La poetisa de Wisconsin en la cabaña del lago

Lorine Niedecker (1903-70)

Lorine Niedecker es norteamericana. Su poesía, en los inicios, fue influenciada por el imaginismo y el objetivismo, en el cual es lugar común ubicarla, pero desarrolló su propia voz. Viviendo casi toda su vida en un ámbito rural, escribió sobre lo que la rodeaba: los vecinos, los árboles, los sucesos diarios. Con el correr del tiempo, incorporó preocupaciones sociales y políticas. Su estilo es limpio, vivaz, con ritmos sutiles, coloquial. Sus poemas están cuidadosamente escritos, cada palabra está puesta en función de la idea y, es muy difícil que emplee palabras sobrantes. Cierta ironía recorre los poemas, usualmente breves. La brevedad es, a veces, extrema, utilizada para acentuar la fuerza de la expresión.

NIEDECKER, Lorine (1903-70), was bom and died in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, living much of her adult life in a small cabin on Black Hawk Island on Lake Koshkonong, Wisconsin. An active correspondent with numerous poets such as Louis *Zukofsky, Cid *Corman, and William Carlos *Williams, all of whom both influenced and praised her work, she lived an essentially isolated life, one which appealed to both her affinity for nature and her innate shyness. From her earliest work on, Zukofsky was an encouraging mentor, and his notions of objectivity and sincerity as elaborated in his essay "An Objective" in Poetry magazine (193 1), were extremely important to her. A keen reader, her interests lay in history, the natural sciences, and pre-Socratic philosophy, subjects fiiu of resonance for her, which informed both the content and shape of her poetry.

Niedecker is an American miniaturist; in this, her work bears some comparison with the short poems of Robert *Creeley or the terseness of J. V. *Cunningham. Her natural register is the epigrammatic mode, one which renders a life or a landscape as though it were composed of a series of small, intense moments. Her mode of construction, something she obviously took from Zukofsky, airns for fidelity to the musical phrase, the leading of sound syllables, and the sense of closure afforded by rhyme-schemes and metrical attentiveness. By such a method she invests with a satisfying density and selfcontainment what might ordinarily escape into ephemerality. The consequent musical completeness and condensation in the poems transforms what could easily have become effusions into something like the workings of a scientist or botanist. Whether commenting on the life of Audubon or Thomas Jefferson or on the often deeply painful events of her own life, she exhibits a rigorous detachment, all the more moving for its precision and lack of self-indulgence.

The two most useful collections of Niedecker's work are From This Condensery: The Complete Writings of Lorine Niedecker, ed. Robert Bertolf (Highlands, NC, 1985) and The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems of Lorine Niedecker, ed. Cid Corman (Berkeley, Calif, 1985). See also Tmck 16, ed. David Wilk (1975) and Michael Heller's Conviction's Net of branches: Essays on the Objectivist Poets and Poetry (I 985).

poemas

La enfermedad económica del país

afecta la conversación de la gente.

Sin pan, ni queso, ni frutillas

No tengo dinero, dicen ellos.

Hasta que en la revolución surge

la fuerza para cambiar

la frase indigerible.

......................

La verdad

da calor

Se ruborizó

cuando le dije 

que antes de que él viniera 

nunca llevaba collares 

........................

Algo en el agua

como una flor 

devorará 

el agua 

la flor 

......................

Desde mi cama veo

el sauce al viento

la hierba.

Desde mi cabeza

emplumado viene

ligero. 

Pienso en un árbol

para hacerlo

durar. 

........................

Muchas cosas son mejores 

con sabor a tocino.

Dulce vida, 

mi amor: 

¿Nunca pretendiste

el mejor manjar? 

Y no tengas miedo 

para verter el vino sobre la col

Lorine Niedecker is a twentieth-century, second-wave, Modern American poet often identified with the Objectivists. Living most of her life on the shores of the Rock River near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, she is perhaps best known as a poet of place who wrote about the Blackhawk Island that she loved. Her work, however, ranges from modernist folk poetry (NEW GOOSE, 1946) to haiku-like forms to long poems like "Lake Superior" and "Wintergreen Ridge" (NORTH CENTRAL, 1968). She is admired for the subtlety of her tightly crafted, nuanced and deliciously ironic poems, as well as for her total devotion to her calling. (...)

Lorine's cabin on Blackhawk Island

Lorine Niedecker... born in Fort Atkinson, lived on Blackhawk Island. Niedecker is a poet of a single location, the area around Blackhawk Island. "I spent my childhood outdoors - red-winged blackbirds, willows, maples, boats, fishing..." wrote Niedecker. (...)

Lorine's cabin on Blackhawk Island

(...) Wisconsin's greatest poet Lorine Niedecker, who wrote about her island home in southern Wisconsin as well as the Ridges Sanctuary in Door County and the Lake Superior region. An avid student of geologic, natural, and human history, Niedecker weaves imagery of Wisconsin's waterways, birds, and plants into her intensely personal and political poems. For much of her adult life, she lived in a small cabin with no running water located on a flood plain on the Rock River. Like Henry David Thoreau, she made her home in close proximity to the seasonal changes of the natural world and found in them a rich source of inspiration for her work.(...)

