Arts Pulse article
Poet Jamie Parsley’s vision of the 1957 Fargo
tornado: A preview and review
By Pamela Sund
One of the aims of poetry is to keep the human spirit alive and feeling
empathy for fellow travelers. Jamie Parsley’s poems do just that. In his
forthcoming book, Fargo, 1957: An Elegy, his sensitive approach to the
narratives of individuals and a community in distress evokes images, not
only of immediate situations, but also of universal suffering and loss. It is
easy to “feel into” the lives of others as their stories unfold through Parsley’
s poetic works.
The personalization of the characters is enhanced by the accompanying
photographs, many previously unpublished. Parsley’s extensive research
of his subject, the 1957 killer tornado that ripped through Fargo, North
Dakota, yielded photos that began to appear from unexpected sources as
though ordained to accompany the narratives. And to make the personal
even more so, Parsley’s mother lost a cousin and her husband to the
disaster, so the poet had firsthand experience of the stories before he
began the project.
An entire book about one tragedy in one American city could easily remain
too site and event specific to engender proper sympathy if it arrived from
the sensibility of a lesser writer. With 12-gauge language suited to the
subject of the tornado, alongside a flute-like musicality that pays homage
to the souls of the dead and to the spirits of those who survived, Parsley
elevates the problematic narrow subject to high accord. He uses concrete
imagery and alternates forceful and subtle rhythms and slant rhyme to
significant effect.
Here is a sampling of the aforementioned. From “Every day:” “It was here
she lived
/ and it was here she lay that night / . . . in the wreckage and shattered glass
/ until
Thilford, her husband, / lifted the boards from her / revealing her
shattered body.” “Every
day” ends with speaking: “And now, alone, I face whatever that sky / will
throw at me. /
Let those winds blow. / Let them rage. / What more could they take at this
point?”
Shifting points of view abound, from that of the survivors, to the victims to
the objective
narrator. Parsley put it this way: “You can make the dead speak in ways
you can’t with nonfiction.” This strategy adds to the heart-wrenching
personalization present throughout.
Layers of Fargo and family history are part of the story, as it moves from
the past to the present, in topography and genealogy. Children and
grandchildren of the survivors and the deceased also appear, and the paved
over and reconstructed sites loom large in Parsley’s descriptions. “There,
where the telephone lines stood / and were knocked to the ground, / a
water tower balloons into the sky / . .. . And where the fence leaned to the
ground in the wind, / identical storage units / as uniform as the niches in a
columbarium.” From Parsley’s viewpoint, the tornado could sit or stand in
for any tragic life event. “And when I think to myself / of the sadness of
this complete disappearance, / I am reminded that this too awaits all of us .
. .”
The very intensely felt poem “Betty” gets it all right: in attitude, rhythm,
imagery and feeling. “Don’t let me fall! / Let me not fall through the long
night / as a stone falls to the hard ground. / / . . . When the angry storm
rises / and kicks up dirt from the earth, / screaming at me in the long dusk
/ / don’t let me be like a fly / shivering and grasping at the glass pane / as
autumn dies.”
This creation of perceptive imagination and spirit is forthcoming in early
December from The North Dakota Institute of Regional Studies press.
tornado: A preview and review
By Pamela Sund
One of the aims of poetry is to keep the human spirit alive and feeling
empathy for fellow travelers. Jamie Parsley’s poems do just that. In his
forthcoming book, Fargo, 1957: An Elegy, his sensitive approach to the
narratives of individuals and a community in distress evokes images, not
only of immediate situations, but also of universal suffering and loss. It is
easy to “feel into” the lives of others as their stories unfold through Parsley’
s poetic works.
The personalization of the characters is enhanced by the accompanying
photographs, many previously unpublished. Parsley’s extensive research
of his subject, the 1957 killer tornado that ripped through Fargo, North
Dakota, yielded photos that began to appear from unexpected sources as
though ordained to accompany the narratives. And to make the personal
even more so, Parsley’s mother lost a cousin and her husband to the
disaster, so the poet had firsthand experience of the stories before he
began the project.
An entire book about one tragedy in one American city could easily remain
too site and event specific to engender proper sympathy if it arrived from
the sensibility of a lesser writer. With 12-gauge language suited to the
subject of the tornado, alongside a flute-like musicality that pays homage
to the souls of the dead and to the spirits of those who survived, Parsley
elevates the problematic narrow subject to high accord. He uses concrete
imagery and alternates forceful and subtle rhythms and slant rhyme to
significant effect.
Here is a sampling of the aforementioned. From “Every day:” “It was here
she lived
/ and it was here she lay that night / . . . in the wreckage and shattered glass
/ until
Thilford, her husband, / lifted the boards from her / revealing her
shattered body.” “Every
day” ends with speaking: “And now, alone, I face whatever that sky / will
throw at me. /
Let those winds blow. / Let them rage. / What more could they take at this
point?”
Shifting points of view abound, from that of the survivors, to the victims to
the objective
narrator. Parsley put it this way: “You can make the dead speak in ways
you can’t with nonfiction.” This strategy adds to the heart-wrenching
personalization present throughout.
Layers of Fargo and family history are part of the story, as it moves from
the past to the present, in topography and genealogy. Children and
grandchildren of the survivors and the deceased also appear, and the paved
over and reconstructed sites loom large in Parsley’s descriptions. “There,
where the telephone lines stood / and were knocked to the ground, / a
water tower balloons into the sky / . .. . And where the fence leaned to the
ground in the wind, / identical storage units / as uniform as the niches in a
columbarium.” From Parsley’s viewpoint, the tornado could sit or stand in
for any tragic life event. “And when I think to myself / of the sadness of
this complete disappearance, / I am reminded that this too awaits all of us .
. .”
The very intensely felt poem “Betty” gets it all right: in attitude, rhythm,
imagery and feeling. “Don’t let me fall! / Let me not fall through the long
night / as a stone falls to the hard ground. / / . . . When the angry storm
rises / and kicks up dirt from the earth, / screaming at me in the long dusk
/ / don’t let me be like a fly / shivering and grasping at the glass pane / as
autumn dies.”
This creation of perceptive imagination and spirit is forthcoming in early
December from The North Dakota Institute of Regional Studies press.
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