Thomas D. Isern's Blog: Willow Creek: A Writing Journal, page 7
December 18, 2022
In Plains Sight
Last week on Prairie Public, a tribute to poet Bonnie Larson Staiger - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcast/plains-folk/2022-12-17/in-plains-sight
December 15, 2022
Resonance
This week's Willow Creek Folk School (No. 124) - you might want to be on hand right from the beginning at 8pm CST. The opening has some elements that set a theme and resonate throughout. I won't say much more about specific content, but Dr. Kelley will do our Christmas reading from Cather, and I'll bring in a seasonal ballad by a forgotten poet of the Montana High Line. Oh, and poor Charlotte will freeze to death again.
I used the word "resonate" above, and it's one I have thought about a great deal lately in a writerly way. A few days ago I had a discussion with some of my students about outlining, basded on some remarks by the historian, Angie Debo--who hated outlining and advised aspiring historians not to do it. On the other hand, I advise my students to outline early and keep at it, adding, adjusting, scrapping if necessary. It seems to me, though, that the disagreement is based on a false dichotomy which posits compulsive planning on the one hand and freewheeling spontaneity on the other. I do not know that there is such a continuum. I am certain there are things that happen with experienced writers that are on no such continuum. Emergent resonance is one of these, a delight to the writer.
I do not think it is characteristic of novice writers. I noticed it beginning to happen in mid-life, with a long line of published prose already in the rearview mirror. At first I noticed it after completion of, generally after publication of, a work. I would look it over and notice, this phrase, this motif, this sensation, this line of thought, it resonates nicely with this other, earlier thing, and now that I think about it, it runs through the work as a lining or undercurrent occasionally flashing or surfacing. Did I do that on purpose? I don't remember intending it. But was it really inadvertent? Did I unconsciously contrive the resonance? Was it just an unsolicited gift? It began to happen more and more, until now as I begin a serious piece, I just expect it to emerge. But I still don't know how that happens. I do know it is not an accident.
Getting back to the folk school - it has begun to happen there, too. Every week I put together odd pieces in the attempt to fashion a program, and not uncommonly, something emerges, Unexpectedly, stanza 3 of song 2 resonates somehow with the final line of song 1, and then it gets into the flow of things, and in the end, it may look like I planned it. Which I didn't. But it's not an accident.
Last night, doing preps for this week's WCFS, I felt it happening and went with it. Then I sat down, with a little sour mash on ice, to think about it.
WCFS No. 124 - Friday 8pm CST - streaming live from the Salon on Willow Creek - on the Facebook timeline of Plains Folk (facebook.com/plainsfolk)
Order of service - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EGgrG2bPhxYAVF5FrAFbjYuD4w8kfSoZ3kMNrhKwk8/edit?usp=sharing
I used the word "resonate" above, and it's one I have thought about a great deal lately in a writerly way. A few days ago I had a discussion with some of my students about outlining, basded on some remarks by the historian, Angie Debo--who hated outlining and advised aspiring historians not to do it. On the other hand, I advise my students to outline early and keep at it, adding, adjusting, scrapping if necessary. It seems to me, though, that the disagreement is based on a false dichotomy which posits compulsive planning on the one hand and freewheeling spontaneity on the other. I do not know that there is such a continuum. I am certain there are things that happen with experienced writers that are on no such continuum. Emergent resonance is one of these, a delight to the writer.
I do not think it is characteristic of novice writers. I noticed it beginning to happen in mid-life, with a long line of published prose already in the rearview mirror. At first I noticed it after completion of, generally after publication of, a work. I would look it over and notice, this phrase, this motif, this sensation, this line of thought, it resonates nicely with this other, earlier thing, and now that I think about it, it runs through the work as a lining or undercurrent occasionally flashing or surfacing. Did I do that on purpose? I don't remember intending it. But was it really inadvertent? Did I unconsciously contrive the resonance? Was it just an unsolicited gift? It began to happen more and more, until now as I begin a serious piece, I just expect it to emerge. But I still don't know how that happens. I do know it is not an accident.
Getting back to the folk school - it has begun to happen there, too. Every week I put together odd pieces in the attempt to fashion a program, and not uncommonly, something emerges, Unexpectedly, stanza 3 of song 2 resonates somehow with the final line of song 1, and then it gets into the flow of things, and in the end, it may look like I planned it. Which I didn't. But it's not an accident.
Last night, doing preps for this week's WCFS, I felt it happening and went with it. Then I sat down, with a little sour mash on ice, to think about it.
