Main Street, Wyoming; 622; WY Poet Laureate

Main Street Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production. And the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history values and ideas. Western writers used to say nobody understands or working appreciates it because they don't know our life. And they say who would be interested in you giving birth to lambs for example. And yet it is a unique way of life and maybe we're becoming more aware of what it offers that is valuable. In 1995 Governor Jim Geringer appointed Wyoming's third part laureate Robert Rowe R-PA joined us on Main Street Wyoming to meet this novelist poet and teacher. His family ran in The Wind Rivers and his words speak for all of us who know and love Wyoming. Welcome to Main Street Wyoming.

I'm Deborah Hammond and my guest today is Robert Roy upon Bobby showing as the ranch where his family lived outside of lander and sharing those stories which helped lead to his being named our state's poet laureate. Bob you've had a distinguished career as a writer and as a professor at the University of Wyoming but but this is where your life in Wyoming really started. This is this essentially is it and this is where my parents bought a room. My father was an engineer my mother had been a schoolteacher but mostly a mother raising my brother and me. And they came up to Wyoming and looked at ranches. This is the one that they decided to buy and they both came here and bought this ranch. About the time we had the big blizzard in 48 and 49 so that other historic. Were you here for that. No they were here I was here just before and I had gone back to school and I just heard about the results of it.

Well how many people were there in your family your mother your father yourself and I had a older brother at that point who was about three years older and he was off in college and I had started college. And as soon as my parents bought the raw stats where I began to spend my my summers and when I became a student I transferred to the University of Wyoming which is about 950. Then I began to come back here as much as I could and. And worked on it. In the summer holidays and what have you spent as much time here as I could. Now I know you've written very eloquently in essays about what ranching life was like back then but. But you as a young man what were you involved in. Well I was involved in a number of different kinds of things just the ones that we can have on his show. OK. I of course was going to college.

I was. Under the watchful eye of my draft board so I knew that I was going into the service fairly soon which was common in the early 1950s to the Korean war had started. I. Became involved in writing while I was at the University of Wyoming. And I began by starting to write fiction. And I began to study with a poet named Joseph Langland who helped me a great deal with my fiction. And I don't know whether he thought I was going to amount to much as a as a poet or not. I may have surprised him at that point somewhere along the line. So there you are there you are writing and majoring in English at the University of Wyoming but meanwhile in your summers in when you're home with your family you're cowhand your eyes person what are you doing a chance builder. A lot of the fans that we're looking at here. I and my father worked on and we did build a lot

of fats because it was always in need of repair. And I worked a lot in the hay fields usually mowing and buck raking and stacking from time to time. I enjoyed working with horses and we usually had three four sometimes a few more horses around the place. I had a friend named Johnny Prieto who was also interested in rodeo and horse breaking and we worked for a time out on the Sweetwater for an intern named William scarlet breaking horses out in the sweet water which I much enjoyed because I'm very fond of that part of the country and in the course of this I became involved in. College rodeo for a time this was a very interesting sort of experience on the whole but it tied in with my beginning to write in the kind of fiction I was

beginning to write. Because one of my subjects early on turned out to be rodeo and so more or less tied together to a degree. Now as I as I look at this and I think of your life with with horses and all of that there was a really important person in everyone's life and that was the person who issued the horses. You have a beautiful poem about that could you share that with me. Sure I would be glad to. And though they were sure it would take place down in the carouse or just outside the corral area and the horses usually had to be shod in the spring. And that was always an interesting event and one that we watched with some interest perhaps in part because we were concerned on how it would all come out and which horse who had misbehaved and whether they would all get shot or not. And this is the own horse shoer. It's about this time of year the old horse shoer. In late spring the horse sure navigates our soggy rode his

