A Way with Words: Local Authors Bring Wisconsin to Life
Andy Erdman 

In a tiny, softly lit room, a capacity audience of no more than a couple dozen spiritedly anticipated the poets’ presentation—particularly the readings of Ellen Kort, Wisconsin’s first poet laureate.

Kort, a soft-spoken teacher, writer and poet whose calm disposition radiates confidence, was honored with the exclusive title in 2000 by then-Governor Tommy Thompson. With her cropped brunette hair and prescription glasses resting just below the bridge of her nose, the poet laureate looked the part of a stereotypical Midwestern grandmother as she sat at the head table facing the small audience packed inside the Wisconsin Historical Museum.

As part of the Wisconsin Book Festival, Kort, along with three other commended Wisconsin poets, regaled those in attendance with inspiring stories, life experiences and, most importantly, readings of award-winning poetry. Kort’s poetry spoke of farms and family. It spoke of Wisconsin women, their struggles and healing. It spoke of rivers and bears and the Fox Valley and the earth. Her poetry spoke of Wisconsin.

“I’ve traveled to a lot of different places, including New Zealand, which I’m very fond of,” Kort said when asked about her poetry’s obvious emotional connection to Wisconsin. “But I don’t know if I could ever leave, and that’s shown in my writing about the land and my experiences here.”

Kort’s work largely reflects a concept known as “sense of place.” A sense of place, as aptly described in "Saving America’s Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation," are “those things that add up to a feeling that a community is a special place, distinct from anywhere else.” But not everywhere in the country has this distinctiveness. Quickly growing areas with lots of new people surrounded by subdivisions, strip malls, cookie-cutter houses and chain stores with corporate sponsorship around every corner lack the quality of being somewhere special, somewhere unique. If someone were to be blindly transported to such a place, he or she would be hard pressed to name their location—they could be in Florida or Nevada or California or wherever. But to Kort and many other writers, Wisconsin has an intangible uniqueness, one that lives and breathes in the landscape and the people of the state. It is this that drives Kort and affects what and how she writes. She is not alone.

In the work of the countless writers, poets and playwrights throughout the state, a pattern seems to emerge: Wisconsin’s literary figures regularly publish pieces that reflect their experiences and environment living in this state. The words they write are affected by Wisconsin.

And many of the pieces they produce reflect their time spent in the Badger State. As a result, experiencing Wisconsin—its beauty, its farms, its Northwoods, it cheese, its winters, its people, its lakes and rivers and fishing and hunting—can be accomplished in one’s own home by experiencing Wisconsin writers, both past and present.

Whether it’s writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, who grew up as a child in and around the state, or Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Zona Gale, or contemporary writer Michael Perry, who became nationally famous for his Wisconsin-based novel "Population 485," the story is the same: This state has rubbed off on them so much so that their writing communicates the Wisconsin experience.

The poetry and prose of Hamlin Garland is a testament to just that. Although Garland eventually settled on the East Coast, he was born in West Salem, near La Crosse, and, as the 20th century approached, he spent his youth on Midwestern farms. In many of his novels, among them "Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly," published in 1895, the influence of Garland's surroundings is clear.

Set on farmland on the west side of Wisconsin near the Mississippi River, the novel provides an account of a young girl, Rose, who dreams of traveling to Madison to get a taste of life outside the farm. The sense of place in Garland’s writing is strong not only in his setting, but also in the language of his characters. For instance, early in the book, a talkative 5-year-old Rose, excited upon seeing a flock of birds, asks her father, “They’s 'bout a million of 'um, ain’t they? They’re glad spring has come, ain’t they, pappa?”

Madison native David Maraniss, who also currently works as an associate editor for The Washington Post, carries on this style of writing today. Unlike Kort and Garland, the effect Wisconsin has had on Maraniss is reflected less in terms of pastoral-related prose and more in his experiences growing up and attending school in the state capital.

Maraniss said growing up in Wisconsin “certainly” affected his writing.

“I became infused with the sensibility of sifting and winnowing, looking hard for the truth,” he said.

