1. 12:13 3rd Jul 2012

    Notes: 2

    Tags: mary rueflepoetry magazinepoetrylaura ingalls wilderthis poem is crazy good

    I remember I chose Little, Brown and Company for a very special reason: they were the publishers of my favorite author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books (this was long before the television series). And although Little, Brown and Company sent me a very kind letter indeed, and guessed my age, they also did something I could never forgive them for, something that upset me for days and weeks and months. They sent me a picture of Laura Ingalls Wilder as a ninety-year-old woman; they told me she was dead, her mother and father and sisters were all dead too, and her husband, and that one of my favorite characters had died in a threshing machine accident—a threshing machine accident—it was so specific I was able to picture it vividly in my imagination, the mangled body in its overalls, the hat fallen off, some blood on the ground, the machine stopped in the noonday sun, one of its wheels bent out of shape, or some spoke or cog, and a leg or arm was in there, and the whole scene took place in the center of miles and miles and miles—as far as you could see—of beautiful golden grain, all the same length, like a crew cut.

    I remember I was not exactly sure what a threshing machine was.

    — from “I Remember, I Remember” by Mary Ruefle, in Poetry Magazine. There are parts of this that are so incredibly beautiful that I’m not sure why I picked this exact passage out. But still…
     
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