Studebaker truck clanging and amble tools of the trade iron shoes in a barrel stooped day's work mixed with mustache. He sets up under cottonwoods keeping one eye on the corral where sugar Pee wee wary shorty are waiting. Their coats are patchy winter hair shady nine evenly. Bellies a little gay. He hasn't come for small talk. Remembering the last time he picks out shorty first ties him high by a heavy halter rope wearing leather apron with pouches for nails. The old man lifts a foot so Weyers wheeled his curved hoof my Spitz neatly clips the edge with resti pinchers rasp that level he bends the cock shoot by a squint LB's fits refits gauging the ellipse. Again soft blue and sureties cautious eye. His mouth bristling with nails. He works under the raised front leg. A

circus back grey cap on backwards hammers near the quick twisting and clenching nails down mutters to himself. All right green morning opening to a shot in muddy boots he limps around Shorty picks up one hind foot easily as a tired lever. Asks if we've heard the first meadow lark. Now Bird is supposed to sing on cue. That's right. And it's just about time but the snow may be a little daunting for them but that was always nice to have one of the sounds of the Red Ring blackbirds that were down by the river was another nice one. That was wonderful. Now what I want to do is let's go in someplace warm and sit down and I want to visit with you about your life as a poet and a writer in Wyoming and you can share some more poems with us. We did a show on Owen Wister and I guess we're talking about if you were to read just one

novel about the American West they said the book that they would recommend would be Robert. Honor thy father which I know it won the Western Heritage Award as the outstanding western novel in 1963. Can you tell me about the book. Well I sometimes laughingly describe to my classes the book is a novel that I wrote about Wyoming and ranching and the cowboy and my intention I said was to. Correct all the faults that I had found in the Virginia DOT that I have achieved that and I'm not sure the Virginian has that many thoughts but I was interested in doing materials that come out of a similar point in time 1889 is the setting for the novel it set out on the Sweetwater River country. Country that I like and. Know fairly well. And what I was interested in was seeing what I could do with a family

ranching there a father whose wife has died. He's raising two sons. There's about three years difference in age between the sons and the sons are quite different in terms of. Temperament and attitude. The way people respond to them. So that was the basic situation that I had to start with and then played against that is the background of 1889 which is about the time of the Johnson cattle cattle or the lynching of cattle Kate Maxwell and Jim Avril. And all the problems that came out in that particular bad period of time in the ranching industry. So the historical part came been through. Why no I absolutely loved it I found a copy in our county library and I'm sure there there are copies in every Wyoming County Library. And what I found particularly good was I felt like you understood that world you described it in a way as if you had lived during that period of time I don't know how you were able to do that had you heard

stories from people about what it was like or at that particular point. I thought at least I do ranchers fairly well and I assumed that endurance had something of what they would have been like in that earlier point in time. But I didn't know enough about ranching and cattle and horses and so forth to be able to make that part. What I assumed would be reasonably authentic. And then I did an awful lot of research into the period. Life of that particular point in time the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association the problem that they were having and the incidents that surrounded that point in history in 1889. So there was a lot of background work that I had to do but there were other things that like Wyoming itself that I had I thought a good grasp of and some of those things pervaded novel background setting what the country looks like. Well just to give my viewers a sense of it can you read a little bit for us from it so sure they can see the Wyoming that they know here.

This is just a very short little piece a description from early on in the novel. That shows Wyoming coming through. In March the wind usually blew hard from the West feeling like it was sharpened on the Wind River Mountains and the edge of beaver rim. The wind was what made the Sweetwater country good for Calum. Most winters it blew the snow off so the cows could live without any hay and usually there would be a warm Chinook when you needed it most. There was none in the worst months of 87 when the cattle drifted south toward Red Desert and starved until they counted up humpback and Bony as sage roots and piled into Revie creek bottoms to die. But the March wind was lame today. I heard a metal lock salute from across a far draw and I was glad to be right in somewhere listening to ALL Blackie snort as he did whenever he wanted to jog trot and smelling the rain so clean and sharp like it always was at Greenup time.

