THE MARSHALL FESTIVAL - HEADING HOME

Now I'm driving home from the Marshall Fesitval, buoyed

by all I've seen and heard during the week, all those poets and writers preserving the stories that I worry will be lost. I admit it: driving to Marshall a week ago, I was feeling down, feeling ignored and neglected and rejected by the world around me. I had been chewing on despair for several months; it was a real Whine Festival, my drive to Marshall. Partly, as Mary says, I overload myself by wanting too much, and then I'm disappointed. I want it all, and can't have it. Partly the world has been ignoring or neglecting or rejecting my work, or so it  has seemed. It wears on you after while. Partly I enjoyed the teaching I did last fall and have no such opportunities now. And partly I hadn't been making the kind of progress with my work that I wanted. Waah, waah, waah....

Now I am so heartened by what I've seen and heard this past week. There are people all across this landscape ensuring that our stories will not be lost, that we shall not have lived in vain. This celebration of rural writers was the single largest concentration of terrific writers I have ever been honored to be in the company of. It was clear how much hard work had gone into preparation for the festival; the organizers, the volunteers, and all those behind the scenes deserve a big round of applause. They did a terrific job. It was non-stop wall-to-wall rural writing of a very high caliber. My hosts, Dan and Mo Stores, were wonderful; they took good care of me; we would sit in the evening with a glass of wine, recounting our day to each other. At the Festival, there was recognition, I think, that the work I am doing is important; and the people I respect know it. People seemed interested in my Vagabond project. Dave Evans, Poet Laureate of South Dakota, talked to me about it the day after the presentation. Bill Holm mentioned it to me. And some of the other poets and writers. They see it as another, different way to drill into this land of ours.

I had to be encouraged at the Festival: writers I admire know my efforts. It's no longer so easy to think I am "unrecognized" when Dave Etter knows who I am. And Bill Kloefkorn does. And Dave Evans does. And such.

I realized at the Festival, too, that it does not matter so much who is saving the stories, as that they are being saved. And they are. I can take comfort in the recognition when I'm feeling gloomy; whether I'm saving them, or someone else is, they are being set down for future generations.

Robert Bly said the problem with younger poets is that they are too much concerned with themselves and not enough concerned with poetry. That poetry is about more than making a name for oneself. I'm not sure this charge applies only to younger poets. I think we have a problem, sometimes, as human beings, seeing beyond the tips of our noses. We keep thinking it's about us, when there is a larger, broader, greater world we need to grasp. I carry that flaw myself and sometimes forget that it's about more than me. Part of the truth about me, I'm afraid, is that as much or as often as I might say my writing is about those of whom I write, it is also about me, about my need to tell their stories, about my need to be recognized. I am not as selfless as I sometimes let on. So this writer's festival was a good reminder for me. As difficult as it is to let go of me, me, me, I think a writer who would be true to this place and its materials needs to forget himself or herself in the collecion and presentation of our world. To be here and not-here. Is it bad to want recognition? Yes, in so far as disappointment immobilizes me. I need to become transparent, yet achieving transparency is not easy for my prideful soul. Correction starts with recognition of the problem. There is no need to wish for that which doesn't matter. Let the stories be saved. The rest is empty whispering.

As far as teaching goes, I have decided that I will teach if the opportunity comes along, but I shall not waste great effort trying to create such opportunities. My job is to write. I shall do what I am put here for, which is to witness who we are; to witness, and to testify to it in my writing. Teaching what I know, what I've taught myself, I am as good a teacher as I have known, the kind I wish I'd had when I was starting out as a writer. Yet, with all the writing I want to do, it is foolish for me to expend my energy trying to find opportunities to teach; someone else should do the administrative work. I shall do the writing.

I must say I have been pleased with the progress I made in September on "Peter's Story" during my "writer's retreat" at the farm. I've got a total of eight chapters now in first rough draft, out of nine or ten total. I have done some follow-up interviews with Peter, and have those transcribed. I have additional tapes that Peter and his friend Ann have recorded which I need to listen to and pull the morsels out of. I have a sense of the arc of the story. I enjoyed the time away from ordinary responsibilities during those two and a half weeks I was at the farm, the low key pace of things. And yet while I wasn't pressured, I got a lot done. I enjoyed the isolation, too, I guess, the time alone. Perhaps I need a little more of that kind of "retreat" in my life.

I have not done as well with work on my Vagabond project. My presentation about that work at the Marshall Festival has served as a reminder that I need to get back on the Vagabond trail; I need to get back to talking to the folks in my focus communities, sharing their lives. And I shall. The beauty of the project is that it allows me to process a world beyond the wind in my own head. There is joy in meeting, interviewing, and trying to understand real live middlewestern people. Sometimes as writers we think we know, and really we don't have the least clue. We haven't been there, haven't done that, and haven't yet met the people who know. The Vagabond project lets me see the places and meet the people and get some input beyond my own notions of how things are. Yeah, I recognize that what I see and hear I process in my way, that I find my pattern. Yet I am not creating out of nothing - that's the difference.

I don't want to be a best-selling author. I don't want to be a rock-n-roll star. I do want a few good readers. There is a level of readership and recognition which would fit me, and I don't think I'm there yet. I do need readers to tell me "you speak for and to us," the way some of them did with Curlew: Home. The Marshall Festival has given me hope that finding such readers is possible. I come away, as I say, on this ocean of prairie: buoyed.

Sheen of the sun,
The push of wind -
What richness!

The scruff of this
Land blesses us.

I smell the earth.
I say: Take me!

Comments

[Marja-Leena]

It is wonderful to have affirmation, even some recognition, because it gives us the strength and conviction to keep on doing what we feel in our hearts is our calling, even if we don't become famous for it. Keep on with the great writing, Tom!

[Tom Montag]

Thank you, Marja-Leena. I appreciate your words, the truth of them, and the pat on the back. We're good for another 100,000 miles, I think!

[patry Francis]

I hear you, and I think that's what's so addictive about blogging. Real feedback! Now! And hopefully from a few good readers.

You always inspire me.

[Tom Montag]

Thanks, patry. As much as I like to say I don't care about what people think, at some level I do. I need to know what I'm doing means something to someone else. I mean, I write to be read. The feedback from blogging is the real juice: being able to see that we've touched someone, encouragement to keep on keeping on.

[qB]

I've been coming back to this post in my mind. So moving and human and gritty and humble. Your passion and love for what you do shine through. Thank you for being such an example.

[Tom Montag]

On, qB, thanks. I hope what you say is true. I am hard at it at the moment, making some progress, so that feels good. Not longer than a day after I posted this, I was asked if maybe I might be interested in teaching an Advanced Comp course for the spring semester.... Now don't that make an old horse puller harder.... Of course I might be interested.