems. I remember writing an anti-war poem as a young man as a language experiment. It is the least successful of poems except as an experiment but even that contains concern for the youth offered up as cannon fodder.
Poets of anti-war verse more likely are caught up in the moment by an underlying concern or passion about our fellow humans. Poems I wrote later in life that can be characterized as anti-war are a product of concern for my country and the human race. These poems ended up in a collection of my own anti-war poems (available upon email request to this blogger).
Editing my blog - thank you.
I am especially grateful to my brother, Joe Hilber, for being my reader. At his encouragement I have reworked my blog chiefly for paragraphing and emphasis purposes today. If you are a reader, please provide criticism and insight feedback. I cherish it and know my work product is thereby a living project.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Why History Lessons Have to be Honest
One of the revelations to me was how even my private school education and public college education had never covered the American subjugation of the Phillipino independence movement prior to and during the Spanish American War and into the Theodore Roosevelt Presidency. My country hunted down (like a dog) the George Washington of the Phillipines, Emilio Aguinaldo.
Had that history been taught us and those who conducted the Vietnam War before us, perhaps we would have chosen a different path.
My country can not even claim its paternalistic rule of the Phillipines protected it from the hegemony of other world powers because Congress never funded meaningful defense of the Phillipines from Japanese invasion in 1941 and subsequently the Phillipines were occupied. The lesson of that of course is that colonialism like slavery is part of our past, but it should not be part of the legacy we bequest to future generations.
Had the past White House occupants seriously considered a paternalistic sponsorship of foreign governments (i.e. that of Saddam Hussein as our proxie in his war against Iran) and in other instances occupation of them as counter-productive to our national interest (i.e. that of present day Iraq), the lessons of the Phillipino would have been honored.
Had that history been taught us and those who conducted the Vietnam War before us, perhaps we would have chosen a different path.
My country can not even claim its paternalistic rule of the Phillipines protected it from the hegemony of other world powers because Congress never funded meaningful defense of the Phillipines from Japanese invasion in 1941 and subsequently the Phillipines were occupied. The lesson of that of course is that colonialism like slavery is part of our past, but it should not be part of the legacy we bequest to future generations.
Had the past White House occupants seriously considered a paternalistic sponsorship of foreign governments (i.e. that of Saddam Hussein as our proxie in his war against Iran) and in other instances occupation of them as counter-productive to our national interest (i.e. that of present day Iraq), the lessons of the Phillipino would have been honored.
Literature, a Window on our Nation's Past
My discussion here is of three novels that are today no longer part of the high school curriculum (if you know otherwise please let me know). High school students are often not asked to reflect on our rich national and regional heritage when it involves harsh realities and difficult topics and concerns.
An October 2 posting to this blog referenced Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn as an example of literature not welcomed in many literature classes in our public schools. I know this particular book requires treatment of sensitive issues of our national origin in slavery and discrimination. Teaching this particular book in a rascist community is a daunting challenge. Some censors fear this particular selection because it dwells on 19th Century stereotypes and attitudes. The fact Mark Twain was satirizing the stereotypes and attitudes is not in purview of these censors. Twain's methods make this novel a senior high selection in which discussion of his methods and the effectiveness of those methods are the work of the English teacher to clarify and to gauge.
I know some think we live in post-rascist America, but that is only by degrees true. If we can not tell the truth to our children about our nation's progress up from our baser conduct they will have no view of the work in front of them to do.
I remember as a young teacher being told that John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath could not be used for American Literature (this supposedly because of a parental complaint about its vulgar, profane dialogue). My students benefitted from the book in terms of understanding dislocation of farm families and rural poverty but also that all people are to be respected and legitimized in their quest for life and prosperity. It was still apropos in 1980s North Dakota which shared in the out-migration of farm families that was the 20th Century history of the Great Plains.
The curriculum which includes the Grapes of Wrath should include O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth which chronicled the 1870s in Dakota Territory and the lives of pioneers in the harshness of their new land (specifically the tragedy of husband and wife, Per and Beret Hansa) . This work in translation did not have the idiom of American English as spoken by pioneers but it was also like Steinbeck's novel brutally honest.
