By Bill Schulz
Twenty-five years ago I sat in the Dahl Fine Arts Theater listening to a woman read poetry about dead animals, dead people, and the South Dakota prairie. Her words, rhythms, and images kept returning to me:
Spring is here:
The first skunk lies dead…
—from Spring
I’m on the hill above the town, with
buffalo grass and graves.
—from Memorial Day
It was a typical prairie homestead:
a hundred sixty dusty acres
with not one tree.
—from Homesteading in Dakota
The next day I mailed her a few of my poems and three days later I received her response. She had meticulously written in the margins words like “good strong image” and “I like this!”
The woman was Linda Hasselstrom and nine years later she would edit a chapbook of my poems. Now it’s 2008 and I am headed for her Hermosa ranch. For the past sixteen years Linda has lived in Cheyenne, but now she is coming home “for good.”
(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘09 FACES)
