Category: Reading

Writer Appreciation: Willa Cather

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

My first encounter with Willa Cather’s writing was in a dual-credit English class my senior year of high school. Our assignment was to read O Pioneers! and write a literary analysis paper, a type of writing with which I was mostly unfamiliar. I remember that I wrote about some religious symbolism, something that seemed very prominent to me at the time. I remember that it was a Dover Thrift Edition of the book, a book that I still have in my office at my university, to the right of My Antonia.

Much time passed, I completed my undergraduate studies (majoring in Literature/Creative Writing & Vocal Music Performance), and I continued to my MFA in Creative Writing program. During that ten-year span, I read only one other work by Cather: the short story “Paul’s Case.” However, during that period, I become much more interested in literature connected with place, and more specifically, literature set in the Midwest and the Great Plains.

Fast-forward to 2008 while I was enrolled in “Twentieth-Century American Novel” (my second semester in a PhD program), and I was assigned my second Cather novel: My Antonia. By this time, my creative writing (poetry and fiction) was set in my own fictional realms in the Upper Midwest, and when I read Cather this time, something was different. I was ready for it. (It probably helped that I was living in South Dakota as well.)

Of the novels we read that semester, all of which I enjoyed immensely, none left quite a powerful impression as did My Antonia. In her prose, I found an attention to rhythms of language, a lyricism that I was striving to develop in my own writing. What imagery. What mastery of the sentence. And the story, how it captivated me.

The book itself, and so much about her skill as a writer, amazed me such that I wrote my mid-term paper about the book. And when the opportunity came to teach two sections of a freshman-level Introduction to Literature, and I learned I was required to assign one novel in addition to the provided anthology, well, it was a quick (and easy) decision.

My students, overall, really enjoyed the book. I had been concerned that, due to its publication in 1917, my students would find My Antonia “too boring” or “too old-fashioned.” On the contrary, they took to it with an enthusiasm I could only have dreamed of.

Fast-forward to 2014 and I began reading The Professor’s House, an appropriate text for me. I moved through it quickly over a vacation back to Minnesota. Next was Death Comes for the Archbishop. On my Minnesota vacation in 2015, I read The Song of the Lark. And in the time since then, I read more of her novels, bringing me up to her 12th (and final) novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl.

Even as I am only a few chapters into the novel, there is a sadness in the background. I am reading the book with the knowledge that there are no more Cather novels to read. I will move on (after this book) to her short fiction, essays, and poetry. Then, perhaps, I will return to the novels.

But helping me deal with this sadness is the awareness that later this summer, on my way to Minnesota, my family and I will be making a detour to Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather lived there several years as a child and teenager, and various historic sites are preserved, including her childhood home. In addition, there is a newly opened museum dedicated to her life and work.

It is the first such literary pilgrimage I will have made, and I am trying to avoid counting the days until I arrive. In the meantime, though, I will continue to savor her words, grateful for this writer who has taught me so much and given me so many hours of reading pleasure.

*

“Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.” –Willa Cather–

The Rhythms of Reading and Writing

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

I’ve commented here before about how I tend to write in the genres I am currently teaching. Although I’ve written for a long time, I’m still discovering things about my writing process, as well as about my writing and reading rhythms. Over the last weeks, I’ve been thinking and analyzing. What trends and tendencies are there? How might I make better use of my time, to write smarter, to read smarter?

One conclusion, after doing some close study, is that when I’m tired, fatigued, or experiencing difficulty concentrating, it’s much easier to write prose. Trying to write poetry, whether drafting or revising, is near impossible and most often futile at these times. I believe part of this is because I’m thinking less precisely on each word, as I tend to do in poetry. (Of course at the later stages of a prose piece, I am scrutinizing each word, but not so much in earlier drafts.)

For instance, a few autumn’s ago, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. each weekday morning to write, more specifically to write short fiction. With the music of Hammock in my ears, with the large mug of hot black coffee, I was ready to enter those fictional worlds. I could pick up where I left off the day before as I gradually awoke to the real and the made-up worlds.

With reading prose–whether novels, short stories, or creative nonfiction–I am also able to enter into the worlds without much difficulty. There’s no warm-up necessary. I resume the novel, the memoir, or start the next short story with relative ease.  Again, this characteristic is a likely result of the way I read poetry, with such close attention.

I suppose it sounds as though I am a “sloppy” prose reader, and when I’m tired, perhaps that’s true. With prose, however, I do focus on the individual sentence, reading just as much for how the writer uses language.

These conclusions are already helping me as both a reader and writer. Poetry is best when I most alert, most awake, which generally means the mornings. I want and need to interact with the poem in as coherent a state as possible. Prose is for any time.

When I have the desire to write but the flesh is weak, I know I can stumble my way through the sentences, wandering through the rooms of paragraphs, not concerned about the hallways, knowing that I can (and will) return when I am alert to renovate the house of prose into a coherent design.

Bookmarked on the Nightstand–5.2.16

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

Watching the Spring Festival: Poems, by Frank Bidart

Okay, so I know Bidart is an important name in contemporary poetry, and I first read his work last summer on my journey through the Norton Anothology of Contemporary Poetry.

I’ve been halfway through this book for several weeks now. (Disclosure: there are only twenty-something poems.) It has been difficult to get some traction. I feel as though I’m missing something because I read a poem, reread it, and then scratch my head. Perhaps I’m not the best audience. I’m not sure.

I plan to finish the book, perhaps starting over (again). We’ll see what happens.

One of Ours, by Willa Cather

This marks my sixth novel by Cather, and it’s of special interest to me for two other reasons: 1) It’s set during World War I & 2) It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923.

As for the former reason, I have a keen interest in World War I, specifically literature set during and writing during that pivotal time. I also teach a literature class in which the first unit is literature from that era. And as for the latter reason, I am slowly making my way through the list of Pulitzer-Prize winners of fiction.

I’m trying to read all of Cather’s novels (and then the short fiction and poetry), and when I finish this compelling novel, I’ll be at the halfway point with her novels.

 

Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies, by Brian Doyle

This is a great collection of essays and creative nonfiction pieces by a contemporary author, editor of Portland Magazine. (Yea, Portland!) He writes about faith, about family, about storytelling, doing so with a precision and a humor that is keeping me engaged. Of special note is his longer essay about writing itself.

I heard him give an amazing reading at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College back in 2012. Moreover, he’s going to be the keynote at the writers’ festival I direct, so I’ll have the opportunity to meet him in February. I can’t wait.

Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut

As I’ve noted multiple times before in this pace, I’m a short-story afficiando. I’ve also wanted to read more of Vonnegut’s work. His story “Harrison Bergeron” was one of the first stories I taught as a first-year TA, and I’ve taught it multiple times since then.

That story is in this collection, but so are a host of other good stories. (I’m about halfway through.) They have that characteristic dark humor he’s know for. There’s much absurdity and creativity (in terms of plot, character, and setting), and I’m continually impressed by how in each world, regardless of the length, he manages to create believability and depth.