Lorine's cabin on Blackhawk Island

http://www.lorineniedecker.org/biog.cfm

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lorine-niedecker

http://www.woodlandpattern.org/niedecker/reading_the_ridges.shtml

http://steelwagstaff.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/lorine-niedecker-and-the-99/

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/us_poetry/Niedecker/Niedecker_poem.html

http://boverijuancarlos.blogspot.com/2011/03/poemas-la-enfermedad-economica-del-pais.html

La cabaña de James Still: el epicentro de su vida

James Still (July 16, 1906 - April 28, 2001)  

"I have come back to the long way around,

the far between, the slow arrival."

(James Still. “White Highways”)

James Still was born on July 16, 1906 at Double Branch in Chambers County, Alabama located in the foothills of the Appalachians. Still was the sixth of ten children, but was able to be named after his father because he was the first boy to be born into his family. From 1906 to 1924, he lived with his family as they moved around the region into at least six different homes in Double Branch, Lafayette, Shawmut and Jarrett Station, all in Alabama. 

As a young child, Still worked with his other brothers and sisters in their family’s fields, wherever they may have been. His father being a veterinarian, the Still family lived a fairly modest life, though they were forced at least once to move out of a home due to mortgage problems. James began school at the age of seven in LaFayette, where his love of books and writing began. In his autobiography, however, Still recollects that his family only owned “three books at home: The Anatomy of the Horse, The Palaces of Sin, or the Devil in Society, and…the Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge” Still recalls that the Cyclopedia was his “first stab at a liberal education.” (Still). 

When he reached the age of eighteen, he moved away from his family in an effort to continue his “liberal education.” After many years of hard work, Still had earned three college degrees at the Lincoln Memorial University and at Vanderbilt University, both in Tennessee. After Still completed his extensive education, he was lead to Knott County, Kentucky in 1932 to search for a job during the Great Depression. He finally settled into working as a librarian at the Hindman Settlement School, where he began to write River of Earth. Knott County, where Still lived alone in a log cabin for the remainder of his life, was centered near the heart of the eastern Kentucky’s coal fields, and served as the setting and inspiration for his short stories, novels and poems. 

River of Earth was published in 1940, and for this, his first novel, Still received the Southern Author's Award. Throughout his lifetime, Still received many other awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 and 1946, and from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1994 he was honored as Southern Fiction Writer by the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Finally, there have been awards from numerous Kentucky organizations and honorary degrees from Kentucky universities, as well as fellowships established in his name, including those funded by the Mellon Foundation for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Studies and by the University of Kentucky Appalachian Studies program. (Mooney). 

James Still’s literary reputation was gained mainly through his early works. Later works, popular among certain circles, never seemed to achieve the same success of books and poetry writings like River of Earth, Hands on the Mountain and On Troublesome Creek. 

Aside from writing books during his adulthood, Still traveled extensively throughout his lifetime, exploring at least 26 different countries in Europe and Central America. Despite his travels around the globe, Still always returned home to his log cabin in Knott County and lived there until his death at the age of 94 in early 2001. 

Still never married, nor did he have any children. He is, however, lived on by Teresa Perry Bradley, whom he considered his surrogate daughter. When her family faced difficulties, he helped pay for her education through college and a master's degree, and years later, after both of her parents had died, Still made her his legal heir. (Mooney).
-Steven Long (http://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/cndls/lumen/faculty/oconnor/river/biography.htm)

(...) It was in Hindman that he began his long writing career, publishing his first book, a volume of poems, in 1937. In 1939 his friend Jethro Amburgey, a famous dulcimer maker, deeded Still his family’s log house (built in 1836) for as long as he lived. Hindman Settlement School and that two-story log house in Knott County became synonymous with the man, the personality, and the writer – James Still.

Mr. Still’s novel of mountain folk life, River of Earth, published in 1940, was called a “work of art” by Time magazine and is considered a classic – unquestionably his most enduring work of prose.

Kentucky appreciated James Still, appointing him poet laureate in 1995 and 1996. During the last ten years of his life, people across the state listened to him read his works with his musician friend Randy Wilson, and heard him tell stories or give talks; some even visited with Mr. Still on his birthday at his house on Dead Mare Branch in Knott County.

All of his writing is set in Kentucky and grew out of his experiences here.

The last stanza of his well-known poem “Heritage” reveals the strength of his connection to his place:

Being of these hills, being one with the fox

Stealing into the shadow, one with the new-born foal,

The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,

One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,

And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.

Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond. 

James Still died in Hazard, Kentucky on April 28, 2001 and is buried at Hindman Settlement School. He is survived by the family of Teresa Reynolds, by Mike Mullins and Hindman Settlement School, by the many folks that knew and loved him, and by all future generations that read his writing.

(JAMES STILL. Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literature. http://www.downtownlex.com/2002-ky-star-awards)

James Still at his cabin on Dead Mare Branch, on his 80th birthday, July 16, 1986; Photo by Tom Eblen

     James Still at his cabin on Dead Mare Branch, Knott County, on his 80th birthday, July 16, 1986. Photo by Tom Eblen 

James Still at his cabin on Dead Mare Branch, Knott County, on his 80th birthday, July 16, 1986.  Photo by Tom Eblen

Heritage

I shall not leave these prisoning hills

Though they topple their barren heads to level earth

And the forests slide uprooted out of the sky.

