On “The Railroad Brought Us Here” by Rayni K. Wekluk
By Brad Aaron Modlin
Welcome to Poets on the Plains, I’m Brad Aaron Modlin.This poem is by Rayni K. Wekluk.
“The Railroad Brought Us Here” I learned about The Dust Bowl the year of the drought Black blizzard I thought of snow at night and I confused it with the grasshopper plague in my fist-sized brain, not More bizarre, the blaring thirst of the dirt the chokehold on our bison cousins I wondered if corn sweats During 4th grade, I blinked so hard it got dark in the sun here was a silver woman on old veneers near Figg St. I was told the railroad brought us here Towns, like teeth, have roots The post office was the butcher shop That house was the midwife’s There was the pharmacy, the dressmaker City Hall looks the same Imagine a sea of prairie grass I was imagining The Great Plains Uttering I’ve never seen woods and an orca ate all the buffalo I dreamt I was swimming through my room It was the strangest sort of June
Used with Permission
This poem is really cool. Let’s start with the title: “The Railroad Brought Us Here.” Us as collective—the inhabitants who arrived to The Great Plains in train cars. But also, the railroad brought us here as in it brought us to these consequences—The Dust Bowl resulting in part from that sudden increase in population and farming. It also seems like us now, remembering—the railroad has brought us to memory.
This is something I love about poetry: how it can be multiple things at one. I always encourage students to read a poem many times because once you know the ending, the poem has a different meaning. This poem ends telling us I lived in “the strangest sort of June.” Go back earlier and the speaker says they were in the fourth grade in the year of the drought—so a drought in recent decades? Or is “the year of the drought” referring to the Dust Bowl? Both?
Time and place are slippery in this poem, just like in memory or dream. We dream of swimming indoors—about as far from the ocean as we can be—and a whale eats all the buffalo. The prairies were a sea of grass, and they were a blizzard of dust in the 1930s, which the elementary student confuses with the Grasshopper Plague of 1874 when clouds of locusts blocked out the sun.
This poem is both dreamy and very smart. Like a cloud of dust, its particles are flying around.
This is a contrapuntal poem—a term borrowed from counterpoint music in which two separate melodies happen at the same time. Not as in an independent melody anda supporting harmony, but two independent lines you might not expect together. In poetry, this can mean two seemingly separate poems on the same page. Rayni K. Wekluk has arranged her poem in two columns. I read the left one then the right one. But—how interesting is this?—you can read it across as well.
I’ll do that now. Pay attention to dreaminess, time, and place in this version.
[The poem again.]
If you want to see this poem, and read it several times, check High Plains Public Radio website.
Rayni K. Wekluk completed her bachelor’s at University of Nebraska in Omaha. She is the author of Garbage City Poems (Thirty West Publishing House). Her poetry and nonfiction are published in Passages North, The Linden Review, Collision, The Goodlife Review, and others. She now studies at The University of Florida’s MFA program.
By the way, if you want to read more contrapuntal poems, check out ones written by another Poets on the Plains host, Tarfia Faizullah.
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Brad Aaron Modlin, representing the windy state of Nebraska.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Brad Aaron Modlin has served for eight years as The Reynolds Endowed Chair of Poetry/Associate Professor at University of Nebraska, Kearney, teaching undergrads & in the online grad program. His book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names and his forthcoming No Earth But This are available from Black Lawrence Press. Work has appeared in The Pushcart Prize; Prairie Schooner; Brevity; The Slowdown; The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and as the premier episode of Poetry Unbound. Also, orchestral scores, Australian art galleries, Brooklyn public art, & his neighbor’s refrigerator. He has received support from Sewanee, Banff, & the Nebraska Arts Council. He often writes about hope or embarrassment because he believes in human goodness & is very clumsy at the gym. https://www.bradaaronmodlin.com/
FEATURED POET
Rayni K. Wekluk is the author of Garbage City Poems (Thirty West Publishing House). Her poetry and nonfiction is published in Passages North, The Linden Review, Collision, The Goodlife Review, and others. She studies at The University of Florida’s MFA program. https://rayniwekluk.com/
