Ken Burns' Dust Bowl premiere

People with grit

Seventy-seven years ago was "Black Sunday" when the worst dust storm of the Dust Bowl devastated the Oklahoma Panhandle and adjoining states. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=blacksunday

Black Sunday, 60 mph turning day to night

Ironically and appropriately, we attended the first screening of famed documentarian Ken Burns' "Dust Bowl" film at the Oklahoma History Center last  night. It was pouring rain when we arrived.

Burns speaking
last night

Burns, producer of the Civil War series, National Parks, and other documentaries, is on a promotional tour, and OETA http://www.oeta.tv/ and the Oklahoma Historical Society    http://www.okhistory.org/  teamed up to bring him here.  We watched five segments of the four-hour-long program which will air in Nov ember on OETA , and it brought tears and pride and stunned astonishment.You can see some clips of the film on his website: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/

We got to go thanks to former student Ashley Barcum who is communications director for OETA. There was a huge crowd, including politicos.

It was typical Burns' excellence. He and his team interviewed hundreds of people and did extensive research. Some of the photos and videos had not been published before. But it's not dry history, it's part of the emotion that makes Oklahoma what it is.  Burns and his crew went to Guymon today--leaving at 5 a.m., to show the clips and give copies of entire interviews with many of the people who were in the film. He sadly noted that four of those have already passed on.

More astounding was the fact that people in the audience knew the people in the film. One woman was from Hardesty and lived through it with her neighbors. Another said, "That's my mother." The stories kept rolling, and Burns quipped that he felt like the story wasn't done yet. Here's a clip of some of his comments. 

Listening to Burns talk made me want to get out my notepad and take notes. OETA newsman and friend Dick Pryor had a 45 minute interview with him that will air in November also. Dick said Ken almost talks in poetry. 

Here is one comment that stood out: "Memory is not past tense. It's present tense. So is history." If you doubted that, it wouldn't last. Someone asked to see the hands of the people in the crowd of about 200 who had been through the dust bowl and knew someone who did...Most of the hands in the room went up.

Seeing this work makes you proud to be an Okie. This was all the more real to me since I recently returned from Black Mesa, Boise City--heart of the dust Bowl and prominent in the film--and Guymon. 

The Oklahoma Historical Society says Associated Press staff writer Robert Geiger coined the phrase "dust bowl" in an article the day after the April 14th storm.  He and photographer Harry G. Eisenhard were overtaken by the storm six miles from Boise City, and were forced to wait two hours before returning to town. He wrote an article that appeared in the Lubbock Evening Journal the next day, which began: “Residents of the southwestern dust bowl marked up another black duster today…” Another article, published the next day, included the following: “Three little words… rule life in the dust bowl of the continent – ‘if it rains’.” 

Much of that area is still almost desolate, and sparsely populated. The people who live there have real "grit," and not the kind that they survived in the Dust Bowl. Here are a couple of shots I took when passing through, in addition to those windmills I've been painting.

Boise City, Cimarron County Courthouse

Gone and forgotten

Vacant land

At the end of the presentation, History Center head honcho Dr. Bob Blackburn presented a Woody Guthrie poster to Burns. Guthrie is in the film. It's appropriate that Guthrie, whose 100th birthday Oklahoma is celebrating this year, wrote about Black Sunday:  
“A dust storm hit, an’ it hit like thunder;
It dusted us over, an’ it covered us under;
Blocked out the traffic and blocked out the sun,
Straight for home all the people did run,
Singin’:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-getting’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.”


Before the presentation, a volunteer, Theresa Black, entertained the crowd with her guitar and singing, including this Guthrie song.

Here's another person's You Tube program. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csnY0Tnvdj8

Grapes of Wrath--Dust Bowl Future

Dust Bowl Future, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140# Fabriano Artistico

The Dust Bowl Future looms on humanity's horizon like Black Sunday did in the Dust Bowl Depression.
 Read Mr. Steinbeck's opening lines in "Grapes of Wrath"--

•     "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale pink in the red country and white in the gray country....
•    "The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was  a raw sting in the air....
•    "In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth."

"We will see this again," I thought," forgetting the lessons of that man-made disaster," and starting painting, from the gut. 

