.
North Dakota farmers waiting for their grants in Resettlement Administration Office, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, July 1936
What is there, out here on the edge, that makes our experience different from that of the city poet? First there is the land itself. It has been disciplined by machines, but it is still not dominated. The plow that broke the plains is long gone and the giant tractor and the combine are here, but the process of making a living is still a struggle and a gamble -- it is not a matter of putting raw materials in one end of a factory and taking finished products out of the other. Weather, which is only a nuisance in the city, takes on the power of the gods here, and vast cycles of climate, which will one day make all the area a dust bowl again and finally return it to grass, make all man's successes momentary and ambiguous. Here man can never think of himself, as he can in the city, as the master of nature. Like it or not he is subject to the ancient power of seasonal change: he cannot avoid being in nature; he has an heroic adversary that is no abstraction. At a level below immediate consciousness we respond to this, are less alien to our bodies, to human and natural time.
The East is much older than these farther states, has more history. But I believe that that history no longer functions, has been forgotten, has been "paved over." In the East man begins every day for himself. Here, the past is still alive and close at hand -- the arrowheads we turn up may have been shot at our grandfathers. I am not thinking of any romantic frontier. The past out here was bloody, and full of injustice, though hopeful and heroic. It is very close here -- my father took shelter with his family at Fort Ransom during an Indian scare when he was a boy. Later he heard of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Most of us are haunted by the closeness of that past, and by the fact that we are only a step from the Indian, whose sense of life so many of the younger people are trying to learn.
Thomas McGrath (1916-1990), b. Sheldon, North Dakota: On the West (excerpt), from The North Dakota Quarterly, Fall 1982
Farmer in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Farmers in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Farmers in Willliston, North Dakota, Saturday afternoon: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Street scene, Ray, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Drugstore, Ray, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Children of Floyd Peaches, near Willliston, North Dakota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Grain elevator and flour mill, Fargo, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939
Locomotive engineer, Fargo, North Dakota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939
Combine, East Grand Forks, Minnesota: photo by Russell Lee, October 1937
Flour mill in Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by Marion Post Walcott, August 1941
Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by John Vachon, October 1940
Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by John Vachon, October 1940
8 comments:
Tom, I love the McGrath quote. What he says is so true, and just reading it takes me back to the prairie with a greater understanding. The spacial quality, the closeness to nature is almost indescribable. Although the photos here are of people and places in North Dakota, they remind me of South Dakota. Same space, same time.
I am in awe of these photos. And have somehow been totally ignorant of Russell Lee's work.
Tom,
Yes, "What is there, out here on the edge. . ." -- that is the question. . .
1.11
light coming into sky above still black
ridge, white circle of moon in branches
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
was act in the past, motion
of material following
from form mixed with action,
second, being “outer”
blinding orange edge of sun above ridge,
white cloud in pale blue sky on horizon
I like to think land has its own story, and that is what defines any area, even when paved. But somehow the west with its open sky and spaces can't be silenced. The air itself talks, and the wind and light . . .
I love staring at these photos.
Marcia,
Thinking about your prairie origins was part of the inspiration in this search. (My mother's father's passage from County Kerry to the Dakotas, also a part.) Tom McGrath of course grew up there, and the prairie was never washed out of him.
Kevin,
Very glad to hear that. Russ Lee saw the living history in scenes and people others missed (or looked away from). He took the time to get close and look, but always with an attitude of respect. Your words mean a lot, your work also has these qualities. (Thinking today about your recent shot of the fellow with the nose job in the Ward; tells me a lot more about the world than a thousand celeb portfolios.)
Steve,
What
was act in the past,
now lives on in image.
Nin,
This is lovely, and so true:
"...land has its own story, and that is what defines any area, even when paved. But somehow the west with its open sky and spaces can't be silenced. The air itself talks, and the wind and light . . ."
And a final comment, back channel, from a native of the plains -- Ron Padgett, Tulsa --
"I keep thinking how wonderful if Dotty Dunn and Floyd Peaches knew each other."
And even if they didn't, Floyd would never have had to pay more than $1.98 for a hat for Mrs. Peaches.
Stirring images and McGrath’s prose puts them into their proper perspective vis-à-vis the image one might have of the East coast. From my Hellenic vantage point, his phrase “Most of us are haunted by the closeness of that past” also echoes much of what Seferis wrote. Thanks, Tom.
A fine quote from Mr. McGrath, Tom. Yet, there is something unsettling in it for me. There is a rock hard truth in his words about out here on the edge. As he says, no romanticizing there.
However, I'm not sure of what he says of the city. It feels either/or, this or that - in other words dualistic. And though there is a truth in dualism, I don't believe it is the truth.
I'm thinking there is a bit of romanticizing re: the city.
Perhaps I'm just quibbling here, a city poet defending the turf (oh how I love the bit of hay in the mouth of that Williston farmer), where the cracks in concrete that spring anew each day bloom with an unsublte if beautiful reminder.
In any case, a tip o' the hat to Mr. McGrath and yourself for giving us a bit of something to chew over with hay.
Photos are breathtaking.
Don
The city past and the country past deserve our attending, without privileging the one or the other. The present also, with congenial bards and sages such as these as sympathetic company.
Today then, a city poem for equal time. (The post provoked, coincidentally, by an attack of bonafide citified flu.)
Bertolt Brecht: When in my white room at the Charité
Post a Comment