Bob has written three novels or numerous short stories most of his time now it's been for his poetry re-ask hours poems come to an end. I think they sometimes come in different ways but initially I think you have something that triggers a memory or you see something or talk to someone and it reminds you of something that's happened to you in your past and you think wow that is interesting. That is I think our lives are made up of certain high points as far as some are obvious events are concerned. But it's also made up of a lot of small things that become important to you. And those are the things that may make ultimately good poems but you don't really know until you work with the idea. So you have it in him each. You have a memory you have a sense of something that happened that you think might be interesting to

certainly to yourself and more importantly to other people. And then you begin to work with it try to get something down on the page thinker with that change it and hope that old you get a poem to come out from. This poem that I'm going to read is what it. Is about. Rodeo and how we feel about it. And. The fashion in which most Wyoming communities respond to it at least I think this is true everywhere. As in. Lander the rodeos on the floor so to call the rodeo on the fourth. I feel it Hey Jane on hot afternoons. The way that sun

hangs there forever. Well downtown streets Brighton bloom into flags and pennants beer cans and the air at night promises another go round with excitement. Girls Widowmaker the carnival arrives a dirty canvas mood I recognise and Arapahoes dance for tourists who pitch them silver spinning through the neon. Cowgirl picking from a truck bed cries her last cruel love away bars with hope and booze women beautiful as a wrangler adds. Our neighbor packs off to the mountains fishing. Buds nerves go bad on parades and drunks asked me to come. But I'm already there with the coolers. Dreaming of softer skin better days coming back like bison. On the Fourth of July. I might get lucky writing bare backs. Take de money and find her

along the bar at the American Legion Club. What about rock writing was the event that I competed. In mainly And when I finished college I was drafted into the to the army. And. I had to give up that facet of my interests. When I came back to the army which was two years later I rode in one more show up at Laramie at the rodeo club I was a student again. And that was poor Leslie finish of that short career. And the launching of your mining that that those experiences for your poetry and your writing you know you write so beautifully about horses and honor thy father it's obvious I mean that it's not a sport it's a way of life. That's one of the things

that you have in there is is this agreement about how do you break a horse. That that particular kind of argument is one that certainly at that point in time went on in terms of how people wanted to break their animals and the way that they would approach it. But that was a sort of thing that the information that is useful to someone who wants to be a writer. I want to things that I would tell my students is that their problem isn't just writing their problem also is in developing the materials that they're going to use as writers and also in that that the materials that are most useful to them aren't necessarily the most unusual or unique exotic things that they could think of but we're more apt to be ordinary kinds of things that almost anyone might go through but that they would think about in more sensitive and interesting ways. There aren't that many completely new things to write about but there are a lot of things that can be written about well if if the person approaches it from that thing so it

doesn't have to be unusual material. You worked with with hundreds of students and through your years as in teaching in different workshops What do you think it takes to be a successful writer. I think it's a mix up of several qualities that they can bring and they may bring different qualities one of the things that goes into teaching students of creative writing is trying to decide where that student is in his work or her work and also maybe what the student most needs a student for example may most need some kind of confidence or a student may be too overconfident and unwilling to revise his work because most work is revised very extensively. Just for example the problem that I was just reading is pretty short. But if I went back and looked the drafts that I'd done I'd probably have 20 drafts that it went through at least before it came to the shape

that it had now time wise would you say how much what how long would it take you to write it what you can consider a finished palm. Probably several months at least. And. That would be pretty typical of the way things go and I would simply hold onto it until it did seem to satisfy me. And then I would send it out and see whether periodicals were interested in it and I might then go back and revise it some more. And even after pieces published in poetry one might choose to revise it more which is not true of my attitude toward a novel for example or necessarily toward a short story that's been published. Now I know that you were describing what the qualities that a person would need to to be a writer you're talking about that ability to to work with him about their natural abilities. Right. And I think there's a need for. The imagination of the Student Bureau to be fairly strong at least in creative work poetry or fiction. There needs to be that

interest in things not necessarily as they literally are although that's often a beginning point. But what things might become what might happen if such and such happen what might happen if some end elements of reality were changed in certain ways to bring about a different sort of result. And I think one doesn't need to have a fairly strong imagination. I think you need to have a good memory. If you can't remember things that have happened to you then you're not liable to be able to pull those well into your writing. And one thing that your memory does is sift out things that may be important to you from things that aren't that is you simply lose track of some of those that are less significant and can't make you so. This poem came out of an experience over south of where along the