Humanity is inhumanely writing its obituary, its extinction notice. 
Science, and detailed books about mass extinctions, and politicos ignoring factual science about climate change, spurring contempt for any regard for our planet's health turned my thoughts to the opening paragraphs of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

Just nine years from now--in about 2026--wars will be probably be fought over water and food, not oil, and exploding populations and increasing heat will turn much of the earth brown, with coastlines swamped under rising oxygen-dead oceans.
As the politicos have no concern for  the future, only lining their corporate pockets with more greed, at my age I don't have much to worry about. But my children and grandchildren do.

This is not "dystopian." (I had to look that word up the first time I heard it. It isn't pretty) Facts--2026--Ten billion people, less water, less farmland, less food, less water, fewer jobs. Chinese will be the most spoken language. Islam will be the largest religion. 
Unless there is a pandemic, or a nuclear war, it will happen because the leaders of the world's most powerful country are trying to speed up the process, ignoring science, attacking the environment, to make a quick buck. 
Best single example, of many,  is  Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA...the fox in charge of the hen house. He's a foe of environment because his puppet strings are pulled by big corporations, big energy and others  like the Koch Bros., who want to rape the earth to make more money, screwing the future of the middle class and poor.

 We have passed the tipping point of turning the process around where humans can survive on earth. This isn't politics. This is science.
Don't believe it? It's happened before. Don't agree with it? You didn't live in the Dust Bowl, or study it,  did you?
Thus the vision of this painting...more to come.

Red dirt, blood, titles and words

There are two new books out by Oklahoma poets that will stir your blood and brains, but in different ways. The common ground is Oklahoma and  pain.

"Subterranean Red" by Kathleen Johnson combines some old black and white photos and stories of Oklahoma people and the landscape; and "Red Fields" by Jason Poudrier of Rush Springs, a young Iraqi war vet now in Lawton, links Oklahoma and the war.

Both are recently published by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish of Mongrel Empire Press http://www.mongrelempire.org .

Johnson, an Oklahoma Cherokee-Scot-Irish, lives in Santa Fe. The book is all Oklahoma, from its section on "Mixed Blood Memories" to stories from the "Cimarron Breaks." You're traveling into deep Oklahoma in these pages.

From "The Apothecary of Minerva Best: "I know home.
It is as red a place, I remember
... .
"So I find solace in sunsets,
dying embers of a fire,
the mud beneath my feet."

Another, "Three Generations of Cherokee Women: A Portrait," is biographical beside an old photo of the author, her mother and grandmother. Choice lines:
"...But her hands look like
they've wrung a thousand chicken necks;... ."
"...My mother, as always, tries
to look pretty--and succeeds, as always,
though squinting into Oklahoma sun."

From "Spring Pilgrimage to Tahlequah":
"...I listen hard  for
stories never told.
All I hear is
 thunder."

From "Dust Bowl Diary" comes my favorite image, even before seeing Ken Burns' documentary this weekend:
"...After a while, everything
seems the color of vermin,
the color of moths--
dirty wash pinned to the clothesline,
... .
This spring, no lilacs;
no luster left in Mother's eyes."

This is a book for Okie travelers seeking the Okie spirit, including poems on the Freedom, Oklahoma rodeo; Alabaster Caverns, Tornado warning: and movement into the city, Yukon and Warr Acres.

And perhaps the most haunting is "FFA Jacket," about her father, intensely personal and painful, concludes with these lines about the onetime national FFA president:
"...Dad standing in the middle of it all,
looking as he always has,
so utterly alone."

That ought to hook you to get the book.

 A red fedora and attitude

I can't get away from the Dust Bowl, and we can't escape either. I heard this next author   read at the First Sunday Poetry Reading at Beans and Leaves Coffee shop http://www.facebook.com/BeansandLeaves April 1, thanks to fireball and pistol Dorothy Alexander--a poet with a red fedora and attitude.  Alexander's books of poetry include "The Dust Bowl Revisited," "Borrowed Dust," and "Rough Drafts," and her most recent poetry book, "Lessons From an Oklahoma Girlhood". http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=250972279998 

Passion and pain
Poudrier's writes about a different dust bowl--Iraq, and his poetry comes in three parts, "Post Theater","While We We Waiting" and "Welcome to Iraq." Some sound routine, like "Fort Sill's New Housing Division," and "Black Angus Watermelon," which proves you can write poetry about anything if you have talent and passion, and he does. PTSD saturates the book like Oklahoma humidity. Included are black and white snapshots from Iraq.

