New review of Carter's *The Land Itself*

 A review of Jared Carter's The Land Itself by Michael R. Burch has appeared recently on the online poetry journal The HyperTexts.

Burch refers to Carter as " . . . the poet of the uncanniness of the commonplace . . ."  He writes,

"The Land Itself begins on a Quixotic note, with a dog barking in the distance and “somewhere a windmill turning in the wind.” The first small town we encounter is ironically named Summit. But Summit is long gone, vanished without a trace from its hill. What remains? “Only the land itself and the way it still rose up.” Here we find the book’s title. What is left when we ourselves are gone, or have become mere shades of ourselves? The land itself, a haunting thought."

The entire review may be read here.

Two poems from the new edition of BJ Omanson’s *Stark County Poems* published in *Illinois Heritage*

Two of the new poems from the new enlarged edition of BJ Omanson's Stark County Poems-- "Proverb of the Three Hotels" and "The Boy Who Climbed a Tree"  (both about Abraham Lincoln's 1858 visit to Toulon, in Stark County, Illinois)-- appear in the current issue of Illinois Heritage: a Publication of the Illinois State Historical Society.

A poem from Jared Carter's *The Land Itself* appears in Ted Kooser's newspaper column, *American Life in Poetry*

 A poem from Jared Carter's The Land Itself has been chosen for inclusion in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry project.  The poem is "Changing the Front Porch Light."  

Kooser's project, in partnership with the Library of Congress, was inaugurated while Kooser was serving as Poet Laureate of the United States.  He describes it as follows:  "American Life in Poetry is a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet and a brief introduction to the poem by Ted Kooser.  The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry, and we believe we can add value for newspaper and online readers by doing so. "

Kooser's weekly column appears in newspapers across the United States and in 72 different countries around the world.  All poems which appear in his column are archived in the Library of Congress.

Jared Carter's earlier book, Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems, was the first book in Ted Kooser's Contemporary Poetry series, published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Carter's poem, and Kooser's comments about it, can be seen here: https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/786

 Consisting of over fifty poems, from short lyrics in a variety of forms to lengthy blank verse and free verse narratives, "Stark County Poems" portrays the history of a small rural county in central Illinois, along the upper Spoon River valley.

Chronologically arranged, and incorporating letters, newspaper articles, obituaries, family stories, early county histories and diaries, the poems cover a century of the county's history, from the 1830s through the 1930s.

Map, illustrations. 59 poems. 225 pages.

BJ Omanson was raised in the Spoon River valley of Stark County, Illinois, where both sides of his family have lived and farmed since the mid-19th century.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Populism

In the autumn of 1893,
      Alpheus Wheeler Appenheimer
and his wife Olive arrived in Stark County,
      Illinois, after having traveled
from their earlier Illinois home in Pike County
      by way of Leoti, Kansas.

They arrived in a covered wagon drawn
      by a pair of worn-out mules conveying
a girl and two boys, implements, blankets,
      a plow and scythe and a chest of clothes,
tinware pots, some kerosene lamps
      and a Mason jar of seeds interred

in early May and exhumed in August,
      still unsprouted— it’d been that dry.
They almost starved on their journey back.
      In Missouri they stopped at a lonely farm
and asked at the house if they might pick a few
      ears of corn to boil for supper.

Go ahead, help yourselves, the woman barked.
      No one else even bothers to ask.
It was hog cholera that had wiped them out
      and sent them westward to make a new start,
and it was drought and the ’93 Panic
      that wiped them out for the second time

and sent them back east to begin again.
      They’d gotten their fill of living in sod—
dirt in your soup and dirt in your bed.
      Their youngest son was born on a night
in January that covered the state
      in three feet of snow as the mercury plunged

to twenty below. He was kept from freezing
      by his mother’s warmth and a crackling stove
that was fed from a pile of unshucked corn.
      At three cents a bushel it made more sense
to burn it than sell it and, anyhow,
      the buffalo chips were long since gone.

In later years, when anyone asked,
      old Alpheus never had much to tell
about losing two farms in two different states.
      In an unguarded moment he said aloud,
You can pray to God. You can vote for Bryan.
      In the end it don’t matter a hill of beans.