One topic of Rolvaag's novel, rural farm wife isolation, was such an important topic in the life of the communities I first taught school in, but the community attitude was not to talk about suicides and mental ailments, and only in an off hand way talk about isolation. Education has to be about opening even the taboo topics in a timely fashion with our children. Today's parents and educators have to deal with taboo topics, such as homosexuality. Our schools have to be safe places for all children.
I encourage all parents who would be educators and supporters of education to open the mind of their child and especially their teenager to the past as a window on our future (or perhaps a future to be avoided). Teaching American Literature in conjunction with U.S. History is and should be considered true underpinning to civics especially when so many of the citizens of tomorrow are the children of immigrant families who learn English and democracy as our common language and idiom.
An October 2 posting to this blog referenced Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn as an example of literature not welcomed in many literature classes in our public schools. I know this particular book requires treatment of sensitive issues of our national origin in slavery and discrimination. Teaching this particular book in a rascist community is a daunting challenge. Some censors fear this particular selection because it dwells on 19th Century stereotypes and attitudes. The fact Mark Twain was satirizing the stereotypes and attitudes is not in purview of these censors. Twain's methods make this novel a senior high selection in which discussion of his methods and the effectiveness of those methods are the work of the English teacher to clarify and to gauge.
I know some think we live in post-rascist America, but that is only by degrees true. If we can not tell the truth to our children about our nation's progress up from our baser conduct they will have no view of the work in front of them to do.
I remember as a young teacher being told that John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath could not be used for American Literature (this supposedly because of a parental complaint about its vulgar, profane dialogue). My students benefitted from the book in terms of understanding dislocation of farm families and rural poverty but also that all people are to be respected and legitimized in their quest for life and prosperity. It was still apropos in 1980s North Dakota which shared in the out-migration of farm families that was the 20th Century history of the Great Plains.
The curriculum which includes the Grapes of Wrath should include O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth which chronicled the 1870s in Dakota Territory and the lives of pioneers in the harshness of their new land (specifically the tragedy of husband and wife, Per and Beret Hansa) . This work in translation did not have the idiom of American English as spoken by pioneers but it was also like Steinbeck's novel brutally honest.
One topic of Rolvaag's novel, rural farm wife isolation, was such an important topic in the life of the communities I first taught school in, but the community attitude was not to talk about suicides and mental ailments, and only in an off hand way talk about isolation. Education has to be about opening even the taboo topics in a timely fashion with our children. Today's parents and educators have to deal with taboo topics, such as homosexuality. Our schools have to be safe places for all children.
I encourage all parents who would be educators and supporters of education to open the mind of their child and especially their teenager to the past as a window on our future (or perhaps a future to be avoided). Teaching American Literature in conjunction with U.S. History is and should be considered true underpinning to civics especially when so many of the citizens of tomorrow are the children of immigrant families who learn English and democracy as our common language and idiom.
No Loss There
If you are anything like me, you probably have taken yourself too seriously. With maturity, that posture becomes less and less sustainable.
I remember the huge loss in my life when I realized I'd not become a priest (Roman Catholic). The Maryknoll Fathers who were my teachers actually prepared me for life outside the priesthood and were genuinely interested in my transition from the seminary life in which I felt at home. In hindsight, they helped me picture a life in which I would not be a priest.
One of the gifts to me was that of Father Sheridan who was my English teacher. In his class, I began to find in poetry and literature in general a broader world view of life than I had as yet formed. As a result, in college I became an English major. Like most English majors, I saw in the life of John Keats the romantic disposition. With time I even came to understand the huge loss he'd suffered in losing a future life with his true love, Fanny Brawne. As I suffered other losses in life, I began to realize the consolation that I found in poetry was linked closely with dealing with depression (not unlike Keats). I could obsess about the creation, a poem I was writing, instead of obsessing about my loss.
The connections was recently renewed when I saw the film Bright Star starring Ben Whishaw, written and directed by Jane Champion. It really hit me how the poem I'd written about John Keats and Fanny Brawne in my twenties and rewritten in maturity had gone from a placeholder kind of poem to a dramatic playlet within a playlet (one act essentially). I realized that had I not lived through all my losses I could not have managed to make art out of life the same as John Keats who managed it at such tender years. Had I died like Keats at age 23, I'd never have learned so deeply life's lessons of compassion and forgiveness of self as well. The mature poem makes light of the human condition and for me marks a passage from the youth who took himself too seriously to the adult who wants to be a player on life's stage. [1] I guess the benefit of living long is that I no longer take myself so seriously. No loss there!