Though the waters of Troublesome, of Trace Fork,

Of Sand Lick rise in a single body to glean the valleys,

To drown lush pennyroyal, to unravel rail fences;

Though the sun-ball breaks the ridges into dust

And burns its strength into the blistered rock

I cannot leave. I cannot go away.

Being of these hills, being one with the fox

Stealing into the shadows, one with the new-born foal,

The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,

One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,

And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.

Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond. 

(a poem of Mr. Still's that is inseparably linked to his home place)

VIDEO James Still: Man on Troublesome Creek (1989)

http://blog.al.com/entertainment-press-register/2011/04/posthumous_novel_chinaberry_ad.html

http://tomeblen.bloginky.com/2011/03/27/james-stills-posthumous-novel-retains-some-mystery/

http://www.kentuckystewarts.com/RowanCounty/JamesStillAppalachianwriterdies.htm

http://faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/sandy.hudock/jshome.html

http://www.downtownlex.com/2002-ky-star-awards

El agujero del poeta y cowboy de Dakota

Badger Clark (1883-1957)  

–The joy is in the journey and not in getting there.” 

(Badger Clark)

The Badger Hole

There's a cabin in Custer State Park affectionately known as the Badger Hole. This cabin was home to one of the park's most colorful historic characters.

Charles Badger Clark was honored as South Dakota's first poet laureate. He lived in the park for the last 30 years of his life. The stories of Badger Clark, his life and poetry are stories of a man living an independent life.

Clark built his home, the Badger Hole, near Legion Lake. Within this cabin, he wrote poetry, read from his extensive library and wrote letters to his many fans. He lived there until his death in 1957 at the age of 74.

Today, the Badger Hole remains much as it was when Badger lived there. As you walk through the doors of the Badger Hole, or wander along the Badger Clark Historic Trail, you walk back into a place and a time of a man who lived and shared a simple life.

The Original Badger Hole

South Dakota nearly lost our beloved poet's first Black Hills cabinBy Shebby Lee

Badger Clark's original Black Hills cabin (shown here) has been rescued by the Badger Clark Memorial Society.

The Badger Hole is missing! The cabin home of the cowboy poet, Badger Clark, located in Custer State Park has been demolished! No, it has not been demolished, it has been moved. But where? And why? Rumors are flying about the former home of beloved cowboy poet, Badger Clark, and it's time to take the wraps off the mystery.

Most South Dakotans know about the state's first Poet Laureate, the charismatic cowboy known as Badger Clark (full name: Charles Badger Clark, Jr.). During the first half of the twentieth century he lived and worked in a cabin in Custer State Park, writing evocative Western poetry and speaking to countless graduates across the state and region. His cabin was known as the Badger Hole, and the Park maintains it today just as he left it, for visitors and school children to visit during the summer season.

But there was another Badger Hole, a one-room cabin that Badger Clark lived in from 1924-1937 while building his permanent four room cabin nearby. Badger Clark did not build that little cabin and never actually owned it. After his tenure, it was moved, changed hands many times, was added on to, and eventually ended up in the hands of the Badger Clark Memorial Society, which used the wings for a caretaker's residence and storage, while returning the original central room to the way it looked when Badger Clark lived there.

In recent years the wings of the older cabin became unstable and the Park added it to its list of surplus property slated to be torn down. This triggered a frantic effort to save the edifice - or at least the original central portion - as a piece of South Dakota history. After many months of negotiations, an agreement was reached between Custer Park and the Badger Clark Memorial Society under which the Park agreed to demolish the wings, if the Society would move the main cabin out of the Park.

The Society set about finding a suitable location where the cabin could not only be preserved but serve an appropriate role. The Park upheld their end of the bargain and prepared the cabin to move, but negotiations with various entities for the cabin's new home were inconclusive. So Society Vice President Paul Jensen of Wasta, arranged to have the cabin removed from the Park without a definite place for it to go. Society member Dorothy Delicate of Custer offered her land as a temporary resting spot, but somehow it never got there.

Enter Linda Flounders, owner of the historic Newton Fork Ranch, located on Deerfield Road, 1/2 mile from Hill City's Main Street. Linda is slowly restoring the 18 acre property comprised of six full round log cabins built in 2000, a large picnic shelter plus her grandparents' 1912 home. Her grandmother was a prolific writer, albeit unpublished, and her uncle Paul Lippman, from whom she purchased the property, was a published writer and held several workshops on the property in the 1980s. Writing is obviously highly revered in her family. When Linda built the cabins at Newton Fork Ranch, it was with the intention of creating a writers retreat. As such, the cabins do not have telephones or television sets. Linda has placed the original Badger Hole on an undeveloped lower portion to the ranch property along the Mickelson Trail and incorporate it into her writers retreat.

Why all this fuss over a dilapidated old shack? Well, for one thing history was made there. Not only was it the home of South Dakota's first Poet Laureate for 13 years, but his first book of poetry on South Dakota subjects - Skylines and Woodsmoke - was written there. Badger Clark also wrote prose, including contributions to the South Dakota Writer's Project, a Depression-era compendium which was almost certainly written while residing in that one-room cabin. His letters to the Editor were frequently printed in Hills papers, and his poetry was published in national magazines such as Scribner's, Outing, Arizona Highways, Sunset, the Pacific Monthly and South Dakota Poetry Society's Pasque Petals, during this period.

