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PARTING THOUGHTS
R E A C HING
for the
NORT H
Northern poets and writers on what "the North" means to them. WRITTEN BY ALYSSA FORD
If you ask an American to envision the North they might think of Santa in his polar outpost, or maybe that doe-eyed Disney princess who sings “Let it Go!” Talk about the North with someone in Britain, or Russia, or Japan and you’ll get a much more visceral response. In his meditative book The Idea of North, Scottish humanities professor Peter Davidson argues that the United States is unusual in that it lacks a strong cultural conception of North. “For most of humanity,” he says, “the North is an austere wilderness of harsh beauty, fox fires and snow-draped forests.” British author C.S. Lewis describes it thus in his autobiography: “huge regions of northern sky… something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale and remote).” Davidson points out that one of the most important touchstones of the North idea—as an untamed frontier and proving ground—is instead woven into the American psyche as West or Going Out West. Perhaps Professor Davidson is right. Maybe for some Americans, North is a two-dimensional confection of a place, a Candyland realm where Queen Frostine holds court with the polar bears. Or maybe the idea of North cannot be extracted whole from our Civil War. There is one truth, though, that Professor Davidson is missing entirely: that the U.S. has a Deep North to contrast its Deep South. This American North is found in the upper reaches of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Though there is scant research about the cultural imaginings in this American North, the poets and writers of this region have much to say. Here are a few examples: Minnesota poet Michael Dennis Browne has written about the North’s elementality. His poem “North Shore Symphony” starts like this: To be shore, and shaped / To be tree, trembling / To be rock, water and flower / To be flower, to flame and fade / I go / North North
Michigander poet Kathleen Carlton Johnson has written about the North’s dreamy quietude. Her poem “Reino” starts like this: He liked the silence / He liked the way the trees looked / Still and grey Sauk Rapids native and essayist Mark Sakry has written about how the North reveals its true self come winter: “Winter brings to this region, already rich and abundant with wild land, a wilderness of immense proportion. Indeed, the stillness invoked by Nature’s hand upon the vast forested areas about Lake Superior amplifies the implicit solitude and romance of the region.” Grand Rapids writer Susan Hawkinson has written about the North’s ability to level her: “Listening to wind and shore and water, I find out once more where I fit. It is a shrinking of self, an emptying of ego, an enlarging of the natural world.” The late Minnesota essayist Paul Gruchow wrote about how the North heightened his senses: “The silence was so deep that you could hear the wings of the birds beating against the air. Ravens squeaked through the forest as if their wing joints were rusty.” This North, with its pine, aspen, taconite, freshwater and fur, is unique in the world and very much defined by its people. Perhaps if Professor Davidson comes for a visit he will be inspired to amend his book. In the meantime, I’m sticking with another tome, also titled The Idea of North. This one is a set of poems by native Minnesotan Doug Linder. It starts like this:
110 | NORTH
Just past the Moose Lake exit off I-35, I say, “The North is an idea, not a place,” And my wife looks at me as she often does and asks, “Then why are we trying to drive to it?”