[1] The profane dramatic poem The Allegorical Death of One John Keats is available upon request by making an email request to this blogger.
I remember the huge loss in my life when I realized I'd not become a priest (Roman Catholic). The Maryknoll Fathers who were my teachers actually prepared me for life outside the priesthood and were genuinely interested in my transition from the seminary life in which I felt at home. In hindsight, they helped me picture a life in which I would not be a priest.
One of the gifts to me was that of Father Sheridan who was my English teacher. In his class, I began to find in poetry and literature in general a broader world view of life than I had as yet formed. As a result, in college I became an English major. Like most English majors, I saw in the life of John Keats the romantic disposition. With time I even came to understand the huge loss he'd suffered in losing a future life with his true love, Fanny Brawne. As I suffered other losses in life, I began to realize the consolation that I found in poetry was linked closely with dealing with depression (not unlike Keats). I could obsess about the creation, a poem I was writing, instead of obsessing about my loss.
The connections was recently renewed when I saw the film Bright Star starring Ben Whishaw, written and directed by Jane Champion. It really hit me how the poem I'd written about John Keats and Fanny Brawne in my twenties and rewritten in maturity had gone from a placeholder kind of poem to a dramatic playlet within a playlet (one act essentially). I realized that had I not lived through all my losses I could not have managed to make art out of life the same as John Keats who managed it at such tender years. Had I died like Keats at age 23, I'd never have learned so deeply life's lessons of compassion and forgiveness of self as well. The mature poem makes light of the human condition and for me marks a passage from the youth who took himself too seriously to the adult who wants to be a player on life's stage. [1] I guess the benefit of living long is that I no longer take myself so seriously. No loss there!
[1] The profane dramatic poem The Allegorical Death of One John Keats is available upon request by making an email request to this blogger.
Before Us The Land of Milk and Honey
Many of us have survived the spiritual wasteland which America tends towards. We only want to die in peace knowing we have done our part to save our land from spiritual destruction. That's a bit premature for you and me though! I have to live out my life countering meaninglessness, despair, and hopelessness and if I have to die anytime soon even then not give up the struggle.
I hope my children will enter into the new age dawning for humankind. To me Barack Obama is our Joshua battling the forces of darkness while my generation becomes an aging Moses atop Mt. Nebo. One day it's likely my children will hope the same for their children and grandchildren. Is this part of what it means to be an American?
We in America live in the land of milk and honey (as far as the rest of the world is concerned). The promised land though at times is also a spiritual wasteland in which greed and materialism reduce all to shambles.
Occasionally, I reflect that I have lived my adult life outside the promised land of milk and honey (my perception) and deal with dreams and longings for better times (which may materialize and evaporate as they do for many of my fellow citizens).
Our spiritual rebirth is a necessary generational task which includes our escape from the enslavements of a rampant capitalism (the land of the rich for the rich and to hell with those who would mess with our rapacious acquisition of wealth). I do not say this to condemn capitalism, rather to curb and soften its excesses and provide respite from the spiritual impoverishment of my country.
Recently, through a Time magazine article, I realized that I have lived long enough at age 59 to see how I have participated in my writing in dialogue with American cultural mainstream.[1]
I have written unintentionally over time a sequence of poems[2] having to do with rebellion, quest, self-denial, want and exile with the Exodus story as the basic metaphor for the human condition.
[1] See specific observations noted in "How Moses Shaped America," Time, October 12, 2009, at 48-50, by Bruce Feiler (an adaptation by Bruce Feiler of his booklength exposition America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story).
[2]Poems in this sequence are available by email request to this blogger and are listed out here:
A Birth mother’s love
If the night watch should fail
Can I be so bereft of thee
Ephemeral flower of the dry hills
The Meandering path
Part I. Jackals and mirages
Part II. Moving on
Part III. Conspirators
Part IV. The Quest
Part V. The Scout
Tribute not sought
I hope my children will enter into the new age dawning for humankind. To me Barack Obama is our Joshua battling the forces of darkness while my generation becomes an aging Moses atop Mt. Nebo. One day it's likely my children will hope the same for their children and grandchildren. Is this part of what it means to be an American?
