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PLAINSWOMAN. (ORIGINAL POEMS)
Abstract
"Plainswoman" is a trilogy of poems that deals with the Scandinavian immigration to the American Midwest and the subsequent efforts of the descendants of those immigrants to come to terms with their dour Scandinavian past and the rigidities of the contemporary culture of the plains states. Part I, "Her First Hundred Years," is a cycle of narrative poems with two main voices, a Norwegian woman who immigrates to America at the turn of the century and her granddaughter, who tries to imagine both her ancestor and her ancestor's experience as a means of interpreting her own life. "Death of a Regional Poet" is a book-length satiric poem written in five cantos in ottava rima. The unnamed narrator relates the coming-of-age of Alpha Oleson, regional poet, whose literary efforts comprise Cantos III and IV. This poem-within-a-poem is based on historical events--the settlement of a Nebraska county, complete with county-seat rivalry, contested elections and a vigilante committee's attempted bridge theft. Part III, "Farewell to Odin," is a collection of poems in which a variety of speakers search for replacements for the old gods, the old oppressors. The tempestuous Norse gods are replaced by the White Christ; the wind and weather of the plains supplants Christianity; the corn goddess reasserts herself; women assert themselves and begin to make their own myth. Several poems are in traditional forms; the sonnet, villanelle and pantoum encase the modern plaints of existential angst, meaningless relationships and isolation. "Plainswoman" begins with the patience and toil of the homesteaders and pays tribute to their virtues of endurance and effort, but appearing throughout the trilogy is the leit motif, "It is not enough to survive." Ultimately the virtues celebrated in ths poetic history of a region are spunk and humor.
Subject Area
Fine Arts|Literature
Recommended Citation
WEST, KATHLEENE KAY, "PLAINSWOMAN. (ORIGINAL POEMS)" (1986). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8609814.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8609814