His father was a newspaper writer, and the volatile environment in Madison during Maraniss’ impressionable years greatly influenced his prose. While attending UW-Madison in the late 1960s, the area’s distinct political atmosphere had a lingering effect on Maraniss that is evident in his experience documenting the campus’s infamous Vietnam War protests, which he much later used in publishing the 2004 book "They Marched Into Sunlight."

“They [the protests] grew as the war dragged on,” Maraniss explained. “The campus seemed to have a protest every month, a strike of some sort every semester. The scent of tear gas was the smell of campus.”

Even well after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on former president Bill Clinton's life and career during the 1992 presidential race, Maraniss returned to his roots, his home state’s individuality, when in 2000 he wrote "When Pride Still Mattered," a detailed biography about famous Packer coach Vince Lombardi and life in and around Green Bay in the 1960s.

Jane Hamilton, another contemporary and highly successful writer, grew up in the Midwest and made Wisconsin her home in the 1980s. Hamilton currently lives in an orchard farmhouse in the southeastern part of the state, near Milwaukee, and the sense of being somewhere special that has affected so many writers who have lived in Wisconsin also resonated with her. Many of Hamilton’s books are set in and around the state and are based on real events whose characters are often inspired by local acquaintances.

Her 1994 masterpiece "A Map of the World," which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 1999 and was made into a movie starring Sigourney Weaver, is set on a dairy farm in Racine County and was undoubtedly affected by the rareness of the surroundings that Hamilton experienced living in the Midwest and Wisconsin. "A Map of the World" clearly reveals Wisconsin’s distinctive environment through talk of milk houses, farm cats, barns, overalls and all the pastoral imagery that is part of the inner fabric of many Wisconsin natives.

Garland, Maraniss and Hamilton capture the state’s individuality and personality for a more mature audience. But that’s not to say that Wisconsin’s impression is lost in those who write for younger audiences. Author of 28 children’s books, South Milwaukee resident Janet Halfmann said that growing up on a farm in Michigan and living in her country home in Wisconsin have influenced her numerous publications.

“Many of my books are about animals and nature, and there’s a lot of that in Wisconsin,” Halfmann said after describing the inspiration for her newest book "Little Skink’s Tail," a story of a lizard who is intrigued by the notion of wearing other animals’ tails.

What’s more, a couple of the commended poets who read their work along with Kort also relayed how influential they felt living in Wisconsin had been in their writing.

John Lehman, who’s equally suited to write great poetry and crack jokes, lives in Rockdale, an unincorporated town with a population of only 214. Among numerous accolades, Lehman co-founded the national magazine Rosebud, a quarterly publication devoted to art, poetry and fiction. The effect of his time spent in Wisconsin became immediately evident to anyone listening to his readings at the Wisconsin Book Festival. One poem he performed focused solely on the southeastern city of Kenosha, and another was appropriately titled “In Love, In Wisconsin.”

Lehman spoke about how Wisconsin has affected his writing and offered a metaphor that he said likely spoke for the entire panel.

“Our poems will get in a pickup and drive you where you want to go,” he said with a smile.

Also on the panel with Kort and Lehman was Doug Flaherty, an internationally renowned poet who taught literature and poetry at UW-Oshkosh for 35 years. Flaherty was quite unambiguous in describing how Wisconsin’s rural and farming history have affected his writing.

“I have at least 100 poems that have nothing but soil and the lands," he said.

This intangible perception of Wisconsin's distinct and authentic nature has influenced many Wisconsin writers—some more than others, consciously or not. It’s a sense of pride in where one lives; it’s a feeling that where one lives should and must be shared with others.

Experiencing Wisconsin and its unique characteristics is often as easy as reading a book, poem or play written by someone who has lived in the state. Its influence carries over in each author’s characters, language, imagery, tone and authenticity. After all, for writers like Halfmann, inspiration is everywhere.

“We live by a creek and have cardinals and dragonflies and huge Maple trees,” she said. “I just look out my window for ideas.”