We in America live in the land of milk and honey (as far as the rest of the world is concerned). The promised land though at times is also a spiritual wasteland in which greed and materialism reduce all to shambles.
Occasionally, I reflect that I have lived my adult life outside the promised land of milk and honey (my perception) and deal with dreams and longings for better times (which may materialize and evaporate as they do for many of my fellow citizens).
Our spiritual rebirth is a necessary generational task which includes our escape from the enslavements of a rampant capitalism (the land of the rich for the rich and to hell with those who would mess with our rapacious acquisition of wealth). I do not say this to condemn capitalism, rather to curb and soften its excesses and provide respite from the spiritual impoverishment of my country.
Recently, through a Time magazine article, I realized that I have lived long enough at age 59 to see how I have participated in my writing in dialogue with American cultural mainstream.[1]
I have written unintentionally over time a sequence of poems[2] having to do with rebellion, quest, self-denial, want and exile with the Exodus story as the basic metaphor for the human condition.
[1] See specific observations noted in "How Moses Shaped America," Time, October 12, 2009, at 48-50, by Bruce Feiler (an adaptation by Bruce Feiler of his booklength exposition America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story).
[2]Poems in this sequence are available by email request to this blogger and are listed out here:
A Birth mother’s love
If the night watch should fail
Can I be so bereft of thee
Ephemeral flower of the dry hills
The Meandering path
Part I. Jackals and mirages
Part II. Moving on
Part III. Conspirators
Part IV. The Quest
Part V. The Scout
Tribute not sought
Friday, October 2, 2009
What is our connection to the earth?
At about the time I wrote Glebewise, the poem, I also wrote a short narrative poem entitled Radish about a peasant who kept the glebe fields of a medieval bishop.
I remember showing this narrative poem to one of my high school students. Today I marvel I took that risk given the realities of public school educators. I felt at the time that by my conduct in foisting the poem on a student with the intellect to understand it revealed questionable conduct on my part, and thereafter vowed never to share poems with any student again (I was a public school teacher and had no business sharing a position on the ecclesiastical conduct of the medieval church in Europe). I am reminded that our public schools are no place today for a liberal education - rather fettered mindcontrol or at least exclusionary content control.
There is no respect for the mind of child if you do not engage the child's mind in timely discussions of the import of historical human conduct. More about education and respect for intellectual growth of the child on another day and why Huckleberry Finn is not taught in today's public school curriculum.
[The poem Radish is available upon email request to this blogger.]
I remember showing this narrative poem to one of my high school students. Today I marvel I took that risk given the realities of public school educators. I felt at the time that by my conduct in foisting the poem on a student with the intellect to understand it revealed questionable conduct on my part, and thereafter vowed never to share poems with any student again (I was a public school teacher and had no business sharing a position on the ecclesiastical conduct of the medieval church in Europe). I am reminded that our public schools are no place today for a liberal education - rather fettered mindcontrol or at least exclusionary content control.
There is no respect for the mind of child if you do not engage the child's mind in timely discussions of the import of historical human conduct. More about education and respect for intellectual growth of the child on another day and why Huckleberry Finn is not taught in today's public school curriculum.
[The poem Radish is available upon email request to this blogger.]
Glebewise
I wrote a poem in my early 30s which I entitled Glebewise. At the time I was churched as a Lutheran and schooled in Catholicism. The imagery of the poem provides a layering of farm and village as well as community and family, but definitely about the context of our lives, literature, and symbolism. The poem is in multiple parts and has recently been edited. Here is an outline of this multi-part poem:
Glebewise
Part I. The Slough
Part II. Aqua pura
Part III. The Gardener
Part IV. A Reservoir
Part V. The Attic
Part VI. The Young exploding spring
Part VII. Flowering heads
Part VIII. The Glebe
Glebewise
Part I. The Slough
Part II. Aqua pura
Part III. The Gardener
Part IV. A Reservoir
Part V. The Attic
Part VI. The Young exploding spring
Part VII. Flowering heads
Part VIII. The Glebe
What is a glebe? In what Kingdom do you live?
