I was a military brat. My return to the U.S. after attending high school in Italy was, well, interesting. Junction City, Kansas was definitely not bella Napoli. This poem came from that experience, albeit a few years after, and was published in the mid-80s in the Allegheny Review, a national journal of undergraduate creative writing, and was republished by Silver Birch Press in 2017. The kid who wrote it still exists. Somewhere.
Letter from Kansas
Caro amico,
Driving the stretch to Junction City,
I look for familiar faces in the cars
we pass, but see only strange grasses
gliding by. Three weeks ago
I slept on a stone-littered hilltop
overlooking the Bay of Naples.
Now the prairie laps at our front door.
A mile from the house two corralled bison
munch dull hay thrown daily
from a truck’s flat bed, and past that
the Discount Center’s sign
spells America. What I wouldn’t give
for a deep draught of Pozzuoli’s
summer stench and the strong
yellow wine that Michele’s father
makes. We mixed it with the gardener’s
red, creating our own bouquet,
remember? And here they say
I’m too young to buy beer and wine.
Without them the food is flavorless,
like the single language spoken.
I understand it all,
and miss the difficulty. Maybe Texas
will be better. Ci vediamo. Bob
This was one of my first posts on the blog, and as you might expect, very few people saw it. I wrote the poem in the summer of 1983, when I was new to poetry, still tentative, exploring. A few weeks later I attempted the sonnet form, and, well, everything changed. Everything.
Does Texas, then, get to claim status as birthing your inner poet?
I like the letter form, and the contrast of Kansas with Italy.
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If not birthing, developing!
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I had the reverse experience with Japan. I LOVE Canada, but artistically I felt like I was ‘home’ right away in Osaka…
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Oh, to have that feeling!
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Wonderful piece. We lived in Kansas for eight years, and I can picture Junction City from your poem.
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Thanks, Leslie. I lived there for about ten months. The winter drove me to Texas!
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Surprisingly hard winters in Kansas. We moved there from North Dakota, so they seemed fairly tame to us at the time.
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I’m not certain how the midwest winters will affect me. I’ll probably whine a lot.
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I certainly whined.
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Ah, so I have an example to follow!
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Yes sir! I excel at whining.
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I don’t remember why haiku form was easy to remember but it was and a shower of syllabic husks later I had shinier things. I oft remember Kansas and the.omg. we have to get through….Kansas…. Oo the exploitive powers I have! Yet flat boring Kansas is a lot more dynamic in terrain than the Florida I’m in now where about all you might hope for is a t-shirt say Florida ain’t flat…worn by a busty gal.
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I’m sure I’d find Kansas more interesting today.
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I know that I-70 stretch well my friend. Grew up in Abilene and went to K-State. I just had to stop in and say hi, the prairies feel like home.
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I attended K-State just one year. I wonder what strange twists my life might have taken had I stayed longer.
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and I attended 1 1/2 years before I took a twist and turn. Still wish I had landed in Europe as did you at some point, but some point in time may still come to be.
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It was a wonderful time to be in Europe. I hope you find your way there!
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