. . . apparently the obstetrician who helped deliver him does:
Article in the Anchorage Daily News, dated April 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Bibliography Entry for Ole Halverson
Ole Halverson, born in 1930 in southwestern Wisconsin—in that lush region of river valleys and forested ridges known as the Wisconsin Alps—has never seen the native land of his forebears. Nevertheless, the heart of Norway beats within his works. Halverson still resides in the farmhouse where he was born, midway between Eau Claire and Prairie du Chien, on rich farmland that is home to some 100,000 Norwegian-Americans, most of them with ancestral roots in Gudbrandsdal, Norway.
Unlike the vast majority of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, Halverson’s parents railed against assimilation from the moment they landed at the St. Paul/Minneapolis Airport in 1921. Then newlyweds, Halvor and Lena had come to America to pursue farming on a larger scale than they found easily possible in Gudbrandsdal. They embraced the rolling hills of Wisconsin, the rich loam and mechanized equipment that New Gudbrandsdal offered, but they eschewed the adopted tongue of their fellow immigrants. Thus, their ninth child Ole—born and schooled at home—did not learn to speak English until he was sixteen. Today he writes exclusively in Norwegian, approving only official translations into English by youngest sister Ethel.
From his seminal work “Knut Brye”—the eponymous epic poem about the well-known sawmill foreman who provided shelter in the 1860s for newcomers to Wisconsin’s Ramsrud Hills—to his 2005 published collection Bad Axe, Coon Prairie, Viroqua, Halverson gives new voice to the childhood tales he heard of the early Norwegian-American experience. His “Uffda,” translated into eighty-five languages to date, recalls the devastation wrought by millions of grasshoppers in western Minnesota on June 12, 1873, and is, arguably, his best-known work. On the other hand, Halverson’s tribute to his parents’ enduring marriage, the naive “et kyss for de” (“a kiss for you”)—found scribbled on the back of a seed order form—is listed in numerous publications as “the most quoted love poem in the modern Norwegian language.”
In “The Garden of the Herrnhutters,” Halverson draws on the memoirs of A. M. Iverson*, pastor to a company of emigrants from Stavanger who settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the mid-1800s. This group, members of the Congregation of Brothers, sought to live in the countryside, away from the temptations of city living. A wealthy and well-educated benefactor, Nils Otto Tank, came to Milwaukee in 1850 to furnish them land and help them establish a colony. The settlement would be built on the model of Herrnhut—a village established by the organizer of the Church of the Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf, in the mountains of Saxony. (Tank had undergone a religious conversion as a young man when he was injured and subsequently stayed in a private home in Herrnhut.) Nils Otto purchased land for the settlement in what today is Green Bay, then a small pioneer settlement. Forty-two adults were among the group that moved to the land to build the new village, which was named Ephraim, meaning “the highly fertile.” The colonists cleared the heavily forested land and built the structures in a process memorialized in “Denne Hagen av Herrnhuters.”
Halvorson writes in blank verse, which lends itself well to the combination of lilting cadences and stark images that infuse his work.
* Pastor Iverson’s memoirs are considered a wealth of information about the early days of Norwegian pioneers in America.
Unlike the vast majority of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, Halverson’s parents railed against assimilation from the moment they landed at the St. Paul/Minneapolis Airport in 1921. Then newlyweds, Halvor and Lena had come to America to pursue farming on a larger scale than they found easily possible in Gudbrandsdal. They embraced the rolling hills of Wisconsin, the rich loam and mechanized equipment that New Gudbrandsdal offered, but they eschewed the adopted tongue of their fellow immigrants. Thus, their ninth child Ole—born and schooled at home—did not learn to speak English until he was sixteen. Today he writes exclusively in Norwegian, approving only official translations into English by youngest sister Ethel.
