In the midst of the
recent spring storms that have sent the landscape back to winter, I read TedKooser’s book of poems entitled The Blizzard Voices.
The poems portray what
happened to the people who lived on the Great Plains when the blizzard of
January 12, 1888 blew full force across the land. Although the harrowing blizzard took place
over one-hundred and twenty years ago, reading about their experiences in
relation to the devastating storm made my own love/hate relationship with Wyoming
springs seem quite trivial. One man
froze in between his horses, children were trapped in rural school houses with
little food or heat bringing death to some, other people risked their own lives
by going out in the storm to find food and blankets to keep others alive, and
many froze to death within feet of their own homes.
Kooser reveals in his
introduction that the voices of the poem are his, gathered over many years from
conversations with family members, and listening to people when he was a boy as
they remembered how they survived the 1888 blizzard.
Authentic and powerful
in their telling, the poems express stories of individual lives and target the
essence of human nature amongst a natural disaster: survival. As I listen to the wind and watch the snow
blow, I can almost hear the survivor’s voices- somewhat sad and reminiscent-
but heard and remembered as their memory, once again, is stirred into the
present.
