In the Limelight

i. Readings

With trembling knees and after one too many slugs of cognac in an attempt to quell my jittering heart, I stood before a small New York City audience in March 1967 and read a few of my poems.  I’d been writing poetry only a few months, but I was on a roll.

Soon I was performing, in my psychedelic dress, with jazz musician and poet Alan Surpin, erasing the barriers between our words and his clarinet or sax.  We called ourselves “Appliqués” and performed at an art galley with an odd name: A Fly Can’t Bird but a Bird Can Fly. We loved it. Then we called ourselves “Sound Forms” and performed for Trinity Lutheran Church and The Communitarians, another church group.

Several times we read and played on the same program as poet Barbara Holland (Rutgers University and New Jersey State Teachers College), and we eventually teamed up with poet Barry Schwartz for a series of eight readings at Kipsbay Gallery in New York. But the highlight of our collaboration remains the weekend we performed at the American Ethical Culture’s Society’s national youth convention in New Jersey on the same program as the blind musician Louis “Moondog” Hardin, whose minimalist albums impressed musicians like Philip Glass and Charlie Parker.

Alan and I had seen Moondog around town. Who hadn’t? His homespun costume made my psychedelic dress look decidedly “off the rack.” A tall, genial man with flowing gray hair and an even longer beard, Moondog dressed in full Viking regalia: sweeping robes, a tall spear, a fur helmet sporting steer horns. This apparition, more forest spirit than military man, stood stock still in the middle of a busy Sixth Avenue sidewalk, begging for his living. Or he’d play drums and keyboards, recite his poetry. “She bought a cover to cover the seat; but the cover was so nice/she bought a cover to cover the cover; and now it’s covered twice.”

After Alan moved to Canada, I kept on reading, sometimes crooning my words as we had done. I read at Eagle Tavern and Cummington Community of the Arts, I read on the radio in New York and Houston and on TV in Woodstock, I read at a medical center in New Orleans, at galleries and at many colleges. Sometimes I read with other poets: Jane Augustine at Bragr Times Bookstore, Gerald Burns at Boston’s Trident Café. Three times I read contest-winning poems in New Jersey at the Newark Public Library.

ii. Performances

When I returned to Nebraska in the mid-1980s and saw scholar-performers in Chautauqua roles, I thought, “I can do that.” Soon I wore a bustle and lacey gloves, carried an umbrella and pretended to be Louisa May Alcott.

That went so well I invented other roles. For a Unitarian Church in Omaha, I dressed in a long flowing gown and pretended to be Eostre, the Germanic goddess of Easter. I wore a worn brown shawl and pretended to be “Henrietta’s Mother,” dashing about New York looking for Henrietta who was riding on an orphan train. I dressed in overalls, dabbed freckles on my face and pretended to be the spittin’ image of my Grandpa Ben to narrate a chapter from my Great Plains Patchwork. I put a pillow on my belly, wore suspenders and a tie to pretend to be J. C. Colby, a gambler lamenting the wicked ways of “Ol’ Mister Hindsight.” I slipped into a negligee and tossed a hot pink boa around my shoulders and, as “Lady Plume,” read my erotic poetry.

Then using a series of hats and other props, I pretended to be eight different orphan-train characters, from Charles Loring Brace, founder of the movement, in his top hat and beard, to a nun, a newsboy, and a variety of orphans. This became my most popular presentation, especially in schools. Backed by the Nebraska Humanities Council, I gave this program, “Orphan Train Riders,” 29 times.

iii. Lectures

College teaching ignited the lecturer in me. Over the years, I lectured hundreds of times, but the lectures I most enjoyed preparing and giving were those sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council.  These included:

“Jimmy Hoffa in Nebraska,” presented primarily to Teamsters’ Union audiences

“The Remarkable Suggs Family,” a historical portrait of people who settled in an all-black Kansas town

“Recipe for a Best Seller” or how to create a blockbuster novel

“Louisa May Alcott and the Orphan Trains” (there really was a connection)

and “The Orphan Trains,” a topic so popular I lectured on it 54 times from 1991-1995.