The cabin is a part of South Dakota history. After a season of drift it has finally found a home. (...)

(...) Already a well-known and well-liked character by the mid-thirties, Badger received permission to build a cabin on state-owned land in Custer State Park. The game preserve was a natural for this early conservationist, who despite his cowboy background, never could bring himseIf to hunt or fish. The cabin was five years in the building, and became one of the strangest "hermitages" ever devised by man. 

Foto cortesía de Dakota del Sur Sociedad Histórica del Estado

Although a lifelong bachelor, Badger Clark was a very social animal and the four room cabin with a front porch stretching the entire width of the building, was expressly designed for entertaining. And as he had hoped, a steady stream of friends and admirers made the long trek into the wilderness to listen to his adventures in Cuba or tales of his life on the disappearing range.

Though the cabin was large for one person, including an entire wall of bookshelves for his insatiable mind, space was its only luxury. The living room was heated by a stone fireplace, the kitchen by a wood cookstove, and the bedrooms, not at all. There was no running water and kerosene lamps lit Badger's typewriter. 

"The Badger Hole" became Badger' s first permanent home and remains today, a South Dakota Historic Landmark, just as he left it for his final trip to the hospital in September of 1957. 

Badger Clark lived a long and productive life which should not be appraised by literary output alone. The poems are good on the whole; one or two perhaps will be judged by time to be great. As a body, they evoke a time and a way of life in the great West which is lost to us forever and which he had the great good fortune to experience first hand. There are three volumes of poetry (one printed posthumously) , a novel, and numerous articles and pamphlets - not an impressive sum for an entire lifetime. But to condemn Badger Clark for his apparent lack of industry would be a mistake. He was far less interested in writing than in studying, caring for his tame deer, cultivating his many close friendships and, most importantly, enjoying the great out-of-doors. (...) (http://www.badgerclark.org/biography.htm)

http://www.badgerclark.org/biography.htm

http://www.sdpb.org/BadgerClark/default.aspx

http://keloland.com/news/NewsDetail6373.cfm?ID=19142

http://southdakotamagazine.com/article?articleTitle=the+original+badger+hole--1308085797--89--history

La cabaña del poeta Joaquin Miller

Miller (1841-1913)
(photo credit: Library of Congress)

Miller en los últimos años

Joaquin Miller was born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller on a farm near Liberty, Ind., on Sept. 8, 1837. His parents set out for the West in 1852 and settled in the Willamette Valley, Ore. Within 2 years their restless son left for the California gold mines. For a time Miller lived with northern California Indians near Mt. Shasta. He was implicated in the massacre of the Pit River Indians, attended college briefly, and operated a pony-express service between the Idaho mines and the West Coast.

In 1862 Miller became editor of the Democratic Register in Eugene, Ore. Before the year was over he had married and had founded a new paper, the Eugene City Review. Later Miller settled in a mining camp in Canyon City, Ore. He practiced law, worked a claim of his own, fought Indian harassment, and was elected judge of Grant County in 1866 for a 4-year term. In 1869 the Millers were divorced.

For the next 10 years Miller pursued a literary career. His first book of verse was Specimens (1868). It was followed by Joaquin et al (1869), a collection of 11 poems signed Cincinnatus Hiner, mostly sentimental doggerel and bad imitations of Edgar Allan Poe. His work had little success in America, so he sailed for London, a "passionate pilgrim" determined to sell his verses of life in the Far West. He printed Pacific Poems (1871) privately. An English publisher brought out Songs of the Sierras (1871), which launched Miller socially and commercially as the Kit Carson of poetry. His fame, however, was short-lived and his talent essentially thin. Songs of the Sun-lands followed (1873), along with the partially autobiographic Life among the Modocs. A tour of Italy produced a curious novel, The One Fair Woman (1876), and Songs of Italy (1878).

By 1879 Miller was back in New York, married to Abigail Leland, a hotel heiress, and seeking a new career in the theater. Of the four plays he preserved, The Danites of the Sierras (1881), an obvious melodramatic story of the Mormons, was the most popular and made him a small fortune. In 1887, without his wife, he settled on 75 acres of barren hillside in Oakland, Calif., to write more poetry and finish his utoplan romance, The Building of the City Beautiful (1893). He died at his beloved "Hights" in February 1913.

Joaquín Miller cabina en Washington, DC Rock Creek Park

(...) It is 1884, and you've been convinced to travel to the outskirts of the city, two miles beyond the nearest streetcar line to satisfy your literary curiosity. You have heard that Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras, the Byron of the West, has built himself a log cabin here and dubbed it “a little edge of God's rest.” (...)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/joaquin-miller#ixzz1i7PNFmdw

Architecture

The Joaquin Miller Cabin is an example of vernacular architecture and a rare log cabin structure in the Nation's Capital. The exterior of the L-shaped cabin was constructed of split logs and chinking with a fieldstone fireplace at the center of the cabin. The cabin was painstakingly deconstructed and moved in 1911.

