Sawdust or Stardust?

Poems by Jim Barnes
my undergrad poetry professor and friend

The Sawdust War

On the early summer days I lay with back
against the sawdust pile and felt the heat
of a thousand pines, oaks, elms, sycamores
flowing into my flesh, my nose alive
with that peculiar smell of death the trees
became. Odd to me then how the summer rain
made the heat even more intense. Digging
down the dust, I began to reshape a world
I hardly knew: the crumbly terrain became
theaters of the war. I was barely ten.

What I knew of the wide world and real war
came down the valley's road or flew over
the mountains I was caught between. Remote
I was nightly glued to the radio,
wondering at reports of a North African
campaign and Europe falling into chaos.
All daylight long I imitated what I
thought I heard, molding sawdust into hills,
roads, rivers, displacing troops of toys,
claiming ground by avalanche and mortar

fire, advancing bravely into black cities,
shrouding the fallen heroes with white bark.
I gained good ground against the Axis through
long summer days. Then one morning, dressed in
drab for hard work of war, I saw real smoke
rising from my battlefield. Crawling from
beneath the sawdust like vague spider webs,
claiming first the underground, then foxholes,
it spread like a wave of poison gas across
the woody hills I shaped with a mason's trowel.

I could not see the fire: it climbed from deep
within. No matter how I dug or shifted dust,
I could not find the source. My captured ground
nightly sank into itself. The gray smoke
hovered like owls under the slow stillness
of stars, until one night I woke to see,
at the center, a circle of smoldering sparks
turning to flame, ash spreading outward and down.
All night the pile glowed red, and I grew ashamed
for some fierce reason I could not then name.

Illustration by Gérard DuBois
for "The Cost of Sentimentalizing War"

Perhaps not quite the same imagery as
that of rural Northeast Oklahoma, but still
a childhood infused with the details of war

When I came across this picture in The New Yorker (November 29, 2021), I was reminded of the above poem, "The Sawdust War," with its 10-year-old narrator, "nightly glued to the radio" and the next day, in his innocence, imitating "what I thought I heard." The poet himself was just a kid at the time, which is how these poems -- written in the 1980s, about the 1940s -- convey the experience of WWII: through the eyes of a carefree yet apprehensive youngster, growing up in rural Southeast Oklahoma.

I wrote to tell Jim that I had been re-reading The Sawdust War and finding every poem so incredibly appropriate to the current atmosphere of confusion and wastefulness and disbelief, that it seemed his book could have been written this very week, rather than 1992. A straightforward enough message, right? But facebook had a different idea, morphing "sawdust" into "stardust." Or had I mis-typed that? But no, it kept happening. Every time I tried to type "Sawdust," facebook changed it to "Stardust." I swear it was not me -- it was spellcheck!

The spelling corrector had obviously not read the poem and knew nothing about a curious child's ability to construct an entire world from sawdust and then to witness its self - combustion! Yes, that can really happen. See, it's a metaphor! Jim caught the error right away: "Thanks, Kitti. But The Sawdust War, right? The gaze is earthward still. . . . Thank the stars that I got beyond the Sunday papers in far away 1944. The Stardust War maybe it should have been, but I made it The Sawdust War."

[Speaking of stardust, this passage from Paul Zindel's play is one of my all time favorites: "For one thing, the effect of gamma rays on man in the moon marigolds has made me curious about the sun and the stars, for the universe itself must be like a world of great atoms . . . but most important, I suppose my experiment has made me feel important--every atom in me, in everybody, has come from the sun--from places beyond our dreams. The atoms of our hands, the atoms of our hearts" (101-02).]

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My readerly Nebraska friends were recently discussing the authors of their state: Willa Cather for fiction, Ted Kooser for poetry, Mari Sandoz for "grit and tough truths" (thanks Laura!). If Wallace Stegner and Ivan Doig seem lacking in authenticity, what other writers can provide "a rubric of art and fiction that can frame, intellectually and artistically, the experience of living farther West than Willa Cather was writing about"?

The question of "a literary path through the Western States" (thanks Jim!) came at the perfect time for me because, coincidentally, I have just finished reading three very different books about life in the wild wild west -- not my usual genre, but a timely coincidence! These all take place further south, from whence I hail, but are still of interest to the train of thought:

1. Killers of the Flower Moon:
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann

From the introduction: “In April, millions of flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the " gods had left confetti". In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts, and black eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.”

From the conclusion: “Stores gone, post office gone, train gone, school gone, oil gone, boys and girls gone—only thing not gone is graveyard and it git bigger.”

An utterly sad and astonishing expose of evil in Northeastern Oklahoma, just a few miles south of where my parents (and all of their parents) grew up in Southeast Kansas. I wish my grandfather (1895 - 1983) were still alive so that I could ask him what he remembers about this terrible aspect of American history.

Thanks to my cousin Sally for recommending. Everyone should read this informative, important book. It is being made into a movie, scheduled for release later in 2022. Hoping they do a good job!


2. The Horse and Buggy Doctor: A Memoir
by Arthur E. Hertzler, M.D. (1870 - 1946)

Again, like The Sawdust War (RE: Ukraine), could have been written today (RE: COVID):

"It is all right to do fool things if someone is standing by able to protect us from the fruits of our folly. But, let it be emphasized, if the cultists [anti-vaxxers] inherited the earth the epidemic diseases wold be upon us with their original pristine terribleness. After more than sixty years [written in 1938, thinking back to 1878] I can still hear the eloquent prayers that filled the countryside when epidemics of diphtheria appeared. One tube of antitoxin will do more good than all of these. I have seen all of these things. A doctor, an M.D., must think the truth. Perhaps it would be better if he sometimes proclaimed it."

3. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story
of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan

and

The Last Days of the Rainbelt
by David J. Wishart

These two are especially pertinent to the story of my grandfather's parents who came from Ohio to settle a homestead in Madrid, Nebraska. They were there from 1887 - 1895, before moving to Southeast Kansas where the drought was less severe.

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So there you have enough material,
for a seminar on memoirs of the West,
maybe even a two - semester course!
Well, at least a blogpost!