It was a strange time and place, I suppose, to be pondering the recent fuss about South Dakota’s poet laureate.
I was sitting on a bench in front of the headquarters building at Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge, full in the sun and partly out of the southeast breeze. I had a sandwich, a can of sparkling water and my binoculars.
Oh, and I had a book, too. A book of poems. A book of poems by our current state Poet Laureate Bruce Roseland.
In case you don’t know him, or of him, Roseland is a fourth-generation rancher near Seneca, which is on U.S. Highway 212 between Faulkton and Gettysburg. Squeezed into a life of feeding cattle, fixing fence and occasionally miscalculating and slamming a hammer onto a finger, Roseland has published more than a half dozen books of poetry and has won multiple awards for his writing.
The book I had at Lacreek is titled A Prairie Prayer. I took it along so I could read a poem or two when I stopped for lunch during a pheasant hunt on the portions of the refuge that are open to upland bird hunting.
I plan my hunting trips to Lacreek, which is about 13 miles southeast of Martin and 120 miles from Rapid City, to include a stop at the headquarters building. The lobby is usually open, even on weekends, and offers restroom facilities, a machine with hot or cold water and updates on birds sighted at the refuge.
When it’s cold, I like to make myself a cup of hot tea. But it was nearly 60 degrees on the recent late November afternoon I was there, so lemon LaCroix water worked just fine.
From my spot on the bench, I was looking out across the sprawling complex of bulrush and cattails and shallow lakes connected by the ever-flowing Lake Creek. Beyond to the south was the quiltwork of upland grasses stretching up to the northwest edge of the magnificent Nebraska Sandhills.
A “mosaic weave” and the rooted writing of a rancher poet
So I was in a good spot to consider the prairie, prairie poetry and a guy who understands both quite well. Roseland, I mean.
In-between watching passing trumpeter swans, geese, mallards and marsh hawks with my binoculars, I focused in particular on a poem called Prairie
Mosaic. In it, Roseland tells of turning cattle into “fresh” pasture that hadn’t been grazed that year, putting out salt licks — blocks of salt and other minerals for cattle to lick — and pondering the surrounding grasses and wild flowers.
Of that fundamental flora, Roseland writes in part:
“These I have lived with all my life.
Everything I have they sustain.
These plant roots feed from a past
containing rainstorms and blizzards,
ages of countless hooves,
and the wild, ancient men that followed them.
All around to the horizon line
I can see, uninterrupted,
like time itself,
the mosaic weave,
a living picture.”
That mosaic weave, that living picture, was especially vibrant at Lacreek as I sat and enjoyed my simple meal with a pleasure that’s impossible to duplicate in a restaurant or at your dining-room table.
Years ago, I wrote a newspaper column in which I said that few foods could compare with a simple bologna sandwich eaten during a duck hunt while reclining on a muskrat hut warmed by the morning sun. A turkey or roast beef sandwich, or avocado and cheese, are winning substitutes for bologna, and probably my preference these days.
But the point remains. It’s the wild setting that elevates the food to another level. And on that recent Sunday down at Lacreek, it was both the place and the poetry.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that I had jazzed up my turkey sandwich with some of Mary’s homemade relish.
Trying to decide where poetry left off and politics began
In-between celebrating the sandwich and the passing birds, I had plenty of time to consider a few things — including Roseland, his poetry and the odd series of events that delayed his approval late last August by Gov. Kristi Noem as the state’s eighth poet laureate.
The poet laureate position in South Dakota goes back to 1937, when the widely read — at least in this region — Badger Clark was named the first poet laureate for the state. He held that title until his death in 1957.
Next came Adeline Jenny, who held the position from 1958 to 1973, Mabel Frederick (July-October 1973), Audrae Visser, (1974-2001), my friend and former SDSU creative writing teacher David Allan Evans (2001-2015), LeeAnn Roripaugh (2015-2019) and Christine Stewart-Nunez (2020-2021).
Up until Dave Evans retired, the governor appointed the poet laureate with a recommendation from the South Dakota Poetry Society with no limit on how long each laureate served. A law passed by the 2015 state Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Dennis Daugaard changed the process a bit, so that the poet laureate serves a four-year term beginning on July 1 in the first year after a gubernatorial election.
Daugaard was unsuccessful in having the bill amended to give governors more authority in the selection process, in case the Poetry Society offered a candidate that a future governor considered unsuitable. If that amendment had passed, Bruce Roseland might not be our poet laureate today. We’ll never know.
But legislators at the time argued that the Poetry Society probably knows poetry better than most governors. I’m pretty sure they were right on that one. And Daugaard approved Roripaugh, the Poetry Society’s nominee, at a time when Kristi Noem was still serving in the U.S. House.
In Noem’s first year as governor, she approved the society’s chosen candidate, Stewart-Nunez. So far, so good. But …
Finding a pathway beyond an unhappy stalemate
While the governor isn’t authorized to appoint a poet laureate who isn’t proposed by the Poetry Society, neither is the governor required by the law to approve the society’s nominee. That’s a framework that could lead to an unhappy stalemate, which is what happened when Stewart-Nunez left her poet laureate position when she moved to Canada for a teaching position there.
I followed the story long range, relying mostly on the excellent coverage of my friend and SDPB colleague Lori Walsh. And long range, at least, it all seemed, well, weird. And political.
