I’m currently working on a project with Bill Caraher who is the pilot of The Digital Press at University of North Dakota. For a year, or beyond a year now, Caraher and I have been thinking about Clell Gannon, and Gannon’s 1924 publication, Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres (SoBGA). I’m working on revisions from a first draft submitted to The Digital Press, and after letting editorial comments sit with me for a while, I have decided to recalibrate a bit of the original narrative. Like it is the case with many texts, the more you read, revisit, and think about SoBGA, the more the text starts speaking to the reader in different ways. The recalibration of the first draft will look something like this:

1. Clell Gannon intellectually situates (indirectly and directly) his 1924 SoBGA into the current of Romanticism. And not the romanticism that you’re thinking about. Like he’s not poeming (poem is now a verb) the reader to go pick flowers and let your feelings rather than your brain dictate your moment to moment actions. Rather, in the original intellectual vein of Romanticism (which was a counter balance to the, ahem, Enlightenment), he’s saying (I’m paraphrasing here), Hey, this northern plains and Great Plains and Western Americana place we all live in: this place is completely worth living in. And not only is it worth living it, it deserves our contemplation, and this place is deserving of a sustained relationship with us.
2. Who else did Clell Gannon roll with at this time? He was a mover and shaker. Also one who was a joy to be around. Thoughtful. And nothing that is in his writings, or others who have written about him, suggests he was a chest thumper. He was friends with Russell Reid and George Will (son of Oscar Will and his vegetable seed empire). The same Russell Reid who acted as secretary of the State Historical Society of North Dakota for decades: when it evolved from the basement of one of the buildings on the State Capitol Grounds eventually to the building that today houses the State Library. Clell would likely lose his mind (in a good way) if he saw the geothermal-heated footprint of today’s State Historical Society of North Dakota, and in-motion expansion of the Military Wing.
   • Clell was unable to physically make the requirements to be mustered into World War I. I do wonder what contributions he might suggest for interpretive exhibits in the 21st military wing following the Great War of the 20th century? Might they have read something along the lines of what Willa Cather spoke of in 1922? “…the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts…” In 1922, Cather had seen veterans return from the Great War, and as returned veterans, they were told (not even really told) to navigate the ascent of the industrial capitalistic roaring 20s.
3. In conversations with Shadd Piehl (ahem, recognized poet of the American West, cowboy poet, teacher, listener, encourager of the written and spoken word, and former bronc rider, etc), Piehl noted that Clell reminded him of the poem American Names that Stephen Vincent Benét set down in 1927, or 3 years after publication of SoBGA. So the revisions of this draft will take into greater account a couple other datum points, including Willa Cather and Stephen Vincent Benét.
4. Clell Gannon’s introduction (very short) of SoBGA is good.
   • In the first paragraph he sets out his flag of love of regional place. Not nationalistic love. But of the regions within this nation: northern plains. Great Plains. American West.
   • The second paragraph is on about poetic structure, meter to be exact, and with a sampling of how a west of the Mississippi River person pronounces “coyote”: say ki’ot, Clell instructs, as two syllables. Don’t get all sophisticated and say “ki’ot’eee.” Don’t do that. Nobody would ever do that. Use two syllables to say coyote, and the meter of the poems will flow.
   • The third paragraph calls out Florence Harriet Davis, librarian in 1924 of what would have been the beautiful Carnegie Library in Bismarck (it was completely razed in the 1970s or 1960s for progress. Poetically, a parking ramp is located there today.). Who is Florence? In a word search in the Library of Congress searchable newspaper database, she surfaces here and there in Bismarck Tribune articles.
   • Clell’s final poem in SoBGA is to Hazel Dell Gannon, who at 17 years old passed away in what Clell describes as Grand Valley, South Dakota. Maybe she was preparing to attend teachers college? Or something? I Google’d Grand Valley, and the closest thing that surfaces is place names in Lincoln County, southeastern South Dakota.
   • Clell signs off on his short introduction with “Bismarck-by-the-river, North Dakota.” Today, in 2024, this is another great reminder to readers to recenter their view of North Dakota’s capital city as one that is a river city as well. Clell understood the importance of the Missouri River to the early history of the region and, eventually, to the state.

Okay, that’s all the Clell-ification I have for the moment. Gotta get after the other items for this Thörsdag, October 31, 2024, Halloween Day (the pumpkins were carved last night).