Reaping the Harvest of Solitude

by Greg Galbraith

Why poetry? Perhaps it was to make order of chaos in my always whirling mind. “You have a very active mind.” No one had made that suggestion to me in my first fifty five years. It came during an initial meeting with someone who has since become a good friend largely through poetry.

Perhaps if someone like an elementary school teacher had recognized this earlier and conveyed it to me my life would have veered off in a different direction. That little sound bite, “you have a very active mind” would have informed my self-awareness enough to ignite an effort on my part to harness it. Likely through an art form. I could have been “trained” in the arts. I’m not regretful.

The direction I took resulted in the ordering of my chaotic mind largely through an abundance of solitude. Poet Robert Bly observed, “The fundamental world of poetry is an inward world. We approach it through solitude.” Kenneth Koch once asked Alan Ginsberg what he considered an ideal existence for a poet. “Retiring from the world, living in a mountain hut, practicing certain meditational exercises half the day, and composing epics as the sun sets,” was his reply.

Looking back, I realize I’ve spent most of my last 30 years working alone on a dairy farm in eastern Marathon county, Wisconsin. Alone. Solitude was a constant companion. Behind the steering wheel of a tractor with a day of round baling to do or fetching the herd from the furthest paddock of grass on a July afternoon accompanied by bronze headed cowbirds riding the flanks of my shorthorn milk cows. High above a turkey vulture circled. Over there, a least weasel skirted a cedar fence post and disappeared in the undergrowth. A monarch teetered on a stalk of timothy and the neighbor’s cow had died beneath a basswood tree. It ends up in my poetry. Processed linearly yet intuitively expressed.

Though solitude worked for Ginsberg, Bly, and myself (yes, I just put myself in a sentence with Ginsberg and Bly. It feels good.)  In the year 2019 we have a reemergence of a louder style of poetry. One of civil unrest and protest. One of discontent among the common folks. One of dismay at the degraded earth. It’s a poetry of the people. It’s a loud collaborative voice. Joy Harjo, the first Native American U.S. poet laureate had this to say about the current state of poetry. “Audiences for poetry are growing because of the turmoil in our country-political shifts, climate shifts. When there’s uncertainty, when you are looking for meaning beyond this world — that takes people to poetry. We need something to counter the hate speech, the divisiveness, and it’s possible through poetry.”

The mind seeks order. Order yes, but not always rational order. I love landing upon those quirky irrational poems by Bly and Corso. With Bly it comes in a poem that leaps and takes your breath away on an island or in the belly of a badger. In Corso’s Last Night I drove A Car I’m left in the fetal position in the back seat of a car I ran over loved ones with. Excited for my new life. It’s poets like these that “gave me permission” to voice the irrational in my own poems.  And so, from my place on earth on I could travel.

I once fell in love with an ethereal light while planting a field of clover. I once listened to round bales lined up along Eau Claire River Road lament winter. “I could have escaped but I feared loneliness,” one bemoaned. I once watched the devil dance with a cheap two dollar whore in my vineyard. I once drank whisky with Richard Brautigan. Poetry made it possible.

I am a folk artist. Untrained in music, painting, and to a lesser degree poetry, where I’ve had some instruction. I believe from our work, art arises.

My farm was grass from end to end. I was kind to her. I never turned a furrow with an iron plow. Never poisoned her with chemicals. Just moved cows around on her.

They got along-the earth and my herd.
Grass proliferated. I helped now and then.
It came time to quit. I painted my face on a stone
and laid it on her. Said goodbye. Wept.
Then wrote a poem of a modern yeoman.

Poetry for me is a survival skill. Survival from the solitude it emerges from.

Greg Galbraith is a Freelance Agricultural Journalist with a weekly column in Wisconsin’s largest weekly farm newspaper, AgriView. His work has also been published in ACRES U.S.A. and Farm and Ranch Living. He focuses on conservation minded practices and individuals in the ag world. The freedom of having his own column allows him to venture into the purely creative when inspired and that includes poetry. In January of 2019 he sold his organic/grazing based dairy farm in Aniwa, Wisconsin and now resides with his wife of 34 years along the Wisconsin River in Wausau. His poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy and Midwest Review. He published a book of poetry, Germinations, through Sandyhouse Press in 2017. His writings and photography can be seen at poeticfarmer.com.