Miller Cabin Series

Since 1973 the cabin has played host to the oldest continuous reading series in Washington through the Miller Cabin Poetry Series run by nonprofit literary and educational organization Word Works. In 1978 the series was held inside the cabin, until they outgrew the space. The readings are now held outdoors. The series has been documented in two anthologies of the participating poets, Whose Woods These Are and Cabin Fever: Poets at Miller's Cabin. Sample poems in the Miller Cabin series include The Three Laughers of Tiger Ravine by David Wolinsky.

Joaquin Miller "Poet of the Sierras"

Many summer visitors to Rock Creek Park are surprised to find a log cabin along Beach Drive at the overpass of Military Road, and few are likely to know that it was once the home of poet Joaquin Miller, who lived from 1837 to 1913. It was moved there the year of his death from its prior location just east of the cascade in Meridian Hill Park when it was threatened with demolition. Miller would later be well-known in international literary circles, and had built the cabin there in 1893 when he had moved to Washington with political ambitions that ultimately failed. In fact, much of his background and life experiences that he wrote about were apparently wild fabrications.

Known as the “Poet of the Sierras," Joaquin Miller was perhaps best known for his poem “Columbus.” His cabin stood along 16th Street for 30 years until threatened with demolition as the new park was being planned. He is quoted as saying, "I sit up here in my fine cabin, while the President himself sits down there at the end of the street with his little cabinet."

Miller’s creative writing began with his assumed name; his real name was Cincinnatus Heiner (or Hiner) Miller. He was born on September 8, 1837, a date that frequently changed during his lifetime. The name "Joaquin" was adapted later from the legendary California bandit, Joaquin Murietta.

Born to Quakers in Indiana, the family moved to Oregon and settled on a small farm. His often cited exploits included a variety of occupations, from mining camp cook, lawyer, judge, newspaper owner and writer, Pony Express rider, and horse thief. As a young man, he moved to northern California during the Gold Rush, and apparently had a variety of adventures, including a year living in a Native American village and being wounded in a battle with Native Americans. A number of his works, Life Among the Modocs, An Elk Hunt, and The Battle of Castle Crags, draw on these alleged experiences.

About 1857, Miller supposedly married an Indian woman named Paquita and lived in the McCloud River area of northern California; the couple had two children. Miller then married Theresa Dyer (alias Minnie Myrtle) in 1862, and had three children with her. The couple divorced in 1869. Miller married for the third time in 1879 to Abigail Leland in New York City.

He was jailed briefly in New York for stealing a horse, and various accounts give other incidents of his repeating this crime in California and Oregon. Despite that fact, Miller found his way to Canyon City, Oregon by 1864 where he was elected the third Judge of Grant County; his log cabin built there is still standing as well.

After losing his bid for a seat on the Oregon Supreme Court, he left the Pacific Northwest and spent some years traveling, living in and visiting England, New York, San Francisco, Brazil, and Washington, DC, where he built his cabin on Meridian Hill in 1883. Disappointed at not being appointed as Ambassador to Japan, about 10 years later Miller settled in the Oakland Hills of California. He gave his Washington cabin to a friend, who soon gave it to the Sierra Club. In 1912, one year before Miller's death, the National Park Service became its reluctant new owner.

The California State Association had sought to move it to Rock Creek Park, but the Park Service had refused the request. It was only after Senator John D. Works of California intervened successfully that the cabin was disassembled, moved, and rebuilt at its current location.

From 1893 to his death 1913, Miller resided on a hill in Oakland, California, in a home he called "The Hights"[sic]. He planted hundreds of trees and even built his own funeral pyre on the property. The Hights was purchased by the city of Oakland in 1919 and eventually became the Joaquin Miller Park, a designated California Historical Landmark.

Fellow author Ambrose Bierce once called Miller "the greatest-hearted man I ever knew" but was also quoted as saying that he was "the greatest liar this country ever produced. He cannot, or will not, tell the truth."

Miller's poem “Columbus” was once one of the most widely known American poems, memorized and recited by most school children of the era. It reads:

"Behind him lay the gray Azores,

"Behind the Gates of Hercules;

"Before him not the ghost of shores,

"Before him only shoreless seas.

"The good mate said: 'Now must we pray,

"For lo! the very stars are gone.'

"Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?

“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

His other poems include “Songs of the Sierras,” “Songs of the Sun-Lands,” and “The Ship in the Desert.” In 1909, six volumes of his collected poems and other writings were published. He died in Oakland on February 17, 1913. (...)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/51719764/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin_Miller_Cabin

http://washingtonart.com/beltway/jmiller.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/joaquin-miller 

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder y su cabaña de la pradera

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (Pepin, Wisconsin, 7 de febrero de 1867 - 10 de febrero de 1957) es una novelista estadounidense. En los años 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder narró su infancia de pionera en un libro "La Pequeña Casa en la Pradera", en Sudamerica se llamó; "La Familia Ingalls" que conoció un gran éxito, tanto en Estados Unidos como en el resto del mundo. Pero no fue hasta sus 65 años de edad en que vio publicado el libro. En 1973 fue adaptado a la televisión bajo el mismo título. Tuvo nueve temporadas todas ellas disponibles en español.

Biografía

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Lake nació el 7 de febrero de 1867, cerca del poblado de Pepin, Wisconsin, en los "Grandes Bosques" de Wisconsin.^[1] Fue la segunda hija del matrimonio entre Charles Phillip Ingalls y Caroline Lake Quiner. Inicialmente instalada en Wisconsin, la familia Ingalls viaja hacia el Oeste a través de los estados de Kansas, Minnesota y Dakota.

