Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"Young Poets Write What They Know" William Reed Dun Roy, Poet Of The Plains, Carrie Shipers

Great Plains Quarterly

In a column for the Lincoln Courier, a newspaper that actively covered the city's political and artistic scenes in the mid-1890s, William Reed Dunroy writes, "Young poets write what they know; what life has taught them." If his own poetry and imaginative prose are any indication, what Dunroy himself knew best, and cared about most deeply, is the Great Plains region-its weather, landscape, and the lives of its people. Dunroy's career as a poet and a reporter began in Nebraska, and his work is most remarkable when he is writing about the place he loved.

Dunroy has not been overlooked …

German Heritage And Culture In Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club, Thomas Austenfeld

Great Plains Quarterly

Reid's discussion of the formal properties of Erdrich's work helps explain the author's popular appeal. Mewing easily between urban and rural settings, between reservation culture and mainstream culture, Erdrich has been evoking the various sets of social and historical circumstances that define the lives of contemporary Native Americans in the Great Plains. In The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), Erdrich turns her attention explicitly to her own part-German ancestry and fictionalizes it, thereby bringing a n element of both thematic and autobiographical relevance into prominence.

The Earth Says Have A Place William Stafford And A Place Of Language, Thomas Fox Averill

Great Plains Quarterly

In the spring of 1986, my daughter was almost four years old and my wife and I were to have poet William Stafford to dinner during a visit he made to Washburn University. I searched for a short Stafford poem our daughter might memorize as a welcome and a tribute. We came across this simple gem, and she spoke it to him at the table.

Later in his visit, Stafford told a story about "Note." He traveled extensively all over the world. Once, in Pakistan, he opened his bags for a customs official. "Books," the man observed. "I am a …