I heard Garrison Keillor read, "Farming In A Lilac Shirt," while I was in heavy traffic early one morning on the way to the dentist.I called our NPR station as soon as I got home to find out what I had heard that moved me so much.
Even though I am not normally a fan of poetry, the poems in this book strike a chord with me! Perhaps it is because I grew up on a farm, and so many of the poems are just like I remember things when I was a child.
This man's voice is heartbreakingly sanguine and an accurate glimpse of a mostly by gone way of the farm country's life family lives.
If you¡¦ve never read a Leo Dangel poem, treat yourself to his biggest collection, Home From the Field, published by Spoon River Poetry Press in 1997 and containing the complete texts of Old Man Brunner Country and Hogs and Personals as well as new poems in a section titled The Stones Take the Field.In the title poem of the third section, Leo Dangel writes of being thirteen years old, playing baseball in the cemetery, which had plenty of room.
Unfortunately, the book has no Look Inside feature, and no reviewer cited from any poem. Here's a poem from Writersalmanacpublicradio_orgHis Elderly Father as a Young Manby Leo DangelThis happened before I met your mother:I took Jennie Johanson to a summer dance,and she sent me a letter, a love letter,I guess, even if the word love wasn't in it.
Dangel does an excellant job of catching the nostalgia of childhood and growing up on a farm in the midwest. Even though many of his poems are from childhood experiences in the 1950's, these ideas are also extended to current day with his poem about the Wal-Mart door greeter.
In the world of cellphones, superstores and genetic crops, the family farm has become a lost icon. This volume of poetry brings the smells, tastes and heart of farmlife and the people we know who live it back into our lives.
