I thought I was writing this poem to the photo that appeared on the front page my hometown newspaper, but as it turns out, the poem also has echoes in an extraordinary book that I finished just last night. THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell is set in Nebraska in 1935 between two cataclysmic environmental events: the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River (24 inches of rain in 24 hours). So it’s a story of the land, but inseparably, it’s a story about the people there. Here’s how Russell (with James Riding In) describes what she attempted to do in THE ANTIDOTE:
THE ANTIDOTE uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people’s private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.
It was a book that puzzled me at first, then fascinated me, then horrified me, then made me read the last hundred pages at a gallop (which is why I’m “late” posting), then ultimately left me with some measure of hope.
Which brings us back to the photo and the poem. I grew up at the edge of the same Pawnee lands in THE ANTIDOTE, in a part of the country where White farming techniques have resulted in loss of topsoil and the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. And I grew up with the myth of the noble (White) farmers, who toiled at the whim of the sparse rainfall and the destructive summer storms, and whose hope was what kept them going.
It’s time to tell the truth. All of it. And it’s time to listen to the land and agree to change the ruinous human part of our relationship with her. She wants to live, and she can heal, if we let her. If we help her.
.
Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins. You can find there the Poetry Sisters who had the bandwidth to write to this month’s challenge, to write a sedoka, along with others who joined in the challenge.
PLEASE NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
Love this poem…not what prompted it or the damage, but the reflection. That quote from ‘The Antidote,’ is so true.
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So many connections here from news to poem to book and our current relationship with the earth. Deep thoughts. I love how you end with hope. I read a Margaret Rinkle article that offered some hope as well.
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Mary Lee, thank you for your poem and sharing your thoughts on this book. I may recommend it for our book club. One of our member’s sons is going to college for sustainable farming. He and those like him give me hope!
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I found The Antidote extraordinary too, and I enjoyed hearing about the rollercoaster of your experience with it 🙂
A lot of life that we thought were “just the way things are” are actually choices. If we can become aware of that as a society…change is possible!
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I so love when a book utterly captures and captivates you. This sounds fascinating – and indeed that ‘myth’ of the noble suffering of the pre-Dustbowl farmer is even taught in school, as if it’s some bewildering, terrible fate that simply befell people, and that we didn’t do it to ourselves… but storms DON’T randomly choose fields, do they.
Hmm.
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That newspaper image is startling. What a great inspiration for your poem. I can see how it’s connected to THE ANTIDOTE. I have now moved it to the top of my TBR pile.
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“She.” I love that you dignify Earth with this pronoun…not “It.” Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks of the animacy of grammar. She is alive, and much harder to commodify than an It.
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Earth to just exist has become a dilemma, we as a society are responsible for partnering to help her existence, all efforts should be turning to her, though in the US efforts are turning away from her. Thanks Mary Lee for your powerful and personal reflection/connection with Earth, and bit of hope.
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Wow! Your poem is so powerful. I love that you used this form to write about climate change. So hard.
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Your sedoka is so stark and powerful, Mary Lee. And The Antidote sounds fascinating. Thanks for mentioning it. I read a novel a few years back that was based on the Republican River flooding and it was terrifying.
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