Identity: That Scary Thing by Nan Lundeen

Essay by Nan Lundeen

Meaningful writing means drawing on the deepest sense of who I am, not necessarily writing memoir but creating from the essence of me.

For me, it’s always been about the land.

I had to learn to claim my writing identity. A friend, who watched my struggle, gave me a T-shirt with a picture of pencils and the word “WRITER” on the back. “This is who you are, Nan,” she said.

During my many years as a newspaper reporter, I did not claim the identity though my title was, “STAFF WRITER,” because it wasn’t “real writing.” In other words, not literary, although my first poems were published in literary journals in the 1970s. I led a dual writing life—fodder for newspaper subscribers to digest during morning coffee and dreams of writing something more meaningful, in which I hoped to capture the moment. I didn’t see that moments were being captured daily that affected people’s lives.

But I am not here to decry or to praise journalism, although, now we need honest, dedicated journalists more than ever. I am here to say the path toward poetry revealed itself more clearly when I took up my pen to write Black Dirt Days: Poems as Memoir. I found more than my roots. I discovered the reality of who I am, the joyful voice of discovery. I realized I like my family.

It is about more than surface identity, though. It is about my parents’ example of prayer and gratitude; my mother’s love for books that became my life blood; Daddy’s love for the land—he never used a herbicide, and he never plowed under the patch of wild horseradish in the front forty, always letting it share with corn or oats or alfalfa, and harvesting only enough to use as a condiment.

The neighborhood was as non-welcoming and close-knit as any farming community in the 1950s. The camaraderie meant everyone cheered for our basketball teams, and neighbors showed up to help bale hay. Such community was vital to survival. But it sowed in me a powerful distrust of groups. Righteous vigilantes, sans my parents, kicked a pregnant friend out of school and burned paperback books our young English teacher assigned such as Gone with the Wind and the Pulitzer Prize winning All the King’s Men.

From the ashes rose my poem, “Hawkeyes Read, Don’t They?”

Throughout, I have wrestled with placing my essence on the page. I fought against self-criticism that told me I was egotistical to think my words could be of value to anyone. I told myself: This is who I am.

And always, the land gave my writing meaning. It became my holy place. I built upon my parents’ stalwart spiritual life grounded in the Iowa soil.

As a newspaper reporter, I wrote environmental stories at every opportunity. I wrote about drinking water defiled by a government-owned landfill in Michigan, plans to build a landfill in a floodplain, PCBs dumped by a local oil re-refinery in an Indiana creek. Those PCB stories attracted a death threat which my publisher countered by carrying a sawed-off shotgun in his truck. But the Michigan folks who got clean drinking water sent me flowers.

Since then, I have folded close to my heart comments from people who have read my books of poems and shared how much they meant. One woman said she kept my book, The Pantyhose Declarations, by her bed and read a poem every night.

After Black Dirt Days came Gaia’s Cry, a book of poems decrying our climate emergency and celebrating Earth Goddesses, calling forth prayers and defenders. Black Dirt Days and my how-to-write book Moo of Writing won national indie book finalist awards. My chapbook in progress is called Nature’s Forge.

For me, it’s about the land. It’s who I am.

Buy Lundeen’s books at nanlundeen.com.

Excerpt from Black Dirt Days: Poems as Memoir

I never thought

my Iowa childhood

would seem quaint.

I grew up there before she was called the Heartland

which I think started with a Chevy commercial or something.

She was called

the breadbasket of the world then

and we were proud—

her Mississippi River bottomland,

her alluvial deposits from Goddess knows when,

the rich black earth

where my soul planted itself

and refused to move

although my body did.

In winter, Uncle Alvin’s laugh boomed over the putt-putt of the John Deere

pulling us wrapped in blankets—

the dog and Gram along—

sitting on straw bales in a wagon on runners

through snowy fields and afterwards,

hot chocolate in the warm farm kitchen with lime green walls.

They liked fun—

my older parents, my aunt, my Gram—my playmates,

me, an only child.