It was just the sort of visit
writers dream of. I met for two hours last night with Ripon's book discussion group at the Ripon Public Library. Their book for discussion this month: Curlew: Home, my memoir of growing up on an Iowa farm. The fellow who had extended the invitation to me some months ago, my dentist, brought an Iowa map, so we could locate Curlew and Mallard, West Bend and Emmetsburg. Yet it was much more than finding Curlew on the map that they wanted to talk about.
As often happens, Curlew: Home triggered memories and stories in the readers, and so some of what we talked about was their own experiences, or their parents' or grandparents'. As is always the case, we had to talk about the proper way to kill a chicken for butchering: every family has its own protocol.
These readers immediately understood why I didn't name my parents in the chapter "Her Most Perfect Day Ever."
"Your parents represent many others," one person said.
"This is a story that belongs to many people," said another.
Yes, exactly. In calling my parents "the young farmer" and "the farmer's wife," I was trying to suggest that my memoir is about more than one Iowa farm family during the 1950s and early 1960s; that it is the story of other families who have no one to tell the story; and over the years many readers have said to me "This could be my story."
One of the readers, a professor of art at Ripon College, I believe, focused a question on my sense of alienation growing up as a poet in rural Iowa, where the young farm kid found no role model for being a poet. It was a sense of alienation, I suppose, that is common among artists who never quite fit with their peers, who never feel fully comfortable with their circumstances. I was somewhat surprised by my response: that I felt as if I didn't "fit," but that it was my fault, not the fault of those around me; that I was the weird one, while the farm families around me were good and gracious folks.
What I didn't say last night, but realized this morning: I still don't "fit;" I still feel different from those around me. Though I have to admit that blogging affords me a wonderful sense of community these days, a kinship with like-minded souls, comrades in the cause of seeing the world as it is and recording it accurately, men and women from across the United States and Canada, in London and South Korea and elsewhere. I do not feel quite so alone.
"Would you read some passages from Curlew: Home?" the discussion group wanted to know. Well, of course, I would. That is what I am born to. And then, bless them, they wanted me to read a couple of my "farmer" poems from the book I call my "collected early poems," Middle Ground, so I read two of those.
Excerpt from the "Prologue:"
... to be dying still
is to be alive.
Excerpt from "Cleaning the Barn:"
There is philosophy to be made of cow manure....
"When do you guys quit?" I had asked early on.
"When we feel like it," I was told.
We started at 7:00 p.m. They finally quit at 9:00 p.m., the library dark and already locked up. A full two hours of the kind of attention, as I say, that writers dream of.
"Thanks!" I tried to tell them as we stepped out into heavy rain, "I am blessed by such attention."
As another who has felt "different" all her life, I can imagine such appreciation was very gratifying. I'm happy for you. It's deserved, you know.
Posted by: MB | November 28, 2006 at 10:35 AM
Just as MB said! Being "different" seems to be a common state for most artists, and it is a truly wonderful feeling to be acknowledged and appreciated by others, especially non-artists!
Blogging has really helped make a lot of new connections with "like" minds, I think.
Posted by: marja-leena | November 28, 2006 at 03:53 PM
Oh, this made me happy for you, and for those readers, Tom!
Posted by: beth | November 28, 2006 at 07:43 PM
I was one of the people at the Ripon library discussion group and I'd like to thank you for sharing your work and especially for reading to us. Your insights have a universal quality that we all appreciate. This is my first time blogging. I'd like to see what it's like to be part of a cyber-community focused on the midwest, since I do some writing in that direction myself.
Posted by: Evelyn | November 29, 2006 at 03:03 PM
MB and Marja-Leena and Beth--thanks for the good words. I appreciate it. You know, this question of "not fitting" could be explored a little further. I may blog about the issue specifically. CURLEW: HOME didn't provide a full answer; the conclusion there was essentially that what is, is. I could turn some more stones yet.
Posted by: Tom Montag | November 29, 2006 at 03:12 PM
Hi, Evelyn. Thanks for the good words. And thanks even more to you and other members of the discussion group for your obvious enthusiasm for my work. You might imagine how that warms a writer's heart. Off-line I will send you some ideas about where to go poking about the blogosphere.
Posted by: Tom Montag | November 29, 2006 at 03:14 PM