From the poem about watermelons:
"The flies cover the bodies
on the Iraqi fields like the backs of black Angus,
but their muscles never jerk,...."

From "Red Fields":
"My feet sink
into the Barnesstilled soil
of my father-in-law's
Oklahoma land
reminding me of times
before I met his daughter
when I drove along
in a tank convoy
towards Bagdad
at the same pace as a tractor
over an unplowed field."

Others are more haunting, like "A Corpse Walked into the Bus Station Today."
"His arms swung his clenched fists
with purpose as he marched in,
stomping his left, dragging his right,
surrounded by ash.
He hadn't been dead long;"

One of my favorite phrases is  from "Convoy": "At ten miles an hour on a beach with no ocean...."

He also shows the human cost of war on the civilians, from "Iraqis":
"No,
they are not terrorists.
They stare at our convoy,
with food,
without home,
with hollow,
instinctual,
sand-dulled
eyes."

This is a courageous, disturbing book, telling stories that need to be told for Oklahomans and Americans and Iraqis. It should gather national attention, for showing the truth of war in its toll on those involved.

Oklahoma Dust Bowl, watercolor challenge

"Dust Bowl Oklahoma," 5 by 7 watercolor, 300 Lb. d'Arches

"I got them dust bowl blues..."

                                                                                          --Woody Guthrie

"...a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk..."

                                           --Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck

Today's painting, and my thoughts, in the Oklahoma series probably won't be the favorite of any one, except me, but the watercolor crosses into what I think art should be ... more than a pretty picture, something that tells a story, that "means" and is relevant.

Oklahomans today seem to  forget and ignore what our families went through in the Great Depression, when greed and abuse of the land caused a national and international crisis for everyone, especially working people.

Only Depression art in photography, fiction, music and painting captured the truth of that suffering. Steinbeck, Guthrie, Lange, WPA artists, they all told stories. Out of crisis comes art.

Europeans invading this continent have abused the land and its residents--human and animal,  forever, spurred by greed and committing genocide in God's name--thinking the land was meant to be plundered for profit until worn out. Whether cotton and slavery in the South, coal in Appalachia, mining in the West, water on the llano Estacado, or exterminating the buffalo or plowing up the sod in the Great Plains, the results have been the same.  

It's pathetically ironic that these "God-fearing" people despised  Native Americans' respect for the natural world as part of something sacred, to be respected because all are part of one creation. Instead those who believed their god was everywhere saw no sin in harming the natural world, even though that was harming themselves. This is more than Transcendentalism, though Emerson, et. al., had it right. 

Science has proved that we're all connected, even though the current president and his "environment" leader--an Okie who should know better--reject science and the health of our country and planet.  Again, their view is the planet is there for  selfish use and profit, nothing more--no respect for the land, or care for the future. Nothing has changed since the Conquistadors were the first to arrive 525 years ago.

Abuse the land, abuse nature--refusing to accept the world's peril of climate change, of rising temperatures because of greed--you abuse "god," and therefore every creature and the future. This isn't politics, it's history and science, and real religion.

What will happen when the oil and the water is gone, when you abuse "god"? The Dust Bowl will happen again.

"Paint what you feel," wrote one artist. This is what I feel. It started deep inside, and welled up, the image, the thoughts, the art, then the painting, and finally these words. They won't be favorites--but they're mine.

Day 10, #WorldWatercolorMonth challenge.
Palette--Burnt and Raw Umber, Sepia, Alizarine Crimson

Back to the Dust Bowl image, Oklahoma

Oklahoma can kiss its so called progressive national image and so-called renaissance goodbye,  thanks to  two continuing government debacles. 
It's back to the Dust Bowl images of poor, backward dump Okies.
Infected Gov. Kevin Stitt, the only pandemic infected governor, refuses to issue mask mandates, making Oklahoma an island of disease surrounded by such progressive states as Arkansas (duh).  Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado also require them.
Then the Washington Post, in a front page article on national unemployment woes because of the virus, started with the cases and backload, and tragedy and inhumanity in Oklahoma.
Headline was bad enough...
"'A very dark feeling': Hundreds camp out in Oklahoma unemployment lines."
But this sentence, read around the country and the world, pretty well seals the national image of "Poor little backward Oklahoma":
"In Oklahoma, one of the poorest states, unemployment — which reached a record 14.7 percent in April — has pushed many to the point of desperation, with savings depleted, cars repossessed and homes sold for cash."
Maybe not the Dust Bowl, whose image haunted Oklahoma for decades.
No, but COVID Bowl, pretty much.