My poetry (and this blog) is about the modernism of living off the land, its consequences and context. Today's sense of living off the land is ambiguous: do you mean beneficiary of the fruits of the earth or do you mean you live away from the farmland life. I live off the land in both senses.
I coined the compound glebewise to represent the wisdom inherent in learning to live on the land. I was a gardener at the time I coined the word.
The latin word glebe is now archaic language for a clod of earth or land. In medieval times, the word glebe was used to name a landstead dedicated for support of a parish priest including a house in which to live. The glebe of the parish could not be sold or alienated by attachment by any conduct of the parish priest (so creditors beware).
I know the responsibility of the human community is to persist in care for the land. We in the upper Mid-West like to underscore reminders of our earthbound dependency. We maintain the highest regard for the earth on which we are dependent.
In a similar vein, any theology which loses sight of our earthbound condition and therefore the essential materialism of our human condition is suspect for me. Midwesterners like myself typically consider a person of religious convictions is God-fearing. The reason that works is that even though we live in a republic of laws with democractic tendencies, we are personally governed by the rules of the Kingdom of God. As subjects in that Kingdom, we obey the laws of our King. Outside of that Kingdom is darkness and damnation for those without personal accountability.
Personally, my moral conduct is not dependent on whether there is a heaven or a hell, while it is enhanced by the prospect that if there be a God, God is love. We are called to the highest motivations in governing our conduct. The rub is in contemplation of the afterlife. I do not believe I can procure life everlasting by any conduct of mine. I do believe that failure to live my life governed by the rules of love is the same as hell on earth.
Belief in an afterlife of hell for the damned strikes me as a theology of consequence for those over whom a religion does not hold sway (at least and unless there is made an affirmation of the religion in a deathbed confession). There is enough fearful in our condition without terrorizing people with belief in a vengeful god. I persist in saying if there be a heaven or hell in the afterlife, it is the domain and provenance of God and not of humankind if it be so.
I coined the compound glebewise to represent the wisdom inherent in learning to live on the land. I was a gardener at the time I coined the word.
The latin word glebe is now archaic language for a clod of earth or land. In medieval times, the word glebe was used to name a landstead dedicated for support of a parish priest including a house in which to live. The glebe of the parish could not be sold or alienated by attachment by any conduct of the parish priest (so creditors beware).
I know the responsibility of the human community is to persist in care for the land. We in the upper Mid-West like to underscore reminders of our earthbound dependency. We maintain the highest regard for the earth on which we are dependent.
In a similar vein, any theology which loses sight of our earthbound condition and therefore the essential materialism of our human condition is suspect for me. Midwesterners like myself typically consider a person of religious convictions is God-fearing. The reason that works is that even though we live in a republic of laws with democractic tendencies, we are personally governed by the rules of the Kingdom of God. As subjects in that Kingdom, we obey the laws of our King. Outside of that Kingdom is darkness and damnation for those without personal accountability.
Personally, my moral conduct is not dependent on whether there is a heaven or a hell, while it is enhanced by the prospect that if there be a God, God is love. We are called to the highest motivations in governing our conduct. The rub is in contemplation of the afterlife. I do not believe I can procure life everlasting by any conduct of mine. I do believe that failure to live my life governed by the rules of love is the same as hell on earth.
Belief in an afterlife of hell for the damned strikes me as a theology of consequence for those over whom a religion does not hold sway (at least and unless there is made an affirmation of the religion in a deathbed confession). There is enough fearful in our condition without terrorizing people with belief in a vengeful god. I persist in saying if there be a heaven or hell in the afterlife, it is the domain and provenance of God and not of humankind if it be so.
Origin of Blog Title
Long years ago I shared a portfolio of my poems with a dear friend from my youth. She wanted to know the origen of the title I used, "Glebewise." I told her it was a compound word I'd fashioned. My understanding of "glebe" was that it was a clod of earth. I later learned it was dedicated land for support of the person who kept the church grounds and lands and probably the housing for this peasant. See my next blog for more about the context of my writing this blog and my poetry.
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