Back Home by Louis Jenkins

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by Louis Jenkins

The place I lived as a child, the sharecropper’s farmhouse with

its wind-bent mulberry trees and rusted farm machinery has

completely vanished. Now there’s nothing but plowed fields for

miles in any direction. When I asked around in town no one

remembered the family. No way to verify my story. In fact,

there’s no evidence that any of what I remember actually hap-

pened, or that the people I knew ever existed. There was my

uncle Axel, for instance, who spent most of his life moving from

one job to another, trying to “find himself.” He should have

saved himself the trouble. I moved away from there a long time

ago, when I was a young man, and came to the cold spruce

forests of the north. The place I thought I was going is imagi-

nary, yet I have lived here most of my life.

First, let me give a TOTH (Tip of the Hat) to The Writer's Almanac; this poem was the poem from yesterday, emailed to me as I am a paying subscriber. It was published in Jenkins' 2000 book, The Winter Road, published by Holy Cow! Press.

This poem hit me hard. My father died a few weeks ago, my mother 3 years ago. The house we all lived in together, and where they lived until 2021, was sold. Even my beloved car is ready to be replaced. I constantly feel ungrounded, with no real sense of home or stability or what really matters. This poem seemed to capture exactly what I am feeling these days, and it is really powerful when a poem does that.

Favorite lines, sentences, images:

wind-bent mulberry trees and rusted farm machinery

No way to verify my story.

The place I thought I was going is imagi-

nary, yet I have lived here most of my life.

And, of course, the humorous bit about the uncle who "should have saved himself the trouble."

The feeling of dislocation, and how it is both tangible and surreal, comes through the entire poem, but especially in that last sentence.

Jenkins himself spent his early years in Oklahoma, then went to "the cold spruce forests of the north," aka Minnesota. He favored prose poems and authored 14 books of poetry. His poems--no surprise here--were often featured on The Writer's Almanac. He died in 2019.

His website is still up and can be found here.

His obit, from Minnesota Public Radio, is here.

A few more of his poems are here.

Holy Cow! Press can be found here.

Sign up for The Writer's Almanac, no longer on Public Radio, but happily in your in-box every day here (I like it coming to me so I got a subscription, but it is also accessible on Substack, which is where the link will take you).

So now you also know why I took some time off! But I am back. A little worse for the wear, but I am happy to return to posting and discussing poems I love and introducing people (I hope) to poets and poems they will love as well.

See you again on Wednesday!