31 days of color--watercolor thoughts

Colors of July, with Sophie and Snoops as art critics

Thirty-one paintings in 31 days. 
I almost made it. One day was a complete failure, but I made up for it the next day with two. And toward the end of the month, including today, I painted ahead--three birthday cards.
Last night, I felt withdrawal for not picking up a paintbrush. Maybe today?
But the WorldWatercolorMonth challenge paid off in several ways. Every artist, athlete, and professional knows you get better if you're consistently producing, or trying to produce. The days you don't, your craft, your work, suffers. 
This blog, which has been suffering, improved. My painting actually inspired by writing, rather than the other way around.
The challenge gave me direction amid all the business of everyday life. It also gave joy to people.
There are four missing before I took this photo--one was a birthday gift, two were sold and one a birthday card.  I've inserted two--one a mountain snow scene done  one day but not posted because I wasn't happy about it. The other the red-headed cowgirl, actually done in late June, but hey, why not.
What I learned-

• I need more color, more vibrant color, in my paintings, and you saw some of this as the month advanced.
• I started off slowly, searching. Some days were difficult, others almost magic.
• Like writing, painting leads you places you hadn't expected--thus the abstracts.
• I started every day with "Paint what you feel," and sometimes that was the most difficult.
• I'm most pleased with some of the abstracts, and also the series of the Oklahoma barn--perhaps even the Dust Bowl, a cross between representational and abstract.
• I have paired poetry and writing before, but it helped to have poetry and writing in mind to focus on what I feel. Thus Frost, Whitman and Conrad.
• Conversations with friends help provoke paintings and feelings.
• The more you paint, the more you experiment--with color, composition and form.
• Painting small is easier than large, in some ways, but sometimes more difficult.
• I have favorites and disappointments. The Santa Fe Trail painting was a disappointment.
• There will be failures--some paintings required two or three attempts. You didn't see the failures.
• Disappointments, failures, can lead to successes. I will repaint some of them.

Favorites? Dust Bowl, Bluebonnet Dreams, Cosmos, As Time Slips Away, Choices in a Yellow Wood, Heart of Darknewss. You'll have to scroll back onthe blog to see those.

Road trip without roads, a book of summer

Road trip! We're traveling 350 miles plus into northwest Oklahoma, and then, staying on the back roads as much as possible, into Colorado, covering 2,000 miles in about seven days.
But before you get to the Western scenery, you need a book to listen to on long stretches of highway. 

Susan found an audio book that just fit, and I downloaded it on Audible. Thus Horatio's Drive became the first book I've "read" in July, my eighth this year.
It's the story of the first American cross country automobile road trip, in 1903, undertaken by Horatio  Nelson Jackson,  his mechanic Sewall Crocker and his dog, Bud.
No paved roads, sometimes no roads, no maps, no gas stations. 20-30 miles an hour was high speed in an open  20-horsepower Winton "touring" car he named "The Vermont." Starting in San Francisco and ending in New York, 61 days later, winning a $40 bet that it couldn't be done in under 90  days.
It's the book by Dayton Duncan, written for Ken Burns' 2003 documentary for PBS Horatio's Drive. The book is hard to come by in print, but easily available as an audio, and you can buy the documentary film too.

You know about Ken Burns, of course, including his recent documentary on The Dust Bowl which had its premier screening here in Oklahoma, in April, 2012, and we were fortunate to attend thanks to former student Ashley Barcum at OETA. Here's my report on that Dust Bowl documentary.
Duncan has also written other Burns' PBS films, on the West, Lewis and Clark, the National Parks, Mark Twain, and more. He's won many awards, including a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum here in Oklahoma, A conservationist, he's been involved in New England politics. The Audio book has an introduction by Ken Burns, beginning with a quote from Walt Whitman.

What a trip. Go take it. 

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road," --Whitman

"The Vermont" is in the Smithsonian, plus this display.

Dust Bowl, P.S.

I should have mentioned in the post on Ken Burns' documentary about the Dust Bowl, "The Worst Hard Time," by Timothy Egan. http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_nf_egan.html.