WCFS No. 124 - Friday 8pm CST - streaming live from the Salon on Willow Creek - on the Facebook timeline of Plains Folk (facebook.com/plainsfolk)
Order of service - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EGgrG2bPhxYAVF5FrAFbjYuD4w8kfSoZ3kMNrhKwk8/edit?usp=sharing
December 11, 2022
Another WCFS in the Bag
Last Friday's Willow Creek Folk School - WCFS No. 123 - https://fb.watch/hlXZNkChxL/
Field Notes
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcast/plains-folk/2022-12-10/field-notes
A Forgotten Balladeer from the Montana High Line
Just in time for WCFS No. 124, the final Willow Creek Folk School of 2022: the discovery of a forgotten balladeer in the high line country of Montana. H. E. Prall, of Wolf Point, was a farmer, a logger, a preacher, and a radio personality who wrote dozens of ballads--including one, appropriate to the season, we will debut this Friday night. We'll stream live at 8pm CST on the Facebook timeline of Plains Folk.
December 5, 2022
WCFS No. 123
Last Friday's Willow Creek Folk School - https://fb.watch/hdO1juTrgq/
December 1, 2022
Walter Hard's Lament
Last week on Prairie Public - https://news.prairiepublic.org/podcast/plains-folk/2022-11-26/walter-hards-lament
November 29, 2022
Tis the Season
For editing, it seems. I have spent the morning marking my way through two papers from my research seminar. This is not light work, but it is rewarding work. Each of these papers will be read to peers in the closing session of the seminar; will go on to presentation at a scholarly conference somewhere in the coming spring; will morph into a chapter of a thesis or dissertation; and finally, will go to print in a book or journal.
I am conscious that from the standpoint of the university, this is part of the branding of a research institution. Moreover, it is an extension of my own standing as a research scholar of the region. And surely this part of the country needs more good history written about it, thereby constructing a true and positive regional identity. Still, as I sit down with each of the authors elbow-to-elbow, parsing footnotes; untangling sentences; aligning narrative and argument; and deciphering the pencil scratchings with which I have defaced their work, I am most conscious that I am affecting the trajectory of their lives, as scholars and as people. I pray, therefore, that I may nudge them in good directions.
I am conscious that from the standpoint of the university, this is part of the branding of a research institution. Moreover, it is an extension of my own standing as a research scholar of the region. And surely this part of the country needs more good history written about it, thereby constructing a true and positive regional identity. Still, as I sit down with each of the authors elbow-to-elbow, parsing footnotes; untangling sentences; aligning narrative and argument; and deciphering the pencil scratchings with which I have defaced their work, I am most conscious that I am affecting the trajectory of their lives, as scholars and as people. I pray, therefore, that I may nudge them in good directions.
November 24, 2022
Traveling with Billy
Always carry a good book when you travel. We're on a Thanksgiving expedition to Oklahoma, a gathering of family in the Arbuckles, which is grand; both of us, of course, also carry along more work than we will be able to handle. More important, as always, a good book. Travel always has its interstices, and sometimes outright lapses, when the book comes out. A good book can become entwined in memory with a good journey.
My literary companion on this good journey is After Populism: The Agrarian Left on the Northern Plains, 1900-1960, by William C. Pratt. I always liked to call Bill "Billy," because it annoyed him, which is what friends are for. I will write more about the work in other venues, but right now, I comment it as a journey book. Because Billy himself is on a journey, an intellectual one for sure, limning the shadows of forgotten political movements and personages, but also a physical one. To Williston, to Belden, to Frederick, to Red Cloud--Billy goes to all the places that were the haunts of the people he discovers in the documentation in order to talk to people and just experience their world. To Moscow to dive into the archives of the Kremlin. His travels are not consigned to the footnotes; they figure in the narrative, often become the narrative, a story of a historian prowling the country, encountering people on their own terms, recounting the encounters.
Willa Cather speaks of the freemasonry of girls and boys raised on the prairies. There is another, overlapping order of prairie scholars (#prairiescholars) who make the landscape their library and their garden, to be both read and tended.
Billy Pratt, a good man to ride the river with.
My literary companion on this good journey is After Populism: The Agrarian Left on the Northern Plains, 1900-1960, by William C. Pratt. I always liked to call Bill "Billy," because it annoyed him, which is what friends are for. I will write more about the work in other venues, but right now, I comment it as a journey book. Because Billy himself is on a journey, an intellectual one for sure, limning the shadows of forgotten political movements and personages, but also a physical one. To Williston, to Belden, to Frederick, to Red Cloud--Billy goes to all the places that were the haunts of the people he discovers in the documentation in order to talk to people and just experience their world. To Moscow to dive into the archives of the Kremlin. His travels are not consigned to the footnotes; they figure in the narrative, often become the narrative, a story of a historian prowling the country, encountering people on their own terms, recounting the encounters.
Willa Cather speaks of the freemasonry of girls and boys raised on the prairies. There is another, overlapping order of prairie scholars (#prairiescholars) who make the landscape their library and their garden, to be both read and tended.
Billy Pratt, a good man to ride the river with.
November 20, 2022
WCFS No. 121
Last Friday's Willow Creek Folk School - https://fb.watch/gWKlRIgDYz/
Willow Creek: A Writing Journal
From the home office on Willow Creek, in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, historian Tom Isern blogs about his (literary) life on the plains.
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