Speaking about His Poem on the Range
by Huascar Medina, Poet Laureate of Kansas emeritus
Hello friends, I’m Huascar Medina, Former Poet Laureate of Kansas, here for Poets on the Plains. I’m pleased to meet you and look forward to sharing the wonderful poetry from Kansas poets. Today, I will be sharing one of my poems, “on the Range,” but first, allow me a moment to introduce myself.
I’ve lived artfully in Kansas for over 25 years. I’m a poet, father, editor, and essayist. As a second-generation immigrant living in the Heartland, my work explores the boundaries between identity and location, while searching for common ground and cultural empathy, in the hope of finding and creating shared spaces for all of us.
I’m the author of three books of poetry: How to Hang the Moon, Un Mango Grows in Kansas, and Protest as Love Poem.
The poem I want to share today is an erasure poem titled “on the Range,” A reimagining of our official state song, “Home on the Range”.
An erasure poem is a type of found poetry created by taking an existing text and erasing, blacking out, or obscuring the majority of the words. The remaining words stay in their original position and form a new poem. The text I used are lyrics from the state song of Kansas, “Home on the Range.”
Here is the poem “on the Range”
Originally, the song we know today as “Home on the Range” was written as a poem titled “My Western Home” in 1872 by Dr. Brewster Higley in Smith County, Kansas. It became a song when Daniel Kelley added the melody we know today. It is widely considered the “unofficial anthem” of the American West. The Kansas Legislature declared it the official state song of Kansas in 1947.
Some songs are timeless and sung by generations who identify with their meaning and promise. The state song is recognizable by most Kansans. The opening line is a request. It begins with “Oh, give me a home” .” The word ‘home’ appears in the poem multiple times. It is a poem of place, a desire for a home to call one's own. A want for a place to feel like home.
I’m reminded of the settlers of Kansas who came here from faraway places like Germany, Sweden, and Russia, in search of a better life. It’s an origin story as old as the American West. Kansas settlers were a mix of both American migrants from the Eastern U.S and foreign-born immigrants during the mid-to-late 19th century. I’m intrigued by this history and this song because I, too, am an immigrant searching for a place to call home.
The erasure poem states: “How often have I asked if theirs is ours.” A reference to the land of Kansas.
The original inhabitants of this land are Indigenous tribes such as the Cheyenne, Kanza, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita.
I wonder if I am encroaching on someone else's homeland, similar, on the surface, as Kansas settlers did to a land that does not belong to either of us. An understanding emerges for me. A lot of us living here chose Kansas as our home. We are mostly descendants of immigrants, if we are not indigenous to Kansas, and no range of time or distance can change that for us, and that’s okay.
Thank you for listening. This is Poets on the Plains. I’m Huascar Medina, living artfully in Topeka, Kansas. I hope you’re doing the same wherever you are.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Huascar Medina, a poet, editor, essayist, and artist advocate. He served as the poet laureate of Kansas from 2019 to 2022 and was named an Academy of American Huascar Medina Poets Laureate Fellow in 2022. Medina is currently a senior editor at South Broadway Press and a contributing op-ed writer at the Kansas Reflector. Medina is the author of How to Hang the Moon (Spartan Press), Un Mango Grows in Kansas (Spartan Press), Protest as Love Poem (Meadowlark Press), and the forthcoming Prairie Fool (Plainspoken Books, 2027), a collection of lyrical essays addressing politics, class, and culture. His work has been published in the Flint Hills Review, Gasconade Review, Green Mountains Review, Kansas Magazine, Latino Book Review, and The New York Times, among other places.https://huascarmedina.com/
