Rural writing by Norb Blei

New Year 1913 in Door County where Norb Blei lived

More than fifteen years ago I began centering my annual writing workshop at The Clearing around a specific theme, primarily for the Advanced Writers, with the intention of bringing a deeper level to their reading, to class discussion, to in-class writing assignments, to wherever these insights into various authors, styles, lives, themes, movements, might lead them, their own work, into the American literary landscape and foreign cultures as well.

This year my intent is to go “rural”… into rural writing…into America’s own rural literary landscape…however one defines ‘rural’? Are we talking agriculture? Farmland? Small towns and villages? Is there a difference between rural writing and nature writing? Does it matter?

The Want of Peace

All goes back to the earth,

and so I do not desire

pride of excess or power,

but the contentments made

by men who have had little:

the fisherman's silence

receiving the river's grace,

the gardener's musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.

I am never wholly in place.

I find no peace or grace.

We sell the world to buy fire,

our way lighted by burning men,

and that has bent my mind

and made me think of darkness

and wish for the dumb life of roots.

--Wendell Berry

It’s my contention that everyone harbors a bit of the rural in one’s being, even a person born and bred in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles. We’ll take a look at this in a class including beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers, starting with the Door County landscape, and a brief glimpse of a big-city writer who left the neighborhood and struggled for years to find himself and his words as a local writer in a rural landscape. (There’s an essay or a book to be written someday about the number of writers so identified by the urban setting—who either spend part of each year in the rural, or pack up and retire there permanently.) We’ll look at poetry, short stories, novel, essays, journals…a variety of perspectives from a variety of writers addressing the rural within.

15 FebruaryThis resident owl of ours, I muse on the third day of his tenure in the butternut, resembles nothing birdlike. Most of all he looks like a baseball pitcher in a tight spot, winding up, swiveling to check the runners at first and second, then . . . the balk. The old owls of my poems were of the furtive sort, night hooters. Whenever I did catch a daytime glimpse of them, they were in a hurry to get under cover and they seemed ragged, weary, diminished by a hard night's work. This one is larger than life-size. He has assumed the stature of a godhead in the birdfeeding zone, though today he and the squirrel eyed each other and nothing happened. Perhaps the owl is full of his nightly mice? I noticed that the squirrel took care, while cleaning up the spilled sunflower husks, not to turn his back on the owl. Although only a small red squirrel, perhaps he is too large to tempt even an enlarged owl.

--Maxine Kumin

How important is the rural in American literature alone? Where would we be (who would we be?) without: Twain’s, Huckleberry Finn; Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath; Masters’ Spoon River Anthology; Anderson’s, Winesburg Ohio; Cather’s, My Antonia; Hemingway’s, Nick Adams (Michigan) stories?

And it’s not all hardscrabble, grim, somewhat self-defeating at times:

FLORA RUTHERFORD:

Postcard to Florida

What brightens up this prairie town in spring?

Not tulip, not dandelion, not willow leaf,

but New Holland, Massey-Ferguson, and John Deere.

Right, the brand-new farm equipment

glistening now in the rooster-strutting sun.

And oh what colors they have given us:

strawberry red, sweet-corn yellow, pie-apple green.

A fragrant breeze drifts in from the plowed earth.

The excitement of crops seeds my furrowed brain.

Mother_,we have come through another wintertime,

and I had to write and tell you this.

--Dave Etter

The class, “Writing Rural, Door County and Beyond” (open this website for specific details: http://theclearing.org/current/classes_summer_description.php?id=79) is nearing capacity at this point. But I’m willing and able to take on a few more. Get back to The Clearing office or contact me for further details. And please feel free to forward this to others who might be interested.

It will be one great and memorable week, especially in light of the other two classes offered, either of which I highly recommend for visitors and lovers of Door County who may not quite know all its history, its unbeaten paths: “Door County in Words” taught by Charlie Calkins and “Off the Beaten Path: Exploring Door County’s Natural Treasures, led by Terrie Cooper and Mike Schneider.

A FARM BOY REMEMBERS

Saturday was for cleaning barns,

forking out tons of manure.

There are more significant ways

to spend a Saturday when the snow

is melting, but this was ours.

Throw out the shit

and put down clean straw.

Renewal has never been so simple.

--Leo Dangel

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Rural writing by Norb Blei