Review by Mack Hassler
“Henry Nash Smith, in Virgin Land: American West as Symbol and Myth (1950), analyzes the Buffalo Bill legend created in popular literature.
Benjamin A.Botkin in A Treasury of American Folklore (1944) looks at the Wild West Show and its proprietor in the context of American Folk traditions.”
Part of the opening references in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1971)
Buffalo Bill is an American Legend nearly as large and important as the name Longfellow created from his limited knowledge of indigenous language out of Schoolcraft: “Gitchie Gumee,” and I will come back to my use of this epigraph at the end of this opening paragraph. However, I want to give priority to Raymond Luczak’s fine introductory work as editor. The man has been deaf since an infection in his first year robbed him of his hearing. He was fortunate to have parents who sought to engage his other senses so he could live well in our noisy world of sound. They were so successful in raising him that Luczak has become a major voice in the elite group of UP poets. I think it is remarkable that his parents, especially here for Foreword in Feet in the Waves: Poems of Lake Superior, trained him to love the Lake so well. Here is more from his fine opening prose:….
“Superior is indeed a precious mother, and it is really up to us to ensure she be well-maintained in her very old age long after we’ve expired…. She is stubborn as hell, and I love her for it.” (p. iii)
We, humans, need to learn, over and over again, that some things can never be. When he was a child, they took him to a Minnesota beach with black iron pellets so he could feel the Big Lake on his toes. In the Introduction here, he writes that whenever he has the chance to go “North” from his work in the Twin Cities, he can actually see his toes wriggling around the agates dancing from the waves (of Superior).” (p. iii) “She is stubborn as hell, and I love her for it.
We, humans, need to learn, over and over again, that some things can never be wholly contained or reduced to a few soundbites online. We need to stop taking certain things for granted. May she stay incorrigible and unrepentant. How else can we learn to save each other and this planet of ours? It is up to us to listen to her. Let the poets in this anthology guide you there (p. iii). I think the editor is telling us we don’t need more data or more evidence. We have that already. We need to love the Big Lake and to speak lovingly to her – maybe the same to our Buffalo Bill tradition: “Ride the horse,” “Ride the Horse”
It is hard to say which one or several poets follow this directive better. The collection includes the names of thirty-three poets, and two share the surname Luczak. Vivien, sister of Raymond, mentions “Agates and feeling them with her toes, which is part of Raymond’s prose in The Foreword
Early we see a short poem as a “statement” titled “On Age” by Debbie K. Frontiera:
“You are only babies,” replied the Greatest of Lakes,
Growled a layer of Basalt beneath both….
“Oh, please!” groaned Earth’s Core
“I’ve seen more billions than any of you can imagine.”
The universe said nothing,
None of them understood anything about time (p. 9)
Some poems are longer, but all are written in “free verse,” with no metrical shape to reinforce the lovingly affectionate tone throughout the book. We find no John Donne or William Shakespeare, but this is what has happened to verse with the aging of the Lake. “Verse” means coming to the end of a line and going back to the start of the next line— or “reverse.” Our best poets now have replaced this shaping of the line with the continuous flow of the line –or “free verse.” I think an excellent example of this openness of lining (and most of the poems in this collection are done with this lining) is Jane Piirto’s “Lake Superior Circle Tour Spring 2018” (pp. 69-72). Piirto’s surname is Finnish-American and contains in the first syllable the double vowel sound that is difficult for most of us who are not Finnish to pronounce. She is a fine poet, and her travel poem begins in Marquette and loops around the edges of the Big Lake, returning to her birthplace in Ishpeming with loving affection throughout
I think Piirto is typical of the choices Luczak has gathered in Feet in the Waves: Poems of Lake Superior, and in its wholeness and even circularity accomplishes what he intends it to do. It is a great celebration of the Lake in its very old age. The Durkee photographs do nothing but enhance the verse’s overall, loving effect. Buy the book and contribute to the celebration of the “Stubborn old mother of us all.”
Review of Feet in the Waves: Poems of Lake Superior, with photographs
Ed. by Raymond Luczak (Modern History Press,
Ann Arbor, MI 2026), 120 Pages, PBK, $19.95.