Noem didn’t act on an interim poet laureate proposed by the Poetry Society, so the spot remained vacant for the remainder of Stewart-Nunez’s term. Then came the next full term, which was supposed to be last July 1. When presented with Roseland’s name, Noem didn’t initially approve it, which was a puzzle to me.
Roseland has the writing credentials. He’s a native South Dakotan. He was already doing some of the outreach work promoting poetry in schools and communities that poet laureates are expected to do. He’s a rancher with deep, abiding connections to the land. You might assume that Noem, who has agricultural roots similar to Roseland’s, would consider him an ideal pick.
But another name was involved, one that was not brought forward to Noem by the state Poetry Society: Joseph Bottum, more commonly called Jody.
That’s where, I assume, politics got involved. I don’t know Roseland’s politics, but I know Bottum’s pretty well. He’s a very conservative Catholic who has been expressing his conservative views in words — written and spoken — for years.
I assume Roseland isn’t as conservative as Bottum is. He might even be liberal, or progressive, depending on which term you choose. If you think protecting fragile prairie ecosystems is a liberal concept, I suppose you could see a liberal philosophy in Roseland’s writing.
What I see is good writing and common sense.
In celebration of grasses that grow right side up
In the poem The Soul of the Prairie is Grass, Roseland writes:
“This the Indians understood.
When seeing what the white man’s plow did
they wondered:
‘What good is grass upside down.’”
Roseland goes on in the poem to talk how towns followed the plow but grass remained in many places, supporting not just livestock but the greater web of life in native flora and fauna. And after celebrating the grasses, Roseland shows respect for the wetlands and even the rougher edges of plant life where less-celebrated varieties grow:
“There is the wheat grass, the crested,
the western, and the intermediate,
the needles grass, the june grass
that is also called blue.
The sweetest of all are the gramma
and buffalo grasses
that cure standing.
In the potholes, the cattails grow,
the sedges and the reeds .
In the alkaloid places, the foxtails
and such that we simply call weeds,
a thousand niches
filled with living things
growing right side up,
as intended.”
Of course, the land must be turned over in some areas to produce grain for food, livestock and even fuel. But in others, the grass should have been left right side up, as the indigenous people and ranchers like Roseland understand.
No question, Bottum knows what he’s doing with words
Jody Bottum is a very intelligent guy, and an exceptional writer. My interactions with him have always been positive, although they usually required me to go online and look up some words and cultural or literary references. I haven’t read much of Bottum’s poetry. None, actually, that I can recall. But I assume it’s well crafted and thoughtful. It’s probably even more polished that Roseland’s.
It’s pretty hard to beat Roseland’s writing for heart and grit, however, especially when we’re talking about South Dakota and a poet laureate tradition that began with Badger Clark.
In a Cowboy’s Prayer, Badger Clark speaks of the freedom and challenges of the land that Bruce Roseland lives everyday:
“Just let me live my life as I’ve begun
And give me work that’s open to the sky;
Make me a pardner of the wind and sun,
And I won’t ask a life that’s soft or high.
Similarly, Roseland writes in his poem A Prairie Prayer:
“Here, on this arc
of grass, sun, and sky
I will stay and see if I thrive.
Others leave. They say it’s too hard.
I say hammer my spirit thin,
spread it horizon to horizon,
see if I break.”
Roseland hasn’t broken yet, in his ranching or his writing. He was probably bent a little bit in the process of getting nominated, declined, stalled and, finally, approved by the governor as poet laureate. But he didn’t break there, either.
On the road with poetry again, but now as poet laureate
And in the end the process worked pretty much as it should. Roseland is busy taking poetry on the road, making himself as accessible as his poems. Which is a very good thing. Because the roots of that poetry grow deep and close to home for any South Dakota who has a connection, directly or indirectly, to the land.
Which means most of us, if we think about it carefully.
Years ago, I collaborated with Dave Evans, our mutual friend Charles Woodard — also an SDSU English professor at the time — and others on a little book about a big patch of native prairie up in McPherson County west of Leola. It is called What the Tallgrass Says, and it examined the 7,800-acre Samuel H. Ordway Jr. Memorial Prairie, which had been purchased a couple of years earlier by The Nature Conservancy.
Best known for its tallgrass species, Ordway also has a blend of mixed-grass and short-grass prairie. Located in the Prairie Pothole Region, it has some wonderful wetlands, too. And like the larger 16,410-acre Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge, Ordway preserves a vital piece of the natural landscape for waterfowl and other wildlife, and for the wild ideas they inspire.
In writing the Ordway book, Evans quoted an Ojibwa song that goes, in part: “As my eyes search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring.”
Sitting on the bench at Lacreek that afternoon, I could have sung: “As my eyes search the prairie, I feel the winter in the fall.”
Even at 60 degrees, there had been a hint of winter edging around my afternoon there. And a predictable chill settled in as the low-angled sun finally spent itself entirely on a sensational display of color and light at the horizon.
I’ll be back to Lacreek yet this fall and again a time or two after that, almost certainly into January and probably February and March. Then my eyes will search the prairie and, if the day is nice, I might feel a hint of spring in the winter.
If I do, I might also decide to have my lunch on that bench at the refuge headquarters, enjoying a hot cup of tea, the warmth of the sun and the inspired words of our new poet laureate.
Oh, and the taste of another simple sandwich, elevated to fine prairie dining by the world around me.
