Dear HCN,
I wish to thank my
detractors, who have flailed away at me and my poem, Advice for
visitors to Rock Springs (HCN, 9/16/96). One accused me of being
full of shit. Darn it, it’s probably true, and may be the main
reason I write at all. I’m glad HCN liked the poem enough to
publish it, and that it provoked some readers to curse at me. The
poet Sandy McPherson once told me a poem doesn’t have to mean
something in particular but it should matter, and she was
right.
Rock Springs surely does have its share of
churches, devoted Little League coaches, and even a few brave
environmentalists, as Marcia Hensley pointed out in her letter. I
admire her sense of place and her spirited defense of her home. One
might expect an assistant professor of English to figure out the
poem has little to do with Rock Springs at all, but I guess that’s
too subtle a point and not worth arguing. I have lived in Wyoming.
I got married on one of its mountainsides, I’ve trekked miles of
wilderness backcountry there, and have spent time in towns from
Kaycee to Casper to, yes, Rock Springs. I saw the stunning vistas,
breathed the crisp air, and met some decent
folks.
I also had other experiences and I do not
write from ignorance.
How ironic that Ms. Hensley
should mention Montana as “the last best place,” a moniker
popularized by a 1989 anthology of that state’s writers. Poetry of
the West is so often imagination, and so rarely fact.
Montana’s pride, like Wyoming’s, is woven
together with its shame and the writers understand this. I should
know – I was drinking a vodka and tonic or three with the anthology
editors when Bill Kittredge blurted out an idea for the book’s
title, adapted from Jim Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. After more
than two years at work editing the text, we were stumped for a
title that mattered until Kittredge’s moment of inspiration – and
it was inspiration, not journalism, underscoring that what we
write, and write about, are usually our
impressions.
Chris
Ransick
Englewood,
Colorado
The writer is
chairman of the humanities department at Arapahoe Community College
near Denver, Colorado.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A poet writes of pride and shame.
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