Thursday January 21, 2021

Thursday January 21, 2021
Reading Between the Lines
 

 

THE RAVEN  VOLUME 2 ISSUE 10   NOVEMBER 1995

 Get Rich With Poetry  by Joe McDonnell

Thank you for reading this article, and congratulations: You are a part of the .01% of the population that will read a story with the word ‘poetry’ in the title. On the other hand you may be part of the 99.99% that cannot pass by the words ‘Get Rich Quick.’ My goal is to satisfy both groups.

Those of you who have driven that stretch of county road between Gully and Grygla know what a spirit killing bit of highway it is. Twenty-eight miles of swamp and lonely farms, then a one mile jog east and another 12 miles of the same into Grygla.

I was driving this stretch one Friday afternoon last month, sucking on a can of pop and listening to Minnesota Public Radio, trying to stay awake and out of the ditch. Playing on the radio was mandolin music so bright and lively it seemed to spread sunlight over the countryside and bring out the beauty of the ancient bottom of glacial Lake Agassiz. The music was from a CD called “Heart of The Heartland” by Peter Ostroushko.

Eric Friesen, the radio host, invited his listeners to send him their thoughts on what the words ‘Heart Land’ meant to them. He promised to read the six he liked best on the air and also send the winners a copy of the CD.

I love it here in the middle of the middle west. Being an outsider, I’ve given a lot of thought to what makes this such a great place. My thoughts arranged themselves into two short stanzas. I got up in the middle of the night and wrote them down. Next day I put them on the computer and hammered my poem into final shape and sent it off to Mr. Friesen down in St. Paul.

The following Saturday Dawn Johnson called me up. “Congratulations,” she said. “I heard your poem on the radio.”

Mr. Friesen himself called the next day to check our mailing address.

For those of you who missed hearing it on the air, here is the poem in its entirety.

Confident and strong
The Heart Land
Laughs off the jibes
From the water’s edge,
While making grub
For those coastal mockers.

Wisely innocent
The Heart Land
Balances on broad shoulders
The nation’s roving
Compass beam.

I love poetry’s ability to compress much thought in compact form, but to be honest, when I see a knot like the above I wonder if it will be worth my trouble to unravel it. I prefer something like: 

‘The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville 9 that day . . . .’

Or how about

‘Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.’

Profound yet simple, and it rhymes to boot.

When my son Matthew heard I had won a CD for writing eleven short lines, he advised me to write poetry full time. Unfortunately the last poet to make a living from verse alone was Robert Frost. Today’s best paid poets are a practically anonymous group working for the country music trade.

It’s tough for a newcomer to break in. We unknown poets need a local forum. Winning this CD gave me an idea. I’m going to convince the Wannaska merchants to sponsor weekly poetry contests. First prize at Riverfront Station could be 10 gallons of gas and a canned ham. The Corner Cafe might offer a free pass to the Saturday Night Smorgasbord, and the author of the best poem submitted to Lee’s Store would be allowed a seven second shopping spree; just enough time to satisfy a person’s hardware needs for the week.

Once a year the merchants would print up the winning poems in a pamphlet. I think these contests would stir up all kinds of new business. Poets are big spenders by nature, you know.