El 25 de agosto de 1885, a los dieciocho años contrajo matrimonio con el granjero el cual había sido hermano de una de sus maestras de escuela Almanzo James Wilder en el territorio de Dakota por el reverendo E. Brown. Compraron una finca que comenzó siendo de 0.2 km² y a los 20 años de haberla construido, la fueron agrandando poco a poco y terminó teniendo 0.8 km².

Tuvieron dos hijos, Rose Wilder Lane y otro que murió de viruela antes de que le pusieran un nombre. Rose estuvo al borde de la muerte por la misma enfermedad pero el doctor del pueblo que se sentía responsable de la muerte de su otro pequeño la curó. La causa fue una epidemia que ocurrió en el pueblo vecino. Laura y Almanzo cuidaron de una sobrina, llamada Jenny, que se quedó a vivir con ellos después de que su padre muriera en Walnut Grove y quedara huérfana.

En 1932 comenzó a escribir el libro "La Pequeña Casa en la Pradera" Se dice que las primeras ideas de escribir vinieron de su madre, su abuelo (el cual también escribió un libro tras la muerte de su esposa) y su hermana Mary, la cual amaba leer y por poco antes de quedar ciega se casa con un aspirante a escritor hijo adoptivo de su vecino el Sr. Edwars, aunque las aventuras que vivió fueron dignas de contarse desde un principio.

Se consumó por las recomendaciones de su hija Rose.

(De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre)

La casa de la pradera. La reconstrucción de la cabaña de madera de la casa de los "Ingalls"en el territorio indio cerca de Independence, Kansas. La pequeña cabaña de la pradera es una recreación basada en la descripción que aparece en el libro.

(...) En La casa del bosque, primer libro de la serie de La casa de la pradera, nos cuenta Laura Ingalls Wilder cómo su familia vivía en una casita en el bosque, al borde de un camino, rodeada de árboles. Se hallaba cerca de la localidad de Pepin, en Wisconsin, concretamente a unos 11 kilómetros de distancia.

Actualmente ya no hay árboles, ni tampoco existe la casa original, pero sí hay una réplica que se ha construído siguiendo las descripciones de Laura en su libro. Es una pequeña cabaña de troncos de madera sin amueblar, con dos habitaciones, un desván y una chimenea. En invierno cierran por causa de la nieve, pero el resto del año se puede visitar. El sitio es mantenido por la Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society. (...)

Interior de la réplica de La casa de la pradera de la pequeña Laura Ingalls  

(...) Una niña vivía en una pequeña casa gris hecha de troncos... 

Poco podía imaginar Laura Ingalls que su nombre se haría tan popular cuando escribió sus memorias en el año 1932. Laura Ingalls Wilder nació en 1867 en una cabaña de troncos junto a los bosques de Wisconsin. Su vida allí la empujó a escribir ya siendo mayor, sus recuerdos de la infancia y de la adolescencia, que más tarde se convertirían en la maravillosa serie de televisión La casa de la pradera. 

El primer tomo de sus historias se titula La casa del bosque y es una novela costumbrista que nos transporta a un mundo sencillo y austero, carente de necesidades. Con él nos sumergimos en un verdadero régimen de subsistencia, en el que todo se hace en casa: humear la carne, hacer la mantequilla, fabricar queso, recoger el azúcar del arce, el baño de los sábados con nieve limpia calentada cerca de la hoguera....

El mejor momento del día es la llegada del padre a casa, tras un día de caza, quien les cuenta historias y las veladas tocando el violín en las que todos bailan. Está narrado en tercera persona, como si Laura nos transmitiese las historias que le contaba su padre, puesto que ella todavía era muy pequeña para transmitir sus propias aventuras. El libro transmite un amor infinito a sus padres, así como un respeto y un cariño inmenso. Así pasa un día tras otro, con la única presencia de los cinco miembros de la familia, Laura, sus padres, Charles y Caroline y sus hermanas Mary y la pequeña Carry. En ocasiones se reunen con tíos y primos, para ayudarse en algún trabajo o para celebrar la Navidad. Laura recuerda a su única muñeca de trapo, regalo de Santa de Claus, como el tesoro más preciado. ¡Qué oportunidad de valorar lo que se tiene para los niños de hoy!

En la segunda novela ya titulada La casa de la pradera, nombre que tomará toda la serie, los Ingalls dejan la casa del bosque porque ya había demasiada gente allí. Así, viajarán en carreta cruzando el oeste hasta Kansas, donde, tronco a tronco Charles construirá su casa en la pradera. A pesar de las dificultades la vida en el campo es maravillosa, pero la presencia de los indios les inquieta. (...) Michael Landon para la serie de televisión, se basó principalmente en el tercer libro de la colección, A orillas del Río Plum. (...)