From his seminal work “Knut Brye”—the eponymous epic poem about the well-known sawmill foreman who provided shelter in the 1860s for newcomers to Wisconsin’s Ramsrud Hills—to his 2005 published collection Bad Axe, Coon Prairie, Viroqua, Halverson gives new voice to the childhood tales he heard of the early Norwegian-American experience. His “Uffda,” translated into eighty-five languages to date, recalls the devastation wrought by millions of grasshoppers in western Minnesota on June 12, 1873, and is, arguably, his best-known work. On the other hand, Halverson’s tribute to his parents’ enduring marriage, the naive “et kyss for de” (“a kiss for you”)—found scribbled on the back of a seed order form—is listed in numerous publications as “the most quoted love poem in the modern Norwegian language.”
In “The Garden of the Herrnhutters,” Halverson draws on the memoirs of A. M. Iverson*, pastor to a company of emigrants from Stavanger who settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the mid-1800s. This group, members of the Congregation of Brothers, sought to live in the countryside, away from the temptations of city living. A wealthy and well-educated benefactor, Nils Otto Tank, came to Milwaukee in 1850 to furnish them land and help them establish a colony. The settlement would be built on the model of Herrnhut—a village established by the organizer of the Church of the Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf, in the mountains of Saxony. (Tank had undergone a religious conversion as a young man when he was injured and subsequently stayed in a private home in Herrnhut.) Nils Otto purchased land for the settlement in what today is Green Bay, then a small pioneer settlement. Forty-two adults were among the group that moved to the land to build the new village, which was named Ephraim, meaning “the highly fertile.” The colonists cleared the heavily forested land and built the structures in a process memorialized in “Denne Hagen av Herrnhuters.”
Halvorson writes in blank verse, which lends itself well to the combination of lilting cadences and stark images that infuse his work.
* Pastor Iverson’s memoirs are considered a wealth of information about the early days of Norwegian pioneers in America.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Have you ever read Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine?
I wrote this very brief, impassioned review of it just now. (Click on the teeny image of the book cover to reach it.)
Monday, August 25, 2008
Slow
He yelled at the large young man crossing the road
against traffic—
the morning sun too much in his eyes:
"Idiot!"
and saw too late
the mouth agape, the frightened eyes, badly cut hair,
and felt the heat of shame
rise in his belly.
© 2008 Erica Jeffrey
against traffic—
the morning sun too much in his eyes:
"Idiot!"
and saw too late
the mouth agape, the frightened eyes, badly cut hair,
and felt the heat of shame
rise in his belly.
© 2008 Erica Jeffrey
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
It's OK to be a writer. For a job.
Yep. It's more than OK. It's nice to have others read my writing as a sort of validation of how I invest my time, but I guess I'd keep writing even if no one else were reading my work. Happily, people do.
Why do many artistic folks feel a need to justify their chosen work? I, for one, didn't inherit this attitude from my parents, who were artists themselves. Yet, over the years I've guiltily hidden my stories and poems the same way I've hidden candy-bar wrappers and empty See's Victoria Toffee boxes.
Ironically, sometimes it's more "OK" in my mind to edit and proofread--and promote--other people's writing than it is to work on mine. Isn't that weird? What if chefs felt this way about the dishes they create? Or shepherds about their sheep? Or firefighters about the fires they battle? ("No, it's OK. I'll just leave this house to burn for now and come help you with that one.")
When I was a kid, I wrote for the pure joy and release of it. Then, as I entered adulthood, the whole money thing got entangled with the production of writing in my mind. It began to seem that without a concrete something being received in exchange for a story or poem or essay I'd produced, I wasn't really working. I was . . . playing.
I'd like to think more like the second worker in the following story: A visitor to the construction site of one of Europe's great cathedrals in the Middle Ages asked a stone cutter what he was doing. The stonemason replied, "I'm making a brick." The visitor asked another stonemason the same question. That stonemason answered, "I'm making a cathedral."
:-) :-) :-)
Friday, August 1, 2008
New blog to check out: Three Sisters Blog
My friend Nicki, a wonderful young mother and writer, has started a blog with her sisters. One of them lives in Nebraska, so I already love their blog. They posted a plug for my book (Omaha Beach) today, which makes me love their blog even more!
Check out their writing: Three Sisters
Check out their writing: Three Sisters
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