AHU - WSC Press - Titles and Excerpts

“When a group of creative people comes together—bursting with ideas and exuberance—they feed off one another, challenging each other to defy gravity and reach for the sky. Maybe it’s nothing more spectacular than some great instructors and some gifted students feeding off each other like sharks with blood in the water. Whatever the source, WSC has plenty of poetry worth celebrating. And that’s what Words Like Rain is all about.” – Scott McIntosh

Essays on John G. Neighardt by Sally McClusky, Lori utecht, Barbara Schmitz. Essays by current Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn and also Jim Brummels, Matt Mason, Jim Mercer, Bonnie Umstead Mercer, Jim Reese, Amy McGoerge. Poetry by Timothy Black, Chris Brandon, Jason Elznic, Roberta Engstedt, Brian Finn, Chris Geidner, Maureen Kingston, Trenton Muth, Chad Wall and others. Foreword by Greta Smith, afterword by Scott McIntosh.

Excerpts:

Anuja Ghimire

Blue Mimosa pg. 210

Moonlight slides

off the cascade

Momentos fall

out of my closet

ballet with your sweater

tango

with your scarf

cling

to the doors

that dance

lend my eyes

to the lamppost

lay my heart

on the highway

and my sighs

on the curve

My blue lips await

your homecoming

your venom kiss

Mitchel Tracy

There Are No Footprints In The Sand pg. 37

Behind me there are only hungry waves

lapping up every trace

of my single set of tracks, baby.

I was not carried here

or born of water.

If I am washed out

there is no holy coast

guard to throw me a sanctified life vest.

No, if I am swalloed up by the waves

I will sink straight and fast.

There’s not even two planks

from a shipwreck to cling to.

I know you’re there, baby

just beyond the horizon

walking the beaches of your own island.

Maybe the wind howls,

maybe the water’s cold.

Calm nights I hear you

singing, working,

the low rumble of the stones you roll

looking in every tidal cave

for an answer

or a sign.

I’ve looked for rescue everywhere, baby,

shook my fist at the slate sea

sent up flares and smoke signals

got only tides

and empty wind for answer.

Amy McGeorge

Johnny Cash Blue pg. 153

After the fall, she didn’t have any more tears to lend.

dried up to the bone

alone in her apartment

that faced the gas station manned by the tribe

of toothless women with bottle-blond hair,

she found it hard to listen to Johnny Cash.

It hurt like scratchy sheets,

to hear his voice waver

over her in the heated air.

An emptiness a thousand times

more troubling than the blues

and overdue library books

hit her in the dry heaves of leftover loves

every time Johnny sand

sweet and grizzled over June.

It felt like the moon wouldn’t show

and the night would never end,

even when the promise was whistling

somewhere outside of the parking lot

below her open bedroom window.

The sound of the needle

scratching against the vinyl

made dancing joyless

in the shuffle of madness

and the burden of losing –

the only man she ever knew

who was sure to have an honest hand

in an uncertain game of rhythmic blues,

filled with poker-faced, cardshark poets

out to stake their claim

and steal all her favorite tunes.

Essays on John G. Neihardt

Barbara Schmitz

Excerpt from Mysticism And Iambic Pentameter pg. 150-153

“The last time I saw Neihardt was at Dana College, and he was still reciting. In fact, he wouldn’t stop. he went on and on. Which was fine with me. His voice was still strong and oratorical, and he picked fine parts of his works to perform; but the program organizers had other ideas and, after about an hour, wanted him to quit. it was quite a battle to get him to sit down and shut up.”

“The day Neihardt died in early November, it snowed just a little. I always felt nature was marking the passage with a small memento. As I look into my copy of A Cycle of the West, I find Neihardt inscribed it to me with “kind thoughts.” I thank you, John, for those kind thoughts, for your attempts to teach me meter—I’m still not very good at it—but most of all, for the introduction to the path of mysticism with your great literature and tremendous spirit. May we all “lose our little dreams and waken together.””—Barbara Schmitz

William Kloefkorn

Excerpt fromHardwares pg. 201-206

“In his autobiography Mr. Neihardt writes, “The chief entrance requirements of the old Nebraska Normal College seemed to be the applicant’s conscious ignorance and his determination to do something about it.” Yes, indeed, if by “conscious ignorance” he means “a desire to know more, regardless of how much I know already.” The Neihardt seminar that summer was comprised of teachers who wanted to know more than they already knew (count the instructor among them), and they had applied for admission to a college that remains in the best sense of the work “normal,” which to me is synonymous with “grassroots” and “common sense.”” –William Kloefkorn

Sally McCluskey, PH.D.

Excerpts from Driving Doctor Neihardt pg. 6-10

“In July 1966, Neihardt was scheduled to teach a two-week seminar in poetry at Wayne. Then word came he’d been downed by double pneumonia—a serious ailment for a man of 85. Some feared he might not survive.

But Neihardt was tough. He recovered, although his illness had left him slightly breathless, and after exertion, he tended to gasp. yet he intended to fulfill his obligation, came to Wayne in July, took up residence in the guest room at Neihardt hall, and was ready to teach.

He was not, however, out of danger. The fates conspired to give him an assistant—me—the department’s lowliest instructor.”

“Maybe his memory was too full of names to remember mine, but I was charmed. It was like being spoken to by an elderly and courteous knight.

Still, we were six decades apart in age and eons apart in experience, and I worried that he might be bored by someone as callow as I. one Saturday afternoon I had a not-so-brilliant idea: I would take him for a drive.”

“I began to try roads I’d never before taken. “This’ll be great,” I assured Neihardt. “We’ll explore the unbeaten track—just like the Ashley-Henry men.”

But somehow I got on a path that was as about as unbeaten as they come. There was no more pavement, only one rutted lane, and trees had become a distant green blur in the rearview mirror.”

“Several fields away, I could see a lone farmhouse. it seemed our only hope for help, but it was clearly too far for Neihardt to walk, and we were separated from the house by a nasty-looking creek with steep muddy sides.

Still about a mile and a half away, some sort of ancient bridge or trestle crossed the creek. It would be a long detour, but I could use it to get to the house, and, I prayed, to help.”

I told Neihardt my plan and pleaded with him to find some shade.

“You be careful, Lady,” he said, and wished me well.

I ran the mile and a half, crossing the bridge, and nearly collapsed on the porch of the farmhouse. I almost wept with relief to find a couple at home.”

“I stumbled up to him. “Help is coming,” I croaked. I was soaked with sweat nd so was he, and we were both huffing mightily.

He gestured with a frown at the banks and the sludgy water. I was afraid you’d try to cross that thing. Would have been a big mistake.”

“I almost did,” I admitted. “It didn’t look safe.”

“It’s not. And it’s not a creek. It’s a drainage ditch. That’s sewage flowing in it.”

I realized that was the best thing that had happened to me all day. I hadn’t fallen into the sewage ditch.

Neihardt said, “I figured if you got stuck down there, I’d have to get you out. I thought I could hang onto a root, and you could climb up my leg.”

That strange and gallant image has hung with me many years. An 85-year-old poet working out a plan to save me by letting me crawl up his leg.

He’d made me smile. “I was okay. I was just worried about you.

He smiled, too, and put his hat back on at a jaunty angle. “And I was worried about you. That’s why we both came through, see? We didn’t worry about ourselves. That’s how it works, you know.” –Sally McCluskey