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/8210640

http://lovingthetasmaniandevil.wordpress.com/

http://www.kansastravel.org/littlehouseontheprairie.htm

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/wilder/index.asp

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Elizabeth_Ingalls_Wilder

http://preservationinpink.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/laura-ingalls-wilder/

http://www.pepinwisconsin.com/cgi-bin/viewnlcontent.cgi?nlarticle_id=13

http://ccei-lij.blogspot.com/2011/04/una-nina-vivia-en-una-pequena-casa-gris.html

La funeraria de Thomas Lynch y la cabaña irlandesa

Thomas Lynch

image by Richie Pope

Thomas Lynch, poeta y ensayista norteamericano, director durante más de veinticinco años de una funeraria en Milford, Michigan, es autor de los libros de poesía Skating With Heather Grace (1987), Grimalkin and Other Poems (1994), Still Life in Milford (1998) y del libro de ensayos Bodies in Motion and at Rest (2000). Los poemas y ensayos de Lynch han aparecido en importantes publicaciones como The New Yorker, Harper’s, Paris Review, Washington Post y The London Review of Books, entre otras. Ha sido merecedor de varios reconocimientos dentro y fuera de su país, como los otorgados por The National Book Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts y The Arvon Foundation en Inglaterra. El enterrador (The Undertaking, 1997), su más importante libro de ensayos, traducido a siete idiomas, ganó el American Book Award, el Heartland Prize para no ficción y fue finalista del National Book Award.

(...) The poems and images are situated on the West Clare peninsula in Ireland where the author keeps an ancestral home in the townland of Moveen between the North Atlantic and the River Shannon estuary. (...)

(...) In 1970, Lynch took his first of many trips to Ireland, reconnecting with family in West Clare. He has since inherited the ancestral cottage there, where he regularly spends time. His relationship with Ireland is documented in his most recent book of nonfiction, Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans.(...)

Típica cabaña irlandesa con tejado de paja

Interior de cabaña irlandesa en 1897

(...) Thomas Lynch es un escritor y poeta. También es director de una funeraria en un pequeño pueblo en el centro de Michigan, donde él y su familia se han preocupado por los muertos - y los vivos - desde hace tres generaciones. Por primera vez, Lynch acordó permitir acceder en el interior de Lynch & Sons, a los productores de FRONTLINE Miri Navasky y Karen O'Connor para los arreglos de un funeral en la sala de embalsamamiento. (ver más...)

(...) Thomas Lynch, escritor, dueño de una cadena de funerarias y autor de la “inmortal” obra El enterrador, 

publica ahora Cuerpos en movimiento y en reposo. En exclusiva para SoHo, hizo la lista de esas veinte 

cosas que uno debe hacer antes de que él lo atienda a uno en su negocio.

Por Thomas Lynch

20 cosas que hay que hacer antes de morir:

1. Hacer una lista de veinte cosas que hay que hacer antes de morir. 2. Hacer una lista de todas las personas que amas. 3. Hacer una lista de todas las personas que te han herido. 4. Darte cuenta de que muchos de los mismos nombres están en ambas listas. 5. Perdonar a todos los de la segunda lista con tu corazón de corazones. 6. Hacer que todos los de la primera lista sepan cuán importantes son para ti. 7. Pedirles perdón a todas las personas de las dos listas. 8. Decirle gracias a cada persona de las dos listas por todo lo que ha significado para ti. 9. Perdonarte. 10. Aprender un par de poemas. 11. Llamar a tus ex amantes y recitarles poemas. 12. Acercarte a un extraño y decirle cómo son de lindos sus ojos. 13. Regalar tus libros y tu música. 14. Abandonar tus viejos rencores. 15. Ir a la peluquería para que te corten el pelo. 16. Sonreír sin ninguna razón aparente. 17. Repetir los puntos del 1 al 9. 18. Destruir tus listas o, si debes, hacer otra. 19. Seguir entonando esa melodía que no te acuerdas cómo se llama. 20. Dejarte ir; dejar a Dios, quienquiera que Dios termine siendo. Entrevista con Thomas Lynch Enlace a la página web de Thomas Lynch.

Funeral Directors Convention | 'How To Live Forever' from Mark S. Wexler o

http://www.alfaguara.com/es/autor/thomas-lynch/
http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/46/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/undertaking/etc/synopsis.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/undertaking/undertakers/lynch.html
http://www.lynchfuneraldirectors.com/generalpages/pbs_the_undertaking.aspx

http://www.thomaslynhttp://willowsprings.ewu.edu/interviews/lynch.phpch.com/1/234/index.asp

http://www.revistasoho.co.cr/contenido/articles/438/1/20-cosas-que-hay-que-hacer-antes-de-morir/Paacuteginas1.html

n Vimeo.

El refugio creativo de Beatrix Potter

BEATRIX POTTER
Helen Beatrix Potter (28 de julio de 1866 – 22 de diciembre de 1943) fue una escritora e ilustradora británica de literatura infantil. Su personaje más famoso es Peter Rabbit.

Su padre, Rupert Potter, era abogado, aunque pasaba la mayor parte de su tiempo en clubes de caballeros, sin ejercer la profesión. Su madre se dedicaba a hacer y recibir visitas. Ambos progenitores vivían de las herencias de sus respectivas familias. Beatrix y su hermano Bertam fueron educados por niñeras e institutrices. Cuando creció, sus padres le encargaron el hogar, dificultando su desarrollo intelectual. 

La base para sus proyectos e historias fueron los pequeños animales que introducía furtivamente en la casa o que veía durante las vacaciones familiares en Escocia.