He is one of the sources for the documentary, and his award-wining book is invaluable non-fiction journalism. I recommended it on this blog before when writing about the Panhandle, back in December. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-panhandle.html

You can read an interview with him at this link: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/egan_worst.shtml

The Great Sentence Search in Oklahoma

I use the NY Times to teach writing, believing that my students must be exposed to good writing to improve, to learn the craft.

We're fortunate to get it every day free to students here on campus at UCO. That makes it easy, except you have to be on the ball ahead of the students every morning, if you use it in the classroom.

One of my techniques is "The great sentence search."

I contend that the best writing comes when the writer almost loses self in the story and has fun. Then the best sentences come. You as a reader can tell when a writer really had fun crafting a sentence. He/she would finish the sentence and, reach up from the keyboard, clinch a victory fist and almost shout, "Yes!".

I find such sentences throughout the paper, business section, arts, news, columns, editorials. I make them find them and we talk about whey they're great sentences.

Yesterday, a story on the front page caught my eye: "An Oklahoma Farming Town is Tested by a Cruel Drought."

It's by Katharine Q. Seelye, about Boise City, the small county seat of Cimarron county, 367 miles from here (closer to Santa Fe and Denver), at the tip of the Panhandle, bordering Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

She shows the impact of the drought on the western half of our state, shriveling after 222 days without rain.  She visits with townspeople and ranchers, survivors of The Dust Bowl 70 years ago, facing the same kind of drought.

Here's the great sentence, describing the drought's effects at a ranch trying to raise cattle:

"On the Sharp Ranch, 15 miles outside town, the cattle were grazing on dirt."

Oh yes, now that's journalism!

Boomtown, Oklahoma, energy icon

I heard somewhere that more than 5,000 people a month are moving to Oklahoma City in the past three  months, thanks to the job market, especially in energy. Boomtown. Perhaps not since the Run, or the 8os oil boom. Don't know.

Devon Tower, seen from The Womb, symbol of OKC's energy growth

But I do know an incredible amount of energy seems to sizzle from the place, a far cry from 20 years ago when downtown was dead, and the state was languishing. The transformation since the Murrah Federal Building bombing is nothing short of miraculous.
I can refer to many trends and incidents, and books have been written about this Dust Bowl, oil bust poor fly-over state changing. Yes, the state is more conservative politically than ever, but there's an undercurrent of energy different from oil and gas that bubbles toward the surface of young people and will change the state even more. 
Sure the conservative politicians brag about our independence, but the downtown transformation was a tax-supported effort, not free-enterprise. And the state still sucks heavily at the Federal teat , with Tinker, FAA, Altus , Enid and more...all of which they ignore, like the current mayor in his national speeches.

If there is one icon of the new energy I see-beyond revitalized Paseo, Plaza District, avant-garde new restaurants, excellent museums, The Thunder, The Devon Tower, and more--it is The Womb, owned by Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips,the weird, stereo-type knocking band that even makes the Neanderthal legislature nervous.
We recently attended the reopening of  this physcheledic gallery off Broadway, thanks to invitations by Jake Harms (future-son-in-law--artist and partner of cool step-daughter Alexx Reger) who manages it and who helped paint much of the  jarring exterior
Look at this place...it is not your stereotype of Oklahoma. Energy oozes from this place like oil and gas from Audrey McLendon's and Cheaapeake's fracking, to the more respectable towering influence of Devon energy's new dominating skyscraper...but it doesn't cause physical earthquakes...just cultural ones.

Me, at entrance of The Vagina, Photo by Susan

As and old-guy, I don't necessarily "like" the art inside, thought a drink inside the "Vagina" is, well, juicy and enervating  and fun. But it doesn't matter. You should see the young people (those under 40 at my advanced age) attending things like this.
This is the kind of energy that is revolutionizing Oklahoma, once old white guys have gone the way of drab buildings. You had to go inside the red-lit "Vagina" to get a drink. It was an adventure, and most of all, fun, because the people think life is supposed to be fun, not uptight.
Art and energy like this is infectious, impossible to ignore, among all the ho-hum or negative images of Oklahoma. Oklahoma's real energy industry isn't under the ground, but above it, in people who demand difference. It's not about being cool, I think, though many do. I think it's about creativity, pushing the boundaries--which is the real pioneer spirit--and having fun.

