Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2006
Abstract
In this third of a projected four-book memoir, William Kloefkorn examines his late high school and early college years, a time of physical growth and intellectual exploration, of redefining relationships with parents and community, and of laying the foundation for his career as a teacher, scholar, and Nebraska State Poet. Adolescence is the time for what Robert Bly aptly calls "the road of ashes," a period of metaphorical "basement work in the kitchen" (Iron John: A Book About Men). Kloefkorn's reminiscences focus on basement and earth and tedious physical exertion: excavating a foundation for the Zenda Co-op Grain Elevator one wheelbarrow of dirt at a time, or helping his father dig a basement for the floor furnace, carrying dirt out of the tunnel one calf bucket after another. ''Anyone who's ever tried it," Bly says, "will quickly note that such bucketing is very slow work." Don't let the tornado on the book jacket fool you: adolescence is a time of descent into caves and coal cellars, and of monotonous, tedious, instructional, character-building hard work.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:4 (Fall 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.