For a Drink of Water

I began writing poetry when fifteen and have continued with it my entire life, which is now quite a number of years, as I was born in 1949, My novel is a late-in-life creation but holds many of the same concerns as my poetry

I grew up in southwestern Minnesota, in the small town of Marshall. Living on the edge of town allowed me easy and long walks into the country. I’ve always loved the prairie, the fields of corn and beans, the expansive sky, the wooded areas and rivers where I could commune with nature. These meditations as a child and teenager meant I could absorb the rhythms of nature, its seasons and inhabitants, into what would later become my poetry. From these walks I came away with a sense of ancestry with the earth.

My poetry has also been influenced by human sources, of course. No doubt my father’s patience and precision with craft (he could fix anything) carried over into my use of words. I was always fascinated with words. Walking home from school, I often saw a truck with the letters SURGE printed on its side. I guess it was the name of a company, but I wondered at the power of that word, how rivers surged during floods (which Marshall knew about), how wind might surge through trees, how fire could be unlocked and surge from the coal my grandfather burned for heat. Words were discovery long before I thought I would write.

I am fortunate to have been a long time friend and student of the poet Thomas McGrath, whose encouragement and belief in my work remains incalculable. I've managed to publish ten books. My poetry is influenced by many poets, but significantly by foreign poets such as Neruda, Lorca, Ritsos, Brecht, Rilke, Saint-John Perse, and I suppose I have to admit, on the home front, Whitman. Mostly, though, I have imagined an audience that wanted the truth to be told, and this is also an influence that might be traced both to my father and to McGrath, and perhaps Meridel LeSueur. The truth is not made up of the factual world, though that helps. Being true to experience, to history, to our deep feelings has been a guide to me. In that sense, I see literature as a means of trying to access what is most genuine within ourselves.