New reading: Collection of poems titled ‘The Blizzard Voices’
April 26, 2009
Collection of poems titled ‘The Blizzard Voices’ -by US poet Ted Kooser.
It’s a set of stories in verse form, about a famous blizzard in 1880s in the Great Plains region -takes in Nebraska, Kansas and a few other nearby states – and people who survived it, remembered family stories about it. While blizzards are an annual seasonal hazard in that part of the US, this one was so extreme over a big area, even for hardened Great Plains people, that it found its way into folklore. It is also known as ‘The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard’ as it struck when village schools all over the Great Plains were full, leading to many mass tragedies and some inspiring survival stories.
They are intensely atmospheric poems(especially when reading it while weather turns to Winter in Canberra) and also have strong oral history elements. In the introduction to new edition (2006), Kooser describes some of his research for preparing to write the poems: using local historical sources, a 1940s books about it, old documents and newspapers etc plus childhood memories of older family members talking about it.
The original edition was published by an indie press in 1986 and a few years later performed as a play in a community theatre in Nebraska’s state capital city -Lincoln. The 2006 edition is illustrated with illustrations: b&w drawings and published by Bison Books/Univ. Nebraska Press.
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More information on Ted Kooser and The Blizzard Voices:
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Blizzard-Voices,673128.aspx
http://www.omahacityweekly.com/article/2008/09/10/%E2%80%98-blizzard-voices%E2%80%99
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