December--Sunset, Sunrise, Barn Again

Sunset, Sunrise, 5 by 7 watercolor card

Another trip around the sun...every day marks the end and beginning of that journey, no matter what the human calendar says.
But as December wanes and the month named for the two- faced Roman god Janus nears, we seem more aware of endings and beginnings.
I've painted versions of this aging barn many times this year, and I'm not sure what is the attraction, except maybe a fascination with the passing of time. Yesterday's and today's are the most recent, reminding me of the journeys we all travel as the earth makes its journey.
Six months ago, July's daily watercolor challenge included eight more versions, including the seasons, beginning July 6.

Oklahoma Sunrise, 5 by 7, July 6

Here are the links on my blog to each of those: "Oklahoma Sunset," "Oklahoma Winter," "Oklahoma Springtime," "Oklahoma Moonrise,"  "Oklahoma Dust  Bowl," "Green Leaves of Oklahoma," "Oklahoma Autumn."

(Day 27 of 31 December paintings)

"People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall."--Thomas Merton

Blogging right along

A few Coffee with Clark blog stats Since May, 2009 when it started Total posts--1,611 Total page views--157,226 Most page views in a month--May, 2014--7,896 Leading page views by country Country                      Page Views
United States 93020 China 8908 Germany 6040 France 5255 Russia 4838 Ukraine 4362 United Kingdom 3345 Turkey 1357 Canada 1112 Spain 939
Leading Monthly Posts August, 2009--76 July, 2009--70 January, 2010--56 December, 2013--39 Posts by years 2014--227 so far 2013--252 2012--203 2011--135 2010--292 2009--339 Favorite posts (What is it about trains?) All 'aboard for Bartlesville Oct 24, 2010 2837 All aboard! Aug 10, 2010, 1 comment 1813 All aboard for Alaska May 27, 2012 1750 All aboard for the Klondike! Going up May 29, 2012 1416 All aboard to Skagway May 30, 2012 1295 Aboard at the White Pass summit May 29, 2012 1288 Flags of historic friends--Canada and the UK Feb 24, 2013 1133 Oklahoma Sky--watercolor Dec 22, 2010, 1 comment 1012 Ken Burns' Dust Bowl premiere Apr 14, 2012 857 Caboose journey, aboard the Rock Island May 14, 2012, 1 comment 835

Pandemic antidotes--a year for poetry

It's been a year of poetry in my pandemic reading, as I look back over the 49 books attempted.

Seven of them were complete books of poetry, with selected portions of other books.

Ray Bradbury said to read poetry every day because it stretched muscles not ordinarily used. I didn't make every day, but this has been a year of quarantine, or stress, trials and more, when stretching muscles, especially mental  and spiritual muscles, is essential to mental health.

Four of the books are from three friends and Okie poets. The most recent was a rereading of Benjamin Myers' Black Sunday, a collection of sonnets, no less, and a short story, all about a few Okies surviving the Dust Bowl. Stories of people with grit, applicable today.

Two new ones by Nathan Brown are like reading a day-by-day diary of the pandemic. His Pandemic Poetry Project contains a poem a day, by date, beginning in March, suggested by sponsored prompts from his readers. 

In the Days of Our Seclusion  (March-May) and In the Days of Our Unrest (June-August). One poem in the second book was my prompt, "back roads." It's about a lonely highway in New Mexico. But most are wrenching reality and insights into our 2020 journeys. You can buy them direct from him, $15 plus shipping. Brownlines

He has two more books continuing the series forthcoming. You can listen to him reading from the poems in his periodic "FirePit Sessions" on his Facebook Page. 

Ken Hada's Sunlight and Cedar. I reviewed in August on this blog. You can read about that earth-deep poetry here. A Geography of Pandemic Poetry

Actually, you can order from Ken and Ben directly as well. Contact them: Ken Hada or @BenMyersPoet on twitter. Or at bookstores of course, but if you want yours inscribed....

These are all mind- and soul-stretching antidotes for the messes we're in this year.

The other books: Mary Oliver's Devotions; Mary Ruefle's Dunce and Charles Bukoski's Betting on the Muse.

The partial readings? A closing poem in Wendell Berry's The Art of Loading Brush--a collection of agrarian writings, and then skipping around in The Big Red Book by Rumi, and another poet I know you've heard of, David, in Psalms.