Platte River there was a yellow willow tree that impressed me very much. I went there with my wife and my daughter many years ago. And this is a poem for my wife Yoshiko called Yellow October is a time of yellow Willow. After green of Aspen turns away. We must wait through cooler days when our leaders harden into red or brown as well as yellow Wyoming foothills. I think your fingers have the shape of willow like your eyes. Perhaps it's just the slowness of the way you turn in quiet fire still. Or something yellow as the leaf that holds to green skin darkening into brown and gray. Above Brush Creek. Watching Willow burn. I return to days in yellow. It's the rainy season mist yellow blossoms never touched by

yellow. I could tell you all of this or I won't. My filled with ball. And willows slowed to yellow. This is a poem that came out of an incident that was fairly concrete as as an image and it started from there but what is behind that probably is the emotion of the particular stage of life I was in at that point and how that could connect up with the scene that I was seen and willows are slow to turn. So they last longer into the fall and that led into the maybe the material content being transformed into a theme of some sort. About that poem is from your book learning to love the haze and I understand that's going to be reissued. But I'm afraid we're about out of time and I'd like you to conclude with one last poem for us.

I think you know the one that you want to know this is your new collection called the ranch. Yes I think the collection of poetry called the ranch. And this is a poem that I've worked over quite a bit at different points. It's called sleeping out on software Creek in autumn. For John R. Milton John Milton was a poet and editor and a writer in South Dakota he taught if University of South Dakota edited this out the code review and he died a little over a year ago. But it's about a lot of other things that relate to thinking about life and death. Sleeping on Sulphur Creek in the west of Coyote Lake. The sun meets Granite Hills light sharpens over snake weed and sage brush in the flats. Cattle wandering off the water lays a Lee inspect my Jeep bedroll in a grassy draw the hide in mitten spring. The rock turns

red after 30 years a weathered home familiar as my aging and. All afternoon I've hiked alone through grandma grass and sage sheep summered here. The herders trailing them home to the sweet water has lead you black drifted north ahead of fall. Now Benny I turn eons out of sheep running cows and calves I remember is house on alkali bringing him apples from our orchard. The way flocks of sage grouse trotted up from the water headed for feeding grounds in morning light and the sign he made for his front door. Welcome hunters. Make yourself at home. And please close the gates. I hope he's well. Friendly as ever. Gates stretched tight. All things seem possible here on Surfer creek. The lone Hawk hunts a sagebrush dry drops rising

empty handed to older I see more loss. Where does the mind like Evening Sun heighten memory before it's all we are what matters. I hear you say is how lost family friends the solitary Hawk remaining remembered lives images words we share tonight in a higher sky. The stars will be hard already horned larks are still quiet has fallen down in shadows. The last heavy truck from a drilling rig spreads dress dust along the road to pick up lake. Sage grouse moved up brushy draw us to roost and Eagle silently make their final sweep along the flats. It should be easy to sleep an early snow kept punters home though now it's melted except for patches on Beaver rim. One Orlando buck watch me at sundown from a distant ridge. Then

went to water below the spring. Drilling rigs are too far away to hear. And with the moon coyotes will be calling. If I wake up. Robert thank you. For a copy of this or any mainstream Wyoming send a check or money order to Wyoming Public

Television or call us at 1 800 4 9 5 9 7 8 8. Please include the subject or broadcast state of the program. The cost of each VHS tape is $20. We accept this MasterCard and discover. Mainstreet Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production and the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history values and ideas.