Agrarian poets
Poets Ted Kooser, Twyla Hansen and Leo Kovar will be featured as part of an exhibit about agrarianism in art and poetry at Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art in David City, Neb. Kooser is the well-known U.S. Poet Laurate. Hansen’s agrarian poems are in several books. Kovar is a writer who has composed poems just for this event. All of these poets focus on agrarian poetry.
Ted Kooser is one of the painters whose artwork is in the exhibit. Because Kooser is both a poet and a painter, he is the featured poet in this event, marrying art and poetry. The poetry and the art each stand alone, but by seeing and listening to both at one time, they give added meaning to each other.
A poet paints pictures with words, often expressing an essence or defining moment in his or her poetry. Kooser’s painting in this exhibit is equal to or better than many produced by full-time professional painters. Many painters are adept at using paint but sometimes fail to explore, express and simplify their paintings into visual poetry. Not so with this painting by Kooser. It is one of the best in an exhibition that has several great paintings.
It is especially fitting that Ted Kooser is participating in this event. Living on an acreage near Garland, Neb., Kooser is located about 25 miles from Bone Creek. As a major poetic voice for rural and small town America, one of his books, “Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps” (University of Nebraska Press), is about the countryside inhabited by both Kooser and Bone Creek. The museum is truly honored to be able to host a neighbor and kindred spirit at this special event.
Poet Twyla Hansen is also a very authentic agrarian whose poetry comes from the heart. She was raised in northeast Nebraska on land her grandparents farmed in the late 1800s as immigrants from Denmark. She received her B.S. in horticulture from the University of Nebraska. Her home, on a wooded acre in Lincoln, is an urban wildlife habitat recognized by the Mayor’s Landscape Conservation Award. Her latest book, “Prairie Suite: A Celebration of Spring” (Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center), is a poem-drawing collaborative with renowned ornithologist Dr. Paul A. Johnsgard. Hansen truly has a track record of having “walked the walk” and “talked the talk” when it comes to being a real agrarian. Because she knows of what she speaks, her poems are honest and provocative.
In recent years, Leo Kovar returned to his roots, Brainard, Neb., where he grew up on a family farm. This is only 10 miles from Bone Creek, where he will read his poetry. Kovar has lived in various locations in the United States but chose to return home for his retirement. As a family farmer, the land owns you as well as you owning the land. Because of this, agrarians have a special sense of place and home. This sense of placeis often missed by city folks, who tend to treat their houses as investments and flip them for a profit. Leo feels that the agrarian sense of place learned in his formative years is responsible for his community involvement and citizenship in each of the places that he has lived during the course of his life. Kovar’s poetry reflects on his strong sense of place.
Of necessity, these poets—Pulitzer Prize winner Kooser, Nebraska Book Award winner Hansen and thoughtful writer Kovar—have lived much of their lives in cities. By choice, these poets are agrarians in mind and lifestyle.
It is very significant that these writers choose to explore the meaning of agrarianism, both intellectually and in how and where they live. Agrarianism is being redefined in today’s society. These well-known and scholarly people are helping to redefine it. Artists and poets tend to choose subjects that they know, that are important to society,and that are not being explored except for their efforts. These poets are or have been urban people with many other choices for intellectual and creative endeavor, yet they are compelled to write about the core of their very being: agrarianism.
An artist’s subject is often in an unrecognized state of change and flux, demanding that the artist or poet say something that no one else is saying. The new agrarianism is somewhere between industrialism on one side and environmentalism on the other. Traditionally, agrarian was identified with homesteaders, small towns and family farms. As these have dwindled or disappeared, agrarian has become more of a value or ideal. It is not the practice of industrialized farming nor is it environmental protectionism. The new agrarianism has more to do with urban community gardens, food co-ops, sustainable agriculture, organic farming and niche markets for products of the land than it has to do with agribusiness. The new agrarianism is being developed as much by the urban dweller’s choices and actions as by those of landowners in the hinterlands. Others fail to see and express what artists and poets see and reinvent for the rest of us to experience. This is the case with the Aug. 9 event, “Agrarianism Expressed in Art and Poetry,” and current exhibition, “Simply Agrarian: Selections from Great Plains Art Museum” at Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art.
The exhibit features 20 artworks by 20 different artists such as Augustus Dunbier, Kady Faulkner, Raymond Knaub and Judy Love. Depending on their childhood experiences and artistic inclinations, each artist has a different agrarian expression. For example, “A Good Solid Century Farm” by Andrew Peters harkens to an idealized abundant family farm of the past. Other paintings focus on loss of agrarian culture, crops, environment, sustainable agriculture, water, weather, domestic animals and urban sprawl into the hinterlands. The sum of these various parts is a rich whole exhibit, perhaps saying more about agrarianism than would a solo exhibit with only one point of view.
Following the poetry reading, a panel will discuss the evolving meaning of agrarianism. The poets will be joined by the exhibition co-curators, Assistant Curator Amanda Mobley and Great Plains Art Museum Curator Amber Mohr, to discuss the agrarian poetry and artwork. Mobley and Mohr gave considerable thought to agrarianism in presenting these paintings and preparing descriptive text for the exhibit. Please think about the new agrarianism and ask questions of the panel. Are all farmers agrarians? Are all agrarians farmers? Are city community gardeners agrarian? Are they urbanites? These and similar questions will be explored by the panel. This free-flowing intellectual discussion will examine contemporary changes in agrarianism as they affect us all.
A special painting and text by Dale Nichols, “Platte Valley Summer,” is on loan from Central Community College while Bone Creek helps the college prepare a new installation to preserve this great work of art. The painting has only been in a public museum exhibit on one previous occasion, and it is arguably the most important painting with text ever done by Nichols.
Bone Creek is also presenting two new agrarian artworks in the museum collection. For the first time, visitors will see an oil painting, “Woodchopper” by Utah artist Gary Ernest Smith, and an alabaster sculpture, “Harvest Spirit” by Wyoming artist Gail Sundell. Both are major contemporary American artists that explore the meaning of agrarianism.
Kooser, Hansen, Kovar
Come early, stay late
August 9th … the Poetry date.
“Simply Agrarian: Selections from Great Plains Art Museum,” as well as the special Nichols painting and new museum collection artworks, will be on display through Aug. 30, 2009. The “Agrarianism Expressed in Art and Poetry Event” is on Aug. 9. Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art is located at 575 E Street, David City, Neb. For more information, please call (402) 367-4488 or visit www.bonecreek.org.
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