La animaron a publicar su relato, The tale of Peter Rabbit, pero tuvo que luchar para encontrar un editor hasta que por fin fue aceptado en 1902. El libro y las obras que lo siguieron fueron muy bien recibidos y ella comenzó a obtener unos ingresos propios de sus ventas. Beatrix se implicó sentimentalmente con su editor, Norman Warne, cosa que mantuvo en secreto, pero sus padres eran contrarios a que se casara con cualquiera que necesitara trabajar para vivir. Warne murió antes de que pudieran prometerse, lo que agrandó la brecha que separaba a Beatrix y sus padres.

Potter escribió 23 libros. Fueron publicados en pequeño formato, fácil de manejar y leer por los niños. Dejó de escribir alrededor de 1920 debido a su mala visión, aunque su última obra, The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, se publicó en 1930.

En sus últimos años se dedicó a una granja de ovejas que compró en Lake District, (Inglaterra); le gustaba el paisaje y con las seguras regalías provenientes de sus libros, junto con la herencia de sus padres, compró grandes extensiones de tierra, que después acabó heredando el National Trust.

Con 47 años, Beatrix Potter se casó con su abogado, William Heelis, con quien no tuvo hijos. Murió en Sawrey, (Lancashire) el 22 de diciembre de 1943.

Hill Top - la casa de Beatrix Potter.

Beatrix Potter compró Hill Top, en 1905, con las ganancias de sus primeros libros, escritos en casa de sus padres en Londres, pero inspirados en sus visitas a  la Región de los Lagos. Allí podía dibujar la casa, el jardín, el paisaje y los animales para sus libros nuevos.

(...) Hill Top Farm es una modesta granja de arquitectura vernácula del siglo XVII. Su jardín, su porche y la deliciosa aldea en la que se encuentra aparecen en infinidad de sus acuarelas. También el interior, que se ha conservado tal como ella lo dejó y se puede visitar (...) 

(...) Beatrix escribió muchas de sus historias en esta casa de piedra. Personajes como Tom Kitten, Samuel Bigotes y Puddleduck Jemima fueron creados aquí, y los libros contienen muchas imágenes sobre la base de la casa y el jardín.

(...) Estaba totalmente comprometida con la causa conservacionista, y luchó, perdiendo dinero muchas veces, por mantener el distrito rural. Trabajó los campos durante las dos guerras y protegió a la autóctona herdwick, un tipo de oveja peluda que hoy sigue pastando por las tierras altas. (...)

(...) "Hill Top era su lugar, su casa de muñecas a medida", explica Graham Wilkinson, guía de un tour sobre la autora. "No quería cambiar nada, ni meter un marido. Era donde iba a pintar y a estar sola". (...)

(...) Cuando murió en 1943, dejó de Hill Top a la National Trust , con la condición de que se mantenga tal y como ella lo dejó, con sus muebles y porcelanas.(...)

"La hora del té en el Hill Top 'de Stephen Darbishire.

(...) UN PAISAJE QUE ENGAÑA

Desde el mirador, al oeste, los picos de Langdale marcan la parte más dura del parque. Un territorio agreste y alto, con montañas que no llegan a los mil metros, pero que engañan. En ellas se inventó la escalada moderna, y todavía muere gente que sube sin tomárselas en serio. Las carreteras discurren por pasos con nombres como Wry Nose (Nariz Torcida). En el valle de Wasdale, aguerridos montañeros parten hacia las cumbres. Aquí todo son extremos: están la iglesia más pequeña, la montaña mas alta y el lago más profundo de Inglaterra, Wastwater. Dicen que muchas veces los submarinistas han encontrado cadáveres de crímenes sin resolver. También que en el fondo hay un jardín de gnomos. A Saber, la única taberna del inhóspito paraje, es famosa por un concurso para encontrar al mayor mentiroso del mundo. Los políticos y los periodistas están vetados, por considerárseles embusteros profesionales.

No todo es tan bucólico en esta parte del mundo que Wordsworth retrató en sus poemas. También hay una parte dura, dramática, marcada por el pragmatismo. Nada de tonterías. Como una corriente de tenacidad bajo las aguas tranquilas de los lagos. Y es en esta dualidad del paisaje donde mejor se comprende a Beatrix Potter. Puede que sus dibujos fuesen cursilones, pero la tímida niña victoriana que pintaba conejitos dejó a su muerte, en 1943, un patrimonio valorado hoy en siete millones de libras. Más de 4.000 acres de tierras que cedió al National Trust fundado por los socialistas utópicos. Dejó órdenes estrictas: los granjeros pagarían poco por arrendar las tierras y se criarían especies autóctonas.

Tuvo Beatrix un último compromiso con la tierra que la inspiró durante años. Dejó sus cenizas a su granjero de confianza para que las esparciese en un lugar secreto, evitando así futuras hordas de turistas en busca de un nuevo lugar de peregrinación.

(Publicado por Rocío María & Patrizia en http://teconjaneausten.blogspot.com/2010/05/el-fabuloso-mundo-de-beatrix-potter-el.html)

http://mrs-darcy.blogdiario.com/

http://www.visitcumbria.com/amb/hill-top.htm

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-hilltop

http://www.biography.com/people/beatrix-potter-9445208