i.m. David Pearson Etter (published as Dave Etter), 1928-2015

An obituary for fellow Illinois poet (but no relation) Dave Etter appears here. I'm so glad I had the chance to meet him last August--thanks again to Mike Stivers and Adam Aspbury for driving me to Lanark to do so. A previous post about my meeting Dave appears here, and Bill Sherman's tribute appears on his blog here.

Meeting Dave Etter, August 2014

Sorry for the radio silence--did anyone notice? Since the start of the new year I've been drowning in marking.

Growing up in Normal, Illinois, I first met other writers when, at 15, I took an adult ed class at Illinois State University, "Women Writing Women's Lives," taught by Linnea Johnson. As soon as I began meeting other writers, I was asked if I was related to Illinois poet Dave Etter. My answers varied between "I don't know" and "Nah, I'm adopted," but I was curious. 

There used to be an event called Wordfair at the wonderful little Franklin Park (the scene of a poem from Imagined Sons, I'm so fond of it) in Bloomington, and I recall, as a teenager, seeing Dave Etter's books for the first time. He wrote about the prairie and the people who live there, in a style reminiscent of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. 

Over the decades, when I meet another poet for the first time and say my name, I've heard Dave Etter's name brought up again and again: "Do you know him? Are you related to him?" I always thought I'd meet him sooner or later, but once I moved to England I didn't hear the questions again and when I did think about it wondered idly where Dave was in the world. Was he still in Illinois? Was he still writing and publishing poems?

Sometime last year, poet Bill Sherman got in touch to ask if he could give my address to Dave Etter, as they knew each other and Dave was interested in writing to me. Dave and I swapped several letters--and books, and on my visit to Illinois last August, we arranged to meet. As there is no public transport serving Lanark, Illinois, the town where he lives, I appealed to my great friend Mike Stivers to drive me, and Adam Aspbury came along for the adventure. The photos didn't turn out very well, but I'm glad to have them!

Dave and I on his front porch

 

Dave

 

Dave and his wife Peggy, who made lunch for us all

 

The Illinois Corn Festival, 23 August 2014

I timed my visit to my hometown to coincide with its annual corn festival and spent four hours there yesterday with my niece Ella.

 One of the two corn shucking tables

A pile of corn awaits shucking

 Ella with corn

Me with corn

A perhaps slightly more flattering photo of Ella, a sweet and spicy sixteen!

The next installment of my home visit photos will be of today's baseball game, in which my nephew Nathan Wallace plays second base &c.

 

Adoption birthdays

Today's my adoption birthday, the day my adoptive parents picked me up from the hospital and took me into their home. It often feels more important than my "real" birthday, as I think of the creative, loving environment I was brought up in and credit it for what I value most in myself. 

My new book, Imagined Sons, focuses on my other position in the "adoption triangle," the birthmother. I've given five readings from the book now, and at each one someone asks whether I've searched for my son. 

I finally managed to start the process last September. I learned that the agency I surrendered my son through had been absorbed into another agency and with some research discovered the right person to contact. We swapped emails, and she said I should get on the Illinois adoption registry and in the meantime she'd send me a letter. 

The letter never arrived. It says something about the degree of my fear that only yesterday, over six months after the initial exchange of emails, that I wrote again to say so. I received a prompt response saying the letter would be sent out at once (with apologies for the lapse), and I downloaded the forms I need to fill out to join the Illinois adoption registry. I'll fill them out this weekend and post them next week. 

So I wonder what day my son's adoption birthday is. His birthday's September 11th, but I know he was briefly in foster care before being adopted, so I have no idea what his adoption birthday would be. If I'd known my parents wouldn't make it to their seventies, I would have begun this search much earlier. All I can do now is remember today, remember them, and be oh so grateful I had them as long as I did.

"Drought" in New Statesman

My poem, "Drought," in the last print issue of New Statesman, is now available to read online. Imaginatively set in central Illinois, it comes from a manuscript in progress about home, family and death (would that I were joking) titled The Weather in Normal.*





*You know Normal's the name of my hometown, right?

In that kitchen, a writing exercise (NaPoWriMo, day 25)

Three days of NaPoWriMo, I've begun anew an exercise I came across in a listserv's archives: Begin with "In that kitchen," continuing writing until you're stuck, and when you reach that wall, write "In that kitchen" again and continue accordingly for 10-15 minutes; this becomes the first draft of a prose poem. In my three pieces, the kitchen is always the kitchen at 220 Arlington Drive, Normal, Illinois, the kitchen I knew as my family's from the age of five, the kitchen I may not see again if the house is sold soon. I was surprised to feel how much a kitchen can be the axis of a family; I suppose ours especially, as it was connected to the garage on one side and was open to the dining room on the other. For those struggling with coming up with a poem a day, I strongly recommend the exercise and urge people to try it with the kitchen they knew in childhood: it's amazing what strands of relationships, family, place, and development arise and mingle.

My parents, Henry and Bernadine Etter, 1965

The Visitation, 16 March

The grandchildren's contributions

I set up a slide show of 70+ photos of Dad on my Macbook

Lindsey and Katelyn, cousins and sisters

(one of our many long stories)

At Carmody-Flynn Williamsburg Funeral Home, Bloomington, Illinois

Normal, Illinois in literature

Thanks to Richard Lambert for bringing to my attention the following passage from Lorrie Moore's story, "Like Life":

"You had to get out of them occasionally, those Illinois towns with the funny names: Paris, Oblong, Normal. Once, when the Dow-Jones dipped two hundred points, the Paris paper boasted a banner headline: NORMAL MAN MARRIES OBLONG WOMAN. They knew what was important. They did! But you had to get out once in a while, even if it was just across the border to Terre Haute, for a movie."

I love it and would be glad to see more!

An Etter Tradition

The Etters don't have many traditions, but one we have and love is that on a child's first birthday, s/he receives her/his very own cake. The last Etter descendant to enjoy this tradition was my youngest nephew Andrew on 23 July, and I was there to see it for myself. (If Andrew doesn't look as excited as you might expect from such an experience, that's probably because he was a bit ill at the time.)

Really?

Well...

This is good stuff.

The End (doesn't he look a little abashed?)