Today’s episode is guest hosted by Victoria Chang.

Transcript

I’m Victoria Chang and this is The Slowdown.

I sometimes wonder why my childhood Michigan landscapes are such a big part of who I am. My cells are in the shape of snowflakes and my bones are made of ice. I was born in the great city of Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Southgate and West Bloomfield. My childhood was spent shoveling snow, putting salt on ice each morning so that we could walk without falling, mowing huge yards, and raking endless fall leaves.

As a child, I loved the outdoors. Because so much of Michigan weather was cold, I had all the necessary equipment. A red, full body snowsuit with a furry hood, mittens, snow boots, and a scarf. I would go outside, no matter how cold, and play in the snow until my cheeks were big ruddy apples. I would stick my tongue out to catch the snowflakes, lie down on the ground and make snow angels. No winter would be without building snowmen. As a sensitive child, I always felt sad while making them, knowing they would eventually disappear.

My first memory of understanding the power of the poetic image was in a Michigan winter. I stood quietly out in the snow and marveled at how slowly smoke came out of a neighbor’s chimney so that it looked like a painting. It felt like I stood there for hours. That image seemed to slow down time.

I admit, I spent much of my childhood imagining my future away from Michigan. But now, I only have positive memories of my childhood landscape. The Michigan landscape is my country. We are all always living and writing from somewhere, and thus we are being defined by our landscapes. We wouldn’t be someone without a somewhere.

Today’s poem is by the reclusive modernist poet, Lorine Niedecker, who spent most of her life on Blackhawk Island in Wisconsin, a marshy peninsula prone to flooding. It was almost as if Niedecker was made of the water that surrounded her. Water would be both the setting and the main character in her spare yet capacious poems.

My Life By Water
by Lorine Niedecker

My life   
  by water—       
      Hear

spring's   
  first frog       
      or board

out on the cold   
  ground       
      giving

Muskrats   
   gnawing       
      doors

to wild green   
   arts and letters       
      Rabbits

raided   
   my lettuce       
      One boat

two—   
   pointed toward       
      my shore

thru birdstart   
   wingdrip       
      weed-drift

of the soft   
    and serious— 
      Water    

“My Life by Water” by Lorine Niedecker from LORINE NIEDECKER: COLLECTED WORKS © 2004 Regents of the University of California. Used by permission of University of California Press.