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June 18, 2012

Perspectives: The poetry police

By Terry Wooten ----

"I got so interested in the art of folks I majored in it. The school is so big I can't get out of it."

Woody Guthrie

I was pulled over by a carload of poetry police recently on my way home from the Kalkaska Elders Project. The authorities accused my themes of weaving all over.

One officer said, "Your poems are too easy to understand. Couldn't you be more complicated? And why do you write in other people's voices? Don't you have anything to say? Could we see your poetic license please?"

I reached inside my mind. My memory shuffled around and found a quote by Walt Whitman. I pulled it out and said "I contain multitudes." "What?" the officers asked.

"These poems aren't about me," I answered, "unless you believe all things are one. I think life is complicated enough. Even Robert Frost felt the basic activities of everyday life had hidden meanings."

The poetry police eyed me with suspicion. They waved me off with a warning, "Put more significant symbols of meaning in your poems."

"Okay," I lied.

The symbols and meanings in my Elders Poems appear organically like morel mushrooms. They're just not easy to see if you're looking too hard. My poetry pick-up cruised home to Stone Circle Drive.

Below are some folk poems from the Kalkaska Elders Project. This one was made possible mostly by the Kalkaska County Library, and SEEDS. All the interviews were done by SEEDS students.

On another note, Stone Circle fires up this Saturday. Please join us to listen, or polish up those poems. A film crew is coming next summer from Barcelona, Spain to shoot a documentary for our 30th anniversary.

Betty Dunham (81)

My tongue was attached wrong underneath

when I was born.

They used to call it tongue-tied.

I had trouble nursing,

and couldn't talk well.

I learned to swear in Norwegian,

before I could speak.

I would go to the barn with grandpa

to milk cows.

If he got mad at a cow

he'd swear in Norwegian.

I was three when somebody discovered

my membrane

that attaches the tongue

to the floor of my mouth

was short.

Six months later,

the night my brother was born

the doctor came to deliver him.

Dad grabbed ahold of me

and held me tight.

The doctor opened my mouth

and clipped the membrane.

There was blood all over.

They say I used some real bad swear words

in Norwegian.

Grandmother wasn't very happy about this.

I've had a loose tongue

ever since.

Richard Walker (80)

I grew up on the south side of Chicago.

The stockyards were on the south side

when I was young.

We were laboring families,

not white collar.

There were marvelous forest preserves

right in the city.

We visited one by streetcar.

Streetcars were red with yellow trim,

a little longer than a school bus.

They had a headlight in the center,

and ran both ways

twenty-four hours a day.

Kids called them red rockets.

On Sundays I'd go with mom and dad.

You'd see all these ethnic picnics

with all kinds of different food,

the Polish, Germans, Italians

and later the Mexicans.

People were having a wonderful time.

My parents didn't drink alcohol.

I'd think, "Look at all those people.

They're so happy."

I got quite an education.

Later I learned

it wasn't such a bad way to be.

Bethel Larabee (83)

Everybody had cattle,

and I was thought of as the local midwife

for cows.

I helped a lot of calves be born.

When you see four feet coming

at the same time"¦nothing can be born that way.

You have to reach up inside

and turn the calf.

You've got to have two feet

coming out right side up.

I helped deliver Holstein triplets

who wouldn't have lived

if I hadn't been there.

I figured she was going to have twins.

Milking cows by hand,

they stood beside each other

and you sat with a cow behind you.

When a calf gets pretty well developed,

they move.

I kept getting kicked in the back

from the left side.

You know there's an extra calf or two